Family Recipes.  Most families have them.  Some families share them. 

We have several family recipes in my family.  One of my favorites is my Uncle Jim's sausage recipe. If you have ever tasted homemade sausage, you would never be satisfied with store bought again.  My aunt & uncle would serve sausage when we visited.  They prepared it when they butchered hogs and had it canned.  I don't know the details of that, but there was a canning facility not too far away where you could take things to be canned in metal cans, mostly vegetables.  I was never allowed to go. Anyway, my aunt would open a can, slice it, and brown it in a skillet.  Yummy!

One time when we were visiting, butchering was underway.  This was done just outside the house by the spring house.  Pans were scattered around with pig parts in them.  Tongues here, feet there. I mainly remember just trying not to get in the way.  It was a task that had to be completed fairly quickly so that the meat wouldn't spoil.  So, youngsters were discouraged.

Several years later, I asked my uncle if he could give me the recipe.  And he did!  Here it is, exactly as he dictated it:

50 pounds of ground pork (shoulder, loin)
13 ounces salt
3 ounces pepper

That's it.  I also remember that he recited this from memory; and when he started with "50 pounds," my Aunt Sarah admonished him, "Oh, Jim!" and said that I wouldn't want to make 50 pounds of sausage!  His reply was that that was the recipe and the only way he knew to tell me.