I've got CRABS! (Recipe: Crab & Shrimp Bisque - with BACON + Seafood Louie Salad)

I love living in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I especially love it when Dungeness Crab Season is upon us!

Dungeness Crab Season was particularly fun - back when I lived on a boat in South San Francisco.   I have many fond memories of having Crab Boils on the dock - which, naturally, resulted in full-blown dock parties! (Nevermind that we were huddled around the Cajun-Cooker, in gale-force-winds, with our teeth chattering!) (Yes, they are STILL fond memories!)  

We are talking about Mega-Fresh Crab.  There were some commercial fishing boats at the marina next door, and we'd buy our crabs FRESH off the boat!

Image Credit: Instructables
In fact, here is a link for cleaning/cooking dungeness crab

So yeah, I LOVE dungeness crab!  Don't love the messy/stinky prep-work- however - which is why this is kind of a rare treat around here.  Although...  If you ever have an opportunity to dine at Joe's Crab Shack (which we did - ironically - in land-locked Arizona!), be sure to steal the plastic crab-discombobulating tool.  It's a life-saver!

Yes, I stole it.  And I feel no shame! 

Side-Story:  Maryland Blue Crabs.  I have relatives in Maryland and while I was visiting one year, I bought a huge bag of fresh-cooked, still-steaming, Maryland Blue Crabs and brought 'em "home" to my cousin's.  They set-up the backyard picnic table with sheets of newspaper and several rolls of paper towels (and assorted hammers and forky/prier-outer-tools), and we had a delightful crab feast one evening.  But the thing about Blue Crabs is: They're the same amount of messy/stinky work - per-crab.  But Blue Crabs are much smaller - so it ends up feeling like 3x the work for one-third the quantity of meat!

Plus (IMHO) Maryland Blue Crabs just aren't as sweet or tasty as Dungeness (Sorry, Maryland!)

Yeah, so last week at the grocery store, cooked Dungeness Crab was on sale for $4.99/lb (Great Price), so I bought one!  I also picked-up a pound of salad shrimp and a loaf of sourdough bread...  Ohhhh there's gonna be a San Francisco Feast!!!

Originally, I was thinking I'd make a vat o' New England Clam Chowdah - but decided crab bisque would be better.  I couldn't find any recipes that exactly matched the ingredients I had on-hand, so I invented my very own recipe (Ooooooh!!!). 

Here goes!

QT's Crab & Shrimp Bisque - with BACON

Yield: Appx 6 generous servings

Ingredients:

• 4-6 slices of thick-cut bacon
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
• 3-4 stalks of celery
• 6-7 leaves of fresh chopped basil
• 1-2 TBS unsalted butter and/or 1-2 TBS olive oil (if needed)
• 3 cans (@ 6 oz which nets 4 oz drained) crabmeat*
• 1 can diced tomatoes**
• 1 @ 8 oz bottle of clam juice
• 2 cups organic vegetable juice (like V8 - only without the high fructose corn syrup!)
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1-2 cups half-and-half
• Old Bay Seasoning (← mandatory ingredient!)
• Salt and (red) pepper, to taste...
• 1-2 tbs flour + water (optional - to thicken the soup)
• Handful of fresh crab and/or salad-shrimp (optional)

Instructions:

1. Fry up the bacon 'til crispy.  Remove bacon and tamp it with a paper towel.  Keep the bacon grease in the pan.
   Depending upon how fatty your bacon is, you might need to drain some off.  Spreckles is VERY lean, so I actually had to add olive oil and butter toward the end of cooking!
2. Finely chop your onion, garlic, celery and basil.  Toss it in your big pot with the bacon grease.  Add butter or olive (if needed).
3. Saute on medium-low 'til the veggies are limp and translucent.
4. Add clam juice, canned tomatoes, crabmeat and vegetable juice.  Bring to a light boil, then reduce heat.
5. Add sour cream and half and half.  Stir until heated through.
6. Let it simmer for 5-10 minutes (do not boil - you don't want to scorch the cream).
7. Grab your immersion blender and blend the soup 'til nearly smooth (it'll still be a wee bit lumpy - and that's okay).
8. Finely chop your bacon and toss it into the soup.  Add more fresh lumpy crabmeat and/or salad shrimp.
9. Give it a sample and add salt/pepper and Old Bay Seasoning to taste.
10. If it's too runny for your tastes, mix a TBS of flour with water and stir it into the soup, to thicken.

