I really don’t like sausage. Like, not at all. Maybe I’m the crazy one, but something about chunks of leftover meat and fat collected from factory floors and stuffed into a clear intestinal casing just doesn’t sound too appetizing. Most of the time things I sweep up from the floor go into the garbage, so by my logic it would be fair to call sausage another form of garbage. I bet the Latin word for garbage was something like “saucsus”. Well anyways, guess what I spotted on my plate when I sat down for dinner tonight? Three long glistening (the intestinal casing makes for a really nice glimmer) speckled sausages. To add insult to injury, my roommate Natalie is currently on a week long trip in France so my plate was the center of attention; I had nowhere to hide and no other option (other than break my host mom’s heart, make the situation real awkward, and waste a poor pig’s life) than to eat the sausage.

The longer and the larger they are, the worse they are. These were probably 3-4 inches long and on the skinny side, so I had hope that they might be manageable if I really just dove in and embraced the garbage-loving part of me that surely had to exist somewhere. The moment I cut into the first one, however, I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. I had to saw at that casing to get it to snap and I didn’t notice the giant fat blobs until they were bouncing and squeaking between my teeth. But I put on a smile and tried to focus on how good of a blog post this experience was going to be. When the inevitable “do you like it?” came a few minutes later, I nodded and responded enthusiastically, speeding up my pace and controlling my face to make sure I didn’t accidentally resemble Emily Hobbs eating maple syrup spaghetti for breakfast in Elf. I was sawing, stabbing, and chewing like a lumberjack turned racecar driver. In fact, I probably looked like I’d been craving some good old sausage and no doubt my host mom made a mental note to serve it again soon.

I made a pact with myself that I only had to eat the middle of each piece. I could cut the ends off and leave them to the side (that would be weird, right? It would be like cutting the crust off of toast). Although they looked slightly more flavorful, that was where I assumed any extra casing would be hiding and I wasn’t about to take any chances. I discreetly shoved any fat bits I could spot into the same pile and covered it with my napkin when I finished. After washing my mouth out with the rest of my dinner (the beans, veggies, and bread I had all ‘saved for last’), I walked my plate over to the the garbage and returned those sausage bits back where they belong.