Posted on 10/01/2025 5:23:58 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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Such a good cheerleader for anything WI. They have a brat festival in Sheboygan with a Johnsonville main stage. My new sausage book has stories.
I’ve figured out that Cajun andouille is generally used as an ingredient, often for gumbo. That’s an excuse for some saltiness but not if it’s “bun size”.
The Hermann Wurst Haus andouille I just got is strong and juicy, not salty, but not what I’d call smokey.
I doubt mass production allows for hours of smoking time and with the volume Hermann Wurst Haus, a small town sausage place is doing, I imagine any of their products in stores are farmed out to some food factory type place.
I’ll just have to make my own bun sausages, Bunwurst. LOL
Never been a big fan of hot dogs. The andouille is a bit chunky. The seasonings are fine in andouille. Salt, pepper, cayenne, thyme. Not a fan of Italian sausage that has that licorice taste(fennel seed?).
Since that Korean red pepper tends to act as a food coloring, and I have a lot of it, I’ll use that. The Hermann’s stuff uses FDA Red #3 and other sausages get their pink color from their choice of Nitrite(pink salt) which I don’t need since I’m doing fresh sausage which gets treated as fresh meat. Freeze or fridge and eat within a week. When I smoke sausage, it will be to 160 degrees and treated the same as any cooked fresh meat.
Will get some sheep casings at some point since they’re more like hot dog size. I’ll use up the hog casings first and stuff them full but not to the point of stretched.
I Like your weather planner! But, I want some snow in Late December for Christmas and New Year and winter and spring that are cold enough to keep your fruit trees from blooming too early.
Of course if you are growing winter wheat...I am not...You want some good snow cover to last until late March to protect your crop from the cold and then melt down to water your wheat.
If you have access to an Oriental Grocery store you can also use Soba Noodles, wheat or even buckwheat soba.
All of you, thanks for the information!
Some extremely good looking Fall/Winter stews. I could not pick one out so I am just sharing the link!
Serious Eats 17 Hearty Stew Recipes to Celebrate the Arrival of Sweater Weather
I am not a fan either! For the equivalent protein you get you pay perhaps $25/lb! I would rather have a filet mignon!
My question for anyone that knows...my green beans were growing well in fall and then we had a frost..my half dried beans are just hanging there..they are heirloom and I want to save the seeds...can I pick them and let them dry on the table and will the seeds be viable?...tia
PAAW-WHUMPH!!
The "soft" explosion made a very nice fiery mini-mushroom cloud, and got the brush pile burning nicely. My wife thought I was nuts. :-)
Pick one. :)
Oof!
Now, honestly, was that a deliberate pun from the get-go?
But, anyway, that's exactly my question: Why can the apple breeders get "everything", so to speak, in apples, but the tomato breeders can't?
Many apple varieties have either a good taste or long shell life..eg..red delicious imo taste like cardboard but they push it because it lasts..Macintosh otoh,are great eating but will soften and bruise easier.
Here’s the basic recipe I use for cinnamon apples in a crockpot:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/cinnamon-spiced-apples/
You can make the recipe as written & then adjust to your liking, which is what I’ve done after making it at least a half dozen times or more. Everyone loves cinnamon apples - makes a nice side dish.
The changes I make:
-I use a whole 3 lb. bag of crisp apples (7-8) because the apples really cook down & I need enough for a side dish.
-I switch the white & brown sugar amounts so 1/3 brown, 1/4 white
-Butter seems excessive - I use about half of the 1/4 cup in the recipe. I do grease the crockpot with ghee (I make my own ghee & it’s my favorite for greasing casserole dishes)
-Crockpot time (3-4 hours) isn’t enough for the way I like cinnamon apples so I let them go about double the time 6-8 hours on low until very soft & much darker than the recipe picture. You can start checking at 4 hours, give a stir & see if you want to go longer.
Well, Gold Delicious will last quite a while but do bruise just a bit easily if you buy them “gold” color. The new varieties like Sweet Tango and SMC Crisp, though, seem to hold up pretty well, and blow away my old standards like Macintosh and even a top notch Gold Delicious (see “Eckerts”, below*) when it comes to taste.
