I recently butted my way into a sausage making class hosted by the Portland Meat Collective. Why?

Because I thought it would put me out of my element and be cool. I was totally right.

This class was incredible. The instructors (Tray Satterfield and Camas Davis the founder of PMC) were knowledgeable, funny and excited to teach, the students were kind every time I poked my camera into their sausage-mixin's. The students were quite a mix of folks, too: one gentleman was a former sausage maker at Zupans, a few people were reformed-vegetarians looking to learn how to be responsible omnivores, one lady was there to learn how to make sausage so she could easily impress her boyfriends traditional Italian family... Pretty cool to learn about the motivations that brought everyone to the same space.

You'll notice a lack of faces in these photos — meat can be a contentious subject, and since I "butted" into this class I have tried to respect the gathering of people who welcomed me, despite not consenting to being plastered all over the interwebs with their hand-crafted-sausages.

I hope these photos convey the art and respect involved in this process. The students were broken up into 3 groups. Each group prepared 20lbs of sausage, either French Garlic, Chorizo or Mild Italian. The end results were ridiculously delicious.