Sausage Story

Sweet Italian Sausage patties were marked down to $1.79 a package at Save-a-Lot.  This is just the type of deal I will pounce on.  Even better, I had a $2 off $10 coupon.  I grabbed all five!  Tuesday is .29 cent banana day, so I got all this meat and seven 'naners for eight bucks.  That's Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
 

Four trays were broken down so that the five patties fit into a sandwich sized  zippy.  Those bags were then crammed into one gallon freezer bag, then stowed for future use.  Five patties went straight into the oven.  The nice thing about being retired is that I can cook part of a meal earlier in the day and have components ready for later.  It was a pizza night, so getting this done ahead of time made a lot of sense.

The butcher trays are recyclable, but if they are not damaged, they are washed and set aside.  These are great to have on hand to use as packaging/protection, or to carry other things.  If anything raw is going on them, I put a protective layer down --  but they are washed in very hot, soapy water.  It's convenient to have these on hand during the summer when you want to send food out to the grill.

I save other packaging whenever possible too.  A few weeks back, a leftover restaurant meal came home with an extra carry-out container.  I guess they wanted to double up for safety.  Since this is perfectly clean, it's in the re-use pile.  This will  be great to transport food to a pot-luck or to bring edibles out to camp.  This is a fiber material -- not Styrofoam.

I like cooking up sausage patties and then slicing them like this.  The strips can be used as is, or can be further cut down into cubes.  This batch was used for pizza, but it would be great to re-heat and serve on a bun with marinara and cheese, or crumbled into a red sauce.  The five patties were used to top two very large pizzas.  The dough probably cost a buck per pie, the sauce was made from scratch and that was probably a buck too.  The cheese was another dollar.  Ordering out pizza is not cheap when you consider you can make a great pie at home for under five bucks!

Making up the sausage earlier in the day was a time saver.  Once it was chopped, it was wrapped in foil, then set in the fridge.  We used it all up over three days.  Not bad for just around $1.50.

Some of the patties will be grilled and served with roasted red pepper, onion and Asiago cheese on a grilled bun.  We love sweet Italian sausage and when it's marked down, that's even better!