Tag Archives: sausage

Sausage…

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If you love sausage, it’s probably a good idea to not spend much time dwelling on how it’s made. Assholes, lips, and nostrils it may be, but somehow they work well together when conjured with the right mix of spices and applied heat.

It occurs to me that most things in the office are kind of like sausage. The end result usually turns out well enough, but taking a deeper look at how the gears are meshing behind the curtain is rarely a good idea. As I mostly just want good tasting sausage likewise I just want my automated work processes to be actually automated. If you have to spend hours talking about how many times an actual human person has to touch an allegedly automated procedure, chances are it’s not quite as automated as you think it is.

I don’t even to think that the money we pour out each year to build these magical systems that need dozens of people to manually intervene in order to give the illusion of automation. Seems better to just admit that automation is hard, expensive, and we just aren’t very good at it. Give me a routing slip, a clipboard, and an hour of walking around time and it seems like I could get the same results at a fraction of the cost as the high maintenance process designed and maintained by a small army of software engineers.

If you’re going open up the kitchen and let the world see how you’re making the sausage, don’t be surprised if more than a couple of them lose interest no matter how good you promise it’s going to taste once it’s cooked.

First love…

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I spend alot of time here writing about politics, technology, and pretty much anything that strikes my interest. It occurs to me that I’ve never really spent any time at all dealing with my first love – food. Some of the best is now verboten since all things starchy and sugar-filled are no mostly off limits to me, but from time to time I do manage to come across a recipe that’s worth hanging on to. I find one of those this morning and in the spirit of the internet being built for sharing information, I thought I’d pass it along as an homage to the humble casserole.

The ingredients are as follows:
– 1 lb breakfast sausage
– 3 cups shredded/cubed potato (frozen should work just as well)
– 1/4 cup butter – melted (because everything’s better with butter)
– 16 oz shredded cheddar a/o whatever other cheese you’ve got handy
– 1/2 an onion diced/chopped
– 16 oz small curd cottage cheese
– 8 jumbo eggs
– salt, pepper, etc.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and grease a large baking dish (I used a 9×13). Brown the sausage and drain before setting aside. Combine potatoes and butter, spreading the mixture in the bottom of your baking dish. Combine eggs, cottage cheese, onion, cheese, and sausage. Pour mixture over the potato base. Bake for 1 hour. Mine came out at 55 minutes with a nice crust and done completely through.

A word of warning. This makes alot of casserole so if you’re not cooking for at least 4 people, you might consider using half portions on the ingredients. In any case, easy to make and quite tasty – though probably not recommended if you happen to give a damn about cholesterol. I’ll make it again, but would probably kick up the pepper and add some tabasco or ground red pepper next time to bring on a little bite.