I Bagel You, Let Me Have Your Sausage

Some of the things that I miss most about the US are Italian sausage and bagels. Being from the NJ share city of Long Branch, where the population when I was growing up was 40% Jewish and 40% Italian, I know the quality of both foods intimately. Ron brought me back a dozen bagels and two pounds of sausage from IOWA. Would you believe it? IOWA? I think he said he had to look for both in the foreign food section.

What he has learned to do is deep freeze the sausage and then pack it well in his checked luggage. About six of the sausage were defrosted: three hot and three sweet. Those I cooked right away and threw the rest into the freezer. I did the same thing last year, but there was a twist last year. His luggage was lost for a day after Ron got home. Still, I ate the defrosted sausage and lived to tell about it. 
 
The bagels were bought the day he left, so they were still fresh. I slice them and freeze them here. The sausage were tasty and close to real Italian sausage, but needed a bit more spice inside. The bagels were surprisingly good; they are much better quality than we can get here.

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Paul Roberts Comments on My Sausage

Though I don't know him personally, Paul Roberts left this message on my sausage. "I take you mean the USA variety of Italian sausage and not ones from Italy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_sausage" Yes, the US kind. The last time we were in Milan, the only place to get the US type sausage was at one butcher shop, but we had no place to freeze it for transport/import into Budapest. Now that I have looked at your link above, I see they classify some salami as sausage also, which I was not aware of and there is an interesting comment. One of the salamis is considered peasant food since it will last up to a year. When I had asked about sausage in a restaurant in Rome, the waiter said "That is food for peasants." I felt wounded associating that comment to my grandparents, but now I understand it better. Speaking of which, there is an Italian grocery store here where they do have a small variety of Italian smoked meats and cheeses, but run by Hungarians. When I asked the "butcher" if they had Italian sausage he said no. When I asked if he could order it, he said "Next time". How definitive is that? Since the last post, I did consume one link of sweet. My stomach felt like a small hand was inside playing Chopin on my stomach wall. I swear I could see the little fingertips poking outward. Other than that, no negative reaction. Houston, we did not have a blast-off.

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My Sausage Was Frozen, Thawed, and Fried

If you are expecting some naughty post here, shame on you! After convincing Ron that he really needed to bring me back Italian sausage, the one food item I have not had for over six years, he did. My instructions were to deep freeze the packages, wrap them in aluminum foil, and then put them in plastic bags. Packing them in his checked luggage should have gotten them here safely. What I had not counted on was his luggage getting lost and being delivered the day after he arrived. The great sausage hunt was on. Rip open that suitcase. They were still cold or if they were a person, they would need to put on a sweater type chilly, but not even close to frozen. Googling food safety, the advice is that after two hours outside of a refrigerator, it is time to abort the mission, fail the test, give up the ghost. Six years without an Italian sausage for an Italian is like six years without insulin for a diabetic. Life is not worth living, if there is life at all. I fried all four packages; he bought a Wegman's brand of sweet and hot, Ginnelli's brand of sweet and hot, all looking so appealingly pink and tasty. Ron's solution to testing all food is the sniff test. If it does not smell bad or have mold, it is safe to eat, but I keep reminding him that botulism is odorless and tasteless. Throwing caution to the wind, I fried them getting gratification just watching them turn brown, listening to the sizzle as the fats leaked out into the hot pan, the aroma whirling into the air. I put all of the hot sausage, now cooked into a freezer container and threw those puppies into the deep freeze. Now that I have heated the baddies out of them, I am try freezing the rest to death trying to beat the odds. According to the nutritionist website, they can stay frozen after cooked for two weeks. The sweet ones are sitting in another plastic container waiting for me to build up my nerve to take that fateful bite. We had thought of having a sausage sandwich picnic in the park directly across the street from the medical clinic just to err on the side of caution, but realized that is the doggie park. Who needs the competition for my sausages?

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