Simple (and Healthy) Chicken Sausage and Peppers Kebabs

Makes 5-6 kebabs

Sausage and Peppers is, in my mind, a celebratory guilty pleasure served in my memory during months when you needed to be warmed up from the cold, or in celebration, no matter the season. Without hesitation, I have stood in many a line at outdoor festivals whenever sausage and peppers sandwiches are served. The St.Rocco’s Society in Beacon always sells sausage and peppers during annual festivals and I have happily walked down the street, grease dripping off my chin, opening my big mouth for a big bite. Every day is not a festival but with this recipe you can eat like it is. I think you could easily use coined vegan sausage as a vegetarian option, but you would have to make sure it is lightly coated in seasonings and olive oil.. If you were making with traditional pork sausage, you would just have to precook it in the oven before grilling for safety reasons. If using metal skewers you could use pork sausage without precooking but get prepared, open a beer and ask somebody to tell a lengthy story which will get your appetite up for your delicious, but more timely, meal. Pink pork is no joke homies.

I have actively sought out church bazaars, Italian festivals, and barbecues for some genuine S&P, and I have, yes, found myself following the aroma of S&P down a boardwalk until I found the storefront which had it for sale. Healthy eating is my game, but occasional indulgence is my name. Well, not quite my name..I have many names and a bunch of nicknames, but well, “Occasional Indulgence” could perhaps be another nickname. For my earliest childhood years my parents had a tiny charcoal hibachi grill which produced, with some coaxing, tasty burgers, dogs and the occasional chicken drumstick…On some occasions, when the air was cold but still ok for grilling, there would be a pot of sausage and peppers bubbling away on this humble little stove.

This dish and grilling have such links to my most special memories and I am thinking today about those moments. We all have friends from many places and times in our lives and I have a friend who has been considered by many, very privileged. As grownups, she told me, rather wistfully, she has not ever had hot dogs which tasted as good as the hotdogs my Dad cooked for us on this tiny little contraption. I am pretty sure she had been in very fancy restaurants and had been served hot dogs on irreplaceable china, but she preferred my da’s dogs. As for my own privilege, I am completely aware of the level of privilege other people see in my life’s journey and I am not sure I even can completely appreciate how much my advantages in life have made my successes and my redemption possible because it is hard to understand privilege from inside privilege. Privilege is complicated, and what I know is this: privileged people, even if the privilege is just having a comely face, have unusual hurdles to clear and yet the impact of privilege seeps into every part of your life so people are sometimes justified in resenting (but not hating) people who have privilege they don’t. Hate should be reserved for people who deserve it because living your life from a place of unilateral hatred of people you have not ever given a chance, seems like a very hard way to live and it seems like it would be, for the person doing the hating, an impediment to achieving as a reason not to try and achieve. Resentment might be understandable but hurting somebody out of resentment, well, it seems this would hurt you more in the end. You should always try, even if having to try so hard seems so unfair - I know, because ironically for some things, I have had to try so hard it has been unfair. You can’t walk through life not liking people with better bodies or natural abilities than you, but you can honestly say if your school did not have textbooks or you did not ever have food in your fridge, it is harder to learn, achieve and grow. I refuse to walk through life being angry at every lady who has the “no boobies yogi body” I wish for or all the people who can sing “summertime” in a non-ironic compelling way. I have this unfairly chesty body which almost always requires underwire (or very high quality elastic) and when I sing it is sweet, but unless the world has a very funny sense of humor, I won’t ever fill a room of people interested in hearing my actual voice. About my privilege I know this to be true: I now know how I was used to being treated after not being treated the way I had always been treated, I know what it is to be resented for things I had no hand in, I know how other people’s resentment of what they perceived of my advantages has at times impacted things from my bank account to my ability to have a safe place to live, and I can honestly say, I appreciate both how hard people had to work to accomplish things which seemed seamlessly easy for me to accomplish and how brave it is for people with a considerable amount to pull back the screen and look at how much easier and how much harder, their advantages have made their lives. My friend (who some people only see as a privileged individual but is so much more) and I were blissfully ignorant of all of this because we were children. We were friends, aware of how much we shared as a people, even as tiny people, who believed in fairies and had the common understanding of what was to have parents who believed both in educating women to be strong and letting children be children . There was no way for us to understand how later in life people who did not know us would talk about how different we were and not qualified to advocate for each other. It moves me today, to know how sad it made the people who actually knew us to hear this, as they understood before the world did, how much we had in common and how much we knew each other’s hearts, as people sometimes do when they know each other at their most innocent. Childhood is such a magical time and when I use my humble backyard smoky Joe, I frequently think of shared meals with people like my friend, from childhood on, who wrote my story and who have fought so hard to be able to sing me back the words to my song, a hot dog (or in this case a sausage), at a time. In my life, there have been times chicken sausage, pork sausage and yes, sausage McMuffins have seemed like luxuries and there have been times when they seemed like very inconsequential purchases. I know regardless of your bank account or life experience, we can break bread and find a way to build a bridge…probably over some form of sausage and peppers. In this blog I try and cook food which has meaning for me as a privileged person who has at times mourned her loss of privileges and even basic protections, but who wishes to build bridges with all who all are genuinely interested in building bridges with me.

