Sunday, 16 March 2014

The Sun City Texas Italian Club Is Cooking!

By Ernesto Berturand


It is said that love might be expressed through making good food and the Sun City Texas Italian Club isn't any exception to this rule. For each Christmas holiday the custom of fixing homemade Italian sausage is definitely a justification for the Italian club members at Sun City Texas to assemble in the VFW building in Georgetown, Texas. It is there that they season the pork utilizing spices, fresh garlic together with parsley and grind the seasoned pork for stuffing inside the sausage casings.

For five years the Sun City Texas Italian club members have honored this family tradition. Although they come from all over the United States they all reminisce on their youth when they would watch fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers come together to make sausage every year right after Thanksgiving and just before Christmas.

With a manual meat grinding machine bolted on the dining table, family members would each take turns rotating the grinding machine to help make the sausages that had been uniquely seasoned by each individual family. The home kitchen was almost always rich in scents, a hustle and bustle, flavor testing and good fun. It is definitely an old custom in Italian households all across Italy that has transferred over to this country even today. In Italy, the butchering of pigs for the purpose of the preparation of holiday sausage was regarded as and still is seen as a community celebration as well as a valid reason to get together and socialize with relatives, friends and neighbors.

What a delicious custom the creation of sausage is! The sausage produced by the Sun City Texas Italian Club men and women is only made available to the club members for purchase. This holiday season the group created nearly one hundred fifty pounds of both mild and hot and spicy flavors. The sausage making group is made up of predominantly men and a single woman who washes the intestines utilized for sausage casing and chopping the onions. This lady also prepares lunch for the 20 adult men participating in sausage preparation.

The Sun City Texas Italian Club was formed eight years ago as a way to bring people of Italian heritage together and also include those who have an appreciation for Italian culture. The club currently has about 80 members. The group gets together often for cooking classes. Memories of family traditions brought from the old country, menus and everything that has been handed down family to family is why the Sun City Texas Italian Club gets together once a year to make Italian sausage.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment