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Welcome to French Food
Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food
and because I live in rural I hope you enjoy my ramblings about rural France!
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This is our village. Our house is the white one at the top right. |
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MAY 2010
Olé A different Tortilla!
Mostly when we Americans think of tortilla's we think of the thin flat corn bread made in Mexico. Its either used as a wrapper for other foods or fried until crisp and served as chips with salsa's. Well, I'm going to describe another kind of tortilla; one that I made the other day for lunch. Our guests had a late afternoon flight so needed a substantial lunch, but something not too heavy. This type of tortilla is from Spain. Its a very traditional dish which can be found all over that country. Its equally delicious hot or cold. The traditional version is far simpler than mine consisting of eggs, potato, onion and, perhaps, a bit of chorizo. Mine has everything but the kitchen sink in it. Well., not quite, but I do put in many more ingredients. The beauty of the tortilla is that you can tailor it both to your taste and to what's in the fridge. Here's how I made this particular tortilla.
Start by preparing all of your ingradients.
Here are the lardons (can be sliced up bacon) with a bit of chorizo thrown in for extra flavor.
The eggs lightly beaten. I used 10 eggs for 5 people. I also added herbs de province, salt & pepper.
Sliced tomatoes & spring onion. (there are two types of onion in this particular effort.)
Green bell pepper & yellow onions
The potatoes. These were diced and then boiled until just soft. Drain them very well before using.
Here's the cheese. I was lazy this time & used pre-packaged, pre-shredded Emmental. Cheddar or Cantal or any nice easily melted cheese will do.
We're ready to start cooking! Here goes: (turn you over grill on now)
When the cheese starts to melt put the pan in the oven under the grill. When the cheese is fully melted pull the pan out of the oven and arrange the tomatoes around thee top.
Back under the grill & cook just until the tomatoes are done to you liking. You're now ready to serve. Check doneness by putting a spatula under the tortilla. It should be slightly browned. If not put it back on the stove.
Enjoy!! Here's the finished article.
Pizza on the BBQ!
Last night we made pizza on our BBQ. This is great fun when you have a crowd of people around since every body gets to make their very own customized pizza. I learned the technique from our German friend, Helmuth, in Chicago a number of years ago. He's still the Master pizza maker. Here's the recipe, but bear in mind that it can very according to your own taste & preferences. Use whatever topping you prefer. The wackier the better so long as they taste good.
So, just make up your toppings and put them out for people to use. Get you BBQ very hot! Put out a rolling pin some flour near a flat surface. (we us a large cutting board) Give each guest a ball of dough which they can then roll out thinly. Degree of thinness depending upon taste , but not too thin. Once rolled out the dough goes on the BBQ. If the BBQ is nice & hot it will only take a very few minutes to cook on the grid side. Flip it over using tongs of quick fingers. Now load on the toppings, starting with a thin smear of the Bolognaise sauce followed by whatever they like. Put the cheese on last. Close the BBQ lid & let cook. Again this will not take long. Don't let the crust burn! When done slide directly onto a plate using tongs or the beforementioned quick fingers. Enjoy!! As a finale I usually do a large after pizza pizza. It very simple, but delicious. Just make up a mixture of melted butter lots of chopped garlic & chopped fresh rosemary. Cook the pizza as before just brushing on the mixture after you turn the pizza over. Absolutely delicious! This is a great party dish since everyone has a great time making their very own tailor made pizza. Just don't drink too much before the pizza making as we don't want anybody to get burned. Enjoy!
Busy, Busy, Busy!!
