Sausage party...No really!

A good time was had by all this weekend. It was a night of good wine and sausage making. The host needed to clear out his big freezer for a pig he was about to slaughter. It being the season he invited friends over and we made about 40 lbs of links and loose sausage from venison and wild boar meat. Quite a lot of fun!
I brought over some dried King Boletes which we added to one batch, and another gentleman brought spices he grew from which we made spicy Italian sausage. The photos are funny to me because for the most part they show what happened. The women sat around talked, drank wine played w/ the kids(no small feat the kids that is), and the men stayed in the kitchen and cooked. I can't wait to do it again.

Sausage!

I took this picture on my phone and I believe that this will be the first of many. I had the chance to see a local chef's meat curing room it was quite a treat. We walked down into a humid basement, and there it was. I can't convey how excited I was to see so much hand-made dry sausage curing. For you that may not know most dry cured sausage in the US involves a "Kill Step" where the sausage is cooked or irradiated or some other disgusting step that big meat processors told the FDA was necessarily when they were being consulted for writing the regulations on making commercial sausage. Its so sad that most Americans have never had anything other than this type of cured meat (unless they are old). I've even heard of some small producers in Europe that refuse to sell to the US because of this demand. Their reasons are that for hundreds of years they have made sausage and cured hams in the same way and no one dies from eating it, so why should they change. Alas our loss.