Sausage and tomato stew

Alright, get the snickering over with off the top about posting a sausage recipe on Valentine's day. (Hee hee! She said sausage!) I'd be lying if I hadn't snickered myself. ;)

Anyhow! Right. Yummy, fast and (with luck) cheap food. I'm a serious crockpot fan. When I say fan, I really mean screaming fangrrrrl. (geek meets adult when you describe getting screaming fangrrrrl over kitchen appliances. )

I don't cook with precise recipes.. recipes in my world are general guidelines for experimentation. Cooking is an art in my world, much like my knitting (patterns? Also vague guidelines.) So adjust to suit what /you/ like. (Pardon the photo, I didn't to take a picture in the pretty bowls at home, so you're getting it in the plastic pots I bring my lunches in. Still tastes good!)



Sausage stew
1 small package of sausage. (Call it say half a kilo ish? About 4-6 solid sized uncooked sausage? Unless you have cooked ones, or only 3 left from a package.. you get the idea. I had a half price huge package of honey garlic sausage. I think I used 6.)

2 onions, chopped (I tossed in a handful and a half of the pre-chopped frozen onions that live in my freezer. Because if I have to chop onions, I will NEVER cook with onions again.)

1 728 ml tin of diced tomatoes. (I think this is 28 oz? The big tin. If you have stewed, fine. If you have stewed with seasonings, great. If you have crushed.. this won't have nice chunks.)

4 carrots (or however many are left in the package. Or a handful out of the package of frozen carrot rounds that lives in the freezer)

1/3 tin of tomato paste (about 1/4 cup.. ish. The small tin, as I've never found those wonderful squeeze tubes I've heard of.)

2 cups chicken broth (I gloop in a healthy dollop of liquid boullion extract and 2 cups of water)

2 cloves of garlic, minced (or a healthy shake shake of garlic powder)

2 tbsp italian seasoning (or find a recipe for what goes into it online.. basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder.. iirc)

pinch or two red pepper flakes (if you use hot sausage, you might not want this.. if you dont like a zip to your food, leave it out as well)

salt (just a smidge, mostly because we use unsalted canned food. You may find tinned tomatoes have more than enough salt already)

I hope I didnt forget anything, I'm going from memory here.

Chop up the sausage roughly and then fry up the onions and sausage. Not strictly required, but I find it's a nicer flavour. I use clean kitchen shears to cut up the sausage, I find raw sausage + knife = pain in the tush.

Add everything to the crock pot. Eye the level of it and decide if it looks alright. This time I added a bit more water, as it just looked like it needed it. (And I wanted a bit more broth to make it go a bit further as a soup).

Turn it on low, go away. Come back 6+ hrs later. (I put this in at about 7:30 am. I get home from work at 5:30 pm. It's in a 4 litre (quart.. whatever) crockpot.)

Take 1/4 cup or so of flour, mix it into a slurry with some hot water and pour it into the crockpot stirring stirring stirring. (we're not doing dumplings here, you want it to mix in, not cook right away). Turn to high for 15-20 mins to make it a smidge thicker. (I really only notice the thicker in leftovers.)

I got 5 good sized servings out of this. With sides (biscuits? Cornbread? Salad? Anything!), it could be 6 no problem, or even 7 or 8 if you dont have big eaters.

Rock Star, baybee!

I'm sitting here watching my husband play guitar on rockband. I was singing earlier, but I'm tired and out of sorts, so he's working on his solo guitar tour. I was struck by the differences in our approaches. I was the first to make the jump to hard difficulty, and the first to jump back to medium when I got my tush handed to me. I rarely do a song more than once in a row. I'd say never off hand. He was slower to move to hard, slower to move back to medium and I listen to the same songs over and over and over again as he practices. He actually uses practice mode to slow some of the more challenging songs down to 70% (or slower) speed and work at just the guitar solo bit by bit by bit. I leap in, hope for the best and I've been practice mode exactly once. At his urging. It's a wonderful highlight about how two very different people can both approach one thing (the game) and enjoy it in very different ways. Equally, how two people can co-operate (we have three different bands where we both work together), even with very different approaches. His love of practice gets indulged when we get asked to do the same songs are different gigs, my impulsive nature adores (even if I complain!) the random set lists. We're both happy. I think this is the point at which I draw some warm fuzzy after school special conclusion about different people working together yadda yadda.. you're all big people. You made the leap already, I don't need to. Besides 'Maple Infusion' needs it's lead singer for a random set list. Cant talk! This virtual superstar life takes it outta a girl!