On the go ever since we got back from Nimes. My apologies for not posting much, but I haven't had much time for creative cooking. I've just been doing old favorites. We had friends over for poker a week ago & I just did roast pork with Grand Mariniere scuffles for dessert. Then a few days ago Sister-in-law with husband & an old friend of Linda's arrived for a ten day visit. They also got roast pork, but we had a nice tomato & brie starter & no dessert. Next night they got chicken with mushroom & tarragon sauce plus lots of veggies with strawberries for dessert. Yesterday Linda was in the hospital for a checkup which meant that she couldn't eat the day before. Everything was fine, but she wasn't feeling that well what with anesthetic & all. So, everyone except her went to the lake for a steak dinner. By the time I'd taken Linda over to the hospital & brought her home, driven down to Toulouse to pick up friend's husband and gone over to my friend David's to pick up his spare set of golf clubs I'd driven over 200 miles during the day. Tired, but the wine with dinner perked me up.
The deal with the golf clubs is that they're left
handed. David has bought a new set so I asked if I could try the old ones.
I'm very left handed, but have always played golf right handed. I couldn't
afford a set of clubs when I was young and it was much easier to borrow
right handed clubs than lefties. I want to try playing left handed on the
theory that I'll hot the ball further and more reliably that way.
Certainly, my left arm & wrist are much stronger than my right. I've tried
hitting some of those perforated balls around the lawn this morning & I do
seem to be able to hit the ball solidly & consistently. We're going over
to a driving range which also has a short course this afternoon to have a
try. Such is life in rural France. The weather is now great, the garden's doing well & I'm going to do some serious cooking soon. Nothing but an easy leg of lamb for tonight.
A Little Trip
We've just come back from a little trip to visit friends down in the South. Nimes to be precise. They used to live here part time, but sold their house and bought a new place just outside Nimes. It was great to see them. We stayed two nights & had a wonderful time catching up with frequent breaks to check on how the political situation was developing in the UK. Their new place is great. Its a newly renovated flat in part of an old wine barn (there's still a working winery). Great views and a really nice layout with a large patio which has wonderful views over the fields & vineyards to the hills. It should go without saying that some cooking got done. We had a delicious curry that Annabel had done for dinner on our arrival. Next day after a trip to the fantastic covered market in Nimes we had Moules Marinara for lunch then slow roasted lamb shoulder with veggies for dinner. As a starter I'd made a tomato & brie salad ( recipe ) which we had with home made bread. Yes, I taught my friend Donald how to make the no knead bread. He liked it and the bread turned out fine. I do envy them the covered market in Nimes. Its wonderful; so many great shops. Regular stuff plus loofspca things. Don't know where they came fro but I bought some very nice Marmande tomatoes. Also, some great brie. We drove up to Uses ( this is where she of the pornographic website used to live). Its a very pretty town spoiled by being far too touristy. Almost every shop caters to the visitor Wouldn't want to live there. We barely made it back to the car when a humongous thunder storm hit. This was a really severe storm with thunder, lightening, hail stones and rain. We almost had to stop as it was hard to see, but we made it through by driving slowly. Our drive back home was nice. We stopped & had a look at Pazenas. A nice town. Very normal with a good range of shops & restaurants. We had lunch which was OK except that they charged 7€ for a demi of house wine which is a bit steep. Supposedly there is a large foreign community there, but we didn't see any evidence of it. The drive up into the mountains and to the viaduct a Millau was as beautiful as ever. And on to home. We both agree that nice though those regions are we still prefer our own Tarn et Garonne. Picked up his majesty who, reportedly, had been a good boy from our friends and retired early. Such is he had life in France.
Gardening - its that time
Did I tell you that in addition to the tomato plants that we bought, all four of them, Linda was given a further ten healthy tomato plants. We have no idea what variety they are so it should be interesting. This many plants, however, presented us with a problem. where do we put them? Our original plan was to put our four plants into pots we would buy and place them by the piggery wall as it gets lots of sun there and is near a water faucet. Now that we're up to 14 plants that won't work. There's just not enough room. In addition when we went to price suitably large containers we were in for a shock; they were about 15 € each. Yes, 14 times 15 now we're into serious money. This was not going to work.
