Sausage

There ain't nobody that made sausage like my ancestors did. (period) All sides of my ancestral family were sausage makers. All the sausage that I ate as a kid was like they talk about heirloom tomatoes. The kids today don’t know what a good tomato is, nor do they know what good sausage is.

Charlie Two Crows has become a commenter on this blog, and has contributed greatly to my knowledge of my little world. The other day I asked him a rather pointed question, that he didn’t feel comfortable talking about, so he picked up the phone and called me. He said “I don’t know the whole true stories, but I know where the bodies are buried” I had to laugh, because that is and old expression that I use to say that I don’t know the whole truth, but I know where to find it. He went on to try to explain the expression. I had to stop him and tell him that he was preaching to the choir, and that I fully understood the expression and the meaning. But, some of the stories that I know about local history, that can never be shared, has some real bodies.

It is purely coincidence that his ancestral name is “Two Crows“, and my ancestral name, in Welsh, is “Crows Valley” (Bran’s Coomb). So it seems that we are birds of a feather in some ways. This time he has given me a big tip in finding information on my mothers family, “the Rathjens”. And I was able to find a photo of an old wall plaque from the @1920-30’s for sale on E-Bay. Unfortunately it had already been sold or I probably would have bought it.

My dad used to love to season, stuff, and smoke sausage, he had many recipes for smoked meats floating around in his head. He was valley wide famous for his thanksgiving smoked turkeys. My grandmother Ruby made the best bacon ham and sausage that you ever ate. I always asked her for her recipes she would reply that “there aren’t any recipes. If you want to know how to make something you’ll just have to come work with me and learn to make things like everybody else in the family did”. She would go on with her lecture that “people shouldn’t use recipes, because you just have to make things that taste good, and the flavor of anything changes by the weather and the season. You make an apple pie from early fall apples different that you make a pie out of late fall apples, and even different with winter apples. You just have to know how to make a good pie. There isn’t a recipe”. I’m sure that she was right, because she made the best food that you ever ate. One of my favorite meals was ranch raised fried chicken, mashed garden potatoes, specklety gravy, fresh picked cob on the cob with cows butter on it. And soda biscuits.

I guess that if I ever want to eat any good smoked pork link sausage for breakfast, I’m going to have to make it myself, because I know that a good tomato nor a good sausage comes out of a store.