You Ain’t From Around Here

This week I discovered two ingredients that are sadly missing from New England cuisine: queso and ground sausage. Now the queso part isn’t too surprising. I mean, we’re pretty far from the border, so why would Tex Mex be any good up here. But, you ask a local whether they want to order chips and queso and they don’t know what you are talking about. Very sad. I will have to enlighten some of these folks in the near future. (By the way, they think that enchiladas use flour tortillas…yick, very soggy.)

The ground sausage thing blew my mind, though. I just can’t imagine a large grocery store not carrying this staple. I mean obviously I don’t cook with it very often these days, but how are these people supposed to make sausage lasagna? Or, breakfast sausage patties? Or creamed corn and sausage? (Okay, that last one is just gross, but it was a regular meal in the Frohlich household when I was growing up.) The butcher man at the super market said that they don’t carry sausage out of its casing except during the holidays. This explains why I was able to buy it no problem for my Thanksgiving turkey stuffing.

Come to think of it, I might want to shake things up around here and make Southern Surprise, a recipe I just made up: queso with ground sausage. Sounds delish, no? I’d have to import the ingredients, but Jimmy Dean would approve.

[Image from: http://www.jimmydean.com/products.asp?p=1]