Here comes plan B. We'll create a new flower (or in this case tomato) bed. We spent a lot of time looking around the garden for a suitable spot.. It had to be both sunny and close to a water supply. we finally settled on a piece of ground next o our parking area & next to another flower bed. Not the best place for water, but not bad. The problem now was creating the bed. At this point the lawn comes right up to the blocks that edge the parking area. Its pretty dense turf AND since we've had quite a bit of rain its very wet. YUCK! Well, out came the digging tools and away I went. Hard work! I slowly managed to skim off the top turf just below the roots. It took me several goes with rests in-between, but I got there in the end. now all we need is multiple bags of mulch and some more sakes and we'll have our tomato bed. Of course if we're really successful I have no idea of what we'll do with all those tomato's, but i guess we'll worry about that when the time comes.
Meanwhile, the new Chinese keyboard I bought for the old computer is driving us nuts. It misses keystrokes sometimes, but types multiple letters others. The 't' is especially bad. As is the return key. we boughtt itt on ebay and the vendor is fine about sending itt back. its a pain, but can't be helped. Now you know why my posts have been sparse & short.
More reorganization Well, I've got most of the recipes into the Index now. Only a few from the old BlogSpot blog left to go. I haven't counted them, but I guess there are about 50 recipes so far. Its tedious work, but interesting in a way as its given me the chance to read over what I've done for the past years on the blog. Interestingly; reading it over there's nothing that I want to change or take back. Thus I have not deleted any posts of any type. I've corrected quite a few typos that the spell checker & I missed, but if my readers don't know that I'm a lousy typist by now then they just haven't been paying attention. I'll try to finish off this weekend. I'm giving up for now to go make a Tarte Tatin for a friend's birthday tomorrow. We're going up to see our friends who are just back from 3 months in New Zealand this evening. We've missed them so we're really looking forward to it. Then we're giving a small lunch for the Birthday girl tomorrow (Endive & salmon salad, belly pork & Tarte Tatin) followed by a sojourn to the new village bar in the evening. In the midst of all this I haven't had much time for my new podcast effort (www.lettersfromeurope.com), but I will have some things to say next week. The British election is getting interesting as is the whole saga of the Euro & Greek sovereign debt.
Some much Needed Reorganization
Even I who write this thing was having difficulty finding things so I've started a major reorganization. Besides the blog was/is getting pretty bulky. Thus I've cut it down to size a bit. You will. I hope. notice that on the Left sidebar it now says; "INDEX OF RECIPES". This links to a page which lists all of the recipes I've ever put on this blog. Or at least it will when I'm finished. So far there are about 2/3rds of what's on the site. The INDEX OF RECIPES has a title for each recipe which links to a page containing that recipe. I've tried to make the recipes easy to print. There is also a brief description of each recipe. Hopefully this will make them easier to find. I'd like to make it a nice searchable database, but for now my software and programming skills aren't up to that task. A future addition , I hope. For the non-recipe posts I'm eliminating the old posts before 2009. I may keep some that I'm particularly like, but I'll het rid of most of them in the interest of simplicity and space. I doubt that anyone reads them anyway. So, that's it for now. I'll try to finish off the recipes this week so I can resume regular posting. As always you comments are welcome.
April
Bread Wars
It seems that things go in waves. Currently there
appears to be a wave of bread happenings going on.
First, there was my starting to make my own no knead
bread. In fact I made two new varieties yesterday. One was a light rye
(multi-cereal bread flour mixed with about 1/4 rye flour) and the other
was an attempt to make Hot Cross Buns in a bread style. As you may know
Hot Cross Buns are a big deal in England for Good Friday and Linda loves
them. So my recipe was country bread flour mixed with about 1/3 plain
white flour, 'Sweeta' instead of sugar (about 1/3 cup), a good hand full
of raisins, another smaller hand full of flaked almonds and about 1/3 cup
mixed candied fruits (would have put more, but that's all I had). Both
breads turned out well. Linda especially liked the 'Hot Cross Bread'
recipe although she surprised me by eating it with Cantal cheese. She said
it was delicious.
