The Sausage Night

When I met my husband, I wasn’t a big meat eater.  Don’t get me wrong, I was far from a vegetarian.  I still ate plenty of chicken, and as far as I’m concerned, anyone who doesn’t eat bacon is just plain crazy.  But I basically ate no red meat.  This started in high school, when I befriended our steer.  I come from a long line of cattle ranchers, and every year we raised a steer to slaughter for meat.  But when I turned sixteen I, of course, fell in love with the steer, and simply could not eat him.  Fast forward a few years, to the early stages of my relationship with my future husband.  I didn’t even eat beef, and he hunted. 

At first, I stuck hard to my guns.  I never cared what other people ate, but I wasn’t going to betray the memory of my beautiful steer.  But then one day, he convinced me to try some elk jerky he made.  Well that ended my long strike, I was definitely a carnivore again.  Before long I was ordering bloody steaks, and eating any game Nick brought home, although it took me years to try rabbit.  For years, everyone has joked that Nick converted the vegetarian.  No one ever paid attention to the fact that I was never a vegetarian to begin with.  But tonight, I was truly amazed at how far I have come.

Tonight, Nick and I made elk sausage, which we always do when he or his dad gets an elk.  The difference tonight, was that we made links, which we have never done.  The kids were fascinated, and begged to watch before reading books for bedtime.  As the meat squeezed out of the grinder and into the pork casings, Tessie squealed with laughter, and Christian joined in.  They thought it was wildly entertaining. 

Once we got them to bed, I joined Nick, to try and speed up the process.  It took a few tries, but I finally got the hang of it, and I must say that my sausage links were absolutely perfect.  When we finally finished the last link, we lay them out on the kitchen counter to dry.  I stood there and stared at the state of my kitchen.  Never, in a million years, would the girl who clung to that steer, begging her parents not to eat him, have believed this sight.  But here I was, staring at my counters covered in drying meat, proud as could be that my husband and I made all this beautiful food.