Sausage amusements on ‘pause’…but swine dining continues

Baseball fans are missing the joy of the “Famous Racing Sausages,” the five big-headed sausage mascots of the Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team. They normally run a footrace during home games.

Here are brief biographies of the contestants who entertain the kids at the ball park and promote the food and drink concessionaires:

Bratwurst “Brat” came to the Brewers from Germany. He is intimidating to the other participants with his muscular physique. Brat relishes his aggressive approach to racing.

Polish Sausage came to Milwaukee after years of coaching cross-country in the hills of Warsaw, Poland. His race style is “slow starts but strong finishes.”

Italian Sausage is suave, making everything look easy. Most times, he doesn’t even break a sweat, sneaking out of the pack and into the lead of countless sausage races.

Hot Dog is an All-American favorite of both the young and old. People cannot help but love Hot Dog; his happy-go-lucky personality brings smiles to the faces in the crowd.

Chorizo Sausage spent many years training and racing throughout Central America. Fans love the strong and spicy kick he gives to running, his sombrero and his salsa dancing warm-up routine.

 Bad news from across the pond: The 2020 United Kingdom Sausage Week in October has been stricken from the schedule because of the ongoing impact of Covid-19.

Organizers of the annual “celebration of the great British banger” said: “We will take a gap year and resume for the autumn of 2021.”

Banger? The British press tells us that “banger” is a slang term for “sausage.” It seems that during World War II, the sausages had a lot of water in them because of the scarcity of meat. As a result, they used to explode, or ‘bang’ in the pan.”

We’re fortunate in North Carolina, for here, every day is “Sausage Day” – whether it’s part of breakfast or served as a banquet entrée.

Sausage was not invented in the American South, but it was perfected here.

Sausage originated about 4,000 years ago in the Mesopotamia region of western Asia, but the food is now consumed worldwide, according to Linda Rodriguez McRobbie of Atlas Obscura, an online travel magazine.

“Sausage was created by hunters to make use of every little piece of meat, so nothing is wasted,” explained Gary Allen, author of “Sausages: A Global History.”

Sausages may not be on the top of the list of today’s “healthy food” options, but Allen says: “If I give up sausages, I may live five years longer…but that would be five long years of being deprived of sausages.”

The rallying cry at Black Rock Bar & Grill, based in Michigan and now operating in five states, is: “Save the vegetables, eat more sausage! Sliced andouille sausage…served sizzling hot on our 755-degree volcanic stone.”

Thom Duncan, a freelance writer from Charlotte, is a huge fan of Southern sausage. If he could write a love song to sausage, it would be “a ballad of salty roasted pig parts. Sausage is remarkably simple. Fat, salt, meat, herbs; that’s all there is.”

Savor the aroma of Duncan’s grandfather “using the side of a beat-up spatula, gently rolling sausage links in a cast-iron pan, determined to caramelize the entire surface area of the link, in the quest for pork perfection.”

In North Carolina, nobody puts “better pig parts together better” than the family folks at Neese’s Country Sausage of Greensboro, which has been in business for 103 years…and has a loyal customer base in eastern North Carolina.