Next, came a minor rant on eGullet. Somebody was
going on, quite nicely, about how good the baguettes were and which were
the best shops. I chimed in with the fact that I was tired of baguettes
and had switched to the various other wonderful types of bread that are
available in France. This is not to say that baguettes are not one of the
wonders of the modern world because they are. Its just to say that too
much of the same thing no matter how good can be boring. I even admitted
that I'd taken to making my own bread.
Finally, we have a bread war going on in our
village. I was shocked to see a third bread shop open up a couple of weeks
ago. We've always had Madame Viguier's shop (the bread actually comes from
Villefranche where her daughter has three shops. Her late father taught
her the trade, but Parisot was too small so she opened up in Villefranche.
Now that her Dad has died they bring the bread over every morning.) And
we've had the shop opposite the general store which does more pastry and
has a delivery route around the outlying hamlets. Now we have this third
shop. Its run by people from a village named Bach which is about 10 KM
away. It has an excellent reputation, but our resident bakers are up in
arms about this invasion of 'their' territory. Thus they've now opened a
shop in Bach in retaliation. Should be interesting to see what happens.
Think I'll keep my head low by continuing to bake my
own bread. Its a brave foreigner who gets involved in the local politics.
Spring is in the air & an old man's
fancy turns to: Gardening
Spring has definitely sprung here in rural France.
You can tell from our garden. I went out & took a few pictures this
morning just to show what I mean.
Those things that aren't out are beginning to
bud. Linda has been planting & pruning away every
day.
I picked our first wild garlic/ onions yesterday.
(I'm never quite sure which they are, but they taste like a cross between
the two)
Its amazing how quickly the weather changes from
winter to spring here. Last week we were still having frosty mornings;
this week it was in the low 60's when we took Roop for his walk.
Of course along with the weather and the flowers
comes some work.
Lots of mulching and planting, not to mention the
last of the pruning. Also, when the wind is calm there's a lotof burning
to do as well.
Still its worth it for the flowers and the views.
I had quite a saga with my mower on its first outing
of the year. A flat tire! I tried blowing it up at home. (once I'd
repaired my little run off the cigar lighter in the car pump.) That didn't
work. So I drove over to Caylus and tried the pump at the garage. No luck
there either. Next I tried a can of repair foam that I had. Still no luck.
Future Coings (Quinces) in blossom.
Went to see the new big screen "Sherlock Holmes"
last night. My opinion, don't bother. Not a great movie.
Had six for dinner afterwards. Not bad. Salad with
wild onions to start, roast chicken with a mushroom & tarragon cream sauce
& veggies and a gluten free lemon cake. The hit of the evening though was
my rye bread with Nicoise olives and caraway seeds. Pretty
nice if I do say so.
Quit Yakking & start cooking
I finally finished the Living in France series of
Podcasts over on my "letters
from Europe" site this evening so now its time to quit talking
and do some cooking.
Thus we ended up with a simple, but very delicious
dinner this evening. We had baked potato (jacket potato to you Brits),
green beans and a fish dish consisting of farmed trout & large shrimp.
Obviously the potatoes & beans were pretty
straightforward. I do recommend, however, baking your potatoes at a very
high heat, somewhere around 210 C with a skewer stuck through the middle
lengthwise. this gives the a nice crunchy skin and flaky insides.
For the fish the first thing was to peel the shrimp,
a job I hate. I only do it because I love shrimp so much. Having peeled
the shrimp I chopped up 3-4 cloves of fresh garlic and chopped it up
fairly finely. I cut the trout into two fillets removing the backbone &
rib bones. Now that I was ready I:
Put a good sized knob of butter into a medium hot
frying pan. As soon as the butter melted I added the trout fillets skin
side down and lightly salted & peppered them. After about 2 minutes I
added the garlic. After another minutes I turned the trout over and added
all of the shrimp. The trout ws pushed to one side so I could toss the
shrimp.
