Homemade Sausage Making

We're just back from a trip to Chile & Patagonia and, Henny Youngman jokes (about tired arms) aside, learned several things:
---Longaniza is tasty. I'll have to try making some.
---salt-only cured bacon is, like the country-style pork products of North Carolina, an acquired taste. (...so I tried. Pass the water, please.)
---Spanish-style fermented chorizo, cryovac-sealed, is available in supermarkets in Santiago and elsewhere. If you write on your customs declaration form "commercially packaged food products," check "yes" on the "vegetables" and "meats" questions, and buy all sorts of canned goods and condiments too, the USDA doesn't seem to mind if you bring it home. Keep your cool when coming through the line. (Don't try this with fresh sausage, however.)

Oh yeah- - take your wife along. Please.

Nice to have you back Duck! We were wonderin' where "ya'll flew off to". Yikes, have you ever seen the round nematode worm trichinella spiralis beneath a microscope? The folks in Thailand really suffer with trichinosis as their favorite sausage is a raw pork product. It is a very painful disease and it's difficult to get rid of also. The worm embeds itself right into the muscle typical of parasitic microorganisms. Kinda makes one grateful for the good ol' FSIS eh?

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Eeew! Here's hoping they fermented this stuff right. (Now I'm worried.)

I worked for a guy, once, who had been doing consulting work in Malaysia and came down with "a parasite." I wonder if that was the cause. (There are so many bad ones lurking out there.) He was so sick that he gave up meat entirely.

We were working in Germany at the time, and he had me going all over the place trying to find tofu. ...you ever try to find tofu among the carnivores of Germany? It's about as easy as finding salad sprouts in a stockyard.

YeeHaa! Extra spinach juice in that smoothie, pardner?

I heard once of a scientist who was studying the trichina who was told by another man that he was stupid and insane and just trying to damage the sausage industry. The quarrel esculated to the point that the scientist was challanged to a duel. The scientist produced two sausages and told his challenger that one of the sausages was loaded with Trichina and the other was not. He told his challanger to pick one and eat it. The challanger backed down.

...a wise man, indeed. I hope he invited the man over, cooked 'em both to at least 185 deg F, and they enjoyed them.

(USDA recommends 160 deg F for ground pork, but why fool around.)