So it is 2013 and Pioneer House has kicked it off in a slightly pioneering fashion. Rather than relaxing and doing sensible things on our holidays Mystery DIY Man was forced to test out his christmas sausage making kit. I decided I might as well make some pasta to round the day off.

Making sausages sounded like a great plan, so we rushed out and acquired some meat (we went with pork). Raided the cupboards at Pioneer HQ (we’re at Mum and Dad’s) only to discover they had already been raided by the Surfer. Now, mincing chunks of meat is a bit of a grim business. Works nicely when there is no sinew but as soon as anything blocks it up the mincer creates pink slime. If you want to become vegetarian but like the taste of meat, I recommend mincing it up. That pink slime mush should sort you out. After a lot of cursing and a large amount of laughing we’d managed to mince up the pork, time for flavouring. Normally you need to put quite a large amount of fat into sausage mix to keep things moist. However since the fat kept getting stuck in the mincer we substituted it for 2 apples, an onion and a bit of old baguette. Add to that some salt, pepper and fennel seeds and we were good to go. Stuffing the sausage skins wasn’t nearly as entertaining as mincing it went without too many hitches except for a few blockages.

After all the dramas with the sausages I thought I’d make some pasta with the Mothership, turns out she got bored after the rolling of the pasta so Mystery DIY Man had to step in to help out. I started off with great intentions of making tortellini, but didn’t cover the dough so it dried out too quickly and I reverted to agnolotti. Still tasted pretty good though.

After all the food creating the family managed to sit down and enjoy a rather eclectic meal of pork, fennel and apple sausage with chicken, rocket and spinach pasta. Hopefully the rest of 2013 continues as it started. Happy New Years everyone.