Venison Sausage, Carrot Currant Pistachio Fried Rice and Spinach

  

Now the Venison was a special treat last Christmas as a gift from our friend, Will. Will is a food industry professional, once an owner of a food truck here on Folly Beach. This is a bit of a story...Will's friend Charlie (part owner of the food truck) shot a deer during hunting season, and simply recipes . You can use any meat you like to make a sausage or just purchase a nice sausage from a butcher. If you're in Atlanta at the International Farmer's Market, you can get a variety of different sausages, such as bison. Here's a link to the Atlanta Farmer's Market .

gave Will a portion of the meat. Will ground the meat and made a sausage with herbs, spices and various seasonings that we are unaware of. So, here's a link on how to make sausage from

 

Here's a picture of the Venison: 

 

 

Brown the sausage in about 1 table spoon of butter and 2 tablespoons of oil

 

Finish the sausage in the oven at about 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes (depending on the size of the sausage). Allow the meat to settle for 8-10 minutes.

 

 

 

 

For the rice, I prefer Uncle Ben's brand as I don't like to struggle with the cheaper rice that often take long to prepare and end up like mush as it isn't parboiled. However, I do enjoy an Asian rice from a local Asian market, such as Thai Jasmine Rice, which isn't as difficult to cook as say, Carolina Rice.

 

 

Carrot, Currant Pistachio Fried Rice Recipe

 

1 C. Uncle Ben's Rice

1-2 cloves of garlic diced or whole

1/2 onion diced

1 stalk of scallion diced

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

2-3 tablespoons of oil (vegetable, olive or peanut)

2 C. Water

1/4 C. currants

1/4 C. diced cashews 

1 carrot peeled (according to the length from top to tip) with a potato peeler

1 sprig of thyme (optional)

bouillon cube or packet (chicken, beef, veggie) 

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

 

 

 

Obtain a pot or pan large enough to cook rice in, and heat 1 tablespoon of oil at high heat. Add diced scallion, onion and garlic to sweat in the pan before adding dry rice to the oil. Sautee the rice and veggies, adding oil as necessary by the tablespoon. Stir long enough to coat each grain of rice with oil, don't worry if the rice is browned a bit. Add the water to the pot and allow to come to a boil before adding the, salt, pepper and bouillon cube (you can even heat 1/4 C of water in the microwave and a dissolve the cube in it before adding it to the 2 C. boiling water and rice mixture). Reduce the heat to low and add the sprig of thyme. Allow the rice to simmer for about 20-25 minutes. I usually leave a top on the pot, tilted to allow some of the moisture to evaporate. Fluff the rice with a fork and check it after about 15-20 minutes. If it's almost ready, you can completely close the lid and turn off the heat (there should be very little water in the pot at this point).

 

 

Take a sauce pan and a 1 tablespoon of butter or oil and heat to medium high in order to toast the cashews, and currants. The currents will puff up when they are done, at this point remove the currants and cashews from the pan. Add the carrots and sauté lightly in oil or butter just enough to heat. Add the carrots, currents and cashews to the finished rice and mix.

 

 

Spinach Sautéed in Butter

 

Bunch of Fresh Spinach roughly chopped (250-500 grams is the typical bunch)

1 tablespoon of butter

1 tablespoon of soy sauce

1/4 onion diced

2 cloves of garlic diced

1/2 Roma tomato diced

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

 

 

Sauté diced onion, garlic, and tomato in the pan with butter and soy sauce until onions appear slightly cooked.  Add spinach, salt and pepper and sauté until spinach softens to the desired consistency.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

White Mayonnaise Cake with Chocolate Frosting!

Okay, I know that I'm going a little over board with the mayonnaise thing, BUT...have you ever wanted to bake a cake, but you didn't have any eggs?

Well, I have, but thanks to the age of information, I could simply utilize the internet to search "mayonnaise cake". Many sites provided a chocolate cake recipe with chocolate frosting. However, I finally found a white mayonnaise cake on cooks.com (direct link to source) . They also provide a coconut icing recipe from scratch. However, I have put a spin on  this recipe. A while ago I bought Betty Crocker Chocolate Frosting on sale (Buy 1 get 1 free...I only bought 1, and with my Food Lion card, it came up to $1.19). Here's the recipe:


WHITE MAYONNAISE CAKE

1 1/2 c. sugar
2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. boiling water
1 c. mayonnaise
1 tsp. vanilla


Sift the flour. Dissolve baking soda in boiling water with salt. Beat mayonnaise and sugar to a creamy mixture. Mix ingredients together. Pour into greased and floured pan (recommended size: 13 x 9 inch). Bake 35 minutes at 325 degrees. Add 4 tablespoons cocoa to make Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

Now, I don't utilize a lot of kitchen appliances related to baking, but I do pretty good with what I have! This is why I have not gone out and purchased a boat load of electric utensils and such because it hasn't been necessary. Besides, I'm a penny pincher...check out some pics of this cake:

Here are pictures of how the mixture looked:

Consistency:

 I dipped a napkin in oil and I swiped the bottom and sides of the pan to coat it, then I sprinkled a dusting of flour and twisted the pan around to let it fall to the sides.

