Brat Beer Bath, Baby!

Another warm, comfort food for Sunday night's dinner. I love sausages and brats, and I really love the ones that are made with things other than just the usual innards. Tonight we had chicken and apple sausages, and I didn't feel like standing around with a pair of tongs out in the cold, so the "brats got a bath."

I used my BIG cast iron skillet, which always makes a nice pot. A stick of butter, and bunch of sliced onions to start (I used yellow and red just because those were leftover from other stuff), and I let that simmer till the onions got somewhat soft, but not translucent. Added two beers (David insisted on his Miller High Life - "it's the champagne of beers, Mom!"), and once hot-added the sausages. Just simmered till they were looking to burst. These were previously fully cooked, by the way. I found some fluffy, over-sized hot dog buns at the bakery, and served them with Texas Caviar (black-eyed pea salad) and some sweet yellow cherry tomatoes.

The Texas Caviar is another recipe to be found in the Strand Family cookbook. An old friend from church, Landa Cartwright, gets credit for this one. I've had other black-eyed pea salads, but this one is the best. Easy to make, too. Just get a large mixing bowl and dump 4-5 cans of black-eyed peas in (drain all but one or two cans), 1 medium red onion-chopped (oh yeah, that's why I had red onion!), 1 green 1 red, and 1 yellow bell peppers-chopped, 1 large bottle of Kraft LITE Zesty Italian Dressing, 1 jar of picante sauce (I use mild), 1 large can pitted black olives-finely chopped, and you can add jalapeño to taste, though I leave it out. That's it. Mix it up, refrigerate in a container, and the saying goes, "the longer it sets, the better it gets!" It is true. Wait at least 24 hours before you serve it. It's great on crackers or big scoop chips; and I like it cold, but you could heat it as well. This will pass for eating black-eyed peas for good luck in the new year.
On another note, I wish I had taken pictures of breakfast this morning. We had my version of Migas, along with fried potatoes and onions (I eat a lot of onions?), and a cast iron skillet of "greasy" refried beans. I would have loved to post a picture of those beans. Usually when I heat up refrieds, I do add a little bacon grease, but this time I wanted them to get really dark and smoky flavored. I learned the term "greasy" the other night when we were at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants "Ojeda's," and I asked our waiter for the "darker" refried beans they serve with the Carne Asada. He said, "Oh, you want the GREASY beans!" And of course I said "Okay!"
So this morning I fried a whole pound of bacon and reserved the grease for the beans; I used about half of it when it was all said and done. And using the iron skillet just added to the flavor. They were perfect if I do say so. The Migas were just scrambled eggs (I use a little sour cream to get them fluffy); all that crunchy, crumbled bacon; shredded monterey jack cheese, and broken corn tortillas chips. Mixed it all together and put it in a casserole dish in the oven for a few minutes with a little extra cheese melted down over the top. I love breakfast. And I really love Mexican breakfast. Don does too, especially when he wakes up on Sunday morning, gets in the hot tub and is served a Tequila Sunrise before his Mexican breakfast. Hey, I like to do it up right, right? We're still coming down from our recent trip to San Antonio. I have foodie pics from that I'll post over the holidays.
Okay, I've rambled on about food--so what's new! Thanks for reading.