AllRecipes, Our Mother Ship

A few years ago, after being a lurker on AR I had become part of "The Buzz".  Then one day, I think it was a Saturday Oh no!!! OMG!!! no AR.  what could have happened.  No one knew.  All day we all tried and tried to get on and couldn't.  What on earth were we all going to do.  We had plans, we had dinners to make and nowhere to go for our recipes.  We started e-mailing to each other, What is happening? people were saying, Where is AR.  Literally dozens of AR peeps, from all over the country,  were in contact trying to find out what on earth could be keeping us from our very favorite addiction.  People were surfing the "net" It didn't matter, who you were, what you did, where you lived,  if you were part of the 1% or the 99%, we needed our AllRecipes.  Then one person finally found a story.  There had been a fire in AR's building.  It wasn't too bad as I remember, but had closed down the building.  We all vowed that from now on we would print all of our recipes just in case.  I wonder how many of us have done that.  I know that I haven't.  1467 recipes would make a pretty big book.   Just hope that nothing like that ever happens again.  I am waaay more addicted now than I was then.

Sausage!!!! Pork Or?

I love making my own sausage.  Some of you that have been with AllRecipes for a while will have seen some of the pictures of sausages that I have made (even the disasters). 

This is my Andouille sausage before smoking

For the most part I use pork, I have used some beef but usually it will be pork.  We were asked this month to try various chicken sausages from Al Fresco.  I have to say my hubby and I were very sceptical about chicken sausage, but were willing to give it a try.  We were so pleasantly surprised.

The first recipe that I made was  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/grilled-sweet-italian-chicken-sausage-with-tomato-cream-sauce-over-linguine/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=al%20fresco&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe%20Search%20Results

This was a delicious recipe and from the first bite my hubby asked what kind of sausage this was and that it was "yummy"  My second recipe also used the Italian chicken sausage but was a soup.  Here is the link.  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sweet-italian-chicken-sausage-and-tortellini-soup/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=al%20fresco&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe%20Search%20Results

This soup was so good that I had some for breakfast this morning.  I have to say that I did add a few more veggies to the recipe but I don't think that I hurt the recipe at all.

The final recipe that I tried was this
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/grilled-chipotle-chorizo-chicken-sausage--shrimp-kabobs/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=al%20fresco&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe%20Search%20Results

This was so good that my hubby had the leftovers of this for breakfast this morning. lol

I know that this month's activities have given me a whole new view on sausage and I may even try making my own now using chicken.  I will certainly be on the look out for more varieties of Al Fresco, so that I can try some of their other recipes posted on AR.  All in all we have had some great food this month.

I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador(a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com. Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on AllRecipes.com - Thoughts from my Kitchen. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of me, pelicangal aka Jan Elton 

 

Butter or Shortening?

My first memory of making pastry is from when I was about 12 years old.  We had cooking class at school and we were making apple pie.  The recipe is the only one that I have used for shortcrust pastry since then,   well with one exception, which I will talk about in a minute.  The recipe is very simple.  2 cups all purpose flour, 1 cup butter, a pinch of salt, and enough ice water to bring the pastry together. that's it.  Chill for an hour or so and voila, enough shortcrust pastry for a double crust pie.

The exception that I mentioned, happened just a couple of weeks ago.  I was making a recipe (which shall remain nameless) from this very site.  The recipe called for making pastry using half butter and half shortening.  I decided on a whim to actually follow the recipe lol.  Made the pastry according to directions.  Put it in the fridge to chill.  Rolled out the pastry and disaster.  Every time I tried to pick up the pastry to turn it or to continue with the next part of the recipe the pastry tore.  Didn't matter how much flour I used or whether I chilled it longer, no way was I going to be able to use this pastry.  I even put it back into the fridge overnight.  The disaster still tore  every time I tried to move it.    Luckily, I still had enough butter in the fridge to make my old standby. 

Apple Pie with All Butter Shortcrust Pastry.

This pastry can also be used for savory pies.  This is AllRecipes Steak and Irish Stout Pie

So as you can see, it is butter all the way from me. You can find some really good recipes using butter at this site:  http://goboldwithbutter.supranet.net/

 I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador(a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com. Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on AllRecipes.com - Thoughts from my Kitchen. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of me, pelicangal aka Jan Elton