sausages

This afternoon, the doorbell rang. When the Chef opened the door, he found the Fed Ex man waiting. All day, we had been hoping for a package. Here it was.

As the Chef signed for our beauty, the Fed Ex guy leaned his nose into the house. "Wow, it sure smells good in there."
"Thanks," the Chef said. I laughed as I sat at the computer, with Little Bean in the sling, falling asleep.
"Is that barbeque you have going?" he looked in, obviously yearning.
"No, it was breakfast." (We would have given some if there had been anything left.)
"Breakfast? What did you have?" the guy asked, perplexed.
"There was chorizo involved," the Chef told him.
"Oh. Wow." He shook his head as he walked down the steps.

Oh, sausage. You make me sigh too. Plump and juicy, the best of pork condensed, you inspire me every time I smell you to run toward the kitchen. Sausage, I will never be over you.

The Chef and I have been tweaking and playing with our homemade sausage recipe for months. I love it -- I have from the first batch. But that Chef, he's persnickety. If it's going in our book, he wants it right. Oh darn, that means more sausages. Tomorrow, we're headed to Don and Joe's for another bag of creamy white fatback and fennel seeds from World Spice. We'll stuff casings and laugh about it in the evening after Little Bean goes to bed. (But even she has been in on the fun of finishing this recipe.)

Can I say, as an aside, how arduous and rewarding it is to write recipes? After years of writing them, on this site and other places, I feel as though I am just now hitting my stride. The best recipes are like stories, imagining the space before the stove and sharing it between us. Our hope is that you will feel we are standing in the kitchen beside you when you read our book. We'll be off to the side, watching you, confident that you know how, but always there to grab something from the refrigerator if you need it. That's the tough work in these last weeks before the deadline -- making the recipes sound possible.

You can do it too. You can make sausages.

Whether squeezed into sheaths or slapped into ample patties, sausages make people happy. Flecked with oregano or twitching with chiles, every sausage has a personality. I'm not done exploring yet. I bet you're not either.

So, if you eat sausages....what are your favorite kinds? And what foods do you cook with sausages?