Spinach and Sausage Casserole.

From Elise. I apparently just didn't take pictures for a while.

Italian Sausage and Cabbage Stew.

From Elise. I used a regular cabbage intead of savoy since they were all out when I was at the store. I only had half a pound of hot Italian sausage which is fine since I'll eat it with sandwiches. Minced and sliced onions, white beans, fairly simple and straight forward stew. I thought it was really good.

Apple and Sausage Pie.

I had been debating whether I wanted to add a cheese sauce to the apple and cheese pie I was planning on making. I figured cheese and apples go well together so I could merge some pairs transitively. I found that Elise actually has a recipe for this and hers uses ricotta (with a lot of other cheese) mixed in with egg. I skipped the feta and only topped with shredded white cheddar. With a single pie crust, it comes out fat and protein heavy which is good since I can pick a carb of my choice at breakfast.

Italian Sausage and Kale Ragu.

Saw it here.

A whole bunch of kale is way too much for only a pound of sausage, I think. Also, I used macaroni because it's what I had. AM more assertive pasta like penne would have been much better. It seems a bit too generically salty for my taste. Maybe too much sea salt, but I don't think I used that much. And maybe needs more ricotta. Or in a bechamel with the kale more finely chopped with more effort in removing the stem. As far as silly leafy greens go, I still prefer red Swiss chard.

Etouffee.

I always thought etouffee was a more involved process, but apparently, it's pretty quick and easy. Holy trinity sauteed in butter, turn into roux, add shrimp or chicken stock, spices, add in fried sausage, fold in shrimp. Awesome.

I used the spice mix from here. Every place more or less has the same basic ingredients and process. Paula Deen uses oil instead butter for her roux (lolwut).

Italian Sausage, Lentil, and Swiss Chard Soup.

Sourced from Closet. Coincidentally, Elise also had a sausage and lentil dish at the same time. Originally called for kale, I subbed Swiss chard which is pretty good, kinda like spinach but more buttery in texture, and added a nice combination of colors. Turned out pretty awesome and hearty. Pretty minimal in ingredients, didn't require a million spices, not even salt and pepper, just a couple bay leaves. I think the simmered sausage brings all the spice necessary. I'd make it again.

Breakfast Strata.

Eggs, egg whites, kielbasa sausage, sliced potatoes, onion, and zuke. Pretty awesome.

Mini Calzones.

Trying to use up some dough I had in the freezer and some Italian sausage I got on sale. The dough turned out pretty workable. Mushrooms, green peppers, onion, ricotta. I skipped the sauce because I didn't think I would have enough room, which I didn't. The main difference from the last time I tried to make calzones was that I think I used all wheat flour then and I rolled the dough much thinner this time. Pretty tasty. I'll freeze a couple.

Pasta Bake.

I forget that pasta bakes are awesome. Sausage, mushrooms, wheat rotini, baked with sauce and mozz. I overcooked the rotini.

Potato Pancakes and Zucchini.

I used a leftover boiled potato to make these potato pancakes which turned out better than the latkes I had tried before. For the batter, I just used milk, flour, an egg, and some salt and pepper. Turned out awesome.

The sausage is from Butcher Wagon, which I bought because it was cheaper than the Jimmy Dean one. What's nice about it is that it only uses pork, corn syrup, water, "flavorings", and dextrose. It said specifically "flavorings" and not spices, but I hope that just means spices. I don't recall what Jimmy Dean has in it, but I'm willing to bet it's more than those five ingredients. (Looked it up. Basically the same stuff with the addition of MSG. Which I don't think you can roll into the heading of "flavorings".) In any case, Butcher Wagon tastes better.

The giant zucchini slices are from this guy, an 8-ball zucchini:

Stuffed Shells.

Pretty straightforward. Ricotta, Italian sausage.

Calzone.

Let's be serious here. Is there a fundamental difference between pizza and a calzone? Or a stromboli? The only thing that's different is the interface and implementation. The policy remains the same.

Seeing as this was my first shot at making dough, I'd say it turned out reasonably well. I was a little short on ingredients even though I went out of my way to buy Italian sausage, so I only had green peppers, onions, and had to make one with mozzarella and the other with provolone.

I went sauce-less because I thought I would have sauce on the side, but I actually haven't gotten around to that for some reason. The dough was pretty simple and turned out well, with a bit of sweetness showing through from the honey. I'd be interesting in making more diverse crusts. It all freezes quite well.

Breakfast Quesadilla, v2.0.

This is what happens when you have leftover green sauce. Yes, that's a fried egg.

Supreme Pizza.

Mushrooms, green pepper, onions, black olives, Italian sausage. Thin crust was not a good container for all of this. I miss Chicago-style pizza.

Farmer's Breakfast.

Boiled potatoes, onions, green peppers, sausage, stirred in eggs. Sourced from Elise. This is kind of what I'm looking for.

Manicotti and Cannelloni.

I made half a dozen of each. The cannelloni was hot Italian sausage, bella mushrooms, and onions. The manicotti was just ricotta. I had initially thought to use spinach and ricotta, but I forgot about the spinach until after I had already stuffed the shells. So it just went on top. I figure a bit of green all around wouldn't hurt. It turned out mostly ok, but nothing to write home about either.

Italian Sausage Lasagna.

This ended up being a disastrous monster. It was supposed to be a hearty lasagna with veggies and Italian sausage but I ran out of space way too fast.

I started with two jars of GV spaghetti sauce (Green Pepper & Mushroom and Onion & Garlic) and a box of oven-ready lasagna. Layer sauce on bottom; add layer of lasagna; add sauce, add ricotta, add sauce, add layer, add sauce. At this point, I was already almost overflowing. There was no way I was going to fit everything in, so I nixed the squash. I put the not-very-well-crumbled Italian sausage and sliced baby Bella mushrooms on top and covered with mozzarella. Now it definitely was overflowing. And proceeded to happily boil over in the oven. It turned out reasonably well in the end though with the sausage lending a lot more flavor than ground beef would have.

The picture is actually from a microwave reheating the next day. The mozz didn't seem to want to re-melt and was a little dry; also, you can see I added a bit too much water to the mix. Seriously. It took longer to reheat it than it did to eat it.