Just Go With It

I was trying to come up with something quick to make for dinner, and thought sliced sausage with some pasta would do it. Not really sure what I was thinking when I thought I could cut raw sausage into slices, but obviously, it did not work. Instead of stopping though, I decided just to go with it, and squeezed out the sausage from the casings.

Casings are pretty sorry looking things once you take out the good stuff.  I have no idea what these are made of, but I don't think they are animal parts.  Slimy little things that are best tossed in the trash.

The sausage once it had been freed.  Kinda squeezed out like toothpaste.

My homemade sauce, straight from the freezer.  Back when I made the giant pot, I had 3 of these for the freezer.  I am now down to one.

And: Dinner!  Used two Italian sausages, about 20 ounces of homemade sauce, a bit of oregano and basil, and half a box of bow tie pasta.  Turned out great!  Add some green beans, and call it a meal.  We also added parmesan cheese, but that's because everything is better with cheese.

On a side note: I made this again, but added zucchini and mushrooms.  Also, I cooked the sausages whole and then sliced.  Verdict: Adding veggies is good, but the sausage is better when removed from its casing.  Left in slices it was too chunky, and the seasonings that are in the sausage were too concentrated in the bites with meat instead of being spread around in the whole dish.  Next time I will look for it sold in bulk, and skip the casing altogether.

An Ice Cream Experiment

As it turns out, Doug has a really hard time with ice cream.  Especially when I make it myself, and use all the heavy whipping cream and whole milk I feel like.  If it were only the whole milk, he might be okay, but that makes for a less-creamy ice cream.  So I needed to find an alternative.  Turns out he's just fine with soy, but soymilk by itself is rather thin and makes "ice cream" that is more like an ice cube.  Some internet searching and experimenting came up with this:

Vegan Peanut Butter Ice Cream
1 (14oz) carton of silken tofu
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups vanilla soymilk

Blended all together, refrigerated for 1 hour.  Then put into ice cream maker just like any other ice cream mix.

The measurements are approximations.  I actually only know the measurements of the sugar and the tofu.  The soymilk was poured from the carton until I had the right consistency, and the peanut butter was a little more than half a jar.

Turned out decent.  Not the ice cube soymilk makes on its own.  The tofu made for a thick almost milkshake like base, but that froze into a creamier treat.  Peanut butter did wonders to cover up that soy flavor some people hate.  In fact, I almost poured some of the base into a cup to have as a milkshake, but decided that I should use it all for the frozen treat.  To make sure no one developed vegan super powers, I added plain M&Ms, reducing the concoction to vegetarian status.