Thanksgiving 2017

Nov 23 2017

I don’t care for turkey so we never had it too often. I just had to put my dog to sleep a week before and I had not been feeling up to par so I wanted something easy to fix. Chicken Pot pie is one of our favorite comfort foods and simple to fix. This is PA Dutch pot pie, chicken with flat square dumplings, peas and carrots. The only bought noodles that are good are Reames. Homemade would be better but I am not good at noodles. There is a recipe on the back of the package.

I did mine in a crockpot and did a double batch. I left the peas out since our son will not eat them. My sides were Bob Evans mashed potatoes, a must to serve the pot pie over, peas, and I had corn vac sealed from last summer. My wife is in charge of dessert and buys it mostly from Moulton Country Store that carries a lot of good Amish goods. She got a good sugar cream pie for this year.

You can use any cooked pulled chicken, I used a 39 oz. can of white meat from a local butcher. I had everything ready to go when Jasn, Tonya and Gavin came early to have some snacks. Sara Jane was here from BG. I heated the peas and put on my warm hold burner and put Jason to work skillet cooking the corn Nancy warmed up some Kings Hawaiian rolls. Now that was about the easiest TG meal I ever fixed.

Everyone said it was good and all had seconds so that made me feel good!

Nancy set a nice table

For the pot pie

Mashed potatoes

Pot pie

Jason frying the corn

My plate

Smoked Polish Sausage & Kraut over Mash

Oct 10 2017

Pork and Kraut is one of my wife’s favorite meals and she likes it sour. Some kind of pork and kraut is my good luck New Year’s Day meal. I don’t fix it as often as I should. My favorite are some smoked ribs cooked in the kraut all day in a Crockpot.

I had almost a pound of kraut left from making sausage rubens to use up. I bought some Polish sausages from my butcher. I smoked them for 1 ½ hours in my Traeger then they went over some sliced sweet onions in a Crockpot covered with the kraut, about a half a beer and water, salt and pepper. It was on high for 3 + hours and then down to low. I left all the juice on the kraut so it was pretty sour.

I served it over some Bob Evan’s buttermilk redskin potatoes and had some organic bread and butter with it. I had Maille mustard with my sausage and it all tasted great!

Sausage

Getting some smoke

In the Crockpot over some onions

Kraut, salt & pepper over

My supper

Sausage Reuben

Oct 06 2017

I was sure glad I popped over to Mary’s cooking blog The Deep South Dish and checked out her sausage reuben, it’s delicious! She said she got the idea from the Brick Tavern in Decatur, Alabama and the sandwich they call  a Five Fingered Banjo Picker.

Mary is my favorite southern cook and has a lot of good recipes, she is from about as far south as you can get in Mississippi. Her cooking is pure southern with Mississippi, Cajun and Creole influence.

The wife loves reubens but I use pastrami instead of corned beef. I used a pound of Bob Evans sausage and made 3 patties from it. I did them in my Traeger pellet grill for 45 minutes and then browned them up in my gas Weber at 400 deg. on flat grill grates 3 minutes each side and melted 2 slices of swiss cheese on top. I toasted the Kaiser buns.

I had some sauerkraut, sliced onion and tomato with Maille mustard on mine. The wife didn’t have onion on hers. We both thought they were pretty darned good. It was a good thing I didn’t fix and sides but had some chips with the sandwich. The sandwich was a whole meal, thanks for the idea Mary!

Click Here for Mary's recipe

Good!

Getting some smoke

Getting browned

Mustard

Kraut

Onion & tomato

My supper