Wisconsin Troopers have been ordered to cut mileage by 20 percent in a cost-cutting maneuver that officials say will reduce services and hinder enforcement of traffic laws.

Last Friday DMV offices around the state were closed due to the furlough order.  Today unemployment call centers and the Vital Records office are closed for the same reason.  The Wisconsin DMV was then forced to offer overtime to DMV employees to deal with a backlog of requests.

All Wisconsin state employees were ordered to take 16 unpaid days leave under Wisconsin Executive Order 285.

On a lighter note, not everyone is trading in their clunkers for cash.  In Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, spectators enjoyed a free “redneck car launch” show.

Today we’ll stay in the kitchen with a delicious meal that is pretty easy, looks great, and tastes even better.  It’s great over rice or pasta, and could also work for sandwiches, just leave the sausages whole instead of cutting them up.

Peppers and Sausage:

You’ll require two pans for this, a skillet and a larger saucepan or pot.  In my situation I used a deep electric skillet in place of a skillet on the stove.  It’s one of my favorite kitchen appliances; it’s versatile and easy to clean.

Here is the ingredient list, although I admit you can take some fairly wide liberties with this to tweak it to your liking, especially with the types and amount of tomatoes and other vegetables.

• 1 can (28 ounce) crushed tomatoes
• 1 can (14 ounce) diced tomatoes
• 2 medium onions (1 diced, 1 sliced into wedges)
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• dried basil (1 tablespoon)
• Italian seasoning ( 2 tablespoons)
• dried oregano (1 tablespoon) [I do at least 2 tablespoons actually, but I love oregano]
• sugar (1 tablespoon) [tastes great with out this as well, or add an extra tablespoon for a sweeter sauce]
• 4 bratwurst or Italian sausages [I used a pound or so of Piggly Wiggly's rope bratwurst, use whatever your favorite is]
• 3 peppers; red, yellow, or green; cut into strips [Red/orange/yellow peppers look nicer but green peppers are usually quite a bit cheaper]
• 1 jalapeno (optional) [one just adds a little bit of heat, use two for more heat or none if you prefer]
• olive oil (for sauteing)

In your saucepan, saute the onions and garlic in a little olive oil, just until they are soft not brown.

Add the can of diced tomatoes along with the basil, Italian seasoning, oregano, and sugar.

Simmer this for about 20 minutes.  While this is simmering you can work on the sausage and vegetables in your skillet.

Cut your sausages into 3/4 inch pieces or so.  Brown the sausages in a little butter.  Or use beer, I did.

Add the peppers and onions (and jalapeno if you choose) and saute with a little olive oil.

Add the can of crushed tomatoes to your saucepan.  Simmer for a few minutes.

Add your sausage and vegetable mix to the saucepan. At this point depending on how thick or thin you want your sauce you may want to add an 8oz can of tomato sauce.  Mine was looking a bit thick so I did.  Simmer for another 10-15 minutes or so.

Serve over pasta or rice and top with a bit of shredded cheese.  I had Monterey Jack handy.  Pepperjack or mozzarella would be good too.

Today I will be bringing you my Memorial Day weekend meal consisting of smoked pulled pork, smoked beans, and a Memphis style slaw.  We did have a good breakfast that day as well and I will post a few pictures of that in the photo gallery.

Smoked Pulled Pork:

I picked up an 8.5lb bone-in pork butt from Hi-Vee, I thought they only had boneless left @ $1.99/lb which I was not thrilled about but a lady pointed me to the bone-in for $0.99/lb.  I rubbed it the night before with the yellow and brown mustard and then the rub listed below.

2 TBSP Seasoned Salt
2 TBSP Coarse Ground Black Pepper
1 TBSP Paprika
1 TBSP Red Pepper Flakes
1 TBSP Oregano Flakes
1 Cup Dark Brown Sugar

I got up around 6am to prepare the smoker and get the meat on by 7am. I used hickory because that is what I had, but I would have liked to try apple with this.  We need to preheat to around 220F which in this smoker takes about 20 minutes.

A couple of tips I have found with my electric smoker is it helps to put a couple charcoal briquettes in with the wood chips for smoke.  It also is best to set the element to maximum until it starts to smoke then dial it back down to the desired temp.  Your mileage may vary.

