Grad weekend #6:Chicken and apple sausage (p. 516),Pan-broiled sausage (p. 517) Fruit salad or fruit cup (p.210),Honey dressing for fruit salad(p.578)

I originally meant to make a couple types of sausage for brunch but realized that I had only bought enough pork for my stuffing and not enough for my pork sausage. That left me with only one type of sausage--Chicken and apple sausage (p. 516).

I ground a couple pounds of chicken thighs--TJOC says to use the skin as well as the meat but I thought that would be too fattening for the crowd I was feeding, so I only used about a quarter of it. I boiled a cup of apple cider down to a syrup, and mixed my chicken, apple cider, dried apples, salt, pepper, sage, thyme, cinnamon, and ginger together.



I formed the sausage into patties and fried them according to Pan-broiled sausage (p. 517).



Essentially, the sausages were cooked until they were done:



The sausage was delicious but really heavy on the apple flavor. I'm usually not one for chicken sausage (and I still think the sausage would be much better with pork) but it was fun to make my own sausage mixture and I'm sure I will do it again.

I thought that it would be a good idea to have a fruit salad with brunch. I'm having trouble with the fruit section of TJOC because I'm allergic to most fruit (I have to carry an Epi-Pen) and it seems insane to make stuff that I can't eat when it's just the two of us. I became allergic to kiwi when I was about twelve, which was no problem, because I don't like it. Over the years the allergy has spread to papaya, bananas, mango, melon, and pineapple (I love pineapple, so that one I miss). Recently, strawberries have started giving me a reaction, which is really depressing. Piece of trivia--fruit allergies aren't that common, but kiwi is the fruit that is most likely to give a reaction (as well as leading to the worst reactions).

Even as a kid I liked making fruit salad, although I never liked eating it, so I'm known in my family for making a nice fruit salad (although how difficult is a fruit salad?). I decided to make Fruit salad or fruit cup (p. 210), without the honey.

I cut up and mixed together oranges, apples, a pear, a banana, and some blueberries.



I then made Honey dressing for fruit salad (p. 578). I mixed honey and lime juice:



It seemed like a strange combination to me. I assume the lime juice is to stop the fruit from browning. I mixed the fruit with the sauce and it was done!




Obviously, I didn't try the fruit salad but my family said that it was good. It had a strong honey flavor to it, so if you like honey, this would be a good choice. I think the combo of fruits was good but another colorful fruit would have made it much more pretty--if I made it again, I would probably add in some strawberries or peaches.