Sausage for Mikhail

One of the delicacies I can add to my extensive list of culinary delights is sausage. I learned about the simplicities of sausage cookery from my Japanese friend Yumi and decided I'd give it a whirl. I acquired some ground beef from a Narodni (Russian for falcon; Kyrgyz: shumkar), a grocery chain in Bishkek much like Food Lion or Kroger supermarkets in the states; only smaller. The ground beef is substantially more plentiful in its excess of fat than our grain and steroid-fed beef in America. But besides that there is little difference. I took my new purchace home and tossed it in the refridgerator. I forgot about it for a week while it sat between my older-than-the-hills mayonaise and harder-than-stone ТОКОЧ (Kyrgyz bread) before I found the time and the courage to brave the sausage. I took the solid beef from the fridge, peeled off the plastic wrapping and was immidiately struck by a putrid stench wafting around my head. Had the sausage gone bad? Is that why it smelled or did cold, uncooked sausage always smell? I didn't know! I had paid almost 100 som for this meat and was not going to let it go to waste, so, apprehensively, I removed the suspect portions of sausage, formed the meat-fat, along with black and red pepper, paprika, salt and plov seasonimg, into patties with my bear hands (much to my displeasure), and tossed them in my small frying pan with a smidgin of butter. I fried it up and took the first bite. Tasted pretty good. So I ate the other six sausages (they were small). Well! Crisis avoided for another day! But what was I supposed to do with my other suspicious sausage fragments? I thought about putting them outside next to the dumpster. Then a stray dog would eat them and be very content. I would be helping the stray dogs of Kyrgyzstan! What a hero I'd be! But if a stray dog eats raw sausage does the same thing happen to him as a homeless person? Does he get sick? And then I thought that I'd have to stand around for perhaps a good while guarding my sausage while I waited for a stray dog to arrive (you never know their scedules) so a homeless person didn't eat it. Then I'd be held responsible for killing a homeless person and could maybe go to jail! I didn't want that! What could I do? As I sat in contemplative thought on these shards of sausage, a thought groggily wandered into my mind. What if I cooked the remaining sausage and gave it to Mikhail? No one would get sick, would they? So that's just what I did. I cooked the final piece, preparing it just as I had before, and carried it (on a platter) down my four flights of stairs and outside to Mikhail. I felt much like a waiter at a five-star restaurant in my penguin-suit with an ivory napkin draped across my arm. When I arrived at my destination, beside the front door of the nearest magazine (convienence store for those literate in the American way), Mikhail waited patiently on a stool for a shopper to place a som in his hand. In my very broken Russian I said: ДРАСТВИТЕ МИКАЙЛ! ТИШИ ЮСТ? and then I handed him the sausage. Mikhail ate the sausage all in one bite! He seemed to enjoy the sausage because he then said: СПАСИБА БОЛШОЙ! And I said: НАЗ ДАРОЛИЯ! I had done my good deed for the day and I left the magazine saying ДАСВИДАНЯ МИКАЙЛ with a smile on my face.

ABOUT Mikhail: he is an old, blind Russian man. He lives somewhere near the magazine and walks to it almost every day to ask for the spare som from generous and compassionate visitors. He also knows smidgens of French which he was happy to share with me through his thick Russian accent. French such as: Aur Revoir!

FOLLOWUP: For those readers worried about Mikhail's and my own subsequent health despite the well-cookedness of the sausage in question: we are doing just fine and I have experienced no "rumblings in my tummy". I can't speak for Mikhail and you can't understand Russian. I have not felt the slightest twinge of illness and I have since visited the magazine where I gave Mikhail 10 som and we exchanged several as-yet-unconfirmed niceities in Mikhail's native language. I may never understand the words he tosses in my direction but, on a deeper level, we understand each other in the strangest of ways.