Extra Chapter 2 : Sausage Making

The first snows of winter are here. The housewives have returned to their own homes and we are to face three months of family time.

This is the first time since I have been reborn when I feel that the house is just… empty.

Where are all those noisy kids with their noses running snot all the time?

Where are all those gossiping hags with their venomous tongues?

Why do I feel like they are already a part of the family?

Being used to call them “aunt” is a big factor in that, for sure, but shouldn’t the reincarnated me have a colder heart?

Well, all family stuff impacts me pretty heavily, so let’s focus on the disgusting task ahead.

Yes. Disgusting.

Because today is sausage-making day.

Sausages are very useful. They are easy to make, full in calories and easy to preserve.

But goddammit, isn’t it GROSS to see how they are made?

I mean, father just came home with a whole pig on his back. And it is a WHOLE PIG. I mean over 300kg of pig. It isn’t even gutted.

Of course, maybe I should be more amazed by the fact of him being able to carry this monster of an animal on his back, alone.

But this is a world of swords and magic. I was prepared to see superhuman feats of strength from the very day I was born.

Also, the floor is full of pig intestines now.

Because the organs are relatively small, mother has taken then in buckets. But the intestines are just so much, and so big…

She used it.

Yes.

Our bathtub.

She used it to store the pig’s intestines.

I barfed when I saw that, but brother and sister are looking at the scene as if they had just seen Disneyland.

For Christ sake! Poop brother I can understand, but sister?!

Sister… are you poop sister as well?

Anyhow… It’s disgusting.

Oh gods…

They are turning them outside out. The pig’s intestines.

Mother has just chopped them into big pieces, each around forty centimeters long. And now she is turning them outside out.

Dong world! Why do you do this to me??!

I couldn’t see this scene anymore, so I just ran to the living room and stood there.

Not much later sister, father and even Jacen where happily going out with our tub full of intestines.

For all I understand they at least have the decency of cleaning the intestines before preparing them to eat, so I guess they are headed to the river.

Meanwhile mother is cleaning the kitchen from all the blood and feces.

I can hear she humming happy while throwing buckets of water to wash all the shit away.

There, she is done.

“Al! Where are you sweetie?!”

I am here, poop mother.

“Oh, there you are. Come, help Ma with slicing the meat. We have a lot of work to do before you father comes back home. Can you imagine? A whole pig! We will have meat to eat all winter!”

…. will our kitchen smell like pig intestines the whole winter as well?

Aaaah… there is just nothing I can do, is there?

This is the kind of world I have chosen to be born in. World, I don’t even know if you have a name since no one in the village seems to even know what a map is. But from today onwards, I name thee Dong World the First!

Anyway.

Last winter we didn’t have so much meat and I wasn’t really seen as helpful, so mother made the sausages all by herself.

But this year I will have to help with everything.

I don’t know if I should regret making myself useful or not.

No. Let’s think on this as a life lesson on how to cook properly. I will have to live on my own someday, won’t I? It’s not like I pretend to depend on women to have my meals.  So I need to know everything about how to cook properly.

….. no I really don’t. Since one of my powers is not needing to eat anything to survive.

But I like to eat!

That’s it! Let’s take this as a lesson on how to make good food, so I can eat good food!

***

At the end it took us over two days to get all that meat processed and prepared. We even had to host a barbecue, or some of it would spoil.

300Kg of meat, it is just too much for a family of five to prepare.

Of course, the first thing we did was to cut it in big pieces, while father went back to wherever he took the pig to collect a portion of it’s blood. He intends to do black puddings… also known as blood sausages. 

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After that, as father and Jacen took out the pig’s skin and fur, me and mother cut the organs.

The throat, stomach, bladder and intestines were double-washed and turned outside out. The gallbladder was just too smelly, so mother threw it out.

The liver, heart, tongue and lungs were made into very thin cut meat, and then mother put sister in charge of beating the hell out of it using a huge stone mortar with wooden pestle we had in the house.

Really. That thing is freaking HUGE. It was at least one-meter-high and the pestle probably weighted over twenty kilos. I used to think it was for decoration only, but it seems to be useful.

Sister was done with it in a moment, but that was just a small part of the whole process.

The kidneys, brain and head (except the nose and ears) mother washed and put in a stew. We would eat it at lunch. Better saying, the family would eat it.

I may have decided to accept this dong world, but eating a pork-head stew full of brains, eyes and whatnot is just too much for me.

The rest of the day we spend separating the lard from the meat, cutting it into pieces and smashing a massive amount of salt over everything.

Dinner was blood sausage and vegetables. I was actually curious about the taste, since I never ate them in my previous life. My family liked them when I was little, but I guess I used to find them gross. They are weirdly tasty.

The first day’s night was dedicated to make the mixed meats sausages, since the organ meat used in the sausages would go bad very fast if they didn’t make them that same day.  

Mother had father operate the stone mortar all night as she and sister prepared enormous amounts of meat, lard and spices. Those would be grinded as ground beef in the mortar, and then put aside.

Me and Jacen just couldn’t keep ourselves awake, so father put a bundle of straw in the Livingroom and we slept there.

By morning they had prepared all of the mixed-meats sausages already, so the three of them enjoyed a few hours of sleep with me and poop brother.

Then, by morning we had one of the sausages for breakfast.

It wasn’t easy for me to eat it. It surely was easier than eating the pork head stew from the other day, but still… well, it was delicious in the end, so I cannot complain much.

We expended the whole of the second day mashing different combinations of meat, lard, spices and other meats together, in order to make a lot of sausage.

Me, mother and Jacen would cut the meat into small pieces, while father and sister would mash it into a pulp.

Then, when it was all mashed nicely, we all would take pieces of intestine and shove the meat inside of it with funnels, making nice and plump sausages.

We had pure meat and lard sausages, beef-and-pork mixed sausages, sausages with cartilage grounded together with the meat, spicy sausages, salty sausages, sausages with herbs… mother even prepared some with cheese rennet, so they would become fermented sausages. They look moldy, but aren’t all bad.

By the end of the second day we had finished the sausages and moved to the rest of the pork.

Mother prepared bacon and a variety of forcemeats.

She also hanged the pig’s legs in the ceiling, after making sure they were all very well dressed in salt. These would luckily become Ham.

At the beginning of the third day we had only a few meats remaining, but both mother and father decided it would be a problem to keep trying to make conserves out of them, since some are already starting to smell.

Usually this kind of meat would just be thrown away, but the people of this world are strong of stomach so they decided to cook it all. 

Of course, father wouldn’t take the chance of making everyone sick, so he used detoxification magic on the meat before preparing it.

It was my first time seeing magic, but it was a bit anticlimactic.

No big incantations, no great poems to rulers of the elements… just a bunch of low-tone humming, much like a mantra.

Then, a small glowing effect under his hand, and the smell in the meat was gone.

Mother cooked most of the meat, and even made a thick stew with the bones. Of course we couldn’t eat all of it, so we shared with our neighbors and friends.

It was a lot of hard work, but at least we could feast.

Then, of course, we had to clean everything we used on these past days.

So. Much. Blood.

***