Millie Ray’s boys remember when their mom would go back home to Evergreen for a visit, and she always returned with a cooler full of her south Alabama hometown’s legendary, hickory-smoked Conecuh Sausage.

It was back in the late ’80s, they recall, before Conecuh Sausage was widely available in grocery stores, and Millie Ray was the Conecuh connection for her neighbors in Homewood.

“My mom used to bring Conecuh Sausage in butcher paper back up here,” Ben Ray III, the oldest of Millie Ray’s two sons, says. “She would bring it for everybody in the neighborhood.”

Millie Ray’s homemade orange rolls — which she began making for her Homewood garden club — also were quite popular around the neighborhood. She made them by the tens of dozens to give to friends and family at Christmastime.

Eventually, with the encouragement of her sons — Ben and his younger brother, Ryan — she launched her Millie Ray’s brand and begin selling her orange, cinnamon and yeast rolls in mom-and-pop shops around Birmingham, Atlanta and in southern Alabama in 2010.

Their popularity quickly grew, and Millie Ray’s rolls — including the recently introduced Nutella rolls and garlic-mozzarella rolls — are now available at Piggly Wiggly and Target stores and at specialty markets throughout Alabama and in parts of Mississippi, Georgia and the Florida Panhandle.

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One thing missing from the Millie Ray’s lineup, though, has been a sausage roll.

So, in the summer of 2022, as their contract with a co-packer in Atlanta was expiring and they were preparing to move all their baking operations back to an in-house production facility in Birmingham, Ben and Ryan began experimenting with a sausage roll recipe to add to the Millie Ray’s product line.

Coincidentally, about a year earlier, another homegrown Alabama brand, Sister Schubert’s, discontinued its popular sausage wrap rolls and replaced them with sausage pinwheels.

“When that happened,” Ryan Ray says, “more people reached out to us, like ‘Y’all (should) make sausage rolls.’ It was always in the back of our mind to do one, and the timing was right.”

And what better sausage to pair with their yeast rolls than Conecuh, the sausage the Ray brothers grew up eating?

“I mean, we’ve been eating Conecuh Sausage all our lives,” Ryan says. “They’re just such a substantial brand in the South. It was just a no-brainer to go with Conecuh.”

Plus, it was another way to honor their mom, who, in 2018, died after a four-year battle with leukemia.

“My mom being from Conecuh County was a huge thing for us,” Ben says. “She went to Evergreen High School, and everything is kind of coming full circle with us using Conecuh (Sausage).”

Besides their mom’s Evergreen roots, the Ray brothers have another connection to Conecuh Sausage that goes back decades, Ben says.

Their maternal grandfather, Ralph Stinson, used to sell hogs to the Sessions family that started Conecuh Sausage, he says.

“They’re a great family company,” Ben says. “We’ve known them for a long time.”

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So, this past spring, confident that they had nailed their recipe, Ben and Ryan set up a meeting with John Henry Sessions and his father, John Crum Sessions, to get them to try their Millie Ray’s sausage rolls and, hopefully, give them their blessings.

It was a brief, but successful, meeting.

“They tried it, loved it and told us go,” Ben says. “It was awesome.”

The Sessions family also gave the Ray brothers permission to use the Conecuh Sausage logo on the outside of the bright red Millie Ray’s box.

The sausage rolls — bite-sized chunks of hickory-smoked sausage tucked inside soft, pillowy yeast rolls — are packaged in aluminum tins and recommended for conventional ovens. They need to cook at 350 degrees for about 20 to 23 minutes before serving.

The first shipments should be available as early as this Friday in the frozen food sections at Piggly Wiggly locations and other specialty markets around Alabama — including, of course, the Conecuh Sausage gift shop in Evergreen.

“I believe this is going to be a signature item for us,” Ryan Ray says. “I think it’s going to be a great addition to everybody’s freezers for breakfasts, tailgates, all occasions.

“And to be able to use a sausage from where my mom was born and raised is special to my brother and me.”

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