Roasted Sausage with Root Vegetables

This dish is amazing. The first time we made it we could not get enough. When parsnips are in season, it's in weekly rotation in our house! It's versatile and simple; you just need to be around for a couple hours in the evening to give it a stir. The hands on time is less than ten minutes, but the results tell a different story. It's hearty, warming and super satisfying.

You can use any type of sausage. We really like german style bratwurst here, but try anything and everything. Parsnips are not required for you, but for me they're vital. You could use another substantial root vegetable in place of them, but I highly encourage you to use parsnips. You can use sweet potatoes or white potatoes, depending on your preference, or a mix of the two. Also, the measurements are not precise for the vegetables and sausage. The following usually makes 3 servings for us with a side salad, but you can easily adjust as needed. If you need to double, don't forget to double the stock as well.

Roasted Sausage with Root Vegetables
primal / paleo / grain-free / gluten-free / egg-free

Source: Adapted from The Stone Soup

1 large sweet or yellow onion (or 2 small ones)

2 small sweet potatoes, or 10 baby potatoes, or a mixture

4 small parsnips, or 2 large

5-10 cloves of garlic, not peeled

4-5 sausages of choice

1/8c cooking fat of choice

S+P

1c bone broth, or stock

Fresh herbs, optional

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Prepare the vegetables: slice the onion into wedges by cutting in half from tip to bulb, peeling, and cutting into wedges while maintaining a bit of bulb in each. This method keeps the wedges intact and prevents the onion from separating and burning. Cut the potatoes into uniform chunks about the size of a small cutie orange. Cut the parsnips into 1in thick batons. 

Place the onion wedges, potato chunks, parsnip batons, and garlic cloves (not peeled!) in a baking dish. I use a deep 10x10, but use whatever works for you. Drizzle with half of your cooking fat of choice, season liberally with salt and pepper, and toss to coat.

Place the sausages on top of the vegetables and drizzle with the remaining oil. Place into the oven for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, give everything a toss, and dump in the bone broth. Now would be the time to throw in any fresh herbs; I like a few sprigs of thmye and/or rosemary. Give everything another stir, and pop it back into the oven for an additional hour until the stock has reduced and the sausages are nicely browned.

Plate up the vegetables and sausage, pour any remaining stock over, and serve with the now caramelized garlic cloves. Enjoy!

The short of it:
Cut and dump veggies, put sausage on top, oil and season. 

Bake 45 minutes. 

Add stock. 

Bake an hour. 

Eat.

Fiesta Frittata/Holy Taco Pie

 So I had all these leftover onions from cooking fajitas and made this delicious frittata. Seriously - it's amazing. I want it all the time. The onions that I had were already cooked and definitely had flavor from the meat they were cooked with, but I'm writing the recipe how I'd make it without the leftover onions.

Fiesta Frittata/Holy Taco Pie
primal / paleo option / grain-free / gluten-free

Yield: 8 servings

1 yellow onion, crescents

1-1.25 lb ground chorizo sausage

4-6 mushrooms, sliced thin

1-2 bell peppers, sliced

1-2 c greens, I used kale

10 eggs whisked with

1/2-3/4c whole milk*

S+P

Cooking fat of choice (coconut oil, bacon fat, olive oil)

1/4c cheese of choice (cotija!)**
*Coconut for paleo
**Omit for paleo

Topping ideas:

Green onions

Cilantro

Jalapeno

More cotija

Fresh diced tomatoes

Cabbage

Pico de gallo

Sour cream/yogurt

Heat your oven to 375 degrees.

Heat a 12-inch skillet over medium heat. Add 1T cooking fat of choice to the pan, followed by the onions, and season with salt and pepper. Cook until translucent (you could add some spices here if you want, but the chorizo from our butcher is super flavorful. If you do, I'd do a dash of cumin, maybe a touch of paprika). When the onions are soft and translucent, remove from the pan. 

Add the chorizo and cook until done. Remove from the pan. Add a touch more oil, and throw in the mushrooms. Salt and pepper them. Let them soak up all the fat/flavor that rendered out of the sausage. Add the peppers (and any other veggies besides greens), give them some S+P, and stir fry for a minute. 

