The Draught Sausage Adventures, cont.

Regular perusers of this chronicle will know that on Sunday morning I failed to find a door snake at Kmart. On Monday morning I complained, en blog. By Monday evening I was committed (a) to making my own door snake, and (b) to ensuring that, henceforth, the once and former door snake be known as a draught sausage by all my heirs and successors unto the seventh generation. Hear that, heirs and successors? Draught. Sausage.

Amongst my worldly goods, I keep a geriatric and slightly temperamental Singer (TM), whose temperamentality I forgive - nay, even rejoice in - because the cranky old beast fell into my arms for a song (a $10 song, to be precise) some years ago at the Rozelle markets. My Singer was unusually obliging this evening, and in five minutes flat, between putting on the kettle and dissolving the cocoa, we had whipped up this rather smart draught sausage case:


A fine beginning to homemade-draught-sausagedom, but as any draught sausage connoisseur knows, a draught sausage case alone doth not a draught sausage make. No ma'am. This draught sausage case needs a-fillin'.

Being something of a lentil-fancier, my thoughts had naturally turned to lentils. Being congenitally miserly, they had then turned to rice, which is cheaper. Copper Witch wisely pointed out that lentils and rice both favour small creatures, or that small creatures favour lentils and rice, and my draught sausage was at risk of being eaten from the inside out. She suggested sawdust, as the lesser of two weevils. (Ha! Get it? Weevil pun, and there are plenty more where that came from. Just ask me. Please.)

But sawdust? In this day and age? When furniture is made out of recycled lemonade bottles and houses begin as prefabricated plastic pallets? I can't remember the last time I saw sawdust. The pet supplies shop down the road sells woodshavings - by the box - but sawdust, no.

Happily, premature Winter seems to have gone into recess, so the draught sausage's services are not immediately required. But I dare not presume, in these strange southern climes, that the weather will continue to be undraughty. Meanwhile, I will hunt high and low for sensible quantities of sawdust and continue to audition other substances for skills in draught-sausage-stuffing and weevil-retardance. The homemade draught sausage will prevail.