How are sausages made and who makes them? Well, this week on Meet Your Maker hosted by Rachel Wharton, we meet a sausage maker and charcutier in Scott Bridi of Brooklyn Cured. Scott breaks down how to break down meat products into fresh sausages and cured deliciousness. The craft of curing and sausage making is time tested but ever-evolving, and Scott explains what brought him to this side of the culinary world and what makes his products unique in their own right. This program was sponsored by The Heritage Meat Shop.

"Analyzing variables is the heart of what would make somebody really good at making sausages and charcuteire."

"Demand for prime cuts leave lots of small farmers with an excess of chuck meat. Sometimes they can't sell those things to restaurants or at farmers markets as-is. That's a problem for them, and something we enjoy helping them with."

--Scott Bridi of Brooklyn Cured on Meet Your Maker

Dave Arnold is heading to Colombia, but not before another episode of Cooking Issues. Dave and Nastassia Lopez start the show off talking about making and preserving cocktail cherries at cellar temperatures. Tune in to learn about the proper balance of sugar, alcohol, and calcium to maintain the structure of the cherry! Later, Dave answers a question about texture in homemade sausage, and how fat is instrumental in determining how a sausage holds up. How can a homebrewer infuse a coffee flavor into beer? Tune in to find out! Other topics include making gummy candies, knife sharpening, and how to make a proper curing room at home! This episode has been sponsored by The International Culinary Center.

"Fat is not just fat; fat is a mixture of fat and connective tissue. When it's native, it will hold itself in place, but if it's melted out it's not gonna hold."

"The smaller a curing chamber is, the less stable it's going to be over time."

-- Dave Arnold on Cooking Issues

As a compendium to the upcoming TEDxManhattan event in NYC on February 18th, Erin Fairbanks chats with one of the featured speakers, Maisie Greenawalt of Bon Appetit Management Company. Her speech will be titled "The realities behind a large company going sustainable", and on this radio interview she discusses why she is so interested in humane farm animal trtreatment, and the challenges that come along with trying to transition into sustainable practices at a large organization. How do you make a commitment to buying a product that's not yet in the marketplace? Small changes can bring about big ones - which is exactly what Maisie reminds us of on a great conversation for foodies and change agents in all wakes of life.

"Creativity and freedom take work - but our people are up for that challenge and excited about it" [10:30]

--Maisie Greenawalt of Bon Appetit Management Company on HeritageRadioNetwork.org