Food, I find, builds bridges with people who seem to have no common language and if you speak sausage and peppers, whether your preference is for chicken, pork or vegan sausage, come sit and talk with me. Having a nonlinear journey makes starting conversations or navigating the initial search for finding common ground with somebody sometimes hard, and I have found sharing and talking about food has helped me forge bridges, even with people prepared not to like me, and soldier through anxious situations. Sausage and Peppers has always been there, against humble and not such humble backgrounds, as a link to my past and a part of my identity. In cooking this healthy version, I am making it my own. I have written this recipe as traditional sausage and peppers previously in this blog, but this version utilizes the grill and the char of the smoke to a real summertime advantage.

While I make it for myself in the traditional way, this pairing offers some of the Italianumami-goodness without the grease and without the guilt. You could cook it and then serve it in sandwiches, eat it as a bowl on its own, or do as I did with the leftovers, and make yourself a Mexican/Italian fusion burrito by serving it hot with shredded cheese and salsa in a tortilla. However you eat it, this version of S*P, as my dad calls it, is cooked more quickly than the traditional. My intention was to cook them all the way through until the peppers slightly charred and the onions became aromatic but alas, the weather did not cooperate. I had them on the grill sufficiently for them to acquire some of the smokiness of the charcoal, but not quite until I felt they were done. I emptied the skewers into a skillet with a tsp of olive oil and cooked until the peppers were done to my satisfaction and the sausage coins had done some more browning. Most chicken sausage comes precooked so there are none of the traditional worries about completely cooking sausages all the way through, but since there’s such low fat content, tossing them with the vegetables in olive oil in spices keeps them from drying out.

Prepared Sausages - Put your sausage on the skewers so each sausage coin is next to an onion on the front side and a pepper piece on the other.

Ingredients

Pkg of Chicken Sausage - Sweet Italian Pepper Flavor

2 medium Onions

green, red, orange and yellow peppers (I used tricolor Bellas, and a green bell pepper) *You could, as I did, instead of buying bell peppers, buy miniature bella peppers for the color and sweetness

3 tbsp of olive oil

tsp of oregano

tsp of basil

tsp of powdered garlic

tsp of salt

tsp of ground pepper

Plan of Attack

Prepare the skewers - If using wood skewers soak them in a pan of water for at least an hour before cooking

Cut the chicken sausages in bite sized coins, the onions into bite sized pieces and the peppers into similar sizes. Peppers are becoming cheaper this time of year, but the bag of miniature tricolor peppers I had was perfect for adding some color and sweetness to the crunchy and twang of the green pepper pieces I added

Put all the pieces in your medium mixing bowl and toss with olive oil and spices

Place the skewers on the grill, turning so the vegetables evenly cook. Serve hot in sandwiches, in sauce or as a bowl of smoky lean protein goodness.

If using a charcoal grill, if possible (it wasn’t for me, because I am neurotic about grilling safety) start your charcoal grill coals.

Place the chicken sausage coins on the skewers, atteMpting to surround chicken sausage coins on either side with onion and pepper pieces.

These are the skewers after I took them off the grill - smoky but not quite cooked to perfection. I took everything off and sautéed them in my medium skillet.

My bowl of leftovers, and oh man was it worth the effort…