A Sausage, A Sausage, Our Kingdom For A Sausage

"A Sausage, A Sausage, Our Kingdom For A Sausage", a bastardized line from Shakespeare's Richard III that has nothing to do with sausage, or food...or anything else that will appear in this blog post, to be sure; but if you have a disturbing love for all things sausage, England is the place to be. While it may not be the proported birthplace of the cased-sausage concept, we're pretty sure the English love for it surpasses, or at least rivals, many a throbbing hearts for sausage, around the world.


The English have many commonly eaten dishes that involve sausage. Sausage and mash (or, bangers and mash, properly); SMB (sausage, mash and beans, sop common they have an acronym for it); sausage casserole; sausage rolls (a flaky pastry filled with sausage meat), a meal of sausage, egg & chips* (a breakfast meal; chips are what they call thick cut potatoes, similar to fries but far thicker), to name a few.

In general there are so many kinds of sausages in the world, from meat varieties, to casing type, and variations of spices and fillings (we won't even get into it you can find out more here: http://www.foodsubs.com/MeatcureSausage.html). You could eat sausages every night of the week and never grow tired of it, at least if you were in England.

We have been to two grocery stores so far in the city where we are currently staying, Waitrose and Tesco - Waitrose is a higher end grocery, and Tesco can be compared to, in price-point relation (not in quality), at least, to a Walmart or Target grocery store. We located it in an area outside of city-center, where we have been spending most of our time.


The grocery stores in England are full of all manor of sausage, from regular pork sausages to kinds stuffed with anything from sweet chili, chives, apricots, and other assorted fruits, mustards, and even bacon. Yes, bacon. Applewood, smoked, dry cured bacon. Which was the first of our pick of sausages, in an array of endless choices, to take home. A simple store brand (Waitrose) yes. A great prices, as you can see 2 packs for 5 (roughly $7.75 USD), each package containing 6 sausages. Really all you can say about them is that they are delicious, the bacon flavor is subtle, and blends well with the pork flavor of the sausage. There's nothing really to find to complain about.

This isn't your Johnsonville sausage, either. These sausages are fresh and short on salt and preservatives (as is much of the food produced by England), which means they won't be able to sit in the fridge for long - but who wants food that lasts "forever" anyway? Fresh is best...and the taste...is amazing.
The selection of food in the grocery stores in this modest city (location private until we depart) is outstanding...you can find so many different types of cheeses (types we've never even heard of - and we have a culinary degree!), yogurts (with flavor combinations, and variety, you just can't find in North America), and specialty foods that you would have to go to high-end stores for - like products made of goat, and ewe's (sheep) milk (cheeses, milks, yogurts), all types of breads and pastries, fresh from the bakery...you walk into the grocery and it's as if you are visiting butchers, and bakers, and cheese shops. The prepared food is even of quality and selection that's unheard of.

Let's just say we're obviously impressed with the food here, it's quality, it's variety; meaning we'll be writing a lot about it until we gather the funds to head to other parts of the city and write more about history, geography, weather (pretty sure it's always cloudy with a chance of imminent rain in the winter though). It's too bad we don't have a refrigerator (yet?), is it?

*what are chips then? They're called "crisps" in England. Weird, hey?