Grandma Club

Be a Granny

We've gotten a lot of comments/emails saying you want to be a granny or want to get your friends together to do these projects. We love hearing you guys are inspired by our projects; getting others involved in these type of activities is the major reason we started recording out projects on this blog. We decided to create a little badge so you can show your granny dedication. If you and your friends participate in grandma club-like activities, become an honorary granny! Copy and paste the code in the box below to add the Honorary Granny button to your website or blog.

<a href="http://16sparrows.typepad.com/grandmaclub/" title="LWA"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3646/3464529700_6fa6a70178_o.gif" width="144" height="115" alt="Grandma Club" /></a>

We also have this code in the sidebar.
Keep tuned, we are working on project-based badges, ala girlscouts.

Making Sausage (Honorary Grannies)

Hats off to my friend Nikki who got together with a bunch of friends and made a shit-ton of sausage from scratch. Here are the directions she gave me for making Italian sausage:

80 lbs of pork shoulder, cut it up into good meat (no sinews etc.), bad fat (rubbery fat and sinewy stuff) and good fat (you know, the big slab hunks).

30% good fat, 70% good meat, grind them separately - the fat has to be ground twice to get it the right size, it must also be very cold before going into the grinder, and the meat gets ground once.

mix.

add salt, cracked fennel, red pepper flakes.

mix THOROUGHLY

cook a  bit to taste test

add more seasoning if needed

mix again

clean casings inside and out

stuff.

We were at it from 10 am to 6 pm.

that's a lot of sausage!

 
Images from the sausage party (oh, that sounds dirty).

Us grannies won't be doing this any time soon seeing as two out of three of us are vegetarians, but I'm so happy to see a large group of people getting together and spending time with each other this way. If you and your friends are doing grandma club adventures, let us know!

Roasting Coffee

A couple of weeks back, I got a call from one of my dearest friends, Elizabeth. I'd told her all about Grandma Club and the things we were up to; so when she was roasting her own coffee she decided to give me a call. According to Liz, the hardest part about roasting coffee in a cast-iron skillet on the stove is the smoke it makes. My boyfriend is currently considering roasting his own coffee at home, so it's nice to see the "old fashioned" way of doing it works just as well as the fancy-schmancy contraptions we keep looking at. Way to go, Liz! You're an honorary Grandma!