Chicken Sausage is surprisingly good

meal idea

He cooks – I’m the cleaner. It works great. Well, most of the time it works just fine. Then there are other times where I decide to align my actions with my ideas and purchase food from the local co-op. The product list causes me to salivate, even when the items are new to me and might sound boring to folks who don’t geek out over local produce quite like I do.

When he cooks, he cooks by experience and instinct. He makes a lot of this and a lot of that, but it usually comes down to “meat, starch, vegetable.” Right? Isn’t that the County food equation?

His meat choices are beef, pork and bacon. Sometimes I can sneak chicken breasts in there. A couple of weeks ago, I really knocked him off balance. I bought chicken sausage. And rutabaga.

Neither of us had tried either of those two foods. Garlic and Herb Chicken Sausage appealed to me because it was already flavored, I love sausage, and my palate could use a distraction from red meat.

And rutabaga? Rutabaga is technically “in season” right now, meaning that, if you have a local farmer, producer or co-op selling you fresh vegetables, they’re selling you something out of a greenhouse or something that’s stored well since its harvest.

These gangsters of longevity come in many shapes and sizes and are often affectionately labeled “root vegetables” across the board, even though their individual tastes and looks are significantly unique.

I decided to help him along with this meal, even though I usually keep my expertise corralled inside the world of vinegar and baking soda and other natural cleaning products.

I said, “It’ll be fine if we just pan-fry this chicken sausage and boil the rutabaga and mash it.” I didn’t say it at the time, but I could have clarified even further with: “Rutabaga is both the vegetable and the starch! Fancy!” (It’s not often that I can use “Fancy” in a sentence.)

‘It’ll be fine that way’ was my argument. And “it was fine that way” was my reward.

The sausage was flavorful and the rutabaga tasted much like a turnip. We just cooked the sausage through and added sour cream and butter to the mashed rutabaga (you could use Greek yogurt instead of sour cream if you wish. I’ve been eating quite a bit of Tide Mill Creamery Greek yogurt lately and it’s my new favorite food.)

It was a cheap, hearty meal and it barely took two seconds of brainstorming to come up with it. I call that a win (I also call ‘keeping my clothes dry while washing dishes’ a win).

Do you have any other meal ideas that involve these ingredients? How about any simple pairings of protein and vegetable that are easy to prepare? 

Jenna Beaulieu

About Jenna Beaulieu

Jenna is a writer and fine art photographer who recently moved from the Saint John Valley region to the quiet side of Mount Desert Island. She’s a fan of excellent music, homemade gravy, and colored pencils (also, short books and long books, good pens, flannel, and when the June bugs don’t really come out much that year). For more about Jenna and her work, visit her website at www.jennabeaulieu.com