Sausage Factory

I had a lovely day yesterday. We didn't go anywhere, inf act we literally didn't leave the house but we had a good day together. Some friends came over to visit in the morning. He is an electrician and did all of the wiring in our extension. He came over to see whether we were ready to connect the power and lights in the entension into the main house. We are not far enough along and must finish the guest bathroom before the power can be connected right through. The bathroom has been used for storage for some months and so we must complete some other works around the place to use up some of the things in storage in there. There is insulation and boarding to insulate the shed roof. There is also wood and tools to complete the doorway and window 'hole' that connects the kitchen with the new room. So now we can priortise our next jobs. After most of the contents of the bathroom have been used up than we can continue with that room.

After our friends had left we started on our sausage making experiment. I really did start with photos but the batteries went flat after the first picture so not a great success. ANyway we had a hand mincer from 'back in the day' when we were first married. We had three small half shoulders of lamb, a breast of lamb and about 1lb of oats, plus spices etc. We boned all the meats and minced them all through the mincer for a first time. We then added salt, black peppar (lots) and pomegranate syrup (very odd stuff but I am assured by the husband that it is essential). I blitzed the oats in the food processor and we sprinkled them on the top as well. This was then all mixed togther and forced through the mincer a second time. By this time my husband has a right arm like Popeye with muscles a bulging. Part way through we minced 4 red chillies into the meat but made sure the mix it all thoroughly before we start stuffing the sausages. After the meat was processed we clean out the mincer and removed any stringy bits left behind. We then fitted, or attmepted to fit, the little sausage stuffing kit. This is essential a tube which fits over the mincer outlet. The skin is pushed onto this tube abd fills up with sausage as the meat is pushed through. Despite being the same make as the mincer everything was slightly too big. We cut down the plastic parts with scissors and left the blade out of the equation already.. I suspect that the mincer is so old that it is on Imperial measurements and the company that makes them has now gone on to metric. Anyway, some how managed.
Before we started stuffing we cooked a small amount of meat in a little pattie to test for seasoning. It was a little bland so we added some salt and tried again, just right. The sausage making itself was great fun. We tied up string after string. They are currently in a bowl in the fridge as I think they would benefit form drying out a little before going into the freezer. We did cook one big sausage though, as a reward for our hard work. It was very good but I am still not sure about the pomegranate stuff. Less may well have been more in this instance.
We have decided that we will save our pennies and invest in an electic mincer because this one is just to hard to operate alone, and not especially easy when there are two of us. We have found a superb one on Amazon, along with a book which looks quite good. I will link to it when I can work out how it is done!