Bad weather, absent DH and recipe reviews

We have more snow. We're not supposed to get much snow but it's blowing so visibility is about 100 feet, according to one of our firefighters who just reported in on his way out to check on his horses.

Larry has class tonight so he might be stuck in Trinidad until tomorrow. I haven't slept in bed completely alone in, umm, years. Literally years. At least not all night. I've spent some partial nights when Larry was on a call, before I was a dispatcher, but not a full night since Larry first started at the post office and had to go up to Colorado Springs for training. That was before Aria was born.

So, last night we tried the Island Sausage. We didn't really like it. Not that it was bad. It had an interesting blend of flavors, and the meat itself was good, but the sauce was overwhelmingly sweet. Maybe doing something like that as an appetizer, where you put the meat on toothpicks, would be OK, or adding something to the sauce (green and red peppers and onions come to mind). It was the kind of dish I'd order at a restaurant to try it out, but I wouldn't order it again.

Tonight I kind of concocted a recipe. I had on the menu "beef casserole." So I went through my beef casserole recipes and started with a recipe, that I won't post because I have no idea where I got it, called "jail food." I varied it right from the start, using a pound of ground beef, a sliced onion, a family sized can of cream of mushroom soup, a regular sized can of cream of celery soup, 2 packets of au jus mix, 3ish pounds of potatoes, and about a pound of carrots. I browned the meat with salt and pepper, the onion, a pinch of basil, a generous pinch of italian seasoning, and about a tablespoon of fresh minced garlic. Drained it, then mixed with the soups and the au jus mix and the small soup can of water. Poured half of that mixture into into a 9x13 casserole, put the potatoes on top of that, then salted and peppered those, then put the carrots on, then poured the rest of the soup mixture on. Baked at 350 for 1 1/2 hours. It wasn't bad, but I would omit the italian seasoning and basil next time.

So, tomorrow, we're going to have something tried and true. Maybe chicken and dumplings, since we've had such cold weather. I had chicken and rice planned, but with all of my menu rearranging, I ended up doing that on Monday. But dumplings sounds good-and I'd have to work really hard to mess that up!!