Foodie Friday: Sausage monster

There was this picture that was making its rounds on Facebook, where you stuck raw pasta noodles into cut sausages and you boiled them and there you had it! A meal that the kid would eat. It looked like a whole lot of fun.

There was just one problem.

I am averse to feeding JED processed food, as much as I can help it. So I couldn't in good conscience give them this even though they would polish it up and ask for seconds. But then, I really wanted to do this with them.

I am in the midst of what I call my nightmare 14 day work week. I have to teach for 14 days without a break. It is crazy ridiculous, downright exhausting and I miss JED and JED miss Mommy being home in the evenings. That made me want to do this with them even more.

So I went out to hunt for sausages I would approve of. NTUC would not have anything unless it was a Finest. We have one Cold Storage nearby and I prayed that they had a better variety for me to choose from. Packrat later informed me that I could have gone to the gourmet butcher across the road. It.Did.Not.Occur.To.Me. Noted for the next round of these guys.

Anyway, there wasn't a lot of choice.

Things I realised, trying to find 'kosher' sausages.
1. What I realised was that not only did most sausages have loads of nitrates, most have monosodium glutamate. The stuff that makes you thirsty and rumoured to make your hair fall out. Present in most Asian food. I had no idea that made in the USA sausages had them too.

2. Sausages that didn't have any of those things quadrupled in price.

3. I really wouldn't know if there was horsemeat in any of the sausages I bought. 

What I eventually ended up with were sausages that cost $10 for 4 that were raw, pure pork meat, no filler, low sodium, gluten free sausages. On the ingredient list, it listed 'lean pork, white pepper, black pepper, salt' and I can't remember what else but nothing with numbers and nothing that wasn't already present in my kitchen. Unfortunately, our helper ripped the sausages out of the packaging before I had an opportunity to take a photograph of it.

I would have loved to use wholemeal spaghetti but Muffin can't swallow the stuff so the regular spaghetti had to do.

JED had a great time stealing cooked sausage slices as they impaled the spaghetti into the sausages. A word of warning, the noodles break off so it would be wise to teach the kids to be gentle yet firm with the noodle. (What an  allegory for bringing up kids!) Evan, whose fine motor skills resemble that of an elephant trying to do embroidery broke a whole bunch of noodles but had a lot of fun chucking them into the pot to boil. 

The result looked like something we could do for Halloween. In fact, with a bit of tomato sauce and a lot of imagination, it would be great Halloween food. Muffin and Evan called them Sausage Monsters and Jordan called hers Sausage Jellyfish. Whatever it was, they wiped the plate clean. I kept some for them to eat cold the next day in school as a snack. They wanted to know why there were so few in their snack box.

Being the crazy food mom, their eventual dinner comprised of this topped off with a lot of carrot and spaghetti with home made baked fish nuggets on the side. No pictures unfortunately because JED inhaled the food too quickly for me to move.

We're toying with other derivatives of this.

Meatball Monsters
1. Boil the pasta first
2. Make meat balls, press in the cooked pasta
3. Pan fry them.

Bleeding Sausage Monsters
1. Same thing
2. Pasta sauce with vegetables cooked in.

Bleeding Brains.
1. Pan fried meat balls with pasta (assuming our Meat ball monsters work out)
2. Douse meat balls in pasta sauce and they'll be dripping blood! (sauce)

The kids are into zombies and monsters now, hence the gross food names!

We had fun. I think it justified my $10 sausages and seeing it fed all 3, it didn't come up to all that much. As long as I don't have to do this every day.

And since it's Friday and Dinomama has a foodie Friday, I'm linking to it!



Technorati Tags: JED, Healthy Eating, Kids Food