*Yes, I know the bisque base has (GASP) canned crab - but I wanted to use the majority of the fresh crab in our salads.  I did dump a generous handful of fresh crab in, at the end

**I would have preferred to use a quart of frozen-squozen tomatoes - but I ran out and had to use canned instead!

Image Credit: Old Bay
Love-Love-Love this stuff!

Okay, I'm gonna skip the whole "Cleaning/Prepping the Crab" tutorial (Messy work - and I didn't want Crab Gooze on my camera, k?!).  Go back to the Instructables Site if you need help!

Bisque on the stove...
This was before the immersion blender whirred all the chunky bits into oblivion!

Bisque in the bowl

"Get into mah belleh!"

Along with the bisque, I figured we needed a bona fide San Francisco Treat for dinner, so I also whipped together a most delightful Crab + Shrimp Louie.  Nothing particularly "original" here, but I figured I'd list the ingredients just the same...

Ohhh yeah!  Good stuff!

Crab & Shrimp Louie

Yields: 2 very generous salads (I couldn't finish mine!)

Ingredients:

• Meat from one freshly cooked/cleaned Dungeness Crab (minus the handful that ended up in the bisque)
• 1 lb salad shrimp.  These are the teeny, previously-frozen, de-veined/de-tailed shrimps.  Not the big finger-sized prawns. (Again, this is minus the handful that ended up in the bisque) (and you could probably get away with buying only half-a-pound for 2 salads - to be honest!)
• 1 bag of salad greens (Ohhhh, such a CHEATER!  But I supplemented with fresh red lettuce greens and spinach from my garden, k?!)
• Couple of smallish, sweet salad tomatoes (I used Campari tomatoes - which are actually 'pretty okay' for store-bought!)
• Half of a smallish red onion, sliced into thin rings
• Half of a thinly sliced cucumber
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
• Tiny can of sliced black olives (I only used about half - on two salads)
• 1 avocado, sliced
• 1 lemon
• Old Bay Seasoning
• Thousand Island Dressing
• Croutons (optional)

Instructions:

1. Rinse your salad greens and pile 'em up on a plate.
2. Arrange your other veggies (eggs, lemon) around the perimeter of the plate
3. Rinse (and dry) your shrimp and crabmeat.  Pile 'em up on top of the lettuce and sprinkle with Old Bay Seasoning.
4. Serve with Thousand Island Dressing and warm sourdough bread with butter.

Yummmmmm!!!

Seed Starting!

So while everybody on the East Coast is busy digging themselves out from the latest Nor'Easter, we were cruising down the highway...

Listenin' to Buffett

Kindly make note of the outside temperature ;-)

A quick trip to the chiropractor to get knocked back into shape.  Then back home and run-out to the garden to see if I can't UN-do all the good the chiropractor just DID!

60* isn't exactly balmy - but it was adequate for garden-chores in shorts and a tank top (and a flannel overshirt!) - as long as I stayed in the greenhouse and/or kept moving!

You never tire of looking at my brassicas, do you?!

(Ohhh - you should be ashamed of yourself!)

Remember these?

Well, I kinda decided - today - that they weren't gonna plant themselves!

Of course, I couldn't possibly plant ALL of them.  So my "Seed Hoard" got edited down, significantly.  Nevertheless, I think I'm gonna end up with PLENTY of babies in a few weeks!

Gourds and Cukes and Squashes

("Oh, my!")

