The United Nations Convenes at Mirkwood!

Ciao and guten tag!

Today it is as if we are hosting a convention of the United Nations at Mirkwood!

I am making Italian Wedding Soup tomorrow, so I decided to make a batch of homemade Italian sausage for the meatballs today. I am so in love with making my own sausage! The book I use is Sausage: Recipes for Making and Cooking With Homemade Sausage by Victoria Wise. I am hoping to buy a smoker to be able to smoke sausages, specifically smoked kielbasa.

Also today I was inspired to make traditional German soft pretzels. When I was little I enjoyed getting soft pretzels from Hot Sam, a kiosk in our local mall. I slathered mine with mustard. Today I used my own homemade sweet-hot mustard!

The pretzel recipe is from my go-to recipe resource, Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen. And here is my mustard recipe:

Mirkwood's Sweet-Hot Mustard

• 1 cup mustard seed (I use a combination of yellow and brown seeds)
• 1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon table salt

1. Mix the mustard seed and vinegar in a glass bowl. Refrigerate for one day.
2. Add mustard seed/vinegar and remaining ingredients to the bowl of a food processor or blender and blend to desired consistency.
3. Store mustard in glass jars in the refrigerator. This mustard improves in flavor the longer you store it!