Dinner and a show

Last night I went to the range with my dad, which is always fun. We go every few weeks, and I really enjoy the chance to spend time with him doing something we both love. We're also getting pretty good with our chosen implements.

Afterward, I went home and cooked a very simple, tasty dinner. If you haven't had this meal before, you need to try it. It's one of the easier things you can make that is also good and can be quite versatile. Get a kielbasa from the store. I like the Polska Kielbasa from Hickory Farms, I think. Whatever it is, it's a sausage in a plastic wrapper. I'm sure they're all pretty much the same. get one of those. get some potatoes. I think 2-3 pounds is plenty. Get an onion. You have all this? Good. Now cut the kielbasa into medallions (about 1/4" thick, maybe a little less) all the way around (it'll be curved in the middle so some of these will end up being a little wedge-like) and toss them into your skillet. i use an electric skillet for this, because it's nice and big, nonstick, easy to set and maintain a temperature, and it has a nice, tight-fitting lid. You can do this on the stove if you're careful with your temperature and you have a great big non-stick skillet with a lid. Now take your potatoes and scrub them under running water. i don't peel potatoes, so I have to scrub them. I'm okay with this. Once they're scrubbed, you get to cut them up. Make one cut lengthwise, then put the potato cut side down and slice this into 1/4" slices all the way down. Toss your potato slices into the skillet. Repeat until all potatoes are gone. Take an onion and get half to a quarter of it (depending on how much you like onions) and make one cut from the stem end (perpendicular to the layers) and then slice it into 1/4" slices. See where i'm going with this? Toss all those into the skillet. Sprinkle on some salt and pepper, stir everything around the get it all mixed up and all the pieces separated and then turn your skillet/stove to 250. You want a long, slow cook with this. Blasting with too much heat right at the beginning won't warm up the sausage enough to get the juices flowing to keep the potatoes from burning. So set it here and let it go for a bit. You'll have to wait 5-10 minutes to start hearing the sizzle and smelling the delicious cooking smell. Once this happens, stir everything up a bit. it's not stir-fry so you don't have to keep things moving constantly, but it's a situation where you want everything in that skillet to get a nice golden color on it. The total cook time is probably like 30 minutes or so, but it really depends on a lot of factors so just keep your eyes on it. Keep moving your potatoes around as they'll want to stick together. When they start getting less white and more translucent and start getting brown around the edges, you'll know you're done. Serve with ketchup and salt and pepper to taste.

The reason these are versatile is sort of theoretical. I was thinking about them and realized that this mix, if cut up slightly smaller, would go extremely well with scrambled eggs in a breakfast burrito. I haven't tried it yet, but it just sounds like it would be really good.

After this cooking process, Jenna and I sat down and watched some episodes of Chuck to get ourselves caught up again, and then watched the new episode of LOST. That show went a bit far afield for my tastes but it seems like they've turned a very important corner now. They are apparently answering more questions than they ask from this point on, which is a big relief to all of us curious folks out in the world who have been watching it for the past few years and saying "What?!" So that's fun. The show is far superior when watched in rapid succession on DVD, but their policy of repeating the prior episode with handy little info at the bottom of the screen is actually pretty nice. Helps remind me about things I've forgotten and makes connections I hadn't seen and such. Anyhow, good show. I suggest it, but if you aren't into waiting potentially years for an answer to a question, just wait for the whole thing to end and get it all on DVD.