Monday, March 31, 2014

Cooking Up A Holiday Tradition With The Sun City Texas Italian Club

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 about five years the Sun City Texas Italian club members have kept this particular family custom. Regardless that they originate throughout the United States each will looks back to his or her earlier childhood days whenever they would delight in fathers, mothers, grandfathers as well as grandmothers joining together to make sausage each year right after Thanksgiving and just preceding Christmas.

Using a hand meat grinder bolted to the kitchen table, family members would take turns cranking the grinder to create the sausages that were uniquely spiced by each family. The kitchen was always filled with aromas, a hustle, taste-testing and fun. It is an old tradition in Italian families all over Italy that has carried over to this country to this day. In Italy, the slaughtering of pigs for the preparation of holiday sausage was and still is a community event and a reason to get together and visit with relatives, friends and neighbors.

What a delicious tradition the making of sausage is! The sausage made by the Sun City Texas Italian Club members is only available to members for purchase. This year the group made close to 150 pounds of both mild and spicy varieties. The sausage-making group consists of mostly men and one woman who cleans the intestines used for sausage casing and chopping the onions. She also cooks lunch for the 20 men involved in sausage making.

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.




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