Old papers and impulse shopping

I was doing some (very very very ... very) overdue filing today. Like.. 6 yr old bills and papers that got shoved in a drawer and ignored. Studiously. Today I moved them to a file folder to get ignored for a while. I was struck, however, about how many 'past due' and 'this will be sent to collections' notices there was. I was in this job already (clearly, as I was clearing out a desk drawer at work), but I couldnt get a grip on finances. We had no budget. We had no plan. We had no real idea what we were spending, and clearly we were not paying on time.

Woah /boy/ am I glad those days are over.

Of course.. we can quite be all sanctamonious.. you see last night there was an incident.

We'd been talking about it for a while, and had nearly talked ourselves into waiting, until we played it. And that was game over for the restraint. We are both video game fans, it's something we can play together (rare in the video game world) and I think I know where the entertainment budget is going for months and months to come to replenish the savings we used to buy it with. I'm calling not going into debt to do it a victory. If you'll excuse me, 'Ruled by Impulse' needs it's lead vocalist.

Monday monday...

Bahhh baaaa.. baa daaaa daaa da. Monday, monday.. so good to me..

Okay Okay.. I'll stop singing. I may have discovered an unholy adoration for Singstar for my PS2 and have inflicted all sorts of barely in tune renditions of 80's tunes upon my longsuffering spouse and driven the cats into hiding.. but I digress.

In spite of the plague (why oh why did I spend my weekend sick and miserable and be healthy in time for work on Monday? I have paid sick leave! I have no qualms about using it! Bah! Cruel fates.), I still went out to spend my 25 bucks worth of gift certificate at the clothing store. They did caution me to use it 'soon' lest I lose it, as as it was already expired, I decided not to push what 'soon' actually meant.

I find out when I get there, that I need to spend 50 bucks to get the 25 dollars off. Hrm. Not ideal, but within my clothing budget for the month. I do need more than just the trousers (frugal is great, but even the most frugal need new undies eventually.) I find 3 pairs of jeans at varying amounts of discounted (two at half price, one at 10% off) and get to the trying on. Of course, because that's the way of the world, the only ones that don't look /awful/ are the ones the least discounted. 44.95. Well. That puts a good dent into my 50 buck requirement. 3 pairs of undies (regular price 3 for 15 buck) will easily put me over.. until I find the sale undie table. 3.97 a pair rather than 5 dollars.. that's a good start until I hit the jackpot of undie searching. 6 pairs in my size (and styles I'm willing to wear) are further marked down to a dollar each. Woot! (Okay, it really *is* a good word.) 44.95 for jeans (black jeans, with beads. Ooooh! Shiny!) and 6 pairs of undies takes me to 50.95. Perfect. And while the jeans weren't an great bargain, I can dance all over the place with the bargain of those panties. :)

One week of January down, and we're on track with the budget, and with the spending tracking. Go us!

It's too cold to go nekkid!

Quote of the day: "I don't have an hourglass figure. I have an hour and a half." – Wendy Lieblman, American Comedy Award winner (I got a quote-a-day calendar for Christmas, can ya tell?)

I need new jeans. I work in a semi-professional capacity and while I can turn up in jeans and a t-shirt to work (and do), they need to be clean and neat jeans (holes in the thighs and butt of jeans are not neat) and a t-shirt that's not making snarky commentary. (Or a beholder holding beer in its eyestalks. Or a 5 headed dragon queen. Why yes, I am a gamer.. why do you ask?)

I have been losing weight. Very slowly. (5 yrs. 90 lbs. Now I'm just 'holy hell you're fat' rather than 'heeey…we could do an exploitive TV special on your fatness!') This means that there is exactly one store in my city where I can buy trousers (or skirts or shorts or anything for the bottom half.) Fortunately, they do have sales and they do have a rewards program. I (stupidly) lost my gift certificate from the rewards program. And then put off calling about it. It expired in November. The nice lady on the phone… told me if I went in and used it right away.. I could still use the reissued one! Woot! (Okay, perhaps I'm a little too fond of the word of the year from last year.) New jeans, here I come! 25 bonus dollars will go a long way in keeping the clothing budget of 30 dollars for the month at realistic numbers. Might I also give a happy shout out to the customer service at Penningtons for customer service above and beyond. I might have different words if the store gives me grief, but so far I'm thrilled.

