So, when I went to prep this week’s column, I went looking to see what I had on hand so I wouldn’t have to do a lot of shopping. I found more smoked sausage than I needed to keep on hand, plenty of pasta and rice and some veggies I needed to use up. That made it real easy to put some dinners together that didn’t take much time and I didn’t have to buy a lot for. I also really like smoked sausage. Fun fact: the longest smoked sausage measured 1,581 feet 5 in and was made by 3 German gentleman in Ilsfeld-Auenstein, Germany, on May 6, 2011. Smoked sausage is a smoked meat cooked via the indirect heat of wood smoke. Sausages are meat products consisting of minced or ground meat and spices stuffed into a casing. Some sausages, like Polish kielbasa, French andouille, and Spanish chorizo, get preserved by both smoking and curing. The smoke gives the sausage a distinctive flavor and extends the storage life of the product. Most sausages are a blend of beef, pork and chicken, but with people trying to eat healthier, you can find many different varieties, often of just a single meat. You can even find fish sausage in Britain! These days though, you can also get sausage made vegan or vegetarian that has absolutely no meat in it.