And Eggplants and Melons and Maters

(although not as many 'maters as you might expect!)

I setup two flats on two heat-mats with one thermostat..

Now, we wait and see how it goes!  I haven't rigged up any lights in there yet, but I'm sure I will.

I am definitely calling this "Progress" toward a Most Successful 2013 Gardening Season!

Recipe: Hand-held Scottish Meat Tarts To-Go!

Gotta type it out while it's still fresh in my mind! I'll add pics and commentary later...........

Memories of Morrison Meat Pies:

I have no clue why Morrison Meat Pies decided to take-up residence in my brain today, but they did.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing.  See, when I was a wee spud, we'd go visit my grandfather in West Jordan, Utah every year.  One of our traditions, whenever we'd visit  Grampa, was to nosh on these unique little meat pies from Morrison's.  I'd never had anything like them before - or since!

Several years ago, Morrison Meat Pies lodged itself in my brain - just before Christmas - and I decided to surprise my mom by ordering a whole case of these pies and having them delivered to her house.  I can *still* hear her squeal of delight when she received the shipment!

Anyway, I really like Morrison Meat Pies is what I'm saying.  And I decided I wanted "something similar" today.  A trip to Utah is not forthcoming, so I was forced to consult Google - in an attempt to find the recipe...

I found a couple of Scottish Meat Pie Recipe here and here.  I didn't really "follow" either of them, but they were a good launching point.

I don't have a proper Scottish Meat Pie Pastry Mould (wouldn't recognize one if I saw it!), but I figured I could improvise Cheater's Style with frigerated pie-crust...

QT's Handheld Scottish Meat Tarts

Yield: Appx 8 tarts and some leftover filling ;-)

Ingredients:

• Refrigerated Pie Crusts (2) for 9" pie
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 cloves fresh minced garlic
• 1/2 cup fresh chopped white mushrooms
• 1 medium potato, peeled and chopped
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1/4 cup dry red wine
• olive oil
• Your choice of seasonings (I used Lawry's steak seasoning, onion powder, garlic powder, white pepper, and a splash of Worchestershire sauce)
• Your choice of sauciness (I used a Swanson Flavor-Boost packet - beef flavor + an envelope of McCormick's Brown Gravy mixed with 1/2 cup of water).

Instructions:

1. Heat a large saute pan with a couple TBS of olive oil.  Saute the onions, garlic and potatoes over medium heat 'til translucent and limp.  
2. Add the ground beef (break it up into teeny mincy-bits - not "chunky") and cook 'til browned.  
3. Add mushrooms and cook some more.  
4. Deglaze the pan with red wine, add seasonings and saucy stuff.  Reduce heat to super-low, cover and simmer while you prep the crusts.
5. Preheat oven to 375*F.  Unroll your (thawed) refrigerator crust.  Cut it into quarters and scoop 1-2 TBS of filling in the center, then roll the edges together (your "tart" should end-up roughly triangular).
6. Seal with a smidge of water and press together with a fork.  Poke a vent hole in the tops of your tarts, then place on a greased baking pan.  
7. Bake at 375*for appx 35-45 minutes 'til golden brown.  Optional - you can mix an egg with a little water and brush it onto the pie before cooking so you'll have a nice shiny glaze.

To be perfectly honest, these bear almost no resemblance to the REAL Morrison Meat Pies of my childhood.  But it was the best I could do - given the materials at hand!  It was still a mighty tasty lunchtime snack!

Garden + Greenhouse Update

Several years ago, hubs bought me a greenhouse for my birthday.  This was shortly after we'd built the pool, and I was insanely trying to re-create a Tropical Resort in our yard  - using plants that were CLEARLY not suited for our climate!  So yeah, the greenhouse was a very handy addition!

I received (and shared) a lot of guidance with the community at Gardenweb, and I also *attempted* to document the construction and "customizations" on my personal website.  Grant you, it's kind of disjointed - but it's still useful info - so I've left the pages up (even though I never update them!).

