kitchen sink cooking

"Kitchen sink" cooking is one of my favorite ways to cook. Like I've mentioned, I'm not very good at really sticking strictly to recipes, as it feels too limiting to me and, besides, what if you forget to buy an item at the grocery store? I'd much rather work with whatever I have on hand, and that's just what happened last night. As an added bonus, especially on busy weeknights, if I can keep it all in one pan to keep clean-up to a minimum, I've found perfection.

Admittedly, I did run by the grocery for some shrimp and some cauliflower because I had an idea in mind of what I wanted, based on everything we already had on hand. But the basil shrimp fried cauli-rice didn't happen. It actually strikes me now that I still could have thrown the shrimp into what I did make and it would've been fantastic, but oh well. Here's what happened: There were two links of Italian sausage screaming to be cooked before they turned.

I hate wasting food. I die a little on the inside every time we have to throw anything out. It's a waste of money and precious resources, on a small scale and large. I mean, we try to avoid most processed and inorganic food for various reasons, including but not limited to resource sustainability, but still... We, as consumers use up X amount of land and Y amount of water and other resources to produce Z amount of food, etc; and reportedly 40% of the food Americans purchase ends up in the trash! What if we could reduce that by just half? And this notion doesn't even begin to touch on the fact that a lot of the processed food that stocks Western shelves is largely void of any real nutritional value. LOW FAT AND LOW CALORIE DOES NOT EQUATE TO HEALTHY! We can pack in the calories, gain weight, become obese, and still starve our bodies. Ok, that was a total tangent. Back to what we actually made.

• SAUTE chopped onions, minced Serrano pepper, and minced garlic with two links of Italian sausage
• Other spices I added: ginger, salt, coriander
• Once sausage is crumbled and almost cooked through,
• ADD finely chopped (rice-ish) texture cauliflower and SPLASH of coconut milk and let SIMMER for a couple of minutes
• FOLD IN chopped chard and let wilt
• TURN OFF heat and add a handful of chopped fresh cilantro

• SERVE AND ENJOY!

I don't have a picture of it, but I also didn't really pretty it up at all, so pics wouldn't do it justice anyway. It was mighty tasty.