Sausage Fest - Day 15.

If there's one thing we all love in this household, it's a good old-fashioned blind taste test.  You'd be amazed at the the number of like things we have found in recent years that can be tested blindly.  But, mostly, it's either sausage or champagne.  So, with three butchers within three blocks of each other who make their own sausage in-store, I was neither surprised nor confused when, upon asking Dad Eater what he wanted to do for dinner that night and he responded, "sausage fest."  So, off we went in search of sausage.  On the way, we decided to get two each of hot and sweet from each place.  We went to the bikini butcher first where, upon checking out the shopkeeper enthusiastically gushed "That is such good sausage, isn't it?" with such pride it was inspiring.  "Yes!" I replied, matching his enthusiasm, though I had not, in fact, ever had their sausage (why, oh why, am I so socially awkward).  We then trotted down the street to the long-standing butcher, the one that's been there for 50 years, Little Eater racing ahead of us and then racing back laughing and gleefully shouting, "SAUSAGE!  SAUSAGE FOR DINNER!"  Two large links later we kept on marching down to the Italian specialty market.  I let Little Eater do the ordering here.  He walked right over to the butcher counter and, when asked what he would like "Sausage, please.  Not too spicy."  Both the bikini butcher and Main Street butcher sell their sausage for $3.99/lb.  At the Italian market, the sausages go for $5.49/lb.  We headed for home and the day went on as it usually does.  When Uncle Eater got home from work and asked what we were having for dinner, he also understood, without further clarification, the rules of the meal.  Like I said, we really love our taste tests.

Sausage Fest, Eater-style.  And, Uncle Eater's foot.
Hello, foot.

While the guys hung out in the living room, I grilled the sausages without telling them what sausages came from where.  So, the taste testing was only truly blind to Dad and Uncle.  Little Eater had eaten his not-too-spicy sausage earlier.  We started by tasting the sweet sausages.  I sliced a small piece of each of the three, placing them in identical locations on all three plates.  Top sausage, middle sausage, and bottom sausage.  Everybody tasted and remembered but did not discuss their preference.  We then repeated the process for the hot sausages.  There was little deliberating and everybody picked their preferences.  And the winner was...
By unanimous vote, the oldest butcher on Main Street was our favorite sausage both hot and sweet.   The biggest surprise, though, was not that Main Street butcher was so tasty, but that the more expensive sausage from the fancy specialty market didn't make top pick on any list.    In fact, though their sausage was quite good, and I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating crackers, it was last choice for each of us with only one exception where it was my middle choice for hot sausage.  In the case of this experiment at least, more money did not equal better quality.