Cajun and Mexican cuisine have each earned reputations for spicy deliciousness, so when my sister combined some leftover refried beans and rice from our Mexican dinner with hot sausage, spinach and some secret ingredients, it's not surprising that it turned out to be fantastic, tasting similar to jambalaya or gumbo. The next day when I scooped some of Darlene's Cajun fusion stew into a tortilla, it was so good that I contemplated opening a chain of "Cajun Eat Dos" fast food restaurants.
Teddy, Darlene and Emma in Montana.
While that bright idea soon faded, when Julie and I arrived home from Montana, we found son Jay had left some Trader Joe's Smoked Andouille Chicken Sausage in the refrigerator. He had planned to barbecue it on the 4th of July, when he came over to view the Redondo Beach fireworks from our condo, but the absence of a barbecue forced him to abort that idea.
Cooking over open fire has been instinctive behavior for men since Fred Flintstone was a boy, but as I have lamented in the past, we don't have room for an outdoor grill alongside our reclining veranda seats at our condo in Redondo.
Thus faced with the dilemma of how to eat hot sausages without flames to grill them over, I read the label, and among the choices was to bake them for 14 minutes.
Recognizing my preference for well-done, I decided to cook them in my convection oven at 375 degrees for 18 minutes, which is about the equivalent of a standard oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. After setting the oven to pre-heat, I lined a small casserole dish with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper, which by now you should've noted is a key for making many recipes into Quick-Clean Cuisine. I quickly opened the four pack of sausages and put them into the lined dish.
I didn't wait for the oven to finish pre-heating before putting the dish in the oven, so I could immediately go upstairs to work on my computer until I heard the oven chime marking the end of the designated time. By the way, if you don't use timers for cooking, you are making it unnecessarily difficult.
Soon, I heard the chime and headed down to find the sausages had browned a bit, with a slot opening almost as if they had been grilled. I ate one with barbecue sauce and one with mustard, and both ways were great, either with or without bread.
If I had some red beans and rice or leftover Mexican side dishes around, I might have tried to make a variation of Darlene's concoction, but for today, just know that baked sausages taste surprisingly great, if you cook them about a third longer than recommended by the manufacturer. Clean up is as simple as throwing away the pan liner and quickly rinsing the casserole dish after it has cooled.
Granddaughter Emma came met us for a vacation in Montana, bringing her loving parents Gina and Laszlo in tow.
We enjoyed lots of fun activities, from hiking to Ousel Falls and the Blue Moon Bakery to watching Team Umizoomi, from flying a kite to playing Dominoes, from chasing a Pomeranian she affectionately called Little Teddy to making homemade noodles, dancing on stage or bouncing on a giant frog at the park. From swimming at the Yellowstone Club to playing croquet out back.
One of my favorite moments was when she asked me to play the guitar so she could dance, but insisting she and her mom first needed to put on a dancing dresses. Once they were dolled up for a nice meal out (hot dogs at the Bunker), I played Fish and a Whistle on my guitar, and they danced beautifully. Afterwards, Emma repeated a phrase she said the first time she danced as I played it earlier in the trip: "That's a nice song!"
So much fun had we that I just realized you must be starving, if you've been waiting for a new quick-clean cuisine recipe.
Easy solution? How about one of Emma's favorite dishes: Yogurt and Crunchies. For New Yorker Emma, that means scoop some plain, nonfat Greek Yogurt into a bowl and stir in Grape Nuts, because she doesn't like anything too sweet. My son Jay on the other coast in Los Angeles loves Greek yogurt with granola stirred in. Even McDonald's gets into the act with its Fruit and Yogurt Parfait, which is surprisingly tasty, cheap and delicious on the go.
Some might call it ridiculous to have a Q-CC version of this ubiquitous treat, but here is my twist on it.
First, I like low carb foods whenever possible, and I'm very cheap, so I usually get Kroger Carbmaster, which is high in protein and low in carbs without losing flavor. I especially like the Black Forest Cake flavor, but there are all the usual great fruit flavors, too, at a price of around 50 cents each. Then again, you can substitute whichever yogurt you like.
Here's the Quick-Clean tip. Peel off the foil top and toss it out, then just add some of your favorite crunchies to the small space at the top. I usually have bran flakes in the house, and they work, but of course Grape Nuts or granola both add a lot more crunch.
After you eat a few spoonfuls, add some more crunchies. When the little yogurt tub is empty, you can just throw the container away and have only a spoon to wash.
Who says you don't have time for a nutritious breakfast?
