Daring to do it: Sausages

For the January-February 2013 Daring Cooks’ Challenge, Carol, one of our talented non-blogging members and Jenni, one of our talented bloggers who writes The Gingered Whisk, have challenged us to make homemade sausage and/or cured, dried meats in celebration of the release of the book Salumi: The Craft of Italian Dry Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn! We were given two months for this challenge and the opportunity to make delicious Salumi in our own kitchens!

Yup.  Salami, salumi, however you say it, I say meat!  Part of me wanted to sit this challenge out.  I mean, vegetarian sausage I kind of understand, but...  I don't know.  I guess I just kind of felt like I wouldn't be doing the spirit of the challenge justice or something.  But I decided that I should do something, if for no other reason than to keep up with the flow!!  (That, and I really didn't want to leave my hostesses hanging...!)

So I made a vegetarian sausage. True, I sort of cheated...  but it still counts, right?!
I made vegetarian stuffed peppers for dinner one night, bat made far more filling than I had peppers for.  The filling was lentils, quinoa, carrots, onions, celery, parsnips, fake meat crumbles, tomato paste, garlic and seasonings.  Sounds like sausage to me!
I added a couple of eggs for a binder:

I then shaped the "sausages" as best as I could:

Since traditional sausage casings are both very not Kosher and kinda gross me out, I used waxed paper to "case" my sausages:

After a soothing sauna/steam bath, the sausages were ready.  And they held together well, too!

I can totally see how this challenge, and the recipes Jenni and Carol provided, would be a lot of fun for carnivores.  I can even say that my vegetarian version was pretty good, and I would kind of like to play with the idea more in the future!  I mean, if nothing else, what a great way to re-purpose leftovers, right?!  So thank you, Jenni and Carol, for challenging me to do something I would never have thought to do!
My fellow Daring Cooks, especially the meat eaters, really did some great work with this challenge.  Please take a look for yourself!