Weapon Yum: A New Sausage

Remember the Fuck the Supermarket project? Operation Foodbox? The thing with the friends and the market and the box of fresh, affordable veges every fortnight? Well, that's still going. It's been a bit of a hit and miss, some of the boxes have been more useful than others, but as a general rule it's working out well and I'm pleased that I'm giving less money to the large supermarket chains. I'm still disgusted and enraged that it's this friggin' hard to obtain a box of truly inexpensive, fresh produce in Sydney, as it's hard to recommend to people that they set up a network of fortnightly bulk buys with friends who have the time, cars and other capacity to get to the market every two weeks. Still, if you can, do it. If nothing else, it really opens your eyes to just how big the mark up at the supermarket is.

ANYWAY. Long rambling intro aside, I had a vegetarian cooking experiment the other night and decided to blog about it. I was in the supermarket on my way to the Whoreganisation the other day, and I spotted a type of vegetarian sausage I hadn't tried before: Bean Supreme, a New Zealand brand. I'm quite fond of vegetarian sausages, especially the ones made with actual vegetables, but rarely buy them because they're just too pricey. I noted that these ones were predominantly tofu, which is unusual, and hence decided to give them a try. I rationalised the purchase with mental images of comfort food, and the thought that as it was the last day of winter I would have few opportunities for comfort food in the coming months.

Well, it's a good thing. These sausages? Not so great. I wouldn't say they were bad, as they didn't have an offputting taste and were edible... they just weren't anything special, and certainly not special enough to warrant the price tag. Bland, even for a tofu product. Even as a long time tofu lover, I'll tell you that THAT is saying something!

The meal consisted of potatoes, chopped and pan-fried, then covered with homemade vegetable stock and left to simmer. When the liquid was absorbed, I threw in a splash of balsamic vinegar and let the potatoes bubble and caramelise. The home-made stock is one of the best things about Operation Foodbox: it usually yields a batch every few months, which is then divided into a huge quantity of plastic take-away containers, stuck in the freezer, and used to cook pretty much everything until I run out.

The sausages were cooked with a mass of onions, then had some vegan BBQ sauce thrown on them. They were served with steamed snow peas, and a steamed artichoke each. Frankly, the artichoke was a bit of nuisance, but the downside of Operation Foodbox is trying to make use of the bizarre things that the people on market duty that week decide should be part of it. It's a pretty minor downside, and watching R (or "Captain Working-class" as his meal choices often suggest) trying to make sense of the first artichoke he'd ever eaten was quite worth it.

The sausages were just... meh. Taking into account the reduced cost of all the vegetables, they were stupidly overpriced and not worth it at all, and without the slatherings of sauce they would have been even more boring. I found myself wishing I'd spent the dosh on good old faithful Santiarium vege sausages, or better yet some plain tofu that could have filled that niche happily. They looked nothing, and I mean nothing like the picture on the packet. It's fairly standard for vegetarian meat alternatives to lie a little when it comes to illustrations, but when this picture houses a block of mush that has to be cut into separate sausages... well, that's a bit too far.

I won't be buying these again.