After no more than a further 2 minutes everything
come out of the pan onto hot plates. A sprinkling of paprika over the
trout which had the shrimps scattered on top and a few parsley springs for
presentation.
Pretty economical as well since both types of
seafood were on sale so only cost about $5.00 for two generous potions.
The cost of two potatoes and the beans was trivial. Not to mention healthy
so long as you didn't slather too much butter on your potato. Time wise;
of course the baked potatoes took about on hour, but didn't need any
watching. The bean steamed in just a few minutes & the fish cooked
quickly. So, a pretty quick meal.
If only I didn't have to peel those blasted shrimp.
Try this its a fun meal.
The Sage speaks; some more!
Seems to be my week for talking. I got the Podcast
off to a garrulous start, going on about living in France.
Now an interview I'd almost forgotten has been
published. There's a nice write up as well as a lengthy interview with
Jeremiah Tittle. You can find the interview & write up here:
www.ConversationsOnTheRoad.com.
I
hope you enjoy it. Please let me know.
The Sage Speaks
I get questions about living in France fairly
frequently. I always try to answer them as best I can. After the one I got
yesterday, however, I thought why not make a Podcast about living in
France?
So, if you mosey over to:
www.lettersfromeurope.com you will
find a series of broadcasts about living in France. So far I've talked
about the legal tax and medical aspects of living in France as well as
going on about where to live; climate, house costs, all that kind of
thing. I'll be doing a couple more about life in France as a foreigner.
Although I must say that you get plenty of that on this blog. Anyway, go
have a look. comment, ask questions, enjoy.
On another topic, I had a lovely and totally
unexpected present the other day. A dear friend in the states sent me a
little cook book. Its in French and had recipes for something like 30
different kinds of 'Tarte Tatin' . There are some delicious
sounding ones both sweet and savory. I'm going to have fun trying these
out.
I did one yesterday for a vegetarian friend who came
to lunch. It was roasted red sweet pepper with roasted garlic and thyme,
all on a flaky pastry base. Really good.
Live, in Person, The sage of Parisot!
Yep; finally got ,y act together and started the
podcast. Ho hum, you say. Well, maybe, but I'm going to enjoy doing it no
matter what anyone else thinks.
To try it simply go to:
www.lettersfromeurope.com.
There you will see the beginnings of my vocal
blog or podcast as they say. So far all there is is my introduction, one
post about the Health Care debate in the states and a link to an
interesting link to an article in 'The Economist'. There are also,
separatel, links to a few more personal sites.
I'm hoping that everyone who looks at this blog will
also have a look at:
www.lettersfromeurope.com.
and that they will tell all their friends to
have a look. The more the merrier I say.
Help me out folks. I don't expect to get rich, but I
wouldn't mind becoming famous.
A voice in the wilderness?
I've been playing around with this Podcast idea of
mine and have gotten to the point of giving it a try. So in this post you
will hear my voice. Whether you like what you hear is up to you to decide.
The message is pretty innocuous, just a sort of introduction to see how it
looks & sounds.
Its turned out to be quite a search to find the
right software to do this. The 'Audacity' software for doing the actual
sound recording is great. Easy to use & understand. Trying to find the
best way to post the audio files, however, has been more of a struggle.
Especially since I want to do this for free or at least as near to free as
I can manage. I think I've sort of cracked it, but I'm still not happy
with the very crude sound player that comes up when you start listening to
my 'broadcast'. We'll see if I can find something better.
In any case below you will find, I hope, my first
effort. Lots of feedback please!!
Bits & Pieces
No big topics of late, but a few snippets of
interest.
First, an on line film that I highly recommend. Its
called "The Butterfly Circus". As far as I know its only online, lasts
about 20 minutes, is beautifully filmed and is very moving.
http://www.thedoorpost.com/hope/The%20Butterfly%20Circus/.
