Bratwurst Pie

Eating very few carbs is fun, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world.  You need a good, solid go-to dish that travels well, can be used as a snack or a meal, and is easy to make in large quantities.  For me, that’s Bratwurst Pie.  Oh, how I love bratwurst.

 

This started out as sausage pie at some point, but I like to make a lot of it and the bulk sausage they sell at my local Sam’s Club has carbs.  But… the bratwurst doesn’t.  Score!  There aren’t too many ingredients: eggs, cream, onion, cheese, salt & pepper, and, of course, brats.

Brat Pie Fixins

Start by chopping up your onion and squeezing the brats out of their casings.  Cook these up together, crumbling the brats as you go, and drain.

Chopping onions makes me happy. It also makes me cry. Go figure.
Naked Bratwurst

When that’s done, put into a lasagna/baking dish and mix in the cheese.  Different cheeses make slightly different pies, so use what you like.  Today I grated some Red Leicester (an Irish cheddar) and mixed it with bagged Mexican mix.  There is Havarti in the picture, but I decided not to use it and keep to the cheddars.  A mix of Swiss and Gruyère is also really good.  Play around with whatever you have/like.  Mozzarella and Havarti would probably be good.

Grated Red Leicester

While all that cheesy brat goodness sits there waiting, mix up the eggs and cream and salt & pepper in a bowl.  Pour this as evenly as you can over the meat and cheese.

Eggs and Cream

Shake the dish a little and the creamy stuff will fill in the gaps.  Now pop that in a 350° oven and find something to take your mind off of it for 40 minutes or so.

Ready for the heat

Be careful when you take the dish out of the oven, there tends to be a little bubbling oil around the edges.

Hey – I said it was low carb – NOT low fat!  🙂

Oh so good...

And that’s that!

Word to the wise – start with a small portion.  It’s wicked good, but very rich.

Bratwurst Pie

  • 2 lbs of bratwurst (about half of the package pictured)
  • 8-10 oz grated cheese of your choice
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • salt & pepper to taste (I use about 1/2 tsp salt and slightly less pepper)

Remove the bratwurst from its casing and brown in a large skillet along with the chopped onion.  Drain.  Spread into a baking pan large enough to hold the meat and egg mixture.  Mix in the cheese.  In a medium bowl, mix the eggs and cream until combined, add in seasonings and pour over meat and cheese.  Bake for about 40 minutes at 350°.

I think I’m going to add in broccoli and mushrooms next time I make this.

Sooooo good!

Cable Alternatives

Not every TV in this house gets cable. Or at least not the premium, box-requiring kind. But that doesn’t stop me. There are more TVs than people, and even more than there are rooms to put them in. We are people against quiet. Noise, background noise, rocks. And since the iPods and iPhones have taken over the world, actual rock isn’t really an option. Hooking them up to something that sounds decent is such a pain. I kinda miss my old boom box stereo… (moment of silence for the 1900s………..)
Of course, I still need cable to get the WiFi thing, but I’m growing fond of services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. All those widgets that came with my newest TVs. They let me watch all kinds of random programming whenever and wherever I want. Stuff I might have missed before TiVo came along.
Today I started watching The Riches. Made it through 3 episodes while organizing the laundry room and puttering. It’s pretty good so far. My secret crush on Eddie Izzard helps.

Oops, I guess it’s not such a secret anymore.

Good show, tho.

Laundry Room Makeover

Well, more of a cleanup, I guess.  This morning, all the reusable grocery bags that I’ve been collecting and shoving in the corner of the laundry room came crashing down.  It was snowing, there was nothing else to do right at that moment, and something came over me – it was time to clean up the laundry room.

Bag Avalanche!

Before…

I then proceeded to do something I’m not really known for – clean.  I mean really clean.  I pulled absolutely everything out of the room and started scrubbing.  Sponges and rags weren’t cutting it – I found some rather, um, nasty crevices here and there around and in the machines.  It was steamer time!  It was so much fun.  Gross, but fun.

What wasn’t so much fun was organizing all those baskets full of miscellaneous debris.  But it’s done now and I have a room that I’m ok sharing with you.  And my mother.

After!

 

Hello world!

Here we go!
I’d love to learn everything there is to learn about blogging before I start, but then I’ll never start. I’ve been trying to do this for years as it is. Soooo… Let’s learn as we go.
Woohoo!!!