I’ve long carried on a love affair with dubious meats.

When I was very young, my mom always kept bologna on hand. My sisters weren’t allowed to touch it because it was the only thing I would eat.

When I was in Girl Scouts, my troop always ate a sack supper the first night of a campout. My mom would get me a couple cans of Vienna sausages for that meal, and I felt like I had won the lottery.

But then my senior year, I took a bologna sandwich for lunch on a field trip.

The female friends I sat with were already well acquainted with that particular food idiosyncrasy of mine and politely ignored it. However, the guys I sat with that day told me in no uncertain terms that my sandwich, containing my beloved round steak, was made of floor-swept meats.

Floor-swept meats! What an insult!

Since then, I’ve heard it called even worse things.

But I also discovered that, while many folks eschew hot dogs and bologna in favor of hamburgers and deli turkey as they age, the principle of the hot dog remains the same. And it remains well-loved.

Sure, you may not eat bologna regularly, but you probably eat plenty of sausage, from breakfast patties to andouille to Italian links.

And hear me out: sausage and hot dogs are basically the same thing. We just changed the name, y’all.

Sadly for me, my husband does not eat sausage.

For many years, we just didn’t have it. I would cook ground beef crumbles instead of Italian sausage, bacon instead of breakfast patties.

Eventually, though, I began to miss my mystery meats.

I learned to buy sausages in frozen pucks so that the girls and I could have sausage biscuits while Zack had one with bacon.

And finally, after nearly 10 years of marriage, it occurred to me that I could probably find a recipe online that would allow me to replicate my beloved Italian sausage.

Turns out, I can have the flavor I have always loved without subjecting my loved ones’ guts to whatever goes into a sausage.

And I was able to eliminate the fennel, which is a seasoning I hate that is in almost all Italian sausage.

Then I did a quick price comparison (y’all ought to know by now that your girl is frugal). I discovered that my two pounds of Italian “sausage” cost less than $7.50: about $7 for a packaged mix of ground pork and beef plus about 30 cents in seasonings I already had on hand.

That’s about $3 cheaper than what I would pay for store-brand Italian sausage, which my old-lady stomach can’t digest anyway. It’s a savings of about $5 or $6 compared to the brand-name variety.

Plus, the quality is much better than either.

Not bad mathing for a kid who ate only bologna for the first four years of life.

ITALIAN SAUSAGE

(adapted from Spend with Pennies)

Ingredients
2 pounds ground pork and beef mixture (or other ground meat)
2 teaspoons dried parsley
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1 pinch cayenne pepper

Directions
■ Combine all ingredients in a large bowl until ingredients are thoroughly mixed. If you have time, cover meat mixture with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4-24 hours to allow time for flavors to meld. I cooked mine immediately. If you do not need both pounds of meat for your meal, you can cook one pound right away and freeze the other half flat in a quart-sized freezer bag.
■ To cook, place in skillet over medium heat. Break meat apart as you cook. Cook until meat is browned all the way through. Drain grease. Add to recipes as needed.

Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].

Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.