Two of the world’s great religions prohibit eating pork products as "unclean." The week before the Christian holiday of Easter, however, most big grocery chains put ham on sale.
Easter in Westminster
On a key holiday that differentiates our religion from those of similar theological pedigree, we as Christians not only have a savior who died for our sins, paving the way for us to go to heaven, but we also get to enjoy that sweet meat forbidden by Jewish and Muslim traditions. And at reduced prices. Vive la différence!
Ham works great for large groups on holidays other than Easter, including the 4th of July, except for those with religious objections and vegetarians. I personally think the religious ban of ham is based on health concerns from long ago, possibly following a pig sushi fad or some similarly misguided pork preparation, or maybe an ancient swine flu outbreak. As for vegetarians, let them eat cake, because most likely tofu won't go over big.
I am not forcing anyone to prepare or eat ham. I’m simply sharing a delicious food.
While spiral cut hams are convenient for serving, it is usually the shank ham with bone-in that is on sale, and it is just as delicious. Some people swear that you have to go through some elaborate preparation of coating it with brown sugar and exotic spices and then tacking on some pineapple rings and Maraschino cherries. If you want to do that, knock yourself out, but hams have so much flavor that to me all that window dressing is overkill.
The cooking time varies by the size and type of ham. If it doesn’t tell you how long to cook it on the wrapper, you can find that info online. The big Q-CC tip is to cover your cooking pan with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper before putting the ham in.
While ham can be the main course for a large family meal, it is the leftovers that we enjoy the most. By slicing it up and storing it in Tupperware, you can prepare subsequent meals quickly and easily. Because it is cured, ham has a pretty long refrigerator shelf life, and it tastes so good that you should have no trouble eating it all in that time frame.
4th of July in New York
We threw away the bone including quite a bit of meat still on it, but boiling this in water makes a great base for bean or split pea soup, if you enjoy the smell of those soups cooking.
For breakfast, dice the ham and add it to enhance scrambled eggs instead of having a side of bacon. When I have company, I like to heat the diced ham in the frying pan first to carmelize it a bit, mixing eggs with grated cheese separately to add to the pan to scramble in with the ham, but this morning I just combined everything in the large frying pan, saving the step of cleaning the mixing bowl, and it tasted just as good. I use about a cup of ham with four eggs and a quarter cup of grated cheese, but you can adjust the recipe to suit your taste. Just keep stirring the concoction over medium heat until it looks ideally done to you (probably about three to five minutes), and then plate it. You don’t need to add any salt, because the ham and cheese have plenty in them. It really doesn’t need pepper either, because the ham has so much flavor.
To make a ham and cheese omelet instead of scrambled eggs, just stop scrambling the mixture once it looks uniform. Let it sit until the eggs start firming up. You should be able to lift one side with a spatula without the omelet breaking apart. Once it has that consistency, add as much grated cheese as you like as filling, then fold it over. If the outside of the omelet looks golden or brown already, just plate it. If not, you can cook it a bit more or serve it yellow. The grated cheese will melt quickly once surrounded by that hot folded omelet.
Ham, of course, is also great for lunch. You can use diced ham in a chef’s salad, but to me salads frequently don’t seem filling, and the salad dressing makes chef salads among the most high calorie items on fast food menus, if you ever take the time to read that info.
Typical urbanite dining out.
I prefer ham sandwiches. Sandwiches can go from mediocre to awesome just by taking time to think about what would taste good in them. Any time you have an avocado around, that is a treat in a ham sandwich, but I didn’t have one on hand yesterday. I did have lettuce, tomato and a toaster. I toasted the low carb bread to give it a little more structural integrity, and then put light mayonnaise on one piece. I sliced a Roma tomato directly onto the mayo-coated toast, peppered it, added Romaine lettuce and then piled on sliced ham. I put honey Dijon mustard on the other piece of bread and closed it up with the toast's dry side out (if that isn’t obvious, then perhaps you should not be preparing meals at home with a sharp object). Fantastic sandwich!
None of this seems particularly groundbreaking, but when you realize that similar food with a soft drink runs $10 or more in a restaurant, you should recognize that learning how to cook a $10 ham and then utilize the leftovers will save you big bucks.
If you’re going to spend big money for a HoneyBaked Ham or some similar expensively processed product, the savings quickly evaporate. Yes, buying a pre-cooked ham or meal in a restaurant saves you the trouble of cleaning up, but you’ll note that the Quick-Clean Cuisine method means minimal clean-up time.
And for my Jewish friends (and other non-pork eating, non-vegetarians), there's always tri-tip.
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