Homemade Breakfast Sausage

I love it when my monthly share of meat includes sausage. Greek Lamb Sausage, Sweet Italian Pork Sausage, Garlic and Cheese Pork Sausage, and Breakfast Sausage....all yum! One month, when we hadn't received any sausage but had received some ground pork, I poked around online, looking at descriptions of making your own sausage meat. Settled on this recipe which has turned out to be used quite often.

Dishes I've used the resulting sausage in:
- Breakfast Sausage Patties served with eggs, fried bananas, and toast
- Breakfast Sandwich of sausage and eggs in a Portuguese Muffin (or use English muffins)
- Spaghetti con Salsiccia (Spaghetti with Sausage)
- Ziti with Sausage, Onions, and Fennel
- Sausage Pasta Bake
- Zucchini and Sausage Mix (haven't posted this one yet)

Brian even sniffed the spice mix, sprinkled a good bunch of it into a bit of olive oil, and then dipped bread into that. Tasted yummy. This is another spice mix that I now mix up in quadruple batches so that I can keep it on hand. I was hesitant at first to use the breakfast sausage in savory dinner dishes but it tasted great to me. I assume it would taste even better if I branched out and made other sausages. I spotted a few books on Charcuterie that I want to get from the library including Michael Rulhman's Charcuterie : the craft of salting, smoking, and curing and also Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery by Jane Grigson. Have I mentioned how much I love the library?

In the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions on other spice mixes for making sausage?

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Chili-Lime Fried Corn Off the Cob

I love corn on the cob but for some reason, it's not something that my boyfriend gets excited about. He'll eat it but it's nothing special for him. But me? I can easily munch away on 2 or 3 ears of corn. Maybe it's because I grew up with corn growing in our backyard garden and I remember the days spent hoeing and weeding, clods of dirt crumbled between my fingers. I loved walking through the stalks, selecting which ears to pick for dinner in an hour. Well, I loved it until I read that creepy short story by Stephen King called "Children of the Corn" anyhow. After that, my enjoyment was marred by an intermittent wave of nervousness.

Anyhow....How could I make corn into something my boyfriend could get excited about? Because once summer corn hits and it goes on sale for 5 or 6 ears of corn for a single dollar, all I want to do is eat corn. Settled on Fried Corn Off the Cob. I thought cutting the ears off the cob would be a pain, but it's not too much hassle after all.

He liked Fried Corn Off the Cob better than boiled corn on the cob but still wasn't all that excited. But then I added chili powder and lime juice. And now? Now he likes it so much he'll cut the kernels off the cobs for me lest I decide to skip it and just boil the corn.

( Click for Recipe and More Photos )