Reprise with sausage

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, October 14, 2009—

WERE IT ONLY BETTER for me — more healthful, I mean — I would happily eat sausage twice or three times a week. I don't go as far as my Slavic son-in-law, who leads his family in The Sausage Dance — they clasp hands and do a slow ring-dance around the platter, set on the floor, chanting sau-sage sau-sage we are going to eat — you. But I do love sausage, have since childhood, when we made our own, the best thing (and one of the few good things) about pig-butchering time.

I wrote recently about Franco Dunn, our Sausage Guy at the Healdsburg farm market. The protein trifecta there, Saturday mornings, is Franco for sausage; The Fish Guy for, well, fish; and Pug's Leap for cheese. (There are other protein pushers, from butter to beef, but I haven't really explored them.) Tonight Lindsey pulled the rest of yesterday's polenta and red sauce out of the refrigerator, and a package of little sausages, I no longer recall what they were called, from the freezer, where to tell the truth they may have spent a teeny bit too much time.
They were elegant things, say half an inch in diameter and six or eight inches long, and tasted strongly of herbs, especially thyme. A French model, a saucisse. They made you stop and taste and think, and I like food that does that. Green salad, of course.

Nero d'Avola