San Martin continued…….blackout

I am appalled to say that all the rest of the day is a bit of a blur. What I can remember is a lot of sausage making.

Sausage making is odd. The sausage machine is like an enormous syringe. The meat goes into a long cylinder and is then pushed into a long nozzle. The intestine’s length has been rolled onto the nozzle and as the meat is pushed through the nozzle it goes directly into the sausage skin. So far all well and good BUT getting the skin onto the nozzle is like putting on an very lengthy condom. That is still fairly ok but when the plunger forces the meat through the nozzle and into the skin you have to help feed it with your hand and THAT feels like you are helping someone take a crap into a 12ft condom.

In Ibiza 12 inch lengths of intestine are cut and fed onto the nozzle and each one is filled and then tied individually. To my mind it is an excruciatingly painstaking method. If they were to sit down and ponder the most time consuming method of sausage stuffing, then this is what they would have come up with. But that is my northern European hurry-hurry-hurrry-lets-have-sandwiches-for-lunch-instead-of-sitting-down-and-breaking-bread-with-our-companions-and-drinking-some-wine-whilst-we-are-at-it mentality and I realise as I think of how it could be done quicker that it aint about doing it quicker. Its about sharing time together, doing something together.

As I think of this I take yet another long messy gurgle from the porron and pass out on the floor.

I am awoken later to find the job complete – 20 kilos of black pudding and 160 foot long sobrasadas and everyone sitting down to eat the Arroz de Matanzas. It is now dark, especially inside my head.