Good Food Down on the Farm

For our retail pork offering, we had some sausage processed as "andouille", which is used a lot in spicy southern cooking, especially Cajun/Creole. We wanted to try some of it ourselves, so went searching for recipes calling for andouille sausage. This recipe comes from this link for Southern Food  and made a great "chilly, rainy night" supper for us. This is a delicious creamy mushroom soup with a little cheese and chunks of andouille sausage. Feel free to use another variety of smoked sausage in this recipe. Ingredients:       1 tablespoons vegetable oil       12 to 16 ounces andouille sausage, halved lengthwise then thinly sliced       16 ounces sliced mushrooms       4 tablespoons butter       4 green onions, thinly sliced       1 clove garlic, mashed and finely minced       1/2 cup flour       3 cups chicken broth or vegetable broth       1 cup heavy cream       8 ounces shredded mild Cheddar cheese       dash ground

Last night I pickled 6 pints of asparagus spears - the season is coming to an end and I wanted to get some done before, suddenly, there's not enough to work with. We've been using a recipe we found online at AllRecipes.com, but have made some alterations to suit ourselves. First, and probably most importantly, there does not seem to be enough vinegar called for - it asks for 1 2/3 cups to put up two pints. I tripled the recipe for 6 pints and ran short of pickling liquid, so I made a note to increase the vinegar for 2 pints to 2 full cups. Second, we found another reference to putting a clove of garlic into each jar, which works out great. And finally, the 2/3 cup of sugar made our first batch (two or three years ago) a little too sweet, so I have a notation on the recipe to use 1/3 cup per 2 pints. You can be the judge of how sweet you want it. The red pepper flakes make it fairly spicy, so you can judge your own usage - on a scale of 1 "mild" to 10 "ho