I spritzed every 90 minutes or so with a mix of 1part brandy and 3 parts grape juice.  Normally I would suggest using spiced rum and apple juice, but this is what I had on hand.  This helps form the bark and keep things extra moist.

After about 6 hours, the meat temperature reached 160F.  At this point, I pulled the meat and put it in an oven bag with some of the spritz.  Most folks would double foil here, but I found this to be easier and worked just as well.  It goes back in the smoker and will stay on until it hits 200F.  It will plateau in the 160-180 range, but that is when all the goodness is happening.  Do not try to crank up the heat to move things along.  Slow is the way to go.  Every smoke is different but you can plan on 1.5 hours per pound roughly.

One other thing the smoking experts say to use with pulled pork is a finishing sauce.  Here is what I used.  It is based of a recipe from a smoking meat forum but I skipped the salt and swapped in Schlitz for Killian’s Red.

Finishing Sauce:
3 Cups Apple Cider Vinegar
1 Bottle Schlitz
2 TBSP Red Pepper Flakes
1 TSP Ground Black Pepper
1/4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar

Mix all sauce ingredients in saucepan, bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer and simmer 30 minutes, uncovered.

Once the meat hit 200 I pulled it, wrapped it in a towel and let it rest for about half an hour. If you needed to keep it longer you can wrap it in a towel and put it in a cooler for up to a few hours and it will stay in a safe (hot) temperature range.

The bone will pull out with two fingers and no effort at all. Pull the pork then mix with finishing sauce.  I just used two forks.  It is so tender it will take no effort at all.

Smoked Baked Beans:

6-8 strips of bacon cut into 1/2 inch squares
1/2 Medium onion, diced
1/2 Bell pepper, diced
1 – 2 Jalapeno Peppers, diced
1 – 55 ounce can Bush’s Baked Beans
1-8 ounce can of pineapple chunks, drained
1 Cup Brown Sugar, packed
1 Cup ketchup

Saute bacon pieces in fry pan until crispy and remove from pan with a slotted spoon. Saute onion, bell pepper and jalapeno pepper until tender.

In a large mixing bowl combine beans, pineapple, brown sugar, ketchup and dry mustard. Stir in bacon pieces and vegetables. Pour into a 12X9 or a deep 9X9 aluminum baking pan. (While mixing if things look dry, add additional ketchup 1/4 -1/2 cup at a time)

Place in smoker for 2 1/2-3 hours (make sure temperature of the baked beans reaches 160F) or place in a 350F oven and bake for 1 hour.

I used sliced jar jalapenos because I had some on hand, and used two 28oz cans of beans instead of a BIG can.

Memphis-Style Slaw:

I pretty much followed the recipe here except again I skipped the salt, and it turned out real real tasty.  Also I used two 1lb bags of shredded cabbage instead of doing that myself.

1 head cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, peeled and grated
1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded and finely diced
2 tablespoons onions, grated
2 cups mayonnaise
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons celery seed
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
Place cabbage, carrots, green pepper and onion in bowl. In another bowl mix all ingredients. Pour over the vegetables and toss well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours to meld the flavors.

The final plate and some satisfied diners.  This was well worth the work and the wait!

Original recipe references:

• Smoked Pork culled from Smoking Meat Forums
• Dutch’s Wicked Baked Beans
• Slaw recipe was from a private forum.  This is close to the recipe I was provided.

One of my hobbies is cooking up tasty meals and I’ve decided to share some of my better offerings with the PdCToday.com audience.  It’s not going to a regular thing, but from time to time you’ll see something tasty popping up here.  These meals will probably be focused on grilling and smoking through the summer and as we get into the winter months things will move indoors.  The photos will be amateur, I’ll just be using my Canon point and shoot but things should look pretty tasty still.   Also, beware I am not the person who follows recipes to a precise degree but I will do my best to layout what I have put together.   Finally, if you have a favorite dish, send it in to me, from time to time I will feature reader favorites.

I’m going to start things off with a meal we had a few weeks ago.  It was well received by the whole family.  Pork chops marinaded in beer and spices, homemade beer battered onion rings, and grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon.  As you’ll see I find beer helps the cooking process both as an ingredient and a beverage along the way. I’ve linked to the original recipes at the bottom of this post, but generally I end up making some modifications to just about everything I find.

