Meatballs

It turns out that ground pork is sold in 1.25 lb packages. Who knew? It also turns out that Safeway, on Tuesday, had no chard, and prior to shopping, I didn't see the note that said you can use spinach instead. So I got dino kale, which I like anyway.

Some of the kale is all flavorful, and some less so, I think it probably has to do with how much oil and garlic that bit of kale came in contact with. *shrug*

The meatballs are a touch dry - it would have helped if I'd noticed the "turn once" direction in the instructions. So I flipped them and cooked them for an extra minute or two. They're also not as sweet as I expected. But I do like the pine nuts.

However, this Real Simple recipe worked out quite well.

Kale sausage again

I did it again. This time with Nugget's country breakfast sausage (the version that came without the casing) and dino kale. Just as good as it was before, but different. I think I prefer the ginger/soy/pineapple sausage, but they're both tasty :-)

Sausage and Kale

A friend of mine posted a kielbasa and kale pasta recipe on Facebook the other day. Since I'm supposed to be feeding the chinchillas high calcium, relatively low phosphorus greens (for which kale qualifies), I figured I should try actually cooking the stuff for myself.

I bought a bunch of regular kale. About 1/3 - 1/2 of it went to the chins. The remainder got chopped coarsely. Cooked up a couple strips of bacon, sliced up two sausages (I got an Italian sausage and a ginger-garlic-soy sauce-something else sausage at Whole Foods), fried those, added a touch of duck fat (left from the confit a few weeks ago). Added the kale. Added some fresh basil (recipe says julienned, but I just chopped it) and a bit of dried thyme (recipe called for fresh... but I have already learned that I do not have the patience for fresh thyme). Cooked all that up for a few minutes, then added rigatoni pasta. Top with a bit of Parmesan cheese.

Tasty. I think I like Dino kale better - maybe next time do half a bunch of each? For two sausages, I did not use enough kale anyway - could easily double, and probably triple, the amount of greens. The ginger/soy sauce/whatever sausage is really tasty - don't bother with the Italian next time. Overall a quite satisfying meal.

Duck confit

Today I attempted a cheater's version of duck confit. Not quite all of the fat rendered (the legs I didn't eat (I made 4 altogether) are in the oven again to see if a bit more time and heat will render it out), but it's still tasty. Sauteed a bit of Dino kale with mushrooms and sage with some of the rendered duck fat. The kale, obviously, wasn't as tasty as the duck was :P

Addendum: another hour or so in the oven renders out most of the fat, and the meat becomes more tender and flavorful. So the 90min from the original recipe isn't quite enough. There's a bit of fat left that I will try rendering. Turns out that 4 duck legs yields more fat than one whole duck does. Who knew? Should probably melt and strain the fat I've got, since there are random brown bits in there, from both episodes. Oh, and it's a shame I ate all my bread earlier today, because now what am I going to soak up the bit of duck fat left in the pan with? Sigh.

Squash might not be evil

So I decided to try a recipe out of Real Simple magazine (Jan issue) last night (internet was dead last night...)

It involved cutting up a butternut squash and baking it with olive oil, sage, salt and pepper. It then involved frying up some pork chops, then putting them in with the squash in the oven. The final step was wilting some kale in the pork fat. Other than the pork chops coming out a little overdone, it was pretty tasty.

Next time, try it without the bone-in version called for in the recipe. And maybe bake it a little less long.

I also had lunch for today, and two more meals for later this week :D