Not a sausage!
Last updated: 15/11/2009 00:01:00
Sadly, sausages remain an infrequent visitor to the Fortress dining table. According to Mrs H: “They're full of rubbish! And the preservatives give me a headache.”
I know they aren't always the purest of meats. In fact, I'd rather not know what goes into some of them. I've heard tails of offal and goodness knows what else being inserted with a couple of spices thrown in to cover up the taste.
But I have been a lover of sausages as long as I can remember and I know the better ones often contain reasonable amounts of meat. In spite of this, the good old British banger rarely makes it onto the Fortress shopping list.
Imagine my delight when I arrived home from work the other day and the early evening headlines were preceded by a trailer for tea.
“Do you want sausages or chicken for tea? I found some locally-made sausages that have 90percent pork.” Mrs H said, before adding; “Or I got some chicken.”
I suspect she knew the answer. She continues to accuse me of not liking chicken ever since I plucked up courage to draw her attention to what seemed to me to be a rather heavy bias towards poultry on the menu.
It was no contest. I was like a child being offered a lollipop if I behaved myself.
“Well, I got them and the chicken because they were on offer as they are near the use-by date. So, which ever one we don't use will have to go in the freezer tonight.”
When she does sanction sausages for a meal, Mrs H does a pretty mean dish which includes a Guinness sauce. I was given the task of grilling the sausages. I turned them regularly, clutching them gently with tongs as if they were delicate ancient artefacts that would disintegrate if I was rough.
I paced around excitedly while it all bubbled away on the stove.
It wasn't my birthday, it wasn't Christmas - but I was having sausages!
I bore my plate to the table as if it was a velvet cushion holding the crown jewels.
As usual, Mrs H always pottered around for a few minutes before she sat down to her meal. Meanwhile I was tucking into it like a lion getting his fill in case the next kill is a day or two away.
Mrs H finally arrived and plunged a knife into a sausage.
“Are you sure these are cooked?” she exclaimed.
“'eir awight,” I replied through a mouthful of food.
She carried on for a few seconds before saying: “I'm not happy with these. Look how pink they are - and they're very chewy. I don't want to be ill.”
“They were under for around 20 minutes,” I protested. “The pinkness is probably due to the high meat content.”
But Mrs H remained unconvinced. She abandoned her sausages, and such was her insistence that we were at risk from food poisoning, I felt obliged to push my remaining sausage and a bit to the side of the plate.
Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
And there was one sausage over. Mrs H put it in the fridge saying generously: “If neither of us is ill tomorrow you can have it in a sandwich.”
To cap it all, when I arrived home the following day, the early evening headlines were once again put on standby.
“I hope that chicken'll be all right,” Mrs H said accusingly. “We didn't put it in the freezer.”
“That's not my fault, is it?” I replied defensively.
“Well, when I saw it in the fridge I did say: 'Oh Neyull!' After all, it was right next to the sausages, which you got out.”
And here's the rub. Eating the dodgy pink sausages had to be aborted, but the chicken that was past its use-by date?
Oh my, what a tasty casserole that was.