ChefAl had a really neat forum. The
subject of spiedies (pronounced "speedies") came up. I'd forgotten about these
treats from upstate New York. They consist of meat, usually marinated, and
often veggies too, grilled and put into a bun with a sauce, sort of like a Meatball Sub.
See examples at the "Cooks.com"
website
One of the entries is printed with Chef Al's permission.
By Darnell on Sunday, March 25, 2001 - 10:22 pm:
"I don't understand you giving us a puzzle and don't know
the answer. How come you expect us to know anything?
I tell you about them steedies, oops, speedies and sausage. I, Darnell Jellico,
am old but once I was young. We lived on a farm and made sausage. You
won't find our method on your home page but it was our method. When the weather
in November got real cold we have a hog killing. About 5 or 6 of Pap's farm
neighbors would get together and kill hogs. I won't go into the scalding,
scraping, gutting, and cutting up the meat. It's the sausage you are interested
in. We had no electricity back then so we had to grind the sausage by hand.
Guess who got that job, us boys. It was hard work turning the sausage grinder
all day by hand.
Me and Turner figured out a way to ease the labor a bit and speed up the work at
the same time. We replaced the handle on the sausage grinder with a pulley
off an old binder, jacked up Turners old man's car, used a short wide belt from
the sawmill and hooked it all up, rear wheel of the car and pulley on the grinder
with belt around both. We made it nice and snug so it wouldn't slip or jump off.
We started the car and when Turner put it in gear that sausage mill began to turn
at a feeroucious speed. I put a piece of meat in the grinder and zap it was gone
in a split second. Turner said we gonna need a hopper to feed that thing so
we built a hopper out of an old cream separator.
We tried it out on a couple of pieces of meat and it worked fine. Purty soon
the men brought the meat all cut up for the sausage and we explained our idea. All
the women folks came also to pack and bag the sausage. Everyone gathered round
to see this sausage grinder get it on. Counting the kids there was probably
15 or 20 people crowded in front of the sausage mill/grinder. Mr. Matt filled
the hopper with two three gallon of meat cut into little squares about 2 or 3 inches
and Turner slid the car into gear, and just let it idle slowly. Well sir that
sausage came out fine and went right into the tub. Why those people marveled
and filled the hopper again. Old Hamp yelled for Turner to rev. it up a bit
and get the sausage made even quicker. Now they had about 4 gallons of cut
up meat in the hopper and Turner pushed the throttle wide open.
It was a disaster of monumental proportions. That sausage came out in a stream about
20 miles per hour. It hit Mr. Matt's wife full in the face and curled all
around her head and under her bonnet. She never did find her glasses.
The bench, where the grinder was attached, sort of bounced around and the stream
of pork got Lena, Mr. Matt, Florence and Nevie. Poor Mrs. Lillie May was a
little bitty woman and when the sausage hit her it knocked her down. Nearly
all the kids got covered also. J.R.'s pack of coon hounds came alive and just
about ate Mrs. Lillie May. Just about that time Newell drove up in the old
A Model Ford truck and he had 5 hounds with him and they joined the melee thus provoking
J.R.'s hounds into a real fight over the meat.
Well they was some kind of screaming and yelling, growling and barking dogs, a fair
to middling amount of cussing. Babies began to scream and rub sausage in their
eyes. Turner looked at me and the mess and said, "Lets git". We got.
