Monday, August 01, 2011

MacGyver cooking

Even though I love cookbooks and have several shelves devoted to them, I rarely refer to them. And even though I've pinned dozens of recipes on pinterest, I rarely go back to them. And when I do try to follow a recipe, I usually modify it somehow because I might have more or less or an ingredient (or I'm in too much of a hurry to follow the instructions exactly). I call it seat-of-the-pants cooking or use-up-what's-in-the-fridge cooking, but Mr. Fix-it came up with a new term: MacGyver cooking. I like it. But this style of cooking makes it difficult to post recipes on my blog. I hope by posting ingredients and a brief description, I inspire you to create your own dishes.

Tonight's MacGyver dinner was inspired by a dish my mom used to make, plus the huge onion I got in my first CSA box.

Ingredients:
1 huge onion, 3-4 stalks of celery, 1/2 of a kielbasa sausage rope (it was in the freezer), 1 bell pepper (optional), 1 can stewed tomatoes.

Directions:
  1. Slice all ingredients.
  2. Saute the onion and kielbasa sausage until they are slightly browned and the onion is almost cooked through.
  3. Add the bell pepper, celery, and stewed tomatoes. Also, add about 1/4 to 1/2 can of water, depending on how much sauce you want.
  4. Add seasonings. I just added powered garlic, dried oregano, and freshly ground pepper. You may want to add salt. We don't add a lot of salt when we cook.
  5. Simmer until all the veggies are cooked through.
Serve over rice or pasta or with some fresh bread. (I always serve it over rice.)

As written, this dish serves four. It has a lot of flavor, even with using half the sausage.

2 comments:

Nancy Thomas said...

Yum....this looks good Arlyn. I wish I were better at just throwing things together but I'm just not.

Miwa said...

You rock, MacGyver! Now, they just need to make a new SNL skit based on you! :)