Day 10–500 Words

Sausages.

For breakfast and with mashed potato for supper, they can be very nice. I used to really enjoy sausages for my dinner and occasionaly with a full English fry up. Those days are far behind me now and I really don’t miss the British banger at all.

Whilst grocery shopping recently in our local Waitrose, I noticed the sausages in the chiller section. There is a huge range of artisan and run of the mill sausage on offer. None could tempt me and I begun to ask why that was. Our youngest daughter took the vegan lifestyle a few years back now and I have to say that much of the food she eats is rubbing off on us. My wife and I regularly eat vegan with her and it’s actually very good. Now I say that, but with a few exceptions. Sausages being one of them, I have no idea what they do during the manufacturing process, I say manufacturing process as they are devoid of any real flavour and they are machined to perfection. No misshapen ones, all exactly the same length and circumference, same colour and frankly the same bland taste.

Thankfully my wife is a dab hand in the flavouring and seasoning department and manages to wrestle some flavour into these indolent pieces. I worry about all the preservatives in such a sausage, so called, and find myself questioning whether we are facing into an all together different future from a medical standpoint. Surely all these preservatives, once the reserve of processed meat foods, are what we should be avoiding. Vegan meat for vegan meats sake. Shouldn’t we be seeking to eat plants as they are and stop appeasing our taste buds and visual cues by calling things by their meat relatives name?

I’m all in favour of more plant food if it tastes good and is devoid of the manufacturing required. Let’s have some odd shapes, decent flavours, much less preservatives and maybe even some artisan ones being made and sold at the Vegan equivalent of the farmers market. What might we call that? Vegan Fair, feels pretty good and not at all pretentious nor attempting to be anything it isn’t. I’d go along and try the wares, I’d even go so far as to taste a vegan sausage along with some plant based chutney.

I have to admit that I’d welcome a nice piece of cheese to go with it. I know, I know. The other thing is, vegan sausages don’t even work with a beer the way they used to when served on a Sunday on the bar of a local English pub, spicy and salty and going down a treat with a nice pint of beer. Oh and no pork scratchings, they don’t have skin on the vegan equivalent, so there is none to be had anyway.

So a life of plant based food awaits us all if we are to save our planet. I won’t be sad if we save the planet and create a tasty sausage and enjoy with a nice buttery mash, oh there I go again. I know, I know.

Sausages. Walls…..