The Touchdown
I made sweet Italian chicken sausage subs. I was going to do a real caloric splurge on pork sausage, but I made the mistake of looking at the fat content on the package, and I just couldn't go through with it. TWO of the chicken sausages were still 5 grams of fat less than ONE of the pork ones. Tasty, yes... worth it? I decided not. The chicken sausages were really good in any case. I put them in a pan with some water to start and covered them. After a couple minutes, I removed the cover, the water quickly evaporated and they took on some nice brown color. I decided last minute to slice them in half lengthwise to get more seared effect and make it easier to eat in the roll. Meanwhile, I had some sliced onions and green peppers getting nice and soft and slightly carmelized in another pan. To prepare the rolls, I cut them down the middle from the top, but not all the way, so it was a pocket, not a halved roll. I put some sweet relish in the bottom, then the sausage halves, peppers and onions, and then ketchup and mustard. They were fabulous. A tiny bit sweet, lots of savory flavor and just a bit messy. Touchdown!
The Field Goal
This is a hot creamy artichoke dip from a Pampered Chef recipe. This would have been a field goal, had I not decided to save on dishes and mix the dip in the bowl I baked it in, which would have been ok if I had wiped down the sides before baking. Sadly, I did not, and as you can see, the residue of dip around the rim of the bowl nearly burnt. It was not nice to look at, but the taste was great. The recipe calls for vegetable soup mix, cream cheese, milk, sour cream, garlic, lemon juice and artichokes. It is very tart and tangy, which I like. You can make it in a bread bowl, but I chose to just cut up a french bread loaf. I think bread bowls look pretty, but it seems like a waste of good bread- can you really eat the whole bowl? What a mess.
The Punt
"Vanilla Pudding Pie" is what I am calling this one. It's looks too pretty to be considered a punt, but it didn't work out that well in the end. I got the idea to make a banana cream pie for some reason and having never made one, looked up a recipe that basically was just crust, bananas, and vanilla pudding- all of which I had. For the crust, I decided to use some sugar cookies that I'd made earlier in the week. I made them into crumbs in my Cuisinart and added some butter, then baked for a few minutes until slightly browned. I let the crust completely cool (finished in the fridge) and added a layer of sliced bananas and vanilla pudding, which was already partially set. I let it set for a few hours, then added some sliced strawberries on it because I had a bunch and they looked beautiful.
The first issue was cutting and serving a piece of this pie. I cut a pie wedge piece with a knife, then used a pie server to lift onto a plate. The pudding did not hold shape. I didn't find this surprising... I wasn't sure how exactly it was supposed to behave. It is just pudding after all. No added gelatin or structural helper. What normally goes into banana cream pie? As I'm thinking about it... could it be that I used "instant" pudding instead of the real deal? Or are cream pies allowed to "flop" a bit? In any case, structural integrity wasn't my only issue with the pie- it was also too sweet. Has anyone else found vanilla pudding to be grotesquely sweet lately? Perhaps I am just getting less used to so much sugar, as I am trying to lessen it in my diet overall. I think this could have been countered with some tartness, perhaps some lemon juice or something, but that certainly would not have helped my structural problems. For these reasons, this pie was a punt.
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