..And so it begins....

Meso...

Seven empty wine bottles and three empty beer ones in the yellow recycling bin later the recipe was complete.

Other vital ingredients which, when omitted, will create an inferior product include laughter, whooping and the very loud, extremely Bosnian music with the thumping Turkish rythymns producing vivid images of long, dark haired Balkan women with lithe hips swaying, eyes staring, dark, fixated on you....

and was the most likely cause for the incessant barking of the neighbour's dog..

I had made "pita" (a Bosnian dish with Turkish origins - dough stretched paper thin by hand with pork mince, onion and potato) and my brother in law's wife had made "pogaca" (a special type of bread).

We were set.

The four of us - my husband and I along with his brother and his wife - had begun our annual pilgrimage to our holy shed (a long way away) in our backyard to make our holy food.

"Meso" or meat in Croatian.

Sausages. 

Minced by hand.  Made by hand.  Intestine pulled over a plastic, approximately 6 inch apparatus in a very familiar fashion (men may identify with this) through which the mince is pushed through. 

Never knew making sausages could be so sexy.

Bacon. 

Cut with perilously sharpened knives, so edgy that if I was Angelina Jolie I could have filled many, many vials of blood if I had so chosen. 

Bacon lovingly rubbed with sometimes overly generous amounts of paprika, salt and garlic.

Hung up to be smoked the next day.

Pieces of bite sized fat with very little meat simmering in it's own fat.  The voice telling you that the ridiculously high fat content of these, well,  pieces of fat really, has sent the measurement for "will this make my bum big" completely off the richter scale silenced by the pairing of these divine morsels with pogaca.

Eat your fucking heart out Posh...

Letting the kids go completely feral until they collapse into their sweet smelling beds.  Mark was no doubt delirious no-one was there to tell him off for watching a particularly saucy part of a French film someone had taped on the top box, which he played over and over again.

I think he quite enjoys the bit where the French whore struts her stuff on stage.

And why wouldn't he?  She has very nice breasts...

It was a late and extremely cold night when the last of the sausages had been hung and we patted our full and bulging bellies.

A bone tiring, enormously long day yet somehow supremely satisfying.

The meso had been done.

The annual pilgrimage was complete.