Greenhouse Saga Pages (if you're even remotely interested):

We bought a Greenhouse
Greenhouse Saga Continues
Solar Fan

There's more info out there, but that oughtta get you started if you are contemplating a similar purchase...

Hobby Greenhouses are actually a lot of work (surprisingly!).  Keeping it warm in winter, actually, wasn't all that difficult (Expensive - yes!  Difficult - not so much).  Keeping it cool on sunny days is a bigger challenge.  Note: I did not say "cool in summer."  Summer-use (for me anyway) is pretty-much out of the question.  I do have shade-cloth on it - which helps.  But it still gets ridiculously hot out there - and veggies seem to be much happier out in natural sunlight anyway! Wintertime: I typically line the ceiling and south(ish)-facing wall with big sheets of bubble-wrap.  I've also got a thermostat rigged-up with electric heaters (one oil-filled and one "barn" heater).  The thermostat is rigged to kick-on when the temps dip below 40* - which is just enough to keep stuff alive thru winter.

Over the years, I have severely cut-back on the number of marginal plants I am attempting to keep in the backyard.  I do still have my two original plumerias - which are now full-blown TREES and no longer fit through the doorway!  I had also kept Ti trees, Crotons, and a Bearss Lime - but they'd get sooooo infested with whiteflies and aphids it was hardly worth the effort (and don't get me started on my mealy/tasteless hydroponic winter-tomato-growing experiment!).

Now I've - more-or-less - reached the point where if it's marginal and I really-really want it, I'll treat it as an annual.  I'm totally "done" with trying to push my luck with tropical landscape plants!

But that doesn't change the fact that I've still got a greenhouse - and I really should USE it, right?  (BTW - there are a couple of baby plumerias and a Ti tree out there right now).  So this year, I plan to turn my greenhouse into a veggie-seed-starting-factory.  And Finny of Indie-Farms gave me some good ideas to get started...

First off, an afternoon of Seed-Sorting:

Followed by several evenings perusing Garden Pr0n:

NSFW!!!

Then...  Oh, I gotta CLEAN-OUT the greenhouse?!!  (Heh!  No "Before" pics, k?!)

Space!  The Final Frontier!!!

I'm not using my heaters at the moment, so I've tucked them into the corner behind the Ti tree.  And that weird buckety-lookin' thing is an outdoor hose-reel/garden sink that I intend to install outside...

Hey!  It's starting to look *almost* organized!

Got a couple of baby Plumerias on the shelf in front of the fan.  No, they don't look real healthy (although they do look better than the Plumies that lived under a bed-sheet all winter!).  I've also got heat-mats ready-to-roll - under the flats.  Haven't started any seeds yet - but will, very soon!

HydroFarm Mega Garden and Light Fixture

I haven't decided whether I'll fire-up the Mega-Garden or not (and no, it's NOT rigged-up to go - I'm basically using it to store seed-starting stuff).  Chances are, by the time I get around to it, it'll be too hot in there, but we shall see!

The plan was to rig-it-up and use it thru winter for growing lettuces but - obv - that didn't happen!

Lastly, lest you think I've been neglecting my Cool Season Veggies, let me provide this luscious update!

Raised Patio Planter filled with Salad Greens. Yummm!

And some Happy Brassicas:

So yeah, I'd have to say that 2013's Garden is off to a pretty good start, so far!

My Custom Garden Coach! And Garden Ramblings!

Requisite Disclaimer:  I live in Northern California and, yes, Spring is starting to be sprung here!  Glory Hallelujah!

Jeez, a Garden Update...  With no pictures!  (I may need to correct that tomorrow!).

Okay, I have to give a shout-out to fellow-blogger Finnyknits.  She recently quit her job, went back to school, and is starting up her own garden-coaching business, Indie-Farms.

