It's Fun in Pioneer Village!!

Yes, our neighborhood is really called Pioneer Village. Here's a map of southwest Regina to prove it:

You'll notice not all of the neighborhoods have stupid sounding names. Just ours.

In Saskatchewan, you don't buy property. You actually buy a "homestead." So what better place to homestead than in Pioneer Village?

It had to be done.

Ok, so there are some civilized things about Pioneer Village. For instance, there's a bike path that you can get on just a block from our house which winds along the Wascana Creek, a smallish river lined with trees and parks. Where the trail hits our street, there is a nice big golf course.

Ok, the creek DOES provide a home for a vast array of wildlife, including hundreds of whiskered cute little muskrats swimming in it, but it LOOKS civilized, right?

Yep, they play golf up here too. It's the summer substitute for curling.

Eventually you leave Pioneer Village and things gradually get more metropolitan.
After about 3 miles, the creek opens out onto Wascana Lake...

...where the grand Saskatchewan Capitol Building sits.

Other things we do in Pioneer Village are make our own furniture. Here I am stripping down an old bedframe I've had for years...

"Huh. This isn't very fun. I thought I was in Pioneer Village, where it's FUN."

I always get excited when the paint starts to bubble.

I strip it down to bare silver metal, then prime it and paint it with brass paint...

...then I hit it with this cool Patina stuff that makes the brass in the paint react as if it's been exposed to the elements.

I painted an antique-looking snapdragon motif on both ends, weathered it with paint techniques, then varnished it with a paint-crackling shellac that makes it look old.


Gosh, I'm so craftsy.

Et voila! An instant antique bed, just right for our Pioneer Village homestead.

Ok, so one thing they don't have in Regina is Chicken Sausages. I know, it's like living among barbarians. I don't know about you, but R and I used to eat them pretty much every week in California. So after craving them for about two weeks, we decided to figure out how to make our own.

First we went to Canadian Tire, a national hardware store, and bought a meat grinder. Incidentally, it was in the sporting goods section, next to the 'woodsy' stuff. I guess hunters buy meat grinders and use them in the woods. What for, I don't want to know. Then we went to Oskar's Meat Haus and bought sausage "hog casings." I'm not sure I want to know exactly what these are made out of either.

As it turns out, people usually make about 100 pounds of sausages at a time, so when we said we needed enough casings for 2 pounds of meat, all of the German-Canadian Meat Haus Wurst-Meisters stopped short, stared at the wacky Americans in their midst, then sold us $1.87 worth of casings. So here, for your enjoyment and edification, is the saga of the making of our first homemade chicken sausages. Just a warning to the faint of heart: some of these pictures may be a little difficult to view.

Of course, you start by opening a bottle of wine. And it just gets better from there.

We cut five skinless, lean chicken breasts into manageable strips...

...feed them into the meat grinder...

...turn the crank...

...and here comes the ground chicken!

Here's where you mix the spices in with the ground chicken. We like to add garlic, pepper, garlic, salt, garlic, thyme, rosemary, and a little bit of garlic. Oh, and garlic is always good, too.

Now the fun part! We added the sausage stuffer attachment to the meat grinder, slid the casing on the end, and started pumping it full of our spicy meat.

Yeah, it looks kind of weird, but just wait!

Next, R started twisting the sausages into links, pinching and tying off the end of the casing like an expert. How does he know how to do this? I could only watch in awe.

Look! They look just like real sausages! The kind dogs steal in cartoons!

We're having a lot of fun with our sausages in this picture. It was around this time that we had to open a second bottle of wine. If you do try this at home, be sure to follow this simple calculation:
1 bottle of wine per sausage maker.

"Mmmmmmm. COOK, you SAUSAGES!!!"

Oh dear lord, those look good. And good for you! These are made from non-fat, skinless chicken breasts, with no added fat or preservatives: true guilt-free sausages. As long as you don't mind eating hog casings.

Whatever those are.

"Bon appetit!"

And so we come to the close of another exciting day in Pioneer Village! We'll sleep soundly in our antique bed, after, of course, we take the dishes down to the river and wash them.

Oh, one more thing. I have two confessions to make: One, I Photoshopped our faces into the "American Gothic" painting at the top of this blog. Those aren't our real bodies.

And two, we actually do own this sign, which you automatically get when you make a reservation at the Steak Pit in Bragg Creek, Alberta, where we had dinner on our way across the country. I guess we were destined for the frontier life.

Dorks.