Snags and Flies - one for the kiddies

Lao sausages are delicious. They come in all shapes and sizes and possibly even different flavours. So far to me they have all tasted spicy and salty and fatty. A taste sensation!

On side-of-the-road food stalls around here you see long coloured ones and short sliced ones and round balled ones and barbecued ones and fried ones and skewered ones.

Rounded balls of sausagey goodness

The food-like substances on far left and far right are Lao sausages on sticks.

 

Yummmm!

 

And then I saw them being made. It was at the "fresh food" market. It was a Friday. It was frightening.

 

At first I wasn't sure what I was looking at... big grubby archaic machinery with gobs of various coloured goo being forced into a funnel and minced into gruel.

 

Not sure where the red came from. Spices? Chillies? Liver? Offal?

 

 

More gruel

 

And then the guy who had done the mincing shoved the tub over to the woman who shoved the goo through another archaic, grubby-looking machine that forced the goo into what looked like very, very long thin plastic bags (sausage skins).

 

They started to look vaguely like snags

 

It was fast and furious and sausages were being produced at a mile a minute. This two-person sausage line was impressive!

 

And then they were packed for sale or transport or something...

 

The sausage maker (I wonder if that's what she'd write on her resume?) worked deftly shoving snags into plastic bags. But wait for the best bit! ...  and then she fished around in the bag to pick all the flies out of the bag. Big black ones. Easy to see I suppose. Not great for sales.

 

Pluck out those nasty little maggot-mothers!

 

Yep - let's just have a closer look at that, shall we? (I certainly did when I saw it)

 

Fishin' for flies

 

I am not particularly fussy about food hygiene (as past work colleagues will attest) but even I was off snags for a few days after this.  Then I figured that a few minutes on a barbie plate should kill off most nasties, (and surely 6 million Laos can't be wrong?) so bring 'em on!!

 

 

And I'm not even going to tell you about the fish...

 

Sushi anyone?