For someone who basically refused the meal as a teenager, as an adult breakfast has captured a special place in my heart. Part of the reason for this must be my discovery that breakfast needn’t involve sickly sweet grains swimming in milk — I prefer butter and salt to jam and honey on the breakfast table. It might also have something to do with my only-three-years-ago decision to start eating eggs. Breakfast is the ovophobe’s worst enemy. But I don’t credit an adult love of omelets with my rediscovery of breakfast: that honor belongs to the breakfast sausage.

The only problem with breakfast sausage is finding a good one. Too often they have some funky off flavor, are too dry, or the texture is just off (we once had a package of links with the texture of hot dogs). Martha and I have made something of a quest of finding good breakfast sausages locally but so far haven’t found a keeper. But with my newfound sausage-making capabilities, a new possibility has opened up: I will make the perfect breakfast sausage.

I wish I could say this is the definitive recipe for breakfast sausage, the culmination of our quest. In truth its flavor was a little lacking. For one thing, the sausage was underseasoned — for once I needed a heavier hand with the salt. I also thought the fennel flavor should have been stronger and would have loved a little spice. Any maybe the garlic was a little strong (or, more likely, not strong enough). Let’s call Breakfast Sausage #1 a valuable learning experience that is hopefully a step toward the ideal sausage, be it Breakfast Sausage #2 or Breakfast Sausage #47.

Breakfast Sausage #1

• 2.5# pork shoulder (boneless)
• 92 g onion, minced
• 19 g garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
• 11 g fresh sage, minced
• 6.5 g fennel fronds, minced
• 12.7 g sea salt
• 3 g black pepper, coarsely ground
• Sausage casings

Cut the pork into ¾” cubes. Place on cookie sheet and freeze for 20 minutes, to firm the meat.

Spread onion, garlic, sage and fennel over meat chunks. Grind using coarse plate. Lightly toss ground meat mixture with salt and pepper to distribute evenly.

Stuff the sausage into casings (if you plan to case the whole recipe, you will need about 4′ of large casings). Leave enough room to twist smaller (3″) links. Twist, cook and serve.

Last year Tom decided he’d like to start an herb garden on one of our window sills (After my agreement, this went into the grocery budget!). Living in a older brick building, we have the luxury of having large areas outside of every window on which to place planters. It’s true we have a northern exposure, but we have to be thankful for what we have, people. Since we had such a great summer of rosemary, sage, tarragon, thyme, peppermint, and oregano in 2008, this year, we decided to continue the garden.

As in ’08, we headed for Mother Earth Gardens, where we originally purchased our window box and plants last year:

At Mother Earth Gardens we strive to provide you with beautiful plants and products, but a central part of our mission is also to choose plants and products that have been grown, produced and delivered in a sustainable manner. We talk about the following words in our buying and decision-making: organic, sustainable, local, family, independently and cooperatively owned.

Luckily, tarragon is an perennial. It came back all on its own:

On May 3 we planted (or replanted, the case of the tarragon pictured above):

• Oregano
• Spearmint *new*
• Thyme
• Sage
• Chives *new*
• Rosemary
• Tarragon

As of Wednesday, it will be 1 month since planting. I hope to be able to plot our herbs’ progress as the season goes on so that we can both have a record of their growth and share it with you. And, of course, expect to see [Tom's] entries on how we use the herbs in our kitchen.

Finally, I wanted to share a project from the weekend. Below are my newly acquired pots from my favorite Swedish store with extras from the work at Common Roots. We’re now officially out of soil, so I think this will be it for the season. Given that, I’m hoping these two bell peppers and a small crop of tomatillos will produce fruit. Tom, the doubter, isn’t sure we have the sun required. We’ll see. The first victory is that it is possible to water the plants *without* removing the screen (as long as the watering can is full enough).