About SausageFest.com

Sausagefest is about enjoying the diversity and artistic efforts involved in making and eating sausage. Sounds pretty simple, but consider how ubiquitous sausages are in all in our nations and how little time, history, or discussion there is about sausages.

We think its time sausages came out of the closet. Sausages have been enjoyed for more than a thousand years. If you go to the Odyssey (book 20, verse 25) Homer talks about blood sausage being grilled. Unlike many American banks sausages will be around for a long, long time into our future. Here at Sausagefest.com we saw the obvious need to address this lack of respect.

Sausages play a substantial part in our world. According to a 2003 Food Network show:

The US alone consumes 6 billion pounds per year of sausage
Germany seems to lead the world in most types of sausages with more than a 1000 variety.
And Alton Brown ,host for this show, suggested that sausage become the national food for the United States.

Alton has a point but it’s too US centric. Every major country and even the minor ones (and you know who you are) should have sausage as their national food. Consider this strong logical argument:

Could England be England without Bangers? No
Could Germany be Germany without Wurst? No
Could Louisiana be Louisiana without Andouille sausage? No
Would there be a Poland without Polish Sausage? No
Chicago would disappear without hot dogs? Yes
Milwaukee without Brats? No
Could Toronto exist without sausage vendors? No

Obviously we have compelling evidence that the fate of the world will rise or fall with the health of the sausage industry. And, you thought Sausagefest.com was just another trite website ready to tout all-male parties.

So now that we brought the topic up, lets clear the fetid air of sophomoric humor around the term Sausagefest. As my world wise nephew Rick Haering advised me some years back, “You know Uncle Kent, at the University of Illinois, Sausagefest has a whole different meaning.”

Most of the time Rick’s native intelligence allows him to overcome his natural Germanic tendency to state the obvious and make it sound like an insight worth sharing. But, given the nature of large diverse web audiences, it’s a point to address.

Yes, Sausagefest is a term that will trigger a variety of effects: snickers, derision, sneers, laughs, or a raised eyebrow. Still in all, it’s a term that doesn’t strike fear, anxiety or loathing. Local US slang generally accepts Sausagefest as a party or event where males are too much in abundance.

I did a recent non-scientific survey and found that all of the following major icons of the civilized world were seen in a more negative light than the terms Sausagefest:

Wall street
Financial advisors
Icelandic financial ministers
George Bush
Bankers (from any country with US types the most heinous)
Al Qaeda

So Sausagefest is a term, for the most part, for fun and enjoyment and Sausagefest.com is going down that road.

Our History: A Very Quick Overview

During a Christmas Eve party in 1996 we were into the final drinks of the after dinner drinks portion of the evening. We were barely capable of forming compound sentences but alcohol inspires many great notions.

Since we serve Cajun File Gumbo for Christmas Eve we talked about the sausage contribution to that cuisine. This quickly led to the larger discussion of sausages from around the world and how they are a vital natural resource. Its like wind power without the media fawning attached to the next Big Thing.

With a professional psychologist present we figured the persons attracted to eating sausage were those people who were not purist, vegetarians, organic farmers, health food Nazis, or squeamish about putting good tasting things into their mouth. This narrowed the universe of people down to a nice twisted segment of the population.

After that we just needed to find a special day that would appeal to this unique population of lost souls. In the US we have either not enough or too many three days weekends. Labor Day weekend seemed like a perfect time for a Sausagefest. At the end of summer, people who were still around their house on the weekend needed a reason to stay behind.

One can imagine this phone call...
"Sam, I'm sorry Patty and I won't be able to stay on your yacht at San Tropez this weekend, but we have this invitation to Sausagefest and it’s just too difficult to pass up the opportunity to attend this event."

As you can surmise, Sausagefest does not have any airs to appeal to the upper crustaceans of society.

So in our twelfth year of being, we have determined that we needed to reach out to the world, leave behind what was essentially a friends and family website, and make Sausagefest the Sausage Portal for the Free World.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sausagefest is such a simple idea what questions can you have possibly have?

But if you do have any, please contact me at: kentantonius@yahoo.com