 

 I chose to make two cakes in a large cast iron pan, so they would have room to rise, but as you can see my cakes came out short, but I ended up making a two layer cake.

Here's a different angle for you can see where the batter came up to the edges in the pan that I used:

I used my toaster oven again at its highest setting of 450 degrees for about 30-35 minutes or until it reaches a golden color:

 

Allow cakes to cool:

I cheated with the icing, but at least the cake is from scratch

 I just liked this photo:

 

A slice!

 

No Eggs! Mayo Meatloaf

Greetings everyone!

This is my first blog post for Penny Pinchers Pan! I got the idea because I found a 1 lb. pack of natural fed angus beef at The Food Lion for $2.79 to make meatloaf. However, I returned home only to realize that I forgot to purchase eggs! My handy-dandy husband suggested that I use Mayo, which is essentially eggs and oil. So, if you think about it, it's not really an eggless meatloaf!

Of course I took his suggestion because I once made a mayonnaise cake (I'll add that one later) as a result of the "no egg" issue. Cooking is chemistry, and if you don't have an ingredient, you can be creative and utilize something comparable to produce a fantastic dish! That's what this website is all about. Here's the recipe for the meatloaf, and please feel free to be creative with this recipe! I'm only listing exactly what I used.


Ingredients:

1 1b. Angus beef (or any beef)

1/4 cup of Mayo (not miracle whip)

1 cup of bread crumbs (you can make them yourself with 3 or 3 1/2 pieces of white bread toasted brown and crushed)

1/2 yellow onion (or whatever type of onion you have)

3-4 cloves of garlic (chopped or whole)

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of cracked black pepper

optional seasonings:

1 packet of Sazon (I used the one for arroz Amarillo aka yellow rice)

a pinch of herbs (of your choice...I had none in my garden or cabinet)

traditional ketchup topping

2 cups of whole baby carrots

2 cups of diced tomatoes

I added the meat to a pot or mixing bowl, whatever you prefer. The garlic was diced and added.

I diced 1/2 yellow onion

Here is what the pile of diced onions...if you don't like onions, you don't have to use them, but escallion (or scallions...you say tomato, I say tom-ah-to) is nice, and not as oniony (In my opinion). My family is from Jamaica, and we use escallion often in our cooking. 

 

Here is a photo of it from bestjamaica.com

They often sell for a 3 bundles at 99 cents or a dollar.

 

 

Below are photos of the toast, salt and pepper

 

Throw the onions in the mix...as with most meatloaf recipes, you just dump everything into a pot, mix it together, and mold the meat into a loaf.

After I ground the enough bread to make a cup of bread crumbs, I tossed them in the mix with everything else. You can buy bread crumbs, but it's cheaper to make your own.

You've got Mayo! I found this on sale at Harris Teeters (buy one get one free)...it ended up costing about $2.60 after using my VIC card (discount card for HT).

 Here is 1/4 cup of Mayo.

 

I dumped the mayo into the mix followed by the optional ingredient, Sazon, which is in the picture below.

 Goya is a popular brand for Sazon, but other companies make it too. There is the type that is used in Spanish rice, providing it he yellow color, but you can buy the one that is not for rice, but for fish, red meat and poultry).

Mix all of the ingredients together, I used the back of the spoon to distribute the mayo evenly

throughout the loaf. This is the binding agent that will keep the loaf together.

Cup your hands and mold the loaf

 

Below you will see many of the other optional ingredients

I slathered a thick layer of Ketchup over the top of the loaf, in the traditional fashion.

I also made a thick dice of potatoes and whole baby carrots (around the loaf).

I used a toaster oven to make this meal, I preheated it to the highest setting, and baked it in the stew pot for about 45 minutes - 1hour. If you're using a regular oven, preheat it to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and bake it for 45 minutes to an hour. You can even increase the temperature to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Just keep checking until the potatoes are done. You may also check the loaf by creating a small incision in a portion of it.

This is not the most appetizing picture, but I promise you, it's delicious, and you can still have meatloaf, if you have no eggs, and you do have some mayonnaise.

I made rice and my husband made sautéed mushrooms and corn as a side dish. Unfortunately,

we did not make any greens to go with it...kids, make sure you have some sort of green, leafy veggies for a balanced meal!

 

 

 The meal was accompanied by my husband's fresh baked bread. I'll get the recipe from him for a later post.

Please feel free to post comments - good and bad (but please try to be constructive, I'm a little sensitive when it comes to my creations). I want to know how this meal worked out for you or if you have any suggestions!

Also feel free to post your own cost efficient recipes or ideas.