Welcome!

Welcome to austinagrodolce … My family and I garden with more intention and enthusiasm than allocated budget or overall design plan. It shows. Wildlife populations don't seem to notice our lack of cohesive design, they just like the native plants here. It seems by growing local we've thrown out a welcome mat. Occasionally, we're surprised at who (and what) shows up.



Thursday, December 31, 2009

You Are Welcome! Happy New Year!

Oh readers, I am certain you are well organized, menu planned ahead, shopping trip(s) taken care of already. I know you have baked, chopped, prepped in all sorts of ways to assure your gathering, or intimate dinner, or snuggle in to watch favorite movies, or whatever forms your New Year's Eve/Day celebrations will take, are all ready to roll food and beverage wise. You have done your homework, you know your customs, and you have everything on hand you need to make sure you have a lucky and prosperous and well fed start to your New Year.

However, there is one not so secret weapon in any prepared host or hostess arsenal that you may have missed and I am going to share it with you here and now. This is such a great concoction that even if it does not bring luck or prosperity all by itself, having it on hand may mean you really don't care so much about either.

What could be that good? The World's Best Mustard Sauce, that's what. The absolutely Makes Everything Taste Better Mustard Sauce.

I originally uncovered this Makes Everything Taste Better Mustard Sauce as part of a pork tenderloin recipe offered so long ago, well prior to internet wanderings, that I did not save the source when I typed it up to put into my notebook.

Sidebar: Yes I have a notebook, The Notebook really, and it is filled with typed out, page protector sheathed wondrousness. It never crashes or requires any sort of connection and I can often judge, by the stains or spots that appeared pre-sheating, how much we loved a particular preparation, just in case it has been that long I might have otherwise forgotten.

You see I type something out, print it, I fix it, we eat it, and if we like it I typically fix it again with tweaks that I note in pencil on the page. Once I have arrived at what we consider close enough to perfection, I type the recipe up again, tweaks included, and then slip it into a page protector which then is shoved into The Notebook (with category dividers I mostly completely ignore).

Occasionally, something is so good as is, it gets fixed several times before I bother to locate a sheet protector for it. Those lovelies finally get their plastic home but only after they have earned all sorts of splatter and splash marks indicating they were well appreciated.

Back to your soon to be beloved recipe:

MAKES EVERYTHING TASTE BETTER MUSTARD SAUCE

1/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon dry mustard powder (I use Coleman's - who can resist that sunny yellow can?)
2 tablespoons chopped chives or very finely chopped green onion tops

Combine all ingredients well. Cover and chill at least two hours, preferably overnight.

And there you have it. Simplicity that, dare I say it, approaches perfection. The resulting sauce is an ideal side for a platter of sliced meats and cheeses. It goes well with any roasted or grilled meat, it rides happily atop any number of prepared vegetables, it is good on a sandwich and even better dolloped on a slice of quiche.

I have said, (over and over and over again, yes, yes, it is a favorite expression my family has heard WAY too many times) that this stuff is so good I'd be happy to eat my shoes, so long as they were well coated in this most delicious of mustard sauces.

And now I share it with you: the proud, the few, the readers of this blog.

You will very likely love-love-love this sauce and find all sorts of ways to work it into your meals from now on. Your lives, if not your waistlines, will be better for knowing of it.

So yes readers mine. Happy New Year! And, you are welcome!


3 comments:

Iris said...

Thank you--it sounds divine! I'm going to make it this weekend fer shure. Cheers, Deb!

Kathleen Scott said...

I copied it and filed in on computer and printed it out for MY notebook, which is not page-protected and has grown now to two binders which someday I'll weed through. Anyway, I'll be able to find and enjoy your sauce.

Happy New Year to you also!

TexasDeb said...

Iris/Kathleen: Cheers! Make the sauce. You will not be sorry. Just be sure to let it sit for at least two hours -more if possible. The flavor continues to mellow and develop and loses what is otherwise a too sharp edge if you don't give it time.

Kathleen: I'm impressed - TWO binders! I weeded my binder out - got rid of almost half of what I'd thought I wanted to make "someday". I still can't keep things in categories though. Just. Can. Not.