V & V Sausage -- Flatonia's own

V&V Sausage, yet another well established Texas sausage, comes from  Flatonia, a little town off of Interstate 10 about half-way between Houston and San Antonio.

The company started in 1955 with Edward and  Alphonse Vinklarek out of the kitchen on a farm near Cistern, Texas. The next year, they rented a general store and post office, converting it into a processing shop.

V&V Sausage modernized and expanded in the early 1970s. Today, V&V Sausage is found in groceries and BBQ restaurants all over Texas.

I picked a jalapeno smoked sausage. It's a little spicy, but it's not the jalapeno you notice. The family recipe goes strong on the black pepper.

I'm trying out three meals here. One is a dinner and two are breakfast dishes.

Let's start with dinner. The vegetable is simple. Open a can of beans. Hey, does always have to be time-consuming?

Your choice: ranch pintos, Van Camp's Pork & Beans. Personally, I went with Bush's Baked Beans Country Style.

For a starch, we're making corn pancakes. Half-cup cornmeal, one egg and a quarter cup milk with a half teaspoon of baking soda and a dash of vegetable oil will grill up enough cakes for two.

Heat up as much sausage as you want on the grill and you're good to go. Easy enough?

Baked beans are kind of sweet, of course. I can see opting for a ranch-style cooked pinto bean if you don't want all that sugar.

This first breakfast is not sweet. It's spicy and hearty and simple. Just one vegetable: grilled onion.

I grill onion in equal proportion to the sausage, 'cuz I want plenty of it. Heat the diced sausage and onion together. Neither needs a lot of time on the heat. Add the egg after the grease is flowing and the onion gets tender, but don't let the onion burn.

Stir it all up and put it on the plate!

While you're cooking the main entree, see that sharp cheddar?  We're heating corn tortillas on a separate heat source. Melt cheese on the second heated tortilla, the lay the first tortilla over it.

Your quesadilla (a grilled cheese flat bread) is your side.

Put it all together.

And this is what your plate should look like.

Uhm: see below, then continue scrolling.

This second breakfast is sweet, because that's how sweet potato rolls.

Dice sweet potato small, like hashbrowns. Grill it first, it'll take a few minutes to cook. 

Add our spicy V&V Sausage, then add the egg.

I had mine with tortillas (of course) and hot sauce. You may want to pass and eat it as is or with a slice of toast.

Buen provecho!