Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Christmas Loaf
Tonight I had a good visit with my wife. We were looking to cook something because we were hungry. We had two pounds of ground turkey and about half a pound of Tennessee Pride sausage left over from a breakfast feast. My wife said, "see if you find a recipe for anything using the two meats on the internets". When I entered sausage and turkey I kept getting a million ways to make sausage from turkey but no combined dish. I do not normally try to talk food, I leave that to Red Molly who has some awesome culinary advice over at Blue Page Special as well as some good blue American politics.
Mountain Girl and I started discussing the possibility of making a meat loaf using the meat items we had. I told her a tomato base was out of the question, and I would try to build a white gravy to season and top the meat.
When we assembled in the kitchen, I broke off a chunk of sausage and threw it in a sauce pan and started to fry it for its drippings to create a rue for gravy. I cooked it down and had less than a tablespoon of pig fat so I added a little butter and browned it with the meat still in. Then I added a few dashes of flour and browned it well. I then added about one cup of milk stirring all the time until I had a good salty white gravy. Then we scrounged the cream of mushroom soup from our cabinet. I put half the can in with the gravy and added another cup of milk and salt. It tasted good like it was. With a few more chunks of sausage and more milk we could have stopped there and had soup and crackers. I am glad we pressed toward the goal!
Good wife was working on the meat mix she chopped half an apple (skin on), a couple of sticks of celery, a quarter of an onion, a few crunched pecans and placed them in the ugly transluscent white meat with the rest of the raw sausage. Then we found a quarter of a can of bread crumbs and about twenty cracker squares for the loaf. She added two whole eggs for the binding. We added the other half of our mushroom canned soup and a half a can of water. She mixed it with her hands, shaped it into a loaf shape, and fit it in the loaf pan. We then put about five tablespoons of the mushroom/sausage gravy on top and smoothed it even.
Our oven was a hot 400 degrees and we left it in for about one hour. We whipped up some mashed taters and corn for side dishes. The loaf was perfectly moist but we used the mushroom/sausage gravy sauce on the meat-loaf and some on the taters.
The taste was like Thanksgiving in a loaf. The sage in the Tennessee Pride sausage gave a dressing flavor that one expects at Thanksgiving. The turkey spoke for itself and the gravy had that dry mush-roomy taste of giblets. If we had some dried cranberrys to add to this loaf before cooking it would have been perfection.
It was actually perfect because it was made with love and creativity that our union brings to our lives and it did not make matters worse.
:: posted by Tennessee Jed, 8:25 PM
7 Comments:
The beautiful wifey w/ the long hair and you had a grand culinary adventure, shared love, in the kitchen.. and who knows what happened after that.... wahoo!! We just heard all this sausage stuff, but I'm thinking..well..you all are a lovey couple!!
What a GREAT recipe!!!
What a GREAT recipe!!!
Julie I did'nt mean to write a porn story. Yet when I read it back and between the lines I guess I could see some yonic and phallic visions. Sometimes a sausage is just a sausage and a hot oven is just a hot oven but the white gravy is full on kinky.
A cooking project with a loved one is a wonderful way to spend time while rendering great results. What a yummy and creative recipe...making it up as you go along is always part of the fun. Great post and thanks to the link to the Blue Page Special.
That actually sounds pretty damn good.
Oh, I always see the cigar as a big ole sexy cigar... sorry!
TJ - Grat Post! Hope you and Mountain Girl have a fabulous holiday and even better New Year!
Well, come on now - don't leave me hanging like that.
What'd you have for breakfast this morning?
What'd you have for breakfast this morning?