Grilled Pork Chops marinaded in beer and herbs:

Ingredients

• 4 boneless pork chops (Whatever your favorite chop is will be fine. I picked up a family pack of assorted bone-in chops as it was the cheapest.)
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 cup beer
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• Tablespoon oregano
• Tablespoon parsley
• Pepper

Combine beer, soy sauce, sugar, oregano, parsley and pepper.  Place pork chops into marinade.  I like to use a large zip lock bag for this, but any pan or container will do; you just want to make sure the marinade is covering most of the meat.  If you need more liquid, I’d suggest using some broth or just plain water as you don’t want the beer flavor to become too over powering.  If you really like beer though go ahead and just use more beer.  Place in the refrigerator and marinade for at least an hour.  Ideally I like to marinade for at least four hours or overnight, but I also don’t plan my meals very far in advance so an hour will do.

Prepare your grill to a medium-high heat.  I love the flavor of charcoal grilling, but gas grilling will do fine as well.

Grill the chops 5-6 minutes per side.  If you have thick chops they may need another minute or two, these were on the thinner side.

Beer battered onion rings:

I have tried making onion rings in the past and not had too much luck but this recipe I found is super easy and super fantastic.

• 1 cup of flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Enough beer to make batter with the consistency of pancake batter

Dip the onion rings into dry flour, then into the batter right before frying.  If you have a “Fry Daddy” or similar appliance use that, otherwise I just used canola oil in a pan set on heat slightly above medium. Since my pan would only hold 6-9 rings at a time, I kept the finished rings in the oven on 225F to keep them hot while I kept frying additional batches.

Grilled Asparagus:

• Asparagus spears
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Cracked pepper
• 6-8 strips of bacon (I like Bloomington Meats bacon as it does not lose so much volume in cooking like most store bought bacon)

The garden was full of fresh asparagus, but you can use the frozen spears from the freezer section at the supermarket as well.  Garden fresh is the best though, it just has great flavor like anything else that is freshly picked.  Drizzle the spears with the olive oil and pepper to taste.  You can use table pepper but fresh ground pepper just has so much more flavor.  Pan fry the bacon just enough to soften it.  Wrap bundles of 4-6 spears in a strip of bacon and secure with a toothpick.  Grill these bundles 4-5 minutes (turning once or twice) until asparagus is tender.

Pull everything off the grill and serve it up.

We had some multi-grain bread with a little Wisconsin butter to finish off the meal.

Enjoy!

Original recipe references:

• Beer Grilled Pork Chops: Recipe Zaar
• Hickory Smoked Onion Rings: Cowgirl’s Country Life
• Grilled Asparagus: All Recipes

Polls have indicated majority support for a smoking ban by the people of Wisconsin.  Even some bar owners supported the ban.  Of course the bill was not without its opponents, but once it goes into effect many believe it will be no big deal.

Wisconsin gun policy and law has been making headlines recently, starting with the February ruling affirming the right of Wisconsin citizens to “open carry” a firearm.  Earlier this month, another lawsuit was filed challenging the state’s policy of arresting people openly carrying handguns in public and charging them with disorderly conduct.

Today Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said in a memo ”that mere open carry of a firearm, absent additional facts and circumstances, should not result in a disorderly conduct charge.”  Milwaukee’s police chief has told his officers ignore the memo.

Additional information on Wisconsin gun laws can be found at the Wisconsin State Law Library.

The economic picture in Wisconsin continues to be grim as Wisconsin’s March unemployment rate hits 9.4%, surpassing the national rate of 8.5%.  Things could get worse yet before they get better, Wisconsin based Harley Davidson this week announced plunging profits resulting in additional layoffs. Land O’ Lakes is also closing its Wisconsin butter plant, laying off 120 people.  Wisconsin foreclosures also continue to rise, up over 27% from February.

Neighboring states also saw increases in unemployment with Minnesota at 8.2%, and Illinois at 9.1%.  Another Midwestern state, Michigan, topped the nation with 12.6% unemployment.  Our neighbor to the southwest is weathering the economic storm a little better, Iowa’s March unemployment numbers came in at 5.2%.

Debate on the governor’s budget is beginning, hopefully it will not come in overdue this time around.

Is the down economy causing Wisconsin residents to think twice about their beer and wine consumption?  Nah, they are just choosing to stay home rather that visit the bar as often.

Is there any encouraging news out there? Perhaps. A high speed rail project that includes Madison is in President Obama’s strategic plan for rail projects.