Harvest Stew

I am not entirely sure where my mom got this recipe, but she has been making it for years.  I am not even sure if this is the actual recipe, or if this is what it has just evolved to over time.  I have never written it down; just memorized it.  It's so good and it's one of my favorites to make in the fall!

Harvest Stew
Ingredients:
1 lb bulk sausage (or 1 lb of links, casings removed, sausage cut into rounds)
3-4 parsnips, cleaned and sliced
1 rutabaga, peeled and chopped
1 yellow onion, roughly chopped
2-4 carrots, cleaned and sliced
1 15 oz can crushed or diced tomatoes (use juice!)
4-6 C chicken broth
3-4 sprigs of parsley, chopped

Instructions:
Spray a large stockpot with some cooking spray and add sausage.  Brown sausage over medium heat.  Once sausage is browned, add veggies and stir until fragrant (about 2 mins).  Add chicken broth, tomatoes and parsley.  Stir and let the soup come to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer and cook until veggies are tender, about 45 mins to an hour.  Serve with bread and a salad.

Another Slow Cooker Meal: Red Beans and Rice

I tried this recipe out earlier in the week.  Well, I kinda made-due with several of the ingredients.  It was super easy to make, but I think that if I make it again, I will follow the recipe verbatim. 

The recipe is from Southern Living magazine and can be made on the stove top or in the slow cooker.  Since I was going to be in meetings all day from work and then traveling too and from a client that is almost in the next state, I wanted dinner to be ready when I got home.

Red Beans and Rice

Ingredients

• 1 pound dried red kidney beans
• 1/2 pound andouille smoked chicken sausage, thinly sliced
• 3 celery ribs, chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon Creole seasoning
• 3 cups uncooked long-grain rice
• Garnish: sliced green onions

Slow Cooker directions: Stir together first 7 ingredients and 7 cups of water in a 4 qt slow cooker.  Cover and cook on HIGH for 7 hours or until beans are tender.  Serve with rice.

My substitutions: turkey kielbasa instead of the sausage and cajun seasoning instead of the creole seasoning.

It looked pretty good when I made it:

And the house smelled delicious when I got home! 

I served with carrots!

But, the kielbasa had no taste and overall, the dish was kind of bland.  So next time I make it, I will follow the recipe verbatim and probably make it on the stove top.  Let me know if you make it according to recipe and how it came out!

Winging It

I really do not want to go to the grocery store this week.  I typically like going grocery shopping, but my local Stop & Shop has been totally reorganized and I don't agree with the layout!  And it takes me about double the time to do my shopping.

Instead of making a list of what we would eat for dinner and then going grocery shopping I picked up some food when I went to BJ's this weekend.  I bought chicken breast, london broil, a three pack of kielbasa (!), strawberries, spinach, sweet potatoes and Chobani yogurt.  And milk and cream.

So, I am totally winging it this week.  Everyday's dinner will be a surprise!  Even to me.

First up: Sunday night.  That was easy - grilled london broil, sweet potato and spinach salad.  Yesterday, Monday, was a little trickier.  Even though we had a lot of leftovers from Sunday, I didn't want to eat that again.  Plus I usually pack leftovers for lunch the following day.

To figure out dinner for Monday I went to www.allrecipes.com and searched the recipes by using their "Ingredient Search".  Have you used this?  It can be hit or miss, but it is a pretty neat tool since you can type in the ingredients you want to use and exclude the ingredients you do not want to use.

I typed in: kielbasa.  (remember - I bought a THREE pack!!!) 

I came up with Sausage and Lentils:

Ingredients:

• 3 C water
• 1 cup dried lentils
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 8 ounces fully cooked kielbasa or Polish sausage, sliced
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Combine water, lentils and onion in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, and cook for about 15 minutes. Add sliced sausage, and season with cumin, salt and pepper. Simmer until lentils are tender, about 5 to 10 more minutes.

The best thing (I think) about AllRecipes.com is the comments.  The comments to this recipes said it was a little bland.  So I made the following changes:

• used shallot and 1 large garlic clove, sauteed in olive oil along with kielbasa
• added 1 tsp. chili powder and 1 tsp. cumin after the shallot, etc. had been sauteed until tender.  I sauteed the mixture a little more until fragrant
• added lentils and water (I used 1.5 cups lentils to finish my bag so I increased the water by 1/2 C at first)

Then, after the desired cooking time was up, I thought the dish looked, well - a little brown!  So I quickly diced up the single carrot I had in the fridge and threw that in as well. The lentils were still a little crunchy anyway, so after I added the carrot I poured some water in and covered the pot and set the burner to low.

And this is how she turned out:

Without carrots - brown :-(  With carrots - color!

I got rave reviews from the Husband and the Toddler!  So the recipe is definitely a keeper.

She couldn't get the lentils in her mouth fast enough!