(SMC Crisp may be the same variety as “Cosmic Crisp”, according to Brave Search. They are known for exceptional shelf life. Sweet Tangos’ shelf life is a bit shorter, but, if their harvest timing is good, they are still pretty good after 2+ months in the fridge, and they start off even better.)
The Red Delicious DO deteriorate in terms of taste, after being picked, and I never really thought them to be exceptionally bruise resistant. Maybe they are more bruise resistant the first week or so after picking? That’d be the critical period for shipping and handling, I suppose.
*Granted that the taste bit does have the element of personal preference, and that the cultivation and soils are a factor too: A bit southeast of St. Louis is an operation called Eckert’s Orchards that has a big “Country Store” and a sort of carnival-park area with all sorts of activities in the summer and fall, AND a large pick-your own area. ALL their apples are large and GOOD tasting, even the Red Delicious.** The Gold Delicious are better, and the Jonathans too - the Jonathons a bit more tart, of course. I’ve not been there since these latest varieties started showing up @ Aldi, but I’m guessing Eckert’s has them too.
Eckert’s Red Delicious were quite good fresh, but what I find with Red Delicious (including from other orchards nearer to us) is that while their appearance doesn’t spoil rapidly, the taste does.
Anyway, all this leads me back to my conclusion that the apple hybridization for these new varieties found in grocery stores has recently been more successful than the tomato hybridization(s), and, I don’t know why.
“I’ll be taking a trip with the truck & trailer week after next & I don’t need a dead battery.”
Beau has the coolest gizmo for starting car/truck/anything batteries - I’ll get the name of it and let you know. It’s compact - comes in a little case and while you DO have to keep it charged (plug in, in the house) it’s powerful enough to start his F-350 truck!
I want one, too! My VW Golf has some sort of ‘trickle leak’ that will drain the battery if she’s not driven every week. I’ve had to beg jumps off of strangers in parking lots in the past - not always a safe practice. I can do it myself; I have good cables, but there are a LOT of weirdos running around loose these days, even way out here in Whoville!
JIFFY CHERRY COBBLER
ING 1/2 cup butter 1 cup ea sugar, flour 1 tsp salt 2 tbl b/powder 3/4 c milk 2 cans cherry pie filling
Melt butter in 13x9x2" pan. Combine sugar, flour, salt, b/powder, milk - batter will be thin. Pour over melted butter. Top w/ cherry pie filling (do not mix). Bake browned 350°F 50-60 min. Serve hot out of the oven with vanilla ice cream.
Yes, Fennel seed or frond is what you’re tasting when you taste ‘licorice.’ It’s a pretty plant, quite useful to pollinators, lots of people just love them some Fennel Bulb - but I don’t like the taste, either. (It’s not as pronounced in the bulb.)
Hog casings. Ugh! Rinsing them out was one of my jobs on ‘Sausage Day.’ The other was making sure Grandma’s huge Standard Poodle didn’t do any ‘taste testing.’ :)
And, Yes. I have traveled the world, but I will always be the Number One Fan of, and for, Wisconsin!
Well, after a bunch of time spent trying to protect our plants, bring some in, etc., we didn’t quite frost! It had to be “close”, though.
I’ll not complain - lots of stuff I had no good way to cover in reasonable time, including a couple blight surviving and quite tall tomato plants, seem to be ok. I’ll know better by tomorrow - in the past I’ve had plants seemingly survive - at first... At least, going out just before sunrise, there seemed to be no frost anywhere. Coldest was ~ 5 am, tho’.
I’m gonna tell Beau about your leaf pile burning process, LOL!
I won the, ‘Evil Step-Mother of the Year’ award when I showed my boys how to ‘splode a water-filled plastic liter pop jug with a .22 off of a fence post.
Yeah, there was lots of ‘sploding going on from that day forward!
I have cherries in the freezer! Thanks! :)
SUPERVISED ‘sploding!
They got in some serious trouble for plinking out windows in the (unused) barn with their bb guns, though. It wasn’t my barn!
“But you said no shooting at animals. You didn’t say anything about windows!” ~ Pre-Teen Boy Logic!
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