Sun-dried tomato and black olive sausages

There are few things that I have cooked that have given me more satisfaction for such little effort. Or to put it another way, I made my own sausages. January's Vegetarian Living really is a winner and I'll be blogging about trying more of the recipes but this really is the show stopper.

Two sausage recipes from Food for Friends: Modern vegetarian cooking at home were presented with a cute introduction. One was vegan and the other had that infamous 'vegetarian Parmesan-style cheese' that doesn't seem to be as wildly available as magazine editors suggest. Never mind. The vegan option 'Sun-dried tomato and black olive sausages' sounded better to me anyway.

I was expecting it to be a lot of hard work so I started my prep when Stephen was still at work. I made the mix (omitting, for some strange reason that I can't remember but probably had something to do with money, the truffle oil) and rolled up my sausages. It took five minutes. The most labour intensive bit being the weighing. Seriously, I thought, is that it? Yes as it turns out.

When Stephen got home I put some carrots into roast. This takes half an hour. There was much pacing. According to the recipe cooking only takes nine mins or so. And I was worried about the inevitable moment where it would all fall apart frying in the pan. Should I just stick to the oven? I decided to follow the recipe and hope. But I didn't need to. The sausages were immaculately behaved. An absolute delight to cook. Everything went perfectly and, as a bonus, the sausages took less time to cook than the carrots.

Once it was on the plate two things struck me. One was how lovely they taste. The other: how cool is it that I just made my own sausages!