I've also been considering adding to my wardrobe by digging out the sewing machine. I am a capable seamstress, not wow, but not inept. I have a healthy fabric stash. I have a lack of bottoms that fit. (Freecycle has helped me have a stash a size or two smaller than my current size. As soon as I work out how to drop inches from my hips on command, I'll let all of you know.) New jeans are coming with gift certificate, but a new skirt is within the realms of my sewing abilities. (Trousers are fussy.. that' s a lot of curving fabric to make it fit my curvy self. Skirts are more forgiving, they like to curve all by themselves.) I'll let you know how this cunning plan works when (if?) I get to it.

Day late and a dollar short.

Alright so more like 2 days late and closer to 800 dollars short, but doesn't have nearly the same ring to it. Nor is it in the dictionary. (Okay, so a freaky idiom dictionary, but a dictionary none the less.)

Happy New Years! Yeah yeah, so it's the 3rd, it's still newish. The 800 bucks? That's how badly December's budget got shattered. And I do mean shattered. More like a fine mist of budgetary owwie. Some of that is legit unexpected expenses. (250 bucks for new tires on Boxing day on the freeway halfway to the relative's house (500 km away) we were expected to be doing holiday foo with that day.) This is why we /have/ an emergency fund, to cope with new tires halfway down the 401. Some was presents not entirely budgeted for earlier in the year. (I only started on this 'lets not go broke' plan in September) Listening to co-workers discuss presents they bought their spouses, we did really well in not going overboard. (about 150 ish for both of us.. we have no children). I'd like to point at one spot and go 'There! that's the culprit! EEEVVVIIIL!!!' but.. looking over things.. we just spent too much in every category. A hazard of not having an itemized budget just a 'dont' spend more than X amount'.

January.. we have an itemized budget. And we're tracking every penny that we spend. Both are new. (So far, we've spend 19.37 at the grocery store. Not bad for a quickie after work run to buy things for lunches for the rest of this week. All things that will continue to be lunch bits next week too. Woot!) We'll see if this itemized budget is on crack.. I sort of threw numbers at categories with very vague 'that seems about right'.. Febuary's budget might need a little tweaking to come in line with reality.. but that's why we're writing things down. OMG! This monkey /can/ be trained! (Stop snickering.. and don't remind me that I've only been trying this for 3 days and I'm still in bubble stage of enthusiasm. Shush!)

I'll have some more resolutions and goals tomorrow. Sneak preview.. regular posting. Wouldnt that be novel? M-W-F (This is Wednesday's post.. a day late.. get it? I'm so clever with the title thing..)

I am the leftover queen.

After waaay too much time in a car, and a whole lot of rich food (shortbread.. not just for breakfast anymore), it's nice to get back to our house and our fridge and vaguely normal eating. (Yes, eggnog in coffee is normal. Move along, nothing to see here.) Not only do we have odd tidbits in the fridge leftover from quick meal preps, but we've got bits and pieces left over from various party dishes. Oh yes, and December's budget got absolutely shattered. I mean so badly shattered it's a fine mist. *sigh* We really didn't plan for Christmas very well, and we really really didn't plan for the flat tire on the highway that became two new tires halfway through the 6 hr drive on Boxing Day. (Okay, so perhaps we did plan for that. The emergency fund has enough to cover the tires and I'd call an unrepairable flat qualifies as what the EF is there for.) Sooooo, there's no room for groceries. Fortunately we've got a well stocked fridge, freezer and pantry. And it's the 30th. If you're going to be out of money for the month, doing it with plenty of stores with only a couple of days left in the month is a good place to be.

It does, however, mean that I'm bound and determined that those leftovers in the fridge shall not be wasted. Cause.. yeah.. nothing like watching your budget hemmorage to make you have a rush of ultra frugal moments. Some diced tomatoes, some roast beef, a roasted potato, a couple roasted carrots, some baked barley.. this sounds like either stew, soup or curry. Which, really, all amounts to about the same thing. Stew is thick soup, and curry is a stew with different spices served on rice. All three are excellent ways to use up the little bit of this and that which seem to be the bane of the back of the fridge. I'll also use bits and pieces into a quiche or baked egg dish. (The difference? For me.. quiche has a pie crust, baked egg dish does not.)

Beef and tomato and gravy with a damp day and a cold I'm pretending I dont have.. that screams soup to me. So in it all went into a pot together. Beef chopped up fine, potato, carrot, tomatoes, a few healthy (okay gravy can't be called healthy.. how about generous) spoonfuls of gravy, a handful of frozen peas, a handful of frozen corn, the 8 frozen green beans forgotten at the back of the freezer, some dried mushrooms, the plastic pot of baked barley.. some water to top it up, a healthy dollop of worchestershire sauce and beef broth concentrate.. simmer 'til yummy. :) Perfect!