I grew up a hard-core carnivore. My family raised all its own beef, pork, chicken, and turkey. Many of the animals had names and were still referred to by them at the dinner table. I have warm memories of my father butchering (that's cutting up, not killing) meat on the big cutting board that also served as our kitchen table, while my mom, siblings, and I ground hamburger and packaged steaks and roasts.
Over the last 30 years, however, I have moved steadily away from eating meat, first because I didn't know its origins, the way I had as a child, then for health reasons, and finally, in recent years, for environmental and sociopolitical reasons. So, I'm not crazy about processing it in my own kitchen.
Ironically, Swedish sausage is mostly vegetables -- 10 lbs. potatoes, 2 lbs. onions, 2 lbs. beef, and 1 lb. pork -- and I think it's the potatoes that make it particularly unappetizing and messy to make. They also turn a disgusting gray when the sausage is cooked, lending it a putrefied look. It's obvious the Swedes eat to live, versus living to eat. If you need further proof, do a search on "lutfisk."
Our first Christmas together, Don hauled out the century-old sausage press passed down from his mom and cheerfully announced, "Time to make Swedish sausage." He set about peeling potatoes and onions and running them through the meat grinder with the ground pork and hamburger. Then, he pulled out the salted pig intestines (euphemistically called casings), washed them, and cut them to length. Next, he filled the press with the mixture, slipped a casing on the spout, and asked me to turn the crank. Soon, we had a pan filled with pudgy sausages, resembling a snake hibernaculum. Thus, was I initiated to a Hultman family tradition.
Given my distaste for everything Swedish sausage, I was happy to pass the baton to Sarah this year, who accepted it with gusto. She not only enjoys the process but also relishes the end result. The bland sausages are about as far from the spicy food of her birth country as you can get, but she loves them. She and Don were all smiles as they shared a fresh sausage for lunch. Meanwhile, I savored my yogurt parfait and bran muffin. :)
Maybe Swedish sausage is something you need to grow up with in order to appreciate. My Swedish grandmother bought it every year for Christmas, and I continued to like it even when I stopped eating meat. (As you noted, it's mostly vegetables.) We always called it "potato sausage" rather than Swedish sausage, but your pix look like I remember it. It's one of my fondest memories from Christmases the first 45 years of my life.
ReplyDeleteLutefisk, on the other hand, is just gross. It's only possible to eat if you're stranded by a blizzard in a hut in northern Minnesota for months on end and you've eaten everything else that can possibly be eaten.
We Hultmans like tradition, and my dad making Swedish sausage will always be one of them. Glad Sarah is eager to lend a helping hand! :-D
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