NYE Sausage

Here's a great recipe Lisa suggested for New Year's Eve, and man, was it a hit!

You take two rings of one pound smoked kielbasa (turkey if you like, it doesn't matter), and cut them into bite sized circles. 

Add them to a slow cooker with a half cup of brown sugar, 3 cloves of garlic,  red pepper flakes, and add a cup of unsweetened applesauce.  Cook it on high for 3 hours, stirring frequently. 

Now, some notes: 

1,  3 hours is what they said to do online, but nuh-uh. Within 90 minutes it was pretty much done and we had it on "warm" the rest of the day.

2. You must use unsweetened applesauce, but all I had on hand were a pair of "lunch" sized snack packs, so I cut up and added a green apple. In my opinion it added positively to the dish, both in flavor and texture.

3. We added a smidge - and I mean a SMIDGE of a Thai seasoning and it was enough to make it the almost too hot for Lisa. I liked the kick myself. 

Try it yourself!

My Apple Cake Recipe. Wellll, Redbook magazine's recipie actually, but it's mine now.

Here's the apple cake recipe I've been talking about on Facebook. I've made it twice and was never 100% satisfied w/ the result (once too dry once too, er, wet), but I'd chalk that up to my tempermental oven, not a flaw in the design.


Chopped walnuts or pecans
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 large apples, peeled and sliced (I use 8 small/medium, mainly because that's what I usually have on hand)
1 tbsp bakingpowder
1 tsp salt
4 large eggs.
1/2 cup veg oil
1/2 cup/1 stick melted butter
1/4 cup Orange Juice
2 tsp vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350 degree F

Combine apples, cinnnamon, 2 tbsp of the flour, 1/4 cup of the sugar, and toss.
In another bowl, combine remaining sugar and flour, baking powder, OJ, oil, vanilla, butter, eggs, salt. Beat until smooth.

Spray pan with nonstick spray and sprinkle bottom liberally with nuts. Pour in half the batter. Cover with a layer of 1/2 the apples. Spoon the remaining batter over the apples and top that with what's left of the apples. With luck you might have some left over for the kids (apples that is).

Bake 1 hr and 20 min or untl toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.