Well, Gawd knows I like supporting local, small businesses.  We all know I love gardening!  And...  Well...  After Finny posted her report card on Facebook (Straight-A's - Friggin' over-achiever!), I noticed that she had just finished a class on Greenhouse Maintenance.  And ya know what?!  I've got a greenhouse that is hellaciously under-utilized.  We originally built the greenhouse to overwinter my Plumerias - but now they're too big to fit through the door!

So I put two-and-two-and-whatevers together and figured "What the hell!"  I know I could always stand to learn more - and Gawd-knows I need some motivation sometimes.......

So Finny came over this afternoon and I got my first Custom Garden Coaching Session!

She looked over my greenhouse, took lots of notes, gave lots of suggestions and followed-up with a summary email - documenting her suggestions (Good Call, Finny!).  Actually, that follow-up email and summary was fantastic because the hour felt like it just FLEW by - with way more information than my brain could absorb!  Much of it, I knew already - but lots of it was new! (Jeez, maybe school is useful after all?!).

Going forward, I think she'll be sending out emails to all of her little Garden Minions, so we'll see how all that pans out.  But I am very pleased with what I learned today.

NOW I just need to set things in motion, right?!  (Ohhhhhhh that!)

This has been a weird year for me (Already!).  See, I love gardening and I have ALWAYS loved that we have this huge yard.  Yeah, the setting-up and putting-away of all the summer furniture is kind of a pain ("Hello Rent-A-Son!").  And the wintertime "haul-away-the-dead-sh*t" routine is certainly not high on my list of FUN activities.  But, honestly, I've always taken pride in the fact that the yard is "My Creation."  And I actually enjoy puttering around in it.  Gardening is like exercise without FEELING like exercise, ya know?!

Well, this year, I had to reluctantly admit that I am just not up to the challenge of tackling all of the winter clean-up chores, due to health constraints (#$%^!!!).  And the extent of the chores goes beyond what "Rent-A-Son-Services" can handle.  I had started to prune one of our peach trees.  I think I got through about 1/4 of what needed to be wacked-off, then I glanced around at all the rest of the fruit trees (and palm trees, and overgrown vines) and decided "to hell with it!"  Seriously - why torture myself?!  Just pay someone and get it done already!

So we hired sumdood with a chainsaw and a wood-chipper to do the "hack-it-down-and-haul-it-away" chores (taming wild vines, cleaning the palm trees, weed-wacking the cannas down to ground level).  That got done last week and the yard looks a WHOLE lot better.

Oh, here are a couple of pictures:

Morning Glories Before

And After...

Mind you, the vines did NOT look like the "Before" picture when sumdood showed up.  I think we had about a week and a half where the temps dipped below freezing, every night, so the leaves had turned to mush.  Oh, but they'll be back!

And, in a couple of weeks, I've got another guy coming over to prune my fruit trees.  O' how it pains me to give that up!  I'll probably end up "supervising" him while he does it - I am such a freak over my fruit trees!

As for the rest of my Gardening Plan - more specifically, the greenhouse - I hope to actually get off my butt and put some of Finny's suggestions to good use!  I do want to start the majority of my veggies from seeds this year and the greenhouse seems like the perfect place to do that!

Hopefully I'll get out there with my camera and post updates as it happens.  We shall see, right?!

Anyway...  If you're in the SF Bay Area and need a good Garden Coach give Finny at Indie-Farms a shout!

Happy 2013 (and 'Twas a Very Spreckles Christmas!)

Wow.  I'm sure glad THAT'S over with!

We survived the Mayan Apocalypse *and* Holiday Traffic.  Que Milagro!

Christmas was actually pretty quiet and low-key for us - which is good.  I did bake a simply phenomenal Spreckles Holiday Ham (and I have never ever cooked a big fresh ham before).

Christmas is not a day for documenting recipes, so I'll just kinda cheat and post links instead...

After confirming with the butcher (and I can't tell you how many of my conversations w/them started with "Can I ask you a really dumb question?!"), the ham - having been smoked - was considered "pre-cooked" and therefore only needed to be re-heated.

