Chicken Apple Sausage Couscous — The Comfort of a Kitchen That Doesn’t Change

The student magazine published my piece this week. It's real. It's printed. It has my name on it — Rachel Abernathy — and a photo of Mrs. Torres making tamales that I took on my phone and that somehow looks professional when printed in black and white. The piece is called 'Dinner at 1800: How Military Wives Feed Families Through War,' and it's three pages long, and I've read it approximately seven hundred times. I bought five copies. I mailed one to Keisha. I put one in Mom's recipe binder when she wasn't looking. She found it Tuesday night. She was flipping through the binder looking for her meatloaf recipe and the magazine fell out. She read it standing at the kitchen counter, not moving, not speaking. When she finished, she folded it carefully and put it back in the binder between the meatloaf and the chicken pot pie. 'You wrote about me,' she said. 'I wrote about military wives. You're included.' 'You quoted me.' 'You said good things.' She looked at me for a long time. Then she said, 'The cornbread recipe in here is wrong. Mrs. Johnson uses sugar in her cornbread. Real cornbread doesn't have sugar.' And went back to making dinner. That's my mother. I write a published piece about the invisible heroism of military wives and her feedback is about cornbread accuracy. I love her so much I could scream. The response on campus was gratifying. Jess, the Air Force kid from Public Speaking, texted me to say she cried reading it. Professor Whitman emailed to say she'd shared it with her department. Professor Kim said, 'See? I told you.' Dad read it. He didn't say anything for a long time. Then he said, 'Your mother would never say this about herself. I'm glad you said it for her.' And went to the garage. Which, in Kevin Abernathy language, is the equivalent of a four-star review. Mom made her chicken and rice casserole tonight — the same one from Week 1, the Pyrex time machine. Cream of mushroom soup, chicken, rice, French-fried onions. The food of my childhood, the food of every duty station, the food that held us together. I ate it and thought about the piece and thought about the women I interviewed and thought about my mother standing at this counter in this kitchen in this house — the house we've been in for five years now, the longest we've ever stayed — making the same casserole she's made in five states. Some things don't change. The casserole doesn't change. The time doesn't change. Mom doesn't change. Thank God for the things that don't change.

Mom’s chicken and rice casserole will always be the dish I come home to in my head — but inspired by her, and by every woman I interviewed for that piece, I wanted to make something in that same spirit: simple, nourishing, and built for real life. This Chicken Apple Sausage Couscous carries that same energy — a one-pan meal that comes together fast, the kind of thing you can make on a Tuesday in a kitchen in any state, at any duty station. It’s not her recipe. But it’s made in her honor.

Chicken Apple Sausage Couscous

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 12 oz chicken apple sausage, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
• 1 cup couscous
• 1 1/4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 medium apple (such as Honeycrisp or Fuji), cored and diced
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• Salt and black pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sliced chicken apple sausage and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4–5 minutes until browned on both sides. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
2. Sauté the aromatics. In the same skillet, reduce heat to medium. Add the diced onion and cook for 3 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and diced apple and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently, until fragrant and the apple begins to soften.
3. Simmer the broth. Pour the chicken broth into the skillet and bring to a boil, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Stir in the dried thyme and season with salt and pepper.
4. Cook the couscous. Stir in the couscous and the dried cranberries. Remove the skillet from heat, cover tightly with a lid or foil, and let sit for 5 minutes until the liquid is fully absorbed.
5. Combine and serve. Fluff the couscous with a fork. Return the browned sausage to the skillet and gently fold everything together. Taste and adjust seasoning. Top with fresh parsley and serve warm directly from the pan.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 390 | Protein: 22g | Fat: 11g | Carbs: 50g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 670mg