Sausage!

Otto von Bismarck, for whom North Dakota's capital city is named*, once said, "The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they sleep at night."

Turns out he was right only about the laws: I have now seen sausage made, and it was just fine.

Otto probably meant industrial-level sausage production, the kind that made Upton Sinclair famous. But at a once-a-year family production, it was admirably clean, with utterly appealing ingredients. I've been waiting for this for months.

Here's how it's done. Start in P. and T.'s unheated Fargo garage. Heat it with a kerosene space heater bought at auction from P.'s parents when they moved from their farm (right). T. had the great improvement this year of placing the heater just outside the garage's doggy door. Apparently, in past years, after a few hours of running the heater inside the small garage, people started to get early symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Plus, it's noisy. Much better outside.

Next, take a lot of meat, about 180 pounds of it total, probably 75% pork and 25% venison (deer meat alone makes sausage that is far too dry):

That's about 50 pounds of meat there, plus salt, pepper, garlic, tenderizer, and lots of water. Next, take a bowl of casings:

This is really the only part that could be considered nasty – and, really, only if you think about it too much – the inflation of the pig intestines that sheath the sausages, or "kissing the casings," if you prefer:



Wrap the inflated casing around the nozzle of the antique stuffer:

...and crank the meat into the casings. (I don't have a photo of this step, since I was on the crank.) Next, cut the sausages into double lengths, and hang them on a pole:

Now to the smoker. The body of this one is a fuel tank T.'s dad fashioned into a smoker years ago, and does the trick quite well. Underneath is a fire fueled by applewood, which T. harvests between his house and the river:

This is what the sausages look like when they're smoking:

Once done, they are rinsed in cold water to wash the ashes off them:

Here's what they look like back inside when they are done (with unsmoked links hanging off to the right):

Wrap 'em up, and you're done!:

The ones wrapped in paper are to be eaten soon. The milk cartons in the back are wound with sausages inside, then filled with water, which allows them to be frozen far longer.

The result: delicious! Once we made it through the 180 pounds of meat, we came back into the house for sausages, fruit, and homemade knoephla soup (traditional German chicken-and-potato-dumpling soup – also terrific!). P. and T. kindly sent me home with an armful of packages of meat, which made for a great dinner last night.

* A little-known fact about Bismarck: It was originally founded in 1872 as "Edwinton," to honor Edwin M. Johnson, a chief engineer for the Northern Pacific railroad. The next year the railroad renamed the city "Bismarck," after Otto, in an effort to attract German immigrants. Because "Blizzardville" would have attracted only Dairy Queen fans, like Jen.