I lost track of all the websites I'd perused in my quest for "How to cook the perfect ham" - but this is the one I followed most closely: Here.  I put a splash of apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, honey and maple syrup in the bottom of the pan.  As for glazing: I sliced diamonds in the skin and placed whole cloves at each of the intersections. Then I smeared a glaze of yellow-mustard, honey and maple syrup on the ham, let it melt a bit, then - toward the end of cooking - I added pineapple slices, maraschino cherries and a generous dusting of white + brown sugar.  Baked it @ 425* for the first hour, then reduced the heat to 350* and cooked it for appx 2 add'l hours (I honestly don't remember how long I cooked it!).

Yeah, so I stayed pretty true to that recipe - except for the addition of appx 1/4 cup of pure maple syrup.  And, even though that recipe was for a much smaller ham (Spreckle's butt was 10#!), I had plenty of leftover glaze that never even made it onto the ham!

So, to recap, Spreckles before:

A Mighty Fine Pig!

Spreckles during:

Spreckles after:

Yes, Spreckles was delicious.

And my shiny new Henckels knives (prezzie from Hubs) came in MOST handy!  I loves me some good knives - yes I do!

So yeah, we snarfed down most of Spreckles on Christmas, and we had quite a few tasty ham sandwiches.  I still had a big chunk o' ham leftover, so I wrapped it up and tossed it back in the freezer for future meals...

We also had Gulliver's Creamed Corn (orgasmic!), mashed taters, and baked apples.  Oh, and a store-bought Pecan Tart for dessert.

All told, a very delicious meal!

Now, unfortunately, you may have noticed that I've gone a bit quiet, of late.  That's because I'm in the midst of another Psoriasis flare-up and I'm feeling pretty crappy, overall.  In fact, it was bad enough that I had to miss out on our NYE plans - Furthur Concert in San Francisco.  Hubs ended up hooking up with one of his Deadhead Friends, so it's not like the tickets were wasted.  But still, it bums me out in a big way...

I've gone back to the Dermatologist and her advice (now) is to stop ALL drugs - except antibiotics - and wait and see if it clears-up on its own.  There was a "rant" post in the works, but I'm just too run-down to even bitch about it (but I am already thinking about going back to Stanford Dermatology and insisting on a newer doctor).

So there is the Holiday Wrap-Up - such as it is.  Hopefully I'll pull out of this funk soon - and get back to blogging!

Rainy Day Recipe: Sweet Italian Sausage

According to NOAA, this isn't an El Niño year, but looking out the window..?  It sure looks like one!  Holy hell, has it been raining!!!

And, I think it was Friday night, I was lying in bed - trying to fall asleep, when it suddenly occurred to me that - ahem! - Christmas is on TUESDAY and I hadn't procured the necessary ingredients for our Mini-Christmas Feast!

So, THE SATURDAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS, I decided to tackle the grocery store.  I was practically having cold-sweats and heart palpitations in the friggin' parking lot!  Gawd, do I hate crowds!!!

If there are any of you out there who are facing a similar dilemma and have to hit the grocery store these final days, two words:  Protective Gear!  I'd hate to hear of anyone ending up in the hospital due to a dispute over the last can of sliced pineapple!

But I digress....................

I *did* survive my assault on the grocery store and we *do* have everything we need for our Holiday Repast.  Spreckles *will* be served!

Okay!  So the shopping (assault) got done and I found myself with an entire Saturday afternoon to kill.  The utterly crap-tastic weather outside severely limited my choices of leisure activities.  :::sigh:::

I had been perusing various recipe sites - looking for New and Exciting Ways to utilize some of the ABUNDANT pork in my freezer.  In fact, awhile back, I found a *most* interesting site on Sausage-Making: Lets-Make-Sausage.  What the hell, right?

