Some friends invited us this morning to come with them to a neighbouring town's rugby club, where they have an annual fundraiser making, cooking, and eating boudins, a local speciality (sausages made with pigs blood).
We got there at 10.30am, and there were 100 or so people there - all drinking wine or mixed drinks - I swear the whole place went quiet when I ordered an Orangina!. Everyone has a paper plate with a dark red sausage, and a napkin (cutlery has no place here), and is sucking the 'meat' from the skins - the skins here being real pork intestine. Apart from their sausage, and their drink, they all have tupperware to take some sausage home.
My new friend Jacques took me round the back to meet the blokes cooking the boudins. There were about 10 of them, all big butcher dudes, in white aprons, standing around these fabulous kettle boilers. Wood fire burning in the bottom, water boiling above, with a big pipe up top for the smoke that looks like a truck exhaust. Enormous sausages were in the boiling water being turned and pricked continuously so that the liquid blood cooks evenly (at least I think that's the explanation).
Brilliant day, feel like a right local. Two regrets;
1. Leaving my camera at home; and
2. Boudin sausages... after tasting, I understand why they need the booze to eat them. Yuck!
