A Foodie’s Sob Story

As most of you who know and love me know, I am a foodie at heart.  Has there ever been a time when I’ve visited and didn’t have a list of restaurants or style of food with me? A time when you’ve heard from my lips, “I don’t care where we go, you chose.”  Or, something to that effect? Now, I might say something like, “I was thinking this… but, wherever you want to go is fine” secretly hoping we’d go to where I wanted…  When it comes to cooking, I have a fairly complete kitchen (in Germany), well, as fairly complete as the storage space in my kitchen will allow me to be.  I also have food magazine subscriptions (thanks mom!)  Don’t I always follow the recipe to the gram the first time I make it, no substitutions for me (Aims – no laughing) and then diversify from there?  Heck, I’ve even been known to improvise a totally new recipe on more than one occasion – sometimes even successfully.  But alas, my passion is becoming as deflated as a limp noodle.

I decided that I really had hit my limit with the chicken and rice.  I tried, like everyone here does to mix it up a bit and have rice and chicken.  But alas, even the occasional fish thrown in there wasn’t satisfying my foodie gullet.  I finally decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and bought frozen sausage (the big kind).  I was going to take control of my eating damnit!  I am foodie, hear me chomp… and all of that…  So, last night, there I was… 

It all began with looking for some nice tomato sauce that I could use as a base.  My idea was sliced sausage with a bit of sauce mixed in with some nice penne.  Well, after visiting two different stores in the area, I ended up with Ragu.  Now, don’t get me wrong, Ragu isn’t bad per se, it’s just not what I was looking for.  Well, not to be disuaded I thought to myself, “a real chef can spice it up, no problem.”  So, home I went with my bottle of Ragu.  I put my bag of sausage under the water ignoring the word “Halal” written there (probably a religious thing but whatever) to defrost and started with my chopping.  Ideally I would have onion, garlic, red/green bell pepper, maybe some fresh rosemary and basil… I had onion, garlic and dried Oregano.  No problem.  I chopped my onion, peeled my garlic and then put some olive oil in a pan and put in on the burner.  <I should insert here that my stove has two temperatures, high and very high.  There is no medium or medium-low heat or anything resembling moderation.> Before the oil got too hot I began pressing my garlic, one at a time, into the oil.  By the time I hit my 5th garlic, the 1st one had already started to burn… I quickly mixed them all and added the onion.  Okay, a little browned garlic never hurt anyone.  I added my oregano and crushed black pepper and stirred for a bit more before deciding I was ready to brown my sausage.  In went my 4 plump sausages as well as some water to prevent burning.  I covered it and began to clean up my mess.  About 5 minutes later I noticed that the the water was gone and half of my onions were burning.  In goes some more water, a little swish here and there, and it’ll be fine – it’ll add flavor.  A few more minutes, more water gone, more onions burning I de-lided, added more water and decided to turn the sausages.  This worked for a while longer.  The sausages were firm and maybe ready to eat?  I brought them out, one at a time, and cut them in 1/2 inch diagonal strips.  Now, I had already realized that when they were cooking there was no oil, no fat of any kind.  I decided that maybe they were just really lean sausages.  But the real tragedy came while I was cutting them and saw that they were really just packed meat product.  I tried to not let this get me down.  Maybe it would be tasty packed meat product… So, back in the pan they went (although solid, they were pink – I didn’t know if that was good or bad) so cooked them up with some of the ragu and the burned onions and garlic.   While that was mixing I took my penne off of the stove and felt pretty good about it, it was prefect al dente.  So, after draining it I mixed it with some of the sausage-Ragu mix, popped it into a bowl, grabbed a fork and prepared to enjoy my non chicken and rice dinner.

Out to the living room I trodded.  I popped in a Gilmore Girl’s DVD and sat down, ready.  Although it didn’t look like much, sometimes simplicity is best.  I made sure to get both sausage and penne in that first bite.  And then… and then nothing, it was bad.  They call that sausage?  Maybe in looks only.  <sigh>  Somewhere stirring in the back of my mind was a repressed thought that I only then allowed to surface.  Halal was religious, religious food in the Middle East seems to mean no pork… I don’t know what the meat was, it wasn’t pork or pork product.  It was probably chicken…

I’m trying to not let it get me down too much.  There are good food at restaurants, it’s just difficult to go out to eat every night when you don’t have a car.  And, I love cooking and baking!  I even having baking pans!  Of course, the brownies haven’t come out quite right yet – the oven, afterall, only has 5 settings, “1 – 5″.  I will overcome… somehow.  And if I can’t, well, what’s that they say, “If you can’t beat em’ join em’”?  Chicken gumbo, baked chicken, fried chicken, chicken saute’, chicken…