Polynesian Sausage Supper -- What We Put on the Fire When the Snow Came Down

Snow Tuesday. The first real snow of the season. Six inches in the morning, drifting to a foot in the wind on the north side of the barn, the cattle waking up to a different world. They handle it. They have wintered every year of their lives in this country. The new calf was nervous in the morning — he had not seen snow before — but his mother knew and stood between him and the wind and led him to the hay rack and showed him how to dig with his nose, which he learned in about ten minutes. Animals figure things out faster than we give them credit for. He was fine by lunch. He is going to be fine.

I plowed the driveway and the road to the calf shed and the path to the wood pile. The plow on the front of the truck is the same plow Patrick bought in 2008 and it works fine if you grease it. I greased it Monday before the storm. I am ready for winter. The truck has new tires and the chains are in the bed and the snow shovel is on the porch. The cycle is the cycle. Some men hate the snow. I have always loved the first snow — not the third snow, not the fifth, but the first one, the one that turns the world to silence and erases the seams in the landscape and makes everything new for a day. Tuesday was that day.

Tara is twenty weeks. Halfway. She and Cole drove down Sunday for an early Thanksgiving dinner because they will be with Tara's family in Bozeman on the actual Thursday. Tara is starting to look unmistakably pregnant now. She had not been able to eat much for the first trimester but she is making up for it — she ate two pieces of pie Sunday — and she looks well. Cole looks like a man whose wife has just made it to twenty weeks after a scare at fifteen, which is to say like a man who has aged five years in two months and is starting to look forward instead of bracing.

The Sunday dinner was a turkey for the four of us, smaller than the AA Saturday but the same idea — brine, roast, gravy, sides. Patrick had two helpings of stuffing, which is his favorite, and a piece of pumpkin pie. Mom had two pieces of pie because she said she had earned them. Tara had two pieces because the baby wanted them, which we accepted as a binding argument. Cole had one. I had one. There was no leftover pie by Monday. There was leftover turkey for soup, which I made Tuesday and which we ate Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday until it was gone. The bird gives many meals. The bird is not a single meal but a week of meals. November is for stretching.

The book award is on a separate calendar. Sarah emailed Wednesday with the schedule for the Boise ceremony — early February, the seventh, four days before Tara's due date. I told her I would come. She said, Are you sure. I said, I will fly. I will be there one day. I will be home on the eighth or the ninth at the latest. The baby is unlikely to come early — first babies almost never do — but if she does, I will rebook. Sarah said, Okay. I am putting you on the program. We will see.

Saturday cookout was nine men. The fire in the snow is a different fire. The light reflects off the white and the heat collects close around the firepit and the cold is visible at the edges of the circle, and you sit closer than you would in summer, and the smoke goes more or less straight up into a sky black with stars. Marcus made seventy days. We had sausage and sauerkraut, the sauerkraut Mom had put up in October, the sausage from a hog Cole had butchered in February. Vince said, on the way to his truck, This is what God would do if God owned a ranch. Pete said, God does own a ranch. Tom said, Patrick owns it. Marcus laughed. We laughed. We went home. The fire was banked. The week was good. The snow is here. The work continues.

The sausage Marcus and Pete and the rest of them ate Saturday night was Cole’s hog, Mom’s kraut, and fire — about as honest a meal as this ranch produces. When I make it indoors, I reach for something that carries the same sweet-and-savory pull that a fire gives sausage in cold air: a Polynesian preparation that sounds unlikely until you taste it, and then it tastes like exactly what it should be. It is not the cookout, but it holds the spirit of it, and on a weeknight in January when the snow is back and the fire is not, it is enough.

Polynesian Sausage Supper

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 2 lbs smoked sausage or kielbasa, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
• 1 can (20 oz) pineapple chunks in juice, drained (juice reserved)
• 1 large green bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 large red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 medium yellow onion, cut into wedges
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• Cooked white rice, for serving

Instructions

1. Make the sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together the ketchup, soy sauce, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, garlic powder, and ground ginger. Stir the cornstarch into 3 tablespoons of the reserved pineapple juice until smooth, then whisk that slurry into the sauce. Set aside.
2. Brown the sausage. Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the sausage rounds in a single layer and cook, undisturbed, for 2—3 minutes per side until browned. Work in batches if needed. Remove sausage to a plate.
3. Cook the vegetables. In the same skillet, add the onion wedges and bell peppers. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, for 4—5 minutes until they begin to soften and pick up a little color at the edges.
4. Combine and simmer. Return the sausage to the skillet. Add the pineapple chunks and pour the sauce over everything. Stir to coat. Bring to a simmer and cook for 8—10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened and everything is heated through.
5. Serve. Spoon over cooked white rice and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 18g | Fat: 28g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 1140mg