Charcuterie de volailles, beans, and greens

The market vendor over at Noyers-sur-Cher who sells poultry, including chicken and duck sausages, pâtés, and cooked chickens and rabbits, is called Langevin. I'm not sure how many of the region's other markets the Langevin people work, but I know they are at the one in Noyers.

This is the paper the sausages came wrapped in.
Volailles means fowl — barnyard birds.

The Langevin company is located in the village of Sassay, in the hamlet called Marchigny. I found it on a map at pagesjaunes.fr. It's north of Chémery, on the road that goes from Contres down to Selles-sur-Cher. There doesn't seem to be a shop. Langevin sells only at the farmers' markets.

Anyway, this is interesting only if you live around here or are visiting. It's exciting to find poultry products of this kind, because they can stand in for the ubiquitous pork charcuterie. I'm looking forward to using a lot of poultry products this winter. We had Langevin's duck sausages for lunch yesterday, and they were delicious.

Saucisson de volaille de chez Langevin

Today, for example, I decided to cook the fat saucisson de volaille that I bought on Sunday. Yesterday I cooked a big pot of "green" lentils with onions, carrots, and herbs. They will be very good with the poached sausage. Green lentils — lentilles vertes — are a special variety grown in the center of France.

In the Auvergne around the town called Le Puy, four or five hours south of here by car, les lentilles du Puy have been awarded an Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, an AOC, like the finest wines and cheeses. Les lentilles du Berry carry a Label Rouge, also attesting their high quality and strictly controlled growing standard. The Berry is the region directly south and east of Saint-Aignan (which historically was known as Saint-Aignan-du-Berry, not Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher).

My new "collard patch" — I've planted collard greens
in the plot where we grew summer squash this year.

So it'll be lentils with chicken sausage for lunch today, followed by a green salad. And this winter, if all goes (or grows) well, we will be eating collard greens again. With chicken, duck, or pork in one form or another. I brought the collard greens seeds here from North Carolina.

An autumn flower

Depending on whether and when we have a really hard freeze (in other words, temperatures below -3ºC or about 26ºF), the collard greens should live on into the winter. In fact, collard greens are improved by cold weather. The leaves are more tender and sweeter after they've been touched by frost.

I figure with the current financial crisis in the U.S. threatening to bring down the entire world economy, we'd better be growing as much food as we possibly can. This winter we will be living on a diet of summer squash and green beans. We also have plenty of jelly, apple and grape, to eat on bread, if we can afford bread.

Come to think of it, we can make our own bread. Otherwise, the freezer and pantry are full.