Sunday: Green and Red Bell Peppers with Sausage and Celery

This week's grocery haul, for $99.33:
-3 green bell peppers
-3 red bell peppers
-1 bag celery
-1 bag organic carrots
-1 bunch parsley
-1 head broccoli
-5 tomatoes on the vine
-1 box prewashed baby spinach
-1 bunch bananas
-1 carton blueberries
-1 jar pitted Kalamata olives
-Small bottle of low-sodium soy sauce
-1/2 lb roast chicken and 1/3 lb pepperjack cheese from the deli
-3 Fage yogurts
-4 cans Sixpoint Sweet Action Ale
-2 bags tortilla chips
-1 whole organic chicken
-1 package (5 links) pork sausage
-1 box instant oatmeal, variety pack
-1 can unsalted roasted peanuts
-6 organic eggs

I carried it all home on my back, like a sherpa. I'll probably need to get more salad greens later in the week, along with ginger, lemons, and anything else I forgot.

Yesterday's dinner was pretty slapdash, as in, I made it up on the fly, but I'm happy enough with how it turned out.

Green and Red Bell Peppers with Sausage and Celery

Here are the ingredients:

Ingredients:

1 pack sausage
2 red bell peppers
2 green bell peppers
2 stalks celery
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes, unsalted
Rice (5-6 cups cooked)
Not pictured: canola oil, pinch cumin, pinch oregano, pinch cayenne, salt and pepper, hot sauce, chicken stock

Instructions:

1. Cut sausage links into small pieces. I like slicing quarters. Brown in large saucepan in a neutral-tasting oil, like canola.
2. Chop celery into small pieces. Add to sausage, stir, and let soften.
3. Chop green and red bell peppers into small pieces. Add to the pot, stir. Wait 2 minutes.
4. Add can of diced tomatoes and 1/4 cup water. Add spices as you like.
5. Make large amount of rice using leftover chicken stock.
6. Serve with hot sauce.

I served this after a hefty Super Salad (spinach, celery, olives, tomatoes, carrots, parsley, olive oil and vinegar) and it made for a quite satisfying, almost-too-heavy meal.

FACTS AND FIGURES 

Prep time: 20-30 min. Chopping, chopping, watching football, chopping.

Servings: 4
Agony rating: 3/10. 
Taste and stuff: 7/10. 

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

I, um, threw away the receipt by accident, but the sausage was $5.99, the can o'tomatoes $2.99, so it's safe to estimate the total cost was no higher than $14 including the vegetables (and that's aggressive) or $3.50/serving.

This afternoon I'm making bone broth in the slow cooker, with a freezer's worth of leftover chicken and turkey bones. At the recommendation of a Ukrainian friend, I removed the bones after 24 hours and pounded them with a meat hammer (er, really an ice cream scoop) to let some of the marrow out. Then I put them back in. Eventually I'm going to add some bay leaves, peppercorns, etc but I don't want things to get bitter.

At some point I'm going to slow roast a whole chicken in there, to give us meat for the week... and more bones!

Meal plan for the week:

Breakfast: Bananas and oatmeal (him) broth, berries, and yogurt (her)
Lunch: Sandwiches (him) ??? (her)
Dinners: Peppers and Sausage with rice; Superveggie salad with roast chicken and hardboiled eggs; Use leftover rice and chicken to make chicken and rice soup (with lemon and ginger?) or egg drop soup

Crockpot Chicken Sausage Stew with Peppers, Potatoes, and Mushrooms

So this meal was kind of a fiasco. I made it like a week ago and just got crazed the whole time. Inspiration for this one comes from Stephanie O'Dea's A Year of Slow Cooking, which is an excellent blog that you should read.

OK. Start by going to the grocery on Sunday. Or sending someone else to go. Acquire the following:

Two 6-packs of healthy chicken sausage
Two regular old potatoes
Two green peppers
Two red peppers
One carton mushrooms
*One carrot (Leftover from another recipe)
*Two sticks celery (Leftover from another recipe)
Optional & not pictured: Onions, broccoli, salad greens on the verge

Here's where it started to go wrong.

Chop vegetables into hearty chunks. BUT: Don't do it the way I did it, which was to start with the celery and peppers and then do carrots and potatoes last.

Not like this!

I tossed them in olive oil and, it being a Sunday night, stuck the whole thing in the fridge so that the cooking could commence Monday morning.

Then I woke up on Monday, looked at the recipe again, and realized that I was supposed to layer the vegetables in order of density. Because this is how slow cookers work. So I picked out all the peppers and mushrooms and celery and put them in a bowl. Remember, they are still covered in oil.

First this.

THEN add these.

Then I sliced up the sausage, threw it on top, turned the thing on low for six hours and ran to work.

Four hours later, I realized that I forgot to add any liquid to the mix. (The original recipe calls for a few cups of wine or water.) I indulged a few fantasies about my house burning down and/or my dog being driven insane by the smell of scorched chicken sausage... but thankfully, that's not how slow cookers work.

I got home and dinner was more or less ready.

Before.

After.

Better yet, the veggies had so much liquid in them that they provided a cup of juice. Crazy.

I served this over rice, with salt and hot sauce. It was filling but unremarkable.

FACTS AND FIGURES
 
Prep time: 30 min. Peeling, chopping, fretting, re-sorting, rice cooking, etc.
Servings: 6.
Agony rating: 3/10. Peeling and chopping veggies takes time.
Taste and stuff: 6/10. Not bad.

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

Oh yeah, I also lost the receipt. So here is a guesstimate based on past prices/prices on label.
Chicken sausages: $6.99 ea x 2 = $13.98
Peppers: $3?
Potatoes: $2?
Mushrooms: $1.50
Celery, carrot: acquired earlier
Rice: $1?
Total cost of stuff I had to buy special:~$22?
Cost per serving: $3.67. Maybe.

VERDICT: SUCCESS. Add hot sauce.