The Strangest Thing I've Eaten Is...Blood Sausage
Flo's mom is quite a cook. On our second day at the Barthelemy's
house, we made blood sausage. Late in the afternoon Bryan, Joel (Flo's
dad) and I started chopping onions and cutting pork off of ribs. This
lasted for about 2 hours and ½ bottle of rum. After dinner, we took
the onions and meat down to the basement and threw it into this huge
cauldron with some spices. Then Mme. Barthelemy produced a garbage bag
full of pig blood. This was strained into the pot, a slow, messy
process.
While the blood began to heat, we stretched out the pig intestines
into which the bloody muck would be spooned. It was totally dark
outside at this point. The basement (the cave, as they call it) is
cool, damp and poorly lit, the rusty lanterns casting a yellow pall
over us as we sat around the bubbling pot of blood, taking turns
stirring. Joel passed around glasses of a homemade cherry liquor and
we sipped and stirred and stared into the thickening soup.
When it tasted just right to Madame, we started spooning the blood
into the intestines, then tying off sausage-size sections with twine.
This was a fairly long process. The iron-rich smell of cooked blood
was getting a little thick in the cave and I was anxious to be done
with it. When this was finally done, the bloody cauldron was rinsed
out and filled with water in which to boil the strings of sausages.
The basement looked like a murder scene. We had blood on our hands,
there was blood on the floor, on the table, on knives and spoons.
Scenes from Scorsese and Tarantino films flashed through my mind as
the blood was sopped up with sponges and rags. I washed my hands
outside, but when I came back in, there was still some sticky blood on
my wrists (out, damned spot!).
After about an hour, the sausages were finally done, i.e., when they
could be poked with a pin and no blood ran out. It was well after
midnight when all that blood finally coagulated and we fished the
sausages out of the pot.
It occurred to me the next day at lunch that making blood sausage
before tasting it for the first time may not be such a good idea.
Looking down at that fat, black-red sausage link, I couldn't help
remembering what it was and wondering why in God's name we were eating
it. But I did eat it, in small bites with my mind running Woody
Guthrie songs in fast speed to avoid gagging. So long, it's been good
to know ya, (bite) so long, it's been good to know ya...
After surviving the meal, Joel pulled out a 21-year-old homemade
grappa and poured me a glass. He showed me how little of the bottle he
had drank in 21 years. I felt I was being rewarded for not throwing up
the sausage we had worked so hard on.
--Michael
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