Tammy's Tangy Kielbasa

Tammy Hicks postmarks an envelope.

I fully intended to post a poppy-seed cake for Memorial Day in honor of my favorite Memorial Day poem, “In Flanders Fields.”

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place…….

Somehow, I never got around to making the thing. Next year, I promise I will!

Luckily, I found an easy and tasty substitute on Friday while at the Post Office in Charlemont, Massachusetts. Postmaster Tammy Hicks and I started comparing notes on our weekend cooking tasks. Tammy said she was going to throw some sweet-and-sour kielbasa into her slow cooker a couple of hours before she needed to serve it at a Memorial Day picnic.

When I asked for her recipe it sounded so good (and so much NOT like work) that I ran to the store and bought the ingredients.

There are only three of them (ingredients, that is). No kidding.

You may certainly dress this dish up by buying really good kielbasa (we have a terrific local smokehouse, Pekarski’s in South Deerfield). And you may use homemade jelly and homemade barbecue sauce.

I just bought what was available at Avery’s General Store and went home and cooked. It was yummy.

Tammy usually makes a LOT of this, tossing between two and five pounds of kielbasa into her slow cooker. For one to two pounds she uses the amounts of jelly and barbecue sauce I indicate here. For more she doubles them.

She suggested cooking the dish in the slow cooker for two hours on high or for four hours on low.

I am only serving four people at my Memorial Day picnic--and my slow cooker is in another state--so I as you can see from my recipe I cooked one pound of meat on low heat on the stove top.



The Very Easy Recipe

Ingredients:

1 pound kielbasa, cut into bite-sized pieces (turkey kielbasa will do—ANY kielbasa will do)
1/2 of a 12-ounce jar of grape jelly
1/2 of an 18-ounce jar of good quality barbecue sauce

Instructions:

Stir the ingredients together in a 2-quart saucepan. Cover, and cook for 2 hours over low heat. Stir once or twice if you’re worried.

Serve on Memorial Day with cornbread, devilled eggs, and coleslaw.

Serves 2 teenage boys or 4 normal people.