braised red cabbage + german sausage

OCTOBER! Cabbage! Germany! I don’t know much about why Germans like Oktober. I tried reading the Wiki article on it, but I lost interest when they started talking about some Prince. I do know that I missed Denver’s Oktoberfest. It was the 2nd and 3rd weekend in September. Hm. But I’m pretty sure that whatever food I might have found on the street would not have been as good as what I made here. I’m not sure how I would have eaten cabbage anyway on the street and that’s what I like most here. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise. I love vegetable side dishes.
So there are apples in the cabbage. I miss New York apples so much. They’re such a thing there and so not a thing here. I searched for an apple picking orchard here and found one, but first, they required reservations to go pick apples and second, they had already sold out spots for the season. What the hell. All those idiots going to pick apples probably don’t even know what the hell a good apple is anyway. They probably just like Fuji and Gala and barf Red Delicious. And they’ll pick these lovely heirloomy varietals and they’ll be all tart and wonderful and they’ll think ew these are gross and then let them sit around and get mealy and then throw them out. I hate them. I deserved one of those spots.

sweet potato and sausage shepherd’s pie

It being almost St. Patrick’s Day, I’m feeling the urge to make some sort of representative dish. I will certainly make corned beef and cabbage on Thursday, but since I’m not corning my own beef, I don’t think that recipe is really blog worthy – “Go to the grocery store, buy some corned beef, cook in a large pot…” I’ve already posted my Colcannon recipe, which I suspect I’ll make this week too. So I thought, well, Shepherd’s Pie is decently Irish enough. I think most people associate England with it, but those Irish make it too. It can also be called Cottage Pie. And since it’s just a dish of meat and potatoes, the variations are endless!

I originally meant to make this even more interesting by adding butternut squash in the potato mash, but when I started to get all of my ingredients together on the counter, I noticed that my butternut squash that had been waiting to be used had gotten soft and wrinkled. And so, rather than having a kitchen meltdown (which I seem to be apt to do), I said, well that’s just fine, the sweet potatoes will be wonderful on their own. Had I had a kitchen meltdown (because I was really looking forward to using butternut squash in this recipe), I think I would have been excused this time. I’m training for a half marathon that’s coming up on April 10th, and I had run 11 miles that afternoon and was pretty hungry for dinner. And since it had been declared, unbeknownst to me, Household Nap Time at around 4:30, I had to patiently wait to go to the grocery store until the two kitties and Joe woke up from their cuddlefest on the couch. (Joe had said he wanted to come to the grocer’s with me – I am capable of doing it myself normally). So around 6:30 we finally ventured out and got our ingredients. So this meant that dinner was ready at almost 10:00. Ugh. I was pretty ready to eat.