What a day..

I thought my furniture moving days were over in college. I had a job as a mover in San Diego when I moved there to pretend to go to SD State. My intention was to spend 2 years at city, and transfer into state. The beach, jet skiing, Tijuana and a pile of friends totally jacked that plan up. Anyway, the worst moving day ever was moving an upright piano into a 2nd story condo. Immediately after that move, i think the company folded because I never got another check.So, back to today... We spent the day rearranging 3 bedrooms in our house. We ditched the guest room, split Conner and Hunter into Their own rooms, and moved Brandon and Keenan into what used the be the guest room. And ridiculously enough, the second largest room in the house. The older boys are at a place where they need their own space and B & K don't mind sharing. Plus, I'm building them a sweet loft/clubhouse/hideout in their room. maybe I'll post a pic when it's done. Kier was amazing. She schlepped more shit than a Sherpa today, had a great attitude all day long and never complained once. Which is more than I can say for myself... At least on the complaining part...

What is kolbasz you ask?

Kolbasz is the Hungarian word for sausage, not unlike kielbasa in poland, except way better and has a ton more flavor. My family has been making Hungarian sausage for as long as I can remember and probabaly more generations back that I could even figure out.

It's something I learned from participating in the process ever since I was about 12 years old. My family would get together every winter and make massive batches of smoked Hungarian sausage although my average batch now is 20-30 lbs due to the limited size of my smoke house. People would literally put thier "orders" in a year in advance to get a link or two of our paprika and garlic laden masterpiece. It seriously has a cult following among our friends and family. That gives me a great sense of pride.

You'd be surprised how fast a few hundred lbs. of sausage can vanish. Anyway, I think i'm at the very least, the 5th generation sausage maker in my family. My sons (i have 4) have shown an interest in working the crank on the stuffer and loading the smoke house so it's safe to assume that the tradiditon will live one.

I just finished the last batch of the winter a couple weeks ago (you can only make it when its COLD outside, otherwise the meat will spoil before it has time to cold smoke and cure properly). It's all old school, old world technique and the stuff will last indefinitley (like jerkey) without preservatives, fillers, additives, chemical preservatives or any other stuff you wouldnt wan't to be eating anyway...

All bets are off!

I just had a thought. Given my sometimes (most of the time) wacky sency of humor, there's alot of stuff I cant really share with some friends and coworkers. You know, the whole HR thing. Well, here's a perfect place to dump some of my favorite stuff, in a totally neutral "green zone". That's pretty cool.

You never forget your first time...

Okay, so this is my first post. I guess that makes me a blogger now. woohoo. It is kinda cool to have a little space on the web to dump my thoughts, random links, goings on, etc. I'm not sure how often I'll update this, but i anticipate that this wont be the first and last time.