Here in Australia, the sausage sizzle is the holy grail of street foods.

I stifled a chuckle the first time I ran into a sausage sizzle on a Sunday at a local community fundraising event at the neighbourhood hardware store. White bread instead of a hot dog bun? It’s just not something we would ever do with our dog-shaped meat in North America. My initial reaction was that it felt a bit, I-ran-out-of-hot-dog-buns-and-did-the-best-I-could-with-the-bread-I-had-lying-around-the-house. I mean, how hard is it to shape bread into buns for mass distribution?

Then there was the issue of configuration. A slice of bread does not naturally fit a sausage: the bread is slightly too thin, and absorbs the sauces and juices from the sausage, leaving a soggy mess that falls apart if you eat too slowly.

It did take me some time to get used to all this, but alas, there are some battles that will never be won. The trick I have learned is to grab extra serviettes, and eat the sausage really quickly before the bread gets too shaggy. For $3 a pop and fundraising charity, I’ll swallow my pride.