Apologies, but I just had to use that line. I have wanted to use it somewhere since the first time I saw it on a billboard approaching South of the Border on I-95. Finally, my moment has arrived!

Sunday afternoon we went to a butcher shop called The Ginger Pig for our long awaited and much anticipated sausage making class. We read about the class back in the Fall while flying from Basel to Berlin. I ripped the page out of the easyJet magazine and signed right up as soon as I could.

We were the first students to arrive. We quickly donned our aprons and washed our hands and waited rather impatiently for our fellow students to show up. Ten of us were standing before bins of ground pork when the class got underway.

Rick and I are going to collaborate on this post. Nobody, and I mean nobody, loves sausage like Rick does. So now is a good time to pass the iPad over to him and let him take it from here.   – – Ruth Anne

Imagine, if you will, dying and going to heaven. I’m betting there will be pretty good food there like sausage every meal, all day long. We’re talking brats, wursts, bangers, Cumberland, veal, pork, beef, lamb–you get the idea. We experienced our own little slice of heaven at the Ginger Pig Sunday evening at a sausage making class. We arrived at 1600 hours and were met by our enthusiastic Romanian instructors, Daniel and George. Eight others were in the class with us. We were the only non-Brits. We were instructed on the cuts of meat to use, type of fat, percentage of fat, etc. We then added salt, pepper, fennel, and garlic in the proportions they recommended. Everything was mixed up and then stuffed into the sausage making machine. You can purchase one of these machines for around 500 pounds if you want one. Probably the hardest part was getting the casing onto the end of the tube at the end of the machine. By this time, the wine was beginning to flow which made us experts in sausage making. When we finished, we had four kilos (roughly 9 pounds) of pork sausage which we made into links. Then we made two kilos of beef sausage, adding fresh and dried peppers. This was also made into links. By this time, with more wine, we were all thinking we could open up our own butcher shops. It began to dawn on us that we had about thirteen pounds of sausage! Finally, we had more wine and dinner which was (you guessed it!) sausages prepared by our instructors. We also had salad, potatoes, dessert, and more wine.

We then transferred our sausages to our flat, realizing that we probably made a little too much for our last week in London. A wonderful time was had by all and we actually learned to make sausage.

Well, I guess I know what we are having for dinner tonight! – – – Rick