Welcome to the first installment of “Rich, that probably isn’t a good idea”.
It came to me a few weeks ago as I was strolling the isles of the dollar store doing some Christmas shopping (yeah…classy, I know). I spied a can of Prairie Belt smoked sausage.

I decided to pay homage to one of my favorite short lived food blogs “Steve, don’t eat that”. Unfortunately Steve’s interesting and hilarious blog was short lived so I will do my best to carry the torch forward.
So here it is in all of its glory…2 cans for $1

The list of ingredients on the back include items like mechanically separated chicken, chicken skin, pork skin, pork spleen, pork stomach, etc. Items like this may offend the timid eater but not I. I’ve always said that I’ll try eating just about anything once (yes, there was the one time in college but I really needed to make rent and I was assured that the video would never surface).

I cracked open the can and the smell hits me….uh, this doesn’t seem like it’s going to go well. The smell was a slight smokiness tinged with wet dog.Wait, don’t pigs have hair? Is it possible that they don’t “de fur” the pig skin be tossing it into the sausage vat? Maybe the smell isn’t really there at all. Maybe it’s just my brain trying to get me to reconsider my decision to go through with this? I mean seriously, have you seen my track record of life decisions?

WTF is the gelatinous goo that my “sausages” are swimming in? It’s an unnatural orange color…like it’s road cone poop or something. The meat sticks are all stuck together as if there is power in numbers and I have to sort of pry them out of the can. You’d think they would be anxious to get out of the orange crap.

It’s time for a taste. The texture is akin to cat stool. I’ve never actually eaten cat stool but I have had it squish between my toes on an AM stumbling to the can while in my youth. Surprisingly, they don’t taste bad. It’s kind of like a mushy hot dog or a Vienna sausage with some smoke. When I say it’s not bad don’t think that this means it’s good. It just means that I’m not spending the evening gargling with lye.

After my initial tasting I look over on the kitchen counter and notice a package of those little rye bread squares for appetizers. I get the idea that if this “sausage” is like a little hot dog maybe I should treat it like one.

Tada! I’m so serving these to unsuspecting guests at my next dinner party. You people are going to be eating spleen and a-holes alongside me! I think the new motto for Prarie Belt sausages should be, “They won’t kill ya but they probably won’t keep ya alive either”.