A Friday Wedding and Sunday Brunch

I'm convinced that this generation's greatest invention is the Friday Wedding. Sure, it may require some work-around at work, but there's no greater feeling than knowing you still have your Sunday.

Belen and I headed to Pittsburgh last week to cake-it-up for Rachel and Mike's wedding! We ended up doing the ultimate coconut cake (recipe from Peninsula Grill) and kept it simple with some flowers for the decor - the cream cheese icing was stressful enough. Trust.

I won't bore you with wedding photos of people you don't know, but a cake's a cake's a cake - and everybody can relate to that.

It was a three-tiered coconut cake with cream cheese icing (which, like I was saying - is a pretty stressful situation when it's hot out). I brought the tiers iced with a crumb coat (and frozen for the trip!) and then iced it and stacked it at the reception site. It was topped with fresh flowers the day of the wedding. All in all, a pretty simple cake!

But we're getting ahead of ourselves... first, we had to see what all the fuss is about with Pittsburgh and these sandwiches... And they are worth they hype.

We hit up the Primanti Brothers by our hotel and ordered up a corned beef and a When Pigs Fly (their special, featuring ham, turkey, and a fried egg). They top it with this awesome slaw and french fries. Warning: Everything in Pittsburgh is topped with french fries.

The corned beef was peeeerfection. What I love about these sandwiches is that the bread is not toasted. There's nothing I hate more than super-toasted bread scraping my mouth to shreds.

And the morning of the wedding we were super relieved to find a First Watch by our hotel! Phew. After a road-trip of snacking on chips and eating sandwiches the size of a small-child, we were ready for something potato-less.

And of course, a photo from the reception. Everything was perfect. As per Pittsburgh tradition, this wedding had a cookie table - which I'm all about. I tried clothespin cookies for the first time (small hollow cookies filled with cream) and I'll be trying to whip those up in the near future. They were delicious!

It was truly a wonderful wedding weekend!

And as I mentioned before, I was able to come home in time to make this:

Homemade Turkey Sausage with guava paste on an English Muffin. Yes.

I had made this turkey sausage a while ago and used 3 pounds of ground turkey, so you can imagine I had lots of it. I froze half of the batch and thawed it out as soon as the idea of making home-made breakfast sandwiches made it to my drop-everything-and-do-this-now list.

What I love about the turkey sausage is you can free-style it, it makes a lot, and you know exactly what's going in it! I feel like you can't say that of most meat you slide out of a tube.

I flavored mine with maple syrup and sage, but there are plenty of recipes online if you're looking for something more traditional (read: bland).

I got my recipe for homemade English Muffins from Alton Brown, so you know it'll be solid. Getting those famous nooks and crannies were my priority when recipe-searching. I didn't realize how easy it would be, so I only made one batch, but there will most definitely be more muffin- making in my future.

But we're here today to talk sausage. So let's do that.

You Will Need:

3 pounds ground turkey
1 1/2 teaspoons seasoning salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon clove
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons dried sage
1 Tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 Tablespoon olive oil (optional)
butter/oil for frying

Mix together spices, sugar, olive oil, and syrup, then add to ground turkey and mix thoroughly. 

Shape into patties - wetting hands with water to keep from sticking if necessary. Cook and serve or freeze if not eating right away. 

I make my patties really thin so they cook quickly and I'm abel to get a lot out of a batch.

Never say never, but I don't see myself buying store-bought sausage for quite some time. I cooked some up the other morning with banana and egg pancakes and of course hit it with a syrup shower.

The best type of shower.

... now that I think of it, I might just have breakfast for dinner tonight... 

Comments

Leslie said…
Is that turkey sausage a cook and freeze, or leave uncooked and freeze? I'm bad at cooking so I need it to be specific.
Joann said…
I left it uncooked and frozen, but it's up to you. After I made the sandwiches, I popped some in the freezer and nuke them at work for about 1:30, so I'm sure either works fine!
Crista said…
This sounds deelish - I've been thinking about making turkey sausage after having too much pork sausage from trying out paleo recipes. I'll put this on my list for next weekend.

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