Sausage balls and old turkey for Christmas

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:01:00 +0000

We asked members of our Kitchen Cabinet to briefly share some of their holiday memories with us, and we're sharing them with you all this week. Tonight or tomorrow, perhaps, many of you will be rushing around your kitchens, stressed about the food you're going to serve. So take a moment with our Cabinet members to remind you that, regardless of what's on the plate, the table and who's around it are what matters.

From John T. Edge, director, Southern Foodways Alliance:

Sausage balls, made with Bisquick, rat trap cheddar, Jim Dandy country sausage, a little cayenne, and a little more sage: That's what the holiday season tastes like here, in Oxford, Miss. On my birthday, Dec. 22, Blair, my wife, makes a gross of the little orbs, shovels them in brown paper bags, and transports them to City Grocery, my buddy John Currence's bar.

Over the course of an extended happy hour debauch, I work the floor, offering sausage balls to all comers, while my friends alternate between pulls of whiskey, bites of balls, and inhalations of hot dogs, capped with Blair's chocolate-and-red wine-goosed chili. As the night goes on, the pot of chili disappears, the grease-splotched bags threaten collapse, and so do I.

Salon.com > Jessica Harris

Sausage balls and old turkey for Christmas