Tonight's Dinner...

I did my first ever late-night slug watch tonight! The little bastards like to munch on leafy greens after dark. I didn't find any slugs, but I did find bugs. Some bugs are absolutely decimating my arugula, and a few of them are trying to eat my fava bean leaves, too. The nerve. That's going to be my food!

If anyone knows of a small insect that likes to munch on leafy greens, let me know. It was just the arugula and the favas. It's pretty small, with wings, and looked a bit shiny. Bonus points if you can tell me how to kill it.

Bugs and slugs. The bane of the gardener's existence.

Anyway, as you can see from the pictures, I turned the cute little radishes I grew into a yummy salad. I paired it with one of my favorite dishes, sausage & apples. If you ever have too many apples around, this is a great way to get rid of some of them. The salad is my own recipe. For this one, the ingredients are --

Arugula
Mizuna salad greens
Cucumber
Radishes
Trader Joe's Gorgonzola crumbles
Trader Joe's raspberry viniagrette

The radishes have a good flavor. Not too tart, and just spicy enough. I grew French breakfast radishes. It's not quite salad green season up here, but all the veggies came from my CSA, Full Circle Farm. They combine with other farms to give customers more variety. While it's completely local three seasons out of the year, in the winter and early spring, quite a bit of stuff comes from California. Usually I try to pick things that don't grow well in our climate, like oranges, avocados, and lemons.

The recipe for sausage & apples comes from one of my favorite cookbooks. It takes about 40 minutes, start to finish. I highly suggest using Trader Joe's apple chardonnay sausage with this -- it really goes well in this dish.

Sausage and Apples
Adapted from Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert, Simply in Season

4-6 links sausage
1/2 cup apple juice or apple cider
1/4 cup apple jelly or hot pepper jelly (I leave this out, as I can never find it at the store)
2 tbsps Dijon mustard
1 medium onion
2 tbsps olive oil
3 firm apples
1 teaspoon dried basil (whoops -- so hungry when it was done that I forgot!)
pinch of pepper

Step 1. Brown or pan fry sausage in a little oil, over medium-high heat. Remove from pan and keep warm.

Step 2. Mix together the apple juice, Dijon mustard, and apple jelly in a small bowl while the sausage is cooking.

Step 3. Cut the onion into vertical slices. (I diced it. This is what an empty stomach will do to a chef!). Add to saucepan you used for the sausage. Add the oil. Cook over medium heat until it starts to brown. Add more oil as needed.

Step 4. Cut the apples into thick wedges. Add it to the onion until starting to brown.

Step 5. Stir in the sauce. Add basil and pepper. Return sausages to pan. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook until sausages are done -- about 10 minutes.

Prijatno! (Enjoy!)
-- Anna