Our First Sausages!

When Martin and I launch our new business one of the things we want is a blog to document our journey and give an insight into what we are doing and where we have come from. Because we don't have a website set up as of yet the first blog of our new adventure will be here!

And the first post is all about our first sausages. We bought a meat grinder and sausage making attachment for my kitchen aid mixer which attaches to the front of the machine. It isn't a very industrial device but for our purposes it gets the job done. We bought some natural casings from a sausage making company and first duty was to soak them to get all the salt out. Phewy does it smell! We had to eat dinner in the other room as the smell was a little too over powering. Fortunately though you get over it.

Next was to grind the meat. We decided to use pork belly as it has a nice blend of fat and meat to it. In the future I would probably use a combination of lean and fatty meat. The fat is important for the taste of the sausage but I think just pork belly was a little over kill. I cut it all up into square sized chunks and fed it through the grinder. It worked! I thought it would be kind of gross grinding the meat but it was actually okay. It was relatively easy and could be done by one person, no problem.

Once the meat had been grounded and everything cleaned thoroughly we got around to seasoning the meat. I had a recipe I was following but I don' have a scale to measure such small measurements and have really no idea how much 10 grams of salt is or 5 grams of pepper. I just winged it. Also threw in there some breadcrumbs and water to blend it all together.

Next we had to wash the casings out. This was surprisingly fun. As the water rinses through them it creates water sausages which for some reason was very amusing to me. We then slid the casings onto the funnel that will attach to the kitchen aid mixer. Took a little fiddling but it was easy enough.

Up to this point I did everything myself. Martin sat near by giving me "helpful" tips. However, actually stuffing the sausages takes two people. While I fed the meat down through the funnel Martin held onto the casings as they filled with meat, leading them into the bowl placed under the mixer. I was a little nervous the first time we did this we would end up with some wonky looking sausages but as you can see, they look pretty uniform in size. After the casings are filled you twist the long sausage you have into smaller sausages, resulting with what you see in the bowl. All done!

I really enjoyed our sausage making. I think it will be fun to experiment with different flavours and cuts of meat and see what people like. These sausages are currently resting to ensure we get maximum flavour before eating. We are taking them to the Partners and no doubt the next blog will be the results of the taste test. Wish me and my little sausages luck!

And Merry Christmas! xoxoxoxoxo

Christmas Treats and More Snow

We recently had some friends over for dinner and instead of Christmas cards I made them these tasty treats...



I wrapped them up in little boxes and tied a ribbon around it. Very cute! And easy to make as well. It was actually really fun rolling them in the different coatings. Would def make again. In fact, if you work in my office and read my blog, don't be surprised if you see some of these come your way!

The weather has been very very snowy. I like it! I think it is pretty and if it has to be cold and miserable out at least it is doing something interesting and turning everything white.



Can you spot the lake in this picture?

Chickens in Snow!

I know there are much more exciting things to post about, like our awesome trip to California, but I am working from home today and took a little break to take some pictures of my girls. In the snow! They are a little freaked out by it, but they are managing.