About a year ago, I purchased a manual meat-grinder/sausage stuffer.  It was fairly inexpensive (I wanna say around thirty bucks), and it looked a lot like an old meat-grinder that my dad used whenever he had a hankerin' for fresh roast-beef or corned-beef hash.  When my mom died, and we were cleaning out her house, I was really-really hoping we'd stumble onto it - because I really WANTED it.  Unfortunately, it was long-gone.

Anyway, in a fit of nostalgia, I decided to order my own, new, meat-grinder thingie - thinking it would be the same as my dad's.  And yes, it does *look* like it.  But that's where the similarity ends.

Weapons of Spreckles Destruction

Firstly, my dad's grinder had a built-in C-clamp so you could firmly affix it to the edge of a counter-top.  Mine has four legs with holes so you can bolt-it-down.  Somehow, I don't think I want this as a permanent fixture in my kitchen!

Secondly, my dad's grinder could grind meat like nobody's business!  My grinder's box said "Grind 5 lbs of meat in one minute" so, naturally, I thought....  Well...  Let's continue the rambling, shall we?! ("Oh please!")

Okay, so anyway, when we picked-up Spreckles, both Finny and I ended up with something like 10# of Hot Smoked Italian Sausage apiece.  Hubs and I aren't big into spicy so I figured I'd make a batch of Sweet Italian Sausage using my handy-dandy/Just-Like-Dad's meat-grinder/sausage stuffer.

I used the "Gina's Sweet Italian Sausage" recipe from this page.  I'm not gonna bother re-posting the entire recipe, but here is the general gist of it:  5 lbs pork shoulder roast, cut into one-inch-cubes, then ground (I ended up using 2 store-bought roasts :::gasp:::) (Hey, they were on-sale and I wanna save the Spreckles roasts for smoking next summer!).  Then there's the seasoning which I prepared using the following ingredients:

Seasoning ingredients:

• 5 tsp cracked fennel (I found whole fennel seeds and I lightly crushed them with a mortar/pestle)
• 1 TBS salt (I would definitely recommend cutting back on that)
• 1 TBS fresh ground pepper (I think I used about 1/2 TBS - and that was fine)
• 1-1/2 TBS garlic powder (I used 1 TBS garlic powder and 3 large, fresh cloves finely minced)
• 2 tsp rubbed sage
• 1 cup cold white wine (I used Kendall Jackson Chardonnay - but I wonder if a sweeter wine, like a white riesling, might be better)

You can get the step-by-step directions from the sausage site........

Let's do pictures, k?

Soaking the pure hog casings in warm water

(Gross!)

While I was cutting/cubing the roasts, I soaked the hog casings (I bought mine as part of a sausage kit on Amazon).  The really grody part was rinsing the INSIDES of the casings.  We're talking about pig intestines here - just FYI - and they're slithery and slimy!  It was challenging to separate the casings, and then to pry one end open and keep it open under a running faucet to let the water run through it.  Then you have to squeeze-out all of the water by pinching/sliding down the length of the casing...  Yeah!  Gross!

Okay, now back to the meat:

This requires a super-sharp knife!

All ready for the grinder!

All right!  

So far, so good!

Wellllll....  It started out all right, but....  Let me just say this:  Whoever came up with that claim about being able to grind 5 lbs of meat in one minute was - for lack of a better word - full of sh*t!  I suppose if I had bolted the damned thing down, it might've gone a little bit easier.  It's extraordinarily difficult to stuff AND crank AND hold the thing steady (in spite of the fact that the grinder weighs a freaking ton!).  Alternatively, maybe having a second person to turn the crank might've helped a bit as well.  But let me tell you: Whoever has crank-duty had better have Popeye arms!

I'm strong to the finitch 'cuz I eats me spinach!

Yeah, so, 30 minutes later (with sweat dripping into my eyes - EW!),  I noticed that I was turning the crank and nothing new was coming out the other end.  In fact, the stuff I was stuffing into the grinder was simply oozing back out the top of the grinder.  WTF?!!

