Yesterday at noon I drove the 20 or so kilometres from Daglan to the village of Cazals, to pick up some goods from a guy in a van in a parking lot. Sounds like shady business, right? Nope, nothing illicit. Just getting my order from Ian Kilgarriff, the jovial owner of La Saucisserie and a specialist in English-style pork products.
What I had ordered were 10 Cumberland sausages (large, English-style sausages), half a kilo of bacon (cut to a thickness of 2.5 mm), and an individual steak and kidney pie. This came to just under 23 euros. I also picked up some good news from Ian.
In the past, Ian has driven his van to a series of villages, to meet up with customers who had pre-ordered his products by email. But Daglan wasn’t on the list of designated stops — and now it is. Starting this coming Saturday, Ian and his van will be in Daglan near the Salle des fêtes, or community hall. I’ll show you some of the products I bought, but first here’s a look at Ian in the Cazals parking lot:
The man and his van.
For breakfast this morning (Sunday), my wife Jan cooked up a nice feast, including a couple of slices of the bacon for each of us. Here’s my plate before I devoured everything on it:
A pretty full plate, for breakfast.
Steak and kidney pie is one of my “pub favourites,” I suppose one would say, so I thought I would try Ian’s version. Here’s how it looked on my plate, before I opened up the crust:
A nice-looking crust.
And here’s how the individual pie looked when I split it open, to show off the filling:
Revealing the filling.
The pie was very good — nice and moist, with both the steak and the kidney cut into very small pieces so they would be in proportion to the pie itself. It may look small, but it’s quite a filling dish (in part because of the pastry), so I probably didn’t need the potatoes with it.
If you’re interested, here’s how it works: First you email Ian to introduce yourself, and he adds your name and email address to his general list. Then, a week or so before he heads out on delivery, he emails everyone with the products available (they can vary a bit, from week to week). You then email your order to him, and he comes back at you with the cost. On delivery day, you just show up at the van at the designated spot, hand over the money, and take away your goodies.
To get on his list, email him at: sausages2446@gmail.com
Local-knowledge note: If you’re wondering why the numbers “24” and “46” are in his email address, they are the numbers of the two départements in France which are his territory. Dordogne (home to Daglan) is 24; the Lot (home to Cazals, Cahors and many more) is 46.
I appreciated the note at the end of this post as my first thought was “wow were the email addresses sausages1 thru sausages2445 already taken?”
Ha! Yes, I thought the numbers needed some explaining.