Since I tend to get more free time on Sundays it often turns into a food production day. This week we had our first frost so today we picked a peck of potential pickles, questionable tomatoes, zucchini, and even a few beans. I canned the cucumbers and beans: I think we are set with pickles for a long time.

But that's not what this post is about: I also made chicken sausage. The last sausage I made used a whole diced onion to help keep the sausage moist. The couple of times I've made chicken sausage it was really tasty, but a little on the dry side. I had the grand idea of using onion AND zucchini to help keep today's chicken sausage moist. Here's the rest of the recipe, more or less:

• chicken thigh meat, diced, skin removed but fat retained
• handful or so of basil, chopped
• sun dried tomatoes (soaked in water then diced)
• porcini mushrooms (soaked in water then diced)
• 1/2 small onion grated finely
• 4 cloves of garlic finely diced
• cup of finely grated zucchini
• 1/4 cup of mozzarella finely diced
• 1/3 cup of grated asiago cheese
• pepper & salt (not to much salt)

The chicken was chilled in the freezer and then put through the grinder with a medium coarse plate. I started with a fine plate but it got jammed up really fast. Once ground the chicken was mixed with everything else, along with the 1/4 cup of water used to reconstitute the mushrooms and tomatoes. Mixed it very well and let it sit in the fridge while al of the stuffing gear is setup and made ready. We ran out of casings towards the end and the rest of the meat was made into patties. There's always extra meat left over inside the stuffer, so plan on having one or two patties. We sampled a small patty and all of us thought it was good. I'll try to update this post after we've cooked up the stuffed sausage.

NOTE: 9/22/11 we cooked some up and served over gluten free spaghetti with a sauce made from tomatoes out of our garden. Tasty.