Sausages and quilts

This week's blog post is mostly about sausages and quilting, an unlikely combination I admit!

Firstly the sausages. A few years ago, Hutch, one of the British civilian employees here at BATUS went to great lengths to get a recipe for proper British bangers, he also tracked down a supplier for the rusk and spices and found a local butcher to make them.

Even then, getting them made was far from straight forward because the Canadian butcher refused to believe that the quantities in the recipe could be right, but eventually the first batch was made and they were a great success. From then onwards Hutch's little hobby has grown into a small little club of ex-pat sausage admirers!

Last month Hutch got head-hunted and left Alberta for a new job in Vancouver. As one of his sausages biggest fans, he decided to hand the reins over to me.

So last week, I drove down to Premium Sausage in Seven Persons, near Medicine Hat and placed my first order for 20kg. I will collect the freshly frozen results on Friday morning and I am already considering expanding the range to include leek and Stilton sausages too!

As you can see from the photo above Premium Sausage, like most of the locals, are very excited about Alberta's latest Canadian Idol winner, the third in only six series. Theo is from Lethbridge, a couple of hours away and so in the grand scheme of Canada, he's a local boy!

This week I have also be finishing my latest quilt which was a slightly more ambitious undertaking than the last one. It is made from more than 500 individual pieces of fabric all of which I had to cut. A rather tedious job!

My colleague Jenny said the colours reminded her of the American flag, so it its henceforth known as the American Flag Quilt. As you can see, when I completed it the cat showed her usual appreciation of all clean linen, by sitting on it. It will be her new favourite sleeping place until she has moulted black hair all over it and then she'll abandon it in search of somewhere cleaner to sit!