Cudighi and Kale Soup

Another wonderful week in the Copper Country is coming to an end for us.   I love it here so much!  I can't wait to live here year round.    I just have one more day and then I am headed downstate.   I will be making lots of raspberry jam tomorrow.   Our property is abundant with both red and golden raspberries.    This will make some great holiday gifts!  Meanwhile, I've got to make sure we don't leave too much food lurking around.   Looking in the lakehouse refrigerator, I noticed some kale I bought at the Houghton Farmer's Market earlier in the week that I knew I better make into something.    I also had some cudighi sausage in the freezer, which is an upper peninsula specialty.   You can make your own by following my recipe here.   It's a mildly spiced Italian sausage....with plenty of "warm" spices like cloves, cinnamon and allspice.   We've been eating lots of great food this week but I just wanted something light for dinner.   Time for kale and sausage soup!  I also spied some cherry tomatoes that needed to be used up.   Great for a garnish.  I also threw in some oyster mushrooms my son foraged in the woods.   These aren't necessary, but if life gives you mushrooms, make soup with them. 

Cudighi and Kale Soup

1 lb. cudighi (or bulk Italian sausage_
1 onion, chopped fine
4 small potatoes, diced
32 oz.  box chicken broth
15 oz.  can Great Northern beans, drained
1 bunch kale, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 t. (or more) hot pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
quartered cherry tomatoes, for garnish

In a dutch oven, brown sausage and onion until sausage is cooked through and onion is translucent.    Add potatoes and broth and cover, cook until potatoes are soft, about 15 minutes.   Add beans, kale garlic and hot pepper, and cook about 10 minutes longer.  Add salt and pepper to taste, and ladle into soup bowls.   Garnish with cherry tomatoes.


I can already see the leaves are changing here and I know by the time I return in mid September, we will be coming upon even more fall color.    I will be working that week, and will not have time to relax and enjoy this place as much as I would like.   I am hoping we can spend Christmas here....it will depend on the kids schedules I guess.    Sure love it here!

Dill Pickles

It's been a while since I canned anything for myself...since the kids have moved out, we just haven't gone through the pickles as fast as we used to do, even though they are always asking for a jar when we visit.   Andy  noticed he was taking the last jar out of the canning cupboard when he was making some tuna salad the other day, so I decided it was time.   I also need to make some thimbleberry jam and some salsa, and I have been thinking about canning some chicken breast as well in the pressure canner.

My favorite pickle recipe is one I came up with in 2010 when I was part of this canning group of bloggers called Tigress' Can Jam.   I wonder what happened to Tigress?   She was a Brooklyn based food blogger and DJ and her blog is no longer.   But I met so many other bloggers there, and clicking through the list so many are not doing it anymore.   They typical pattern is they stop posting, then get the idea to move their blog over to Word Press from Blogger, and then it dies.  I fear food blogging is a dying form, but I'm still at it.   I can remember back at the height of food blogging, I'd post about once a week.  Now, it's about once a month.   We used to have a group of food bloggers called Michigan Lady Food Bloggers that would get together for potlucks and I think I might be the only one that is still blogging.   Sad!


Here's my pickle recipe...I was trying to recreate something that tastes like McClure's Pickles. 

 McClure's Style Fresh Dill Pickles

8 lbs small pickling cucumbers, sliced in half or quarters longwise
28 cloves of garlic (about 2 heads) peeled
16 dill heads, with sprigs (or 14 t. dill seeds)
Pickle Crisp
Optional 12 small dried hot chili peppers
5 cups vinegar (white or cider)
6 c. water
1/2 c. pickling salt


Place 2 cloves garlic. , 2 dill heads and 2 hot peppers and 1/8 t. Pickle Crisp in the bottom of wide mouth pint jars.   Pack with as many pickle halves and spears as possible tightly in each jar.  Prepare a brine with vinegar, water and salt by placing in all ingredients and stirring and heating until brine boils.  Fill jars to 1/2 inch headspace, place lids and bands and hand tighten. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

I used to make these with a wild grape leaf tucked into each jar, but didn't bother with it yesterday.   Grape leaves are supposed to help keep pickles crisp.   I like to use Ball's Pickle Crisp  to help keep my pickles crisp these days when I am canning.

Red Rage BBQ Sauce

I'm in the Keweenaw this week, having just spent the 4th of July enjoying the barbecue at the Fitz, a great restaurant in Eagle River.   They have the very best named BBQ meal on the menu at the Fitz.....Douglas Houghton's Anchor.   Douglas Houghton was Michigan's first geologist, and while working in Eagle River, he and two companions drowned in Lake Superior near Eagle River, Michigan when their small boat capsized in a storm.  His remains were discovered on the shoreline the next spring.   The Douglas Houghton's Anchor menu item features brisket, pulled pork and ribs....it's really enough for 2 people to eat.  I so loved their BBQ ribs that I begged the owner for the recipe, and didn't succeed.    It can never hurt to ask. 

My usual "go to" BBQ sauce recipe is one I first learned about on Bobby Flay's Throwdown.....it was from a restaurant in the Carolina's that no longer is open called Wood Chick.   Here is how I make that sauce.    I was leafing through some old clipped recipes (actually I really wasn't leafing through clipped recipes at all, I was looking at google photos of recipes I took pictures of) and I forgot that I had found a recipe I had coveted for years....Alex Young's Red Rage BBQ sauce at Zingerman's Roadhouse.   Alex is no longer at the Roadhouse, he ended up opening a French restaurant called the Standard Bistro and Larder, and so I wondered if Zingerman's still uses that sauce.....it appears they do, they just call it "Red Rage" now. 

I'm going to try my hand at making a version of this for dinner tonight.   Since I am in the UP, exotic ingredients like Urfa pepper and Muscovado sugar are off the list.   Here is how I will adapt:

Mother's Kitchen Red Rage  BBQ Sauce

1 1/2 c ketchup
1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c finely diced onion
1/4 c  beer
1 T honey
1 T molasses
1 1/2 t minced fresh garlic
3/4 t pepper
1 1/2 t red pepper flakes
1/4 t kosher salt

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.