Hot Diggity Calidog Stew

I’m experimenting again. It’s turning into a fun thing to do, especially since people actually like my concoctions. My best friend’s mom grabbed this one the minute she brought it home. She had already tasted my bean soup a few weeks ago, and loved it, so my friend didn’t even get a chance to taste this stew, but she did ask me where the name came from. It came from the fact that I used cauliflower as the base, and hot dogs from the food bank in the stew. Here are the ingredients.

Ingredients

· 1 head of cauliflower

· 1 stalk of celery

· 10 dried plums

· 1 pk of hot dogs

· 1 red onion

· 1 full head of garlic

· Potatoes (if small-1/2’d; if med.- quartered; I used about 8 total)

· 3 Maggai chicken bouillon cubes

· 6 capers

· 2 cans of corn

· 1 can of peas

· 1 can of garbanzo beans

· 2-3 cups of chopped collard greens

· 1 pk of Lipton onion soup

· 1 box of Tabatchnick mushroom soup

· ½ bottle of Duck sauce

· 1 cup of Oyster sauce

· 4 TBSP of Badia seasoning

Now, if you are like my mother, you might be screeching about now. My mom flipped when I started to list the ingredients to this one. And to be honest, if I just looked at this list without having made this, I might feel the same.

To start with, I had a head of cauliflower that I had to find a use for. I figured that I’d blend it up and use it for the base of my stew. Now bear in mind, there was a bit of water added to the cauliflower to mix it. Once blended, I wasn't really feeling the flavor, considering that I’m not really into cauliflower. So I started to diversify with it, trying to find something to mix with it that might alter the flavor a bit more to my liking.

At this point, the plums went in. Now, I’m not a sterling admirer of dried plums either, but I’m thinking...dried fruit ought to have some measure of sweetness to it, so I tossed them in and blended them.

Basically, all that did was change the color to brown. It didn’t help the flavor much in my opinion. Note that, by this time, I had thrown some oil in the pot (my pressure cooker) and was stir frying the onions (diced), garlic (diced), diced celery pieces and hot dogs (cut in pieces).I threw a bit of the Badia, probably the first 2 TBSPS into the stir fry, and broke up the 1^st cube of the Maggai and mixed it around.

After this had browned a bit, I threw in the cauliflower mix. Now you may need to add a bit more water, depending on how liquid your cauliflower mix is. Again, I wasn’t feeling the flavor because of the cauliflower, so naturally I had to start improvising to improve it.

At this point, I threw in the mushroom soup, added the collards, corn, peas, and garbanzo beans, plus the capers and the 2nd Maggai cube. Still not satisfied, I tossed in the Lipton onion soup mix, added the duck sauce, the oyster sauce, and the last Maggai, with the last 2 TBSPS of the Badia. At this point, I was getting something I could live with, but I figured it would be better once it cooked for a while in the pressure cooker.

I think I let it cook for about an hour. Being that its stew...the pressure cooker doesn’t steam and whistle, but it was done. Just had to release the steam and let it cool prior to opening it. Once cooled, I tasted it, and shock upon shock...it worked! It tasted good. My best friend’s mom loved it, and commented that she thought it would have been even better with beef or chicken as opposed to hotdogs.

Sandra M Urquhart

Massage Therapist/Writer

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