Add the onions and chorizo back in the pan, followed by the greens. Stir everything together. At this point I added a touch of butter to melt along the bottom of the pan because the particular pan I was using sometimes sticks in crucial situations. 

Pour in the eggs and milk evenly over the top of the fiesta in the pan. Top with some cheese. Cotija preferably, but cheddar or colby jack would suffice if necessary. 

Cook for 20 minutes, or until the eggs are completely set but not overcooked! Top with anything and everything and devour.

Store leftovers in the fridge. Reheat in a 350 degree oven wrapped in foil for 15-20 minutes. Or eat cold. Whatevz.

Oh hey cell phone photo. Oh hey Grandma plates.

Do you like frittata or quiche better?

Summer Vegetable Meatloaf Muffins (Primal/Paleo)

One of the foods my husband and I can make, deliciously, with just about anything in our fridge, is meatloaf. We don't eat it very often, but it's basically Mikey's favorite food. He's obsessed. The meatloaf that he is drawn to (like Riverbend Cafe's Blue Plate Special) tend to be more of the dense, somewhat plain, comfort food style meatloaf. Probably very similar to how his mother used to make. I prefer my meatloaf in muffin form with plenty of garlic and herbs, and chock full of vegetables. We usually meet in the middle and make a meatloaf with carrots, celery, kale, and onion.

When Mikey requested meatloaf muffins this week, after I decided to finally go to our butcher to restock on meat, I knew I wanted something more suiting to the warm weather we've (kind of) been having lately (okay, for a few days there). As we started the usual meat mixing party, I started pulling things out of the fridge and just throwing them in. We had tons of greens left to use from our Full Circle Farms CSA box, along with two huge yellow zucchinis from Hazel and Brand's garden, and I love the color and texture that comes from tons of vegetables in a meatloaf. What came out of the oven was more of a vegetable loaf with meat added, than a meatloaf with vegetables added...and that was perfectly okay by me. In fact, this was my favorite meatloaf we've ever made, by leaps and bounds. It obviously helped that we ate it with steamed artichokes:)

Summer Vegetable Meatloaf Muffins

based on nothing but a desire to consume mass quantities of summer produce

10-12 muffins, depending on your fill level

for the loaf:

1.2 lb ground turkey

2 eggs

1 tablespoon milk, water for paleo

1/2 cup breadcrumbs, divided*

1 t granulated garlic

1/2 t montreal steak seasoning

1 T worcestershire sauce

3 T garlic, minced

1 t onion salt

1/2 t sea salt

1-2 cups kale, chopped

1 cup spinach leaves, chopped

1 cup yellow zucchini, diced

2 large carrots, shredded

1 large stalk celery, diced

1/2 cup tomatoes, diced

for the glaze:

1/3 cup ketchup

1/4 cup barbeque sauce

1 t sriracha, or hot sauce

1 T worcestershire sauce

Basically:

Throw all of the meatloaf ingredients into a bowl and mix 'em up. Fill a prepped pan, top with mixed glaze ingredients, put it in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Eat.

Details:

Turn your oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the meat with the binding agents: eggs, milk, and breadcrumbs (*start off with 1/4 cup, then wait to see if you need the rest). Add all your spices and flavorings: garlics, steak seasoning, worcestershire, onion salt, sea salt. Mix with your hands, just until combined and the flavorings are evenly distributed.

Add in all of your vegetables: kale, spinach, zucchini, carrots, celery, and tomatoes. Mix until the vegetables are evenly distributed, and everything becomes sticky enough to hold shape. At this point, adjust your dry/wet binding agents to suit your preferred texture. You may also let the mixture rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, as some of the vegetables will release some of their liquids. You may then pour this off, or redistribute, depending, again, on your preferred texture.

Prep your muffin tin by spraying with oil. Form mounds of meatloaf mixture, and place into the muffin tins. We filled to slightly above the top of the pan, and got 10 muffins. If you fill just to below the lip, with room for glaze, you'll get 12. 

Mix your glaze together, and top each muffin with about a teaspoon of it, smearing it around to coat the top fairly evenly. 

Bake for about 30 minutes (less if you do 12 muffins). Broil if you like the glaze to caramelize slightly. Enjoy:)

ready to go in the oven // sorry no after shots, we gobbled them up // crappy cell phone shot