When I was a kid in the '70s, it seemed like these were always around the house... These were known as "dad's food." See, my dad played music on the weekends, most of the time... There was the occasional weekend where his band didn't have gigs... On some of these weekends, the family would entertain company... and by "entertain," that's what was going on... a lot of laughter, music on the stereo, booze, more laughter... Other weekends were more toned down - my brother and I getting into whatever we could get into (we had air hockey, pinball, board games aplenty... and plenty of things to evoke creativity, as well)... Anyhow, we'd be upstairs in our room, or downstairs in the basement, hangin' out, and Mom and Dad would hang out on the couch, watching television... On Saturday nights, Monty Python's Flying Circus came on PBS at 11pm and then this fairly-new comedy show on NBC called Saturday Night Live would start at 11:30...I wasn't always allowed to stay up and watch tv with them, but more times than not, I would (and more times than not, I would fall asleep before SNL was over - usually from exhaustion after rollicking through the neighborhood all Saturday with the other neighborhood kids).
Enter "dad's food."
We always had a lot of food around the house - we were a family of eaters, for sure... There were certain foods that we, the kids, weren't allowed to eat... Most notably things like Mom's "Fruzen Glaje" and "Turtles" (I'm sure my brother could add some things to this list, but I'm just remembering the things that I always got in trouble for sneaking and eating) and "dad's food," which usually consisted of Chicken in a Biscuit crackers, those anchovy things packed in a can with the key on them, and these peculiar little sausages... Penrose "Hot" Sausages, to be exact. At one point, Dad let me try one... At the age of eight, I was not impressed... They were so... so... sour, or something... In fact, I was so not impressed, I think I cried with disgust at the taste... I mean, what did I know? I was eight. However, a few years later, I was offered another chance to try one. My last attempt to eat one was immediately brought back to mind with one whiff of the vinegary solution the sausages sat in... but I was going to have another go. This time, the results were much different (I had recently developed a thing (thanks to my brother) for salt an vinegar potato chips, so that's probably where the "tolerance" came from)... I bit into the sausage and... wow! Yummelicious! Not "hot" at all! Not nasty! Tasty! What a treat (for my tongue, not my ten year-old arteries)!
Time moved on, and I got to experience them several more times over the years of Monty Python/SNL/Double Chiller Theater (with Fritz the Night Owl) Saturday Nights... and then... it just kinda stopped... The Penrose quit making their appearance at the household... I had thought that they were no longer even made, anymore...
Recently, a friend of mine brought up "these little pickled sausages" that he used to eat back in the day... "Penrose! Hell yeah!" I replied. Over the next couple days, I began to get a craving for the little sausages in the vinegar pickle... After trolling around the newly revamped Kroger (that now takes up an entire city block - HUGE, I tell ya), Topeka! err... Eureka! In a little corner of the new meat department... there they were... I bought two jars of them. When I got to the car, I opened a jar and the pungent smell immediately transported me back to the '70s... One bite into that little sonofabitch and it was late Saturday night in front of the tv with my family, all over again.
It's funny how a little thing like a pickled sausage can make you feel so good, sometimes.
EDIT: I've gotten a lot of hits dealing with these lovely things... if you'd like to order some, you can do it here. They're a little pricier than they are here at the local grocery, but for those of you with no access to them, I guess it's a small price to pay.