Yeah, the grinder plate kept getting jammed up with fatty connective tissue from the roast.  Sh*t.  So I had to keep stopping, removing the grinder plate and blade to de-gunkify them (had to use a knife and a strong-stream of running water), then re-assemble the unit.  I repeated that process, several times, and - ohhh maybe after an hour, total - I ended up with a bowl-full of freshly ground sausage. 

(which I forgot to take a picture of - but I think you can imagine it, right?!)

So then I pulled the hog casings from their soaking bowl and began the tedious task of separating them.  I had no clue how many casings I would need, so I started out with five:

Gross, right?!

(I ended up using only one! HA!)

Okay, then I mixed up the seasonings:

The trick - at this stage - is to have the liquid seasoning mixture COLD so that the meat and fat solidify a bit. The other trick is to do your final mixing with your bare (or gloved) hands so that the seasoning gets evenly distributed.

I didn't take pictures during the stuffing phase because I'd need to sprout more arms!  But I removed the grinding plate and blade, and replaced it with the sausage stuffer tube.  I smeared the outside of the tube with a little olive oil so I could more easily slide the hog casing onto the end of the tube.  And it really wasn't easy at all - particularly since my fingers were super-slimy (no way to avoid that!  I think I went through a whole roll of paper towels!).

The stuffing of the casings really wasn't very difficult (after the prep-work was done!).  Pull the end of the casing off the feed-tube and start turning the crank.  The casing fills with air at first, but then the sausage starts coming out.  Right hand gently tugs the casing, guiding the sausage, while the left hand turns the crank.  Once you've got one sausage length, stop cranking, tug the sausage away from the stuffer and give it a couple-three twists.  Then resume tugging/guiding and cranking for the next sausage...

End up with this:

Yummy Sausage!

I ended up with 9 links appx 3-4" long (from one hog-casing).  I could have kept going with the casings, but I actually prefer bulk Italian Sausage (and didn't want to wrestle with more pig intestines!!), so I also ended up with two vacuum-packed 1-lb bags of bulk Italian sausage for the freezer - and one smallish bag (maybe half-a-pound?) that I tossed in the fridge.

I left the stuffed sausages to air-dry on the plate in the fridge overnight (since I don't have a cool dry place to hang them).  This morning, I vacuum-sealed them (2 per bag) for the freezer...

* * * * *

Taste-Test!

I did cook-up one link and some mini-patties for brunch this morning since I was dying to see how they came out.  The flavor of this recipe is good - but not well-suited for breakfast (Hubby agrees!).  I am SURE that this will be awesome in tomato sauce, though...

Now I can't wait to make a batch o' spaghetti sauce with my very own Frozen Squozen 'Maters, home-grown herbs, and home-made Italian Sausage!

So: What's the final verdict on Sausage-Making?!

• I wish I had my Dad's old grinder - This one sucks!
• The fact that it got jammed-up, early-on, meant that the meat inside the grinder got super-smushed.  And not in a good way.  
• So, for Round I of sausage-making, it really didn't have the proper "chunky" texture throughout.
• Sausage-making seems like a lot of work to me (right now) and I am not super-eager to attempt it again anytime soon!
• Bottom Line:  I need a better grinder (and I think I've decided I also need a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer.  Hello Amazon Wish-List!)

I DO have a whole lot of hog-casings to use up, however.  And I DO want to try more of the recipes on the sausage-making site (Mmmm...  Bratwurst!), so I suspect I may end up buying some plain-ol' already-ground-up breakfast sausage from the store (::::GASP:::).  Using the grinder as a sausage-stuffer really isn't all that bad (I might ask hubby to run the crank next time!), so I probably WILL attempt this again.

Hope you've enjoyed my Culinary Mis-Adventures.  I'm not calling this one a "Win" - but definitely worthy of more experimentation - once I get the proper equipment!

And now I will leave you with a picture of a blown-glass snowman that I made at Bay Area Glass Institute a couple of weeks ago:

"Merry Christmas!"