"There Are No Two Finer Words in the English Language Than 'Encased Meats'"

Inscribed on the wall of Chicago’s (sadly, long gone) hot dog emporium, Hot Doug’s

Some fifty-odd years ago I started writing a how-to sausage book that never really came to anything—but, some forty years later, I finished the book. Or, rather, I finished a book.

In between, I had written—and had published—several other books. They all shared a more-or-less historical format, and they were all about food. Consequently, the book that fo…