'Something Beautiful' in a Sausage Puff

The structure of childhood is built on phases. And right now Elli is going through some surprising phases in her entertainment tastes. As far as music, she is obstinently loyal to the Newsboys. To the point that the mere suggestion of listening to some other artist (like, say, I don't know, Chris Tomlin), can stir up a tempest no ship captain wants to see coming. Last Saturday afternoon, when I asked Elli if she wanted to listen to some music while we cooked, she said, "No Chris. Newsboys!" Sorry, Chris, buddy. You still have my heart, but for this toddler, Newsboys is where it's at. So, we turned on the greatest hits CD and settled in to make a new recipe, from my beloved Taste of Home cookbook. I was attracted to it because not only does it have only four ingredients and I thought Elli would love to play in the dough, but it also calls for sausage. For those of you keeping score, I'm down to five pounds of sausage from The Gift of a Third of a Pig last fall. I'm seriously considering donating the rest. Sausage Cheese Puffs 1 pound sausage 3 cups baking mix 4 cups cheddar cheese 3/4 cup water In skillet, cook and crumble sausage until no longer pink; drain. In a bowl, combine baking mix and cheese; stir in sausage. Add water and toss with a fork until moistened. Shape into 1 1/2 inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes or until puffed and golden brown. Cool on wire racks. This recipe makes four dozen puffs. Four dozen. That's about three dozen too many for our family. You can freeze them, but we opted to take in about half to church with us the next morning, treating the nursery workers to a special surprise treat. I put on the sausage to cook while Elli help me prep the other ingredients. "First we need to measure out three cups of baking mix," I told her. We set the Pyrex measuring cup and large mixing bowl in front of us on the counter, and I picked up the box of baking mix and poured out the first cup. "That's one," I announced. "Can you pour that into the bowl?" She grabbed the cup's handle and attempted to lift it. It got about a quarter of an inch off the counter. "Ess too heavy," she said. "OK, I'll help you lift it up."

We poured it together into the bowl, and I measured out the next cup. "How many cups is that, Elli?" She paused, searching her memory. "Two!" "That's right, two. Let's pour it in the bowl." I measured out the last cup and asked, "How many is this?" "Ess two!" "It's three." "Es tee!" "Nicely done. Let's pour." Elli looked at the pile of mix in the bowl. Suddenly, she smiled. She pointed at the pile and exclaimed, "Cheese!" "No, honey, it's baking mix. It's like flour." She looked at the pile again. "Ess cheese!" Her finger approached the pile, and she looked sideways up at me in that 'look what I'm doing aren't you gonna stop me?' way. "I'm telling you, sweetheart, it's not cheese. You can try it, but I'm not sure you're going to like it." As a child, I used to eat that orange powder cheese like crazy, sucked it right out of the golden cannister like a Pixie Stick. I did not, however, eat baking mix in that way. Or at all, come to think of it. Elli ate the baking mix as if it were powder cheese. "Elli, you're ridiculous. If you want cheese, I have cheese. Take a look at this." I held up the two, two-cup bags of shredded Cheddar cheese. "We need to put this in the bowl too. Want to?" She licked the baking mix off her fingers and nodded. Confident she could go solo on the cheese, I opened the bag and handed them to her with the instructions to put the cheese in the bowl. She did awesome.

And I was able to give a little TLC to the cooking sausage. To my surprise, Elli did not try to swallow the cheese shreds whole, per her usual. She did, though, try to reach into the baking mix box to get more of the white stuff. "Seriously, Elli, I'm telling you it's not cheese." She just looked at me and continued to lick her fingers. "Oh boy," I muttered. I took that as a sign that she was too preoccupied to stir. So, I stirred, and Elli ate. By this time the sausage was cooked and cooled enough to add. I moved the bowl away from Elli, added the sausage, and stirred some more. "Want to help me add the water?" Elli nodded. And so the dough began to form. Ever try to stir a pound of sausage, two pounds of shredded cheese and three cups of baking mix? It was like trying to move wet sand with a spork. "Forget this," I said. "Let's use our hands." Elli watched as I rolled the dough over and over itself to blend all the ingredients together into a soft, gooey dough. "Time to make some balls." I showed her how to break off some dough and form it into some sort of semblence of a ball. "It's just like Play-Doh," I told her. Apparently, though, that trick only works once. She only picked apart the gob of dough I gave her. She just wasn't interested. She was interested, however, in the baking mix. "Cheese!" she said, scooping up the dusting on the counter.

I knew I had to distract her from the "cheese." The thing that worked was turning up the Newsboys. While I rolled out some puff balls, Elli shook her groove thing, which turns out to be a lot lower on Elli than you might think. (You'll probably need to crank up your volume to hear the music in the background of this video -- the stereo was in the other room. If you want to listen to the song that was playing, it was "Something Beautiful" by "No Chris.") Yes, she was licking the bowl. There was baking mix on the side. Though I had thought for sure this would be a recipe Elli would be enthralled with, it wasn't really. Oh well. They can't all be Jif Shakes. But we did get some tremendous laughs out of it, not to mention a week's worth of breakfast. Things Elli Could Do: Help measure and pour baking mix Dump in cheese Form dough (had she not been preoccupied with the baking mix) Eat things normal kids would not Overall Sausage Puffs Ratings (5 being the best): Elli-friendly cooking: 3 Elli-friendly eating: 4 Simple: 5 Fast: 4 Frugal: 5

Question of the Week: What is your favorite breakfast recipe?