Northwoods Woman

Super simple meal that only has 4 main ingredients (I like those the best), takes little time to prepare (bonus points*) and contains 2 food groups that Rick loves:  meat and potatoes (those are food groups, right?).

Here’s what you need:

Ground sausage (any kind – plain, Italian, moose**)

Potatoes (I like to use leftover home fries)

Mushrooms

Onion

Here’s what you’re gonna do:  Brown up the sausage and onion together and drain.  While those are set aside, cook up your taters.  When those are done, mix in some mushrooms.  Add the sausage and onion mixture and heat everything through.  DONE!

What, you expected something complicated?  I thought you knew me!

Here comes a little secret ingredient that takes it over the top:  Liquid Smoke.  Throw in one or teaspoons of this lovely liquid after everything is mixed together and you have just entered Yummyville.

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t tell you how much of each ingredient you need.  Bwahahahaha!  That’s because you get to determine how much you like depending on your taste (and number of people you are feeding)!

Don’t have any left over potatoes?  Use frozen Southern Style Hash Browns (you know, the tiny square thingys).  Don’t like mushrooms?  Leave them out!  Want a bit of color?  Add some green or red pepper.

Personally, I add a little garlic, chives and Lawry’s to mine and I’m a happy camper.

Now go and make some hash for your family for supper tonight.  Because, you’re like, drooling on your keyboard and it’s kinda gross.

*Double triple bonus points for this recipe from the fact that it is adapted from something my Mom used to make for us when I was a kid.  She worked her arse off but always had something hot and nummy for us for supper.

**Really?  You got moose?  Let me know how that tastes, ‘K?

I was so happy when I got these little envelopes!  If my green thumb prevails, we will save some money this year not having to buy transplants.

We also pinched some pennies by reusing Calie’s cat food tins.  The real fun part was getting to use the drill press to poke drain holes in the bottoms.

And they are all nestled safely in the new greenhouse.  But since the nights are still on the chilly side hovering around the freezing mark, we put a space heater inside to keep the poor darlings from getting too cold.

It’s only been a week since the planting, so no sign of life yet, buy I’m keeping my fingers crossed that by this time next week I’ll see something green sprouting out of the dirt.

I just hope it isn’t moss.

So on a very beautiful Saturday, we headed south to meet with Donna.  She was a very lovely person who was easy to talk to about the history of the house and what we had envisioned for it when we purchased it 20 years ago.

I love this house.  It was so hard for me to finally come to the decision that it had to be lived in and I was not going to be the one doing that anymore.

Yes, we have not lived in it for over 10 years, but it was still a part of me.  Our daughter Nichole rented it from us until she moved 2 years ago, so in a way I still felt that I had a connection to it.  2 years without someone in there was like watching it slowly die.  It needed human contact on a constant basis.

It has such a wonderful old charm to it that you just don’t find today.  Whenever we did any work on it, we made sure to keep the original character that we fell in love with.  And I was always hoping that the right person would come along that saw all the possibilities that this house held.

I have to say that I was a little worried that the potential buyer would see the pictures that Donna took and not see what we did.  Yes, there is a lot of work that needs to be done on the inside of the house that we did not get to when we lived there, but in a way that was a blank canvas with which someone could bring the house back to life with.

It turns out that there was no need for worry.  The buyer loves the house and wants to get in there as soon as possible and begin the process of remodeling it with the same visions that we had so many years ago.

When my grandson sat next to me on the front steps yesterday and told me that he never wanted to leave this house, I almost started crying.  I sat there and thought about how my daughters had grown up in that house and all the wonderful memories that it held for them.  Seeing the grandkids running around the yard and playing in the puddles took me back in time to when my little girls did the same thing.

I hope that in the years to come, there will be more little ones that can run through the house, play in the puddles and catch crayfish in the stream down the road.  That is what keeps the house alive.

At least I still have my memories, and I’m not letting them go without a fight.