Notes from the Kitchen

 
For years I've been the Paper Products Gal at any covered dish occasion. Everyone knows that I'll come through with great paper plates and some nice plastic silverware, but no one ever asks me to actually cook anything.

Mostly likely that's because I love to tell people that I can't cook.

The truth is actually not that I can't cook, it's just that I don't. I'm single, I live alone, and I really don't like leftovers. Give me a Lean Cuisine and a little salad and I'm good to go.

Lately, though, I've been cooking more. I make chili or lentil soup and share it with my grandmother and the VIM. I've discovered that I can make some mean baked apples. I mean, geeze, I'm not a complete loser in the kitchen. I just choose to look like one sometimes. But those times are getting fewer and further between. Maybe I'm growing up. Maybe I'm getting bored with Beanies and Weenies. Who knows why these things happen?

So for the last covered dish meal I was invited to I offered to *gasp* bring a covered dish. The hostess did well in hiding her fear and surprise and said, "Great." (I think she added another "Juuuuuust great" under her breath, but I was already walking away, formulating my plan.)

I needed a crowd pleaser. Unfortunately the only thing I was certain would be pleasing was baked apples, and I wasn't keen on the idea of peeling apples for 100 people. So the VIM offered a suggestion: Hot Sausage.
"It's easy" he says.
"There will be a lot of beer drinkin' guys there, right?" he asks.
"They'll love you" he says.
"It's easy," he says again.
"Here's what you do: you getcher sausage at the butcher shop and cut it up into short little sandwich sized pieces. Throw it in a pot and boil it. Throw it in a crockpot with sauce, peppers and onions for a few hours, put out some rolls beside the crockpot, and voila. People love hot sausage sandwiches."

I'll take his word for it.

So I gathered all the ingredients together and began the quick and easy task of making Hot Sausage Sandwiches.

Step 1: Cut the sausage into little sandwich sized pieces.
Have you ever tried to cut fresh sausage (and let's not even get into what "fresh" could possibly mean in this case, ok)? I string out the 2 pounds of sausage on my counter and start hacking at it with a knife. The skin (blarg) is tough. It doesn't want to be pierced. Sausage starts squeezing out the other end. I try a straight edged knife. I try a serrated knife. I try scissors. I end up with glops of ground pig on my counter and noticeably thinner sandwich sized pieces of sausage.

Step 2: Throw it in a pot and boil it.
Apparently I wasn't listening and missed the real second step, which was to poke holes in the skin before boiling the stupid sandwich sized pieces of sausage. But whatever. This was a truly easy step. I was beginning to feel at ease. I was beginning to feel like a cook until the water started boiling. Suddenly the whole shebang changed from some nice little sandwich sized pieces of sausage floating placidly in some water to a turbulent, roiling, tormented ocean storm of pig fat. At least that's what I think it was. Scroll back up and look at the picture. Click on it to enlarge so you get a Real Good Look at it. I had no idea that fat could puff up and foam like that. I also had no idea how bad foamy pig fat would smell when it boiled over the side of the pot onto the electric burner. and did you know that the sausage itself will puff up? At least the ends of it. I guess if I had poked holes in the skin it would have had ample room to expand. Since I missed that step, the sausage expanded exploded out instead. I should have fished one of the exploded-end sandwich sized pieced of sausage out of the boiling foamy pig fat and taken a picture of it, but at that point I was heading to my happy place.

Step 3: Throw it in a crockpot and let it cook.
This was about the only thing that went right. The sauce hid the disfigured sandwich sized pieces of sausage, and the peppers and onions soon covered up the smell of burning foamy pig fat.

The end result was amazingly a success. People actually ate that stuff. I mean, they ate all of it. Blargh.

I did it. I brought a covered dish. Now can I go back to the paperplates and plastic silverware???