Vegetarian sausage rolls

Today's baking has been vegetarian sausage rolls for the Brownies trip to Carew Castle tomorrow. It was all rather last minute, having only found out about the need for such things when I got back from my shopping trip yesterday but a rummage in the freezer yielded some useful ingredients.

I worry about the pig in pork sausage rolls. Which bit of the pig is one concern as all pig parts are considered edible. If the reasonably attractive bits are the ones packed into polystyrene or displayed on the butcher's counter you can be pretty sure that the unattractive bits are the ones that end up in sausage rolls. I'm pretty certain that the sausage roll is at the end of the food chain when it comes to choice of bits for the 'pork' content. If you read the ingredients of a pack of sausage rolls the actual 'pork' bit is horribly low and the definition of what actually constitutes 'pork' is worrying too.

Then there's the question of the welfare of the pig and cheap frozen supermarket pork sausage rolls aren't likely to feature even the worst bits of British pigs reared in happy conditions outside rooting about in the undergrowth. These are more likely to be their foreign counterparts reared indoors in unspeakable conditions of the sort that were banned in Britain years ago.

But there is an alternative to pork in a sausage roll role helpfully provided by Delia in her seminal Christmas book years ago. Christmas isn't Christmas without Delia's book and when I got it down from the shelf this morning it helpfully fell open on the vegetarian sausage rolls recipe.

The alternative is what is called a Glamorgan sausage - breadcrumbs, onion, Cheddar cheese and chopped fresh garden herbs mixed to a paste with milk or cream and seasoning. It behaves exactly the same as sausage meat but without the dubious content.

My hurried freezer rummage found several bags of cheesy breadcrumbs - useful freezer bounty made by whizzing left over cheese sandwiches in the food processor. This gives a handy bag of breadcrumbs for gratins and breading fish, but always label it so you don't make a cheesy apple Charlotte by mistake (although that one might actually work!) I also found a sheet of ready rolled puff pastry and there was a block of cheese in the fridge and herbs in the garden. Bingo. All it needed was a bit of mixing, roll the pastry out a little thinner, cut in half, add the long rolls of Glamorgan sausage, egg glaze, cut into slices and bake at Gas 7 until golden brown.

Hopefully acceptable for the Brownies tomorrow but also perfect for picnics. Delia's vegetarian sausage rolls are - like dogs - not just for Christmas!