These photos are back to front because in fact initially James had the unpleasant task of flushing water through the natural sausage skins (i.e. sheep gut), and then Fiona and James were able to go through the, frankly slighly pornographic motions, of making the sausage (I have put the least embarassing photos on in case they both kill me).

There has been a long lead up to this moment, which started on Saturday night when the recipe search started. It was a true team effort - Fiona and James had done their research, Fiona and Vanessa managed to get the mincer to work when a sick dog required James to hurry off at the critical moment, and I (and possibly Vanessa) marvelled at the repressed homesickness that must have been residing in James and Fiona when their excitement at seeing a 'proper sausage' for the first time since leaving the grey shores of home reached a critical level.

Although I thought at some point James might suggest we should be blindfolded, in actual fact we just had four different types to taste which looked so similar we couldn't really tell them apart anyway. A fair bit of red wine had been consumed at this point so it all got quite confusing, however with my parents joining us to add their opinion, we were all able to agree on the same one as our favourite.

Three meters of natural sausage skins and 48 hours later and the final recipe was finely tuned and churned out into sausage skins, expertly stuffed by James and twisted by Fiona (with all of us exclaiming at intervals "Oh my god, they really are sausages"). Much debate followed, again aided by a fair amount of wine, and we have almost arrived at our final recipe - which I cannot tell you as it is obviously top secret information : )

Luckily tonight we are having a break from sausages as Vanessa felt up for a spot of poultry slaughter before they make a break for it and try and escape from Ormiston to face the wide open spaces (I have tried everything to convince them to stay but may attempt altering the driveway posts today). I am about to take the kids out for the morning as I believe some of the ducks are meeting their maker. I won't write about it on the blog as I am feeling a little ill at the thought, but I had better sign off or I won't get away in time.