The Beginning

Hello, out there.
Well, you've arrived! Welcome.
It seems appropriate to start things off with a tale of sausage-making.

That's right! Sausage. Last Sunday, Meghan and I embarked on our first sausage journey. She received a sausage attachment for her Kitchen-Aid mixer, and we knew it was important that the new parts didn't gather dust -- so the production began. Tug and Special Cat waited in the wings (well, actually, Tug sniffed hungrily the whole time and waited for bits to drop).

We began with pork and, um, casings. You know, like INTESTINES. A tiny glob in a bag turned out to be miles and miles of incredibly durable, pliable magic. Just imagine, if intestines are this useful in the kitchen, just think of how useful they must be in the body! It's seriously amazing.

Okay, so words can only get us so far in the sausage-production world. You, dear reader, need pictures.

The casings. Fancy!

Tug, the Butter Pig. Also fancy. But mainly drooly. And handsome.

The operation begins. Uh.


Most people probably do not touch their casings for so long before actually filling them.
They were just so...special.

Okay. Apologies for not providing images of the actual production. But, you see, there's stuffing, and catching, and pushing and twisting and, well, just so much MEAT on the hands, that it's sort of impossible to take photographs at the same time. If we could only train Tug to use a camera, we just wouldn't have these sorts of problems. Anyway, just imagine the two of us cursing a bit and laughing a whole lot, and that's pretty much what the production part looked like. Oh, and see those mangled ones in the back? Those are the first sausages to be born. Not bad, though, eh? The ones in the front are perfect looking, thanks to Meghan's supreme pork-catching abilities. Good work, Meg.

The final product, from another angle. They really are so professional, don't you think?


Cook 'em up!

Is there some sort of sausage factory that would hire the two of us? Cause, um, those look pretty great. (I will leave out the part about the sausages being kind of dry, like the kangaroo jerky that we ate as an amuse bouche. And the part about the buns that we made resembling bricks, rather than, uh, buns. Seriously, does no store in Chicago carry bread flour anymore? And the part about how sausage-making made us feel tired. And the part about Special Cat's shrieks of confusion and despair that accompanied our meal. Those parts are totally not important.)

The most important thing is that Zaheer and Matthew deemed the sausages delicious (they are experts, after all), and Matty provided much needed pre-sausage-factory assurance, and the mustards we made tasted great, and the slaw was excellent and summery, and you, o reader, have learned so much more about our abilities, and, well, the whole world of sausages is out there waiting for us. So. We're on our way. Casings are waiting!