Is the URL to find it. I'm definitely going to
explore more of the films made in this project. Its called The Doorpost
project and there seem to be a number of films done by independent
producers. Judging by "The Butterfly Circus" there could well be some real
gems! If you watch it please let me have your impressions & thoughts.
Of interest to me is the fact that I seem to have
cracked a major problem in my golf game. I've always been plagued by
topping the ball. I just wasn't consistent except off the tee where I was
not long, but reasonably straight and consistent. My fairway shots,
however, were too often pathetic topped efforts that didn't go far.
Spring seems to be with us at last. Or at least the
temperatures are up and the air feels balmy. That of course means
gardening; not my favorite occupation, but it must be done I guess. In
addition to cleaning up after Linda's pruning I cut our a big vine that
was chocking our walnut tree this morning. Hope it helps as both Rupert &
I love the walnuts so would hate to lost the tree.
Finally, I was interviewed for an American satellite
radio station the other day. It was fun, mostly about life in France & how
a Yank ended up here. Its supposed to be posted on the Internet as a
podcast soon. I'll let you have the link once I get it. Who knows maybe
I'll become a celebrity.
February
Valentine Lunch
Yes, the French do celebrate Valentine's day. Not as
boisterously as we Yanks & Brits perhaps, but they do send cards and have
a good time in general. We, Linda & I that is, always celebrate because
not only should one, but its also Linda's birthday. Normally we celebrate
quietly at home, but this year we decided to join a group of friends for a
Sunday lunch. Its been so cold that it was nice to be getting out.
We love this restaurant. It called Le Grange de
La Cros in other words the barn at La Cros. La Cros being a very small
hamlet on the way to Bach. And the restaurant literally is a barn. A very
charming barn it must be said, but like most barns it has some drawbacks.
The one Linda was worried about was the temperature. How to dress nicely
(what woman is going to look frumpy on her birthday?) and still keep warm.
I think she succeeded brilliantly. Velvet trouser suit with warm tights
under, several layers of I don't know what, boots with layers of socks. I
was easy t-shirt, shirt, sweater & tweed jacket and and extra pair of
socks under my brogues. As it turned out the barn was warm & so were we.
There were 8 of us. In this case all Brits except me
as per usual. We all know Thierry the restaurant owner well having been
regular patrons for several years so we got an enthusiastic greeting.
Thierry speaks a wonderful form of Franglaise to us. We say; "speak
French!", he says "speak English!" so we end up with a hilarious mishmash.
Sunday lunch is 19 Euros for 4 courses including
wine. There are normally two choices for each course except for the
cheese. Mrs. Thierry seems to cook everything herself. I've never seen any
helper. We always wave and say hello through the window into the kitchen
across from the barn. Anyway, the starter choices yester day were, a
roasted pear with a sauce and melted blue cheese or a a 'cheese cake' with
smoked salmon.
I choose the 'cheese cake' which was delicious. A
thick round of Chevres cheese with chopped nuts topped with smoked salmon
and on a bed of rocket with vinaigrette. Yummy. The pear was good, my
friend Rob gave me a bite of his. The choices for the main course were
roast cannette (baby duck) or pallet of pork (pork shoulder).
I had the pork which was nicely roasted and served
with parsnips and potatoes. This was the first time I've ever been served
parsnips in a French restaurant. Bravo Mrs. Thierry! The duck was done in
a very rich sauce and was very tasty.
The cheese come on a large wicker platter and there
are around 8-10 different cheeses to choose from. The platter is just left
at the table for you to serve yourself. I had a nice selection. The local
cabeque was particularly nice.
The dessert choice was a chocolate mousse type dish
or a pineapple dish. Not being a chocoholic I choose the pineapple. It has
been fried in butter and mixed with spices and bread chunks. Very nice
indeed.
All of this took several hours and much good
conversation. We solved all the world's problems several times over. Alan
was driving so I could safely have an extra glass (or two) of wine. So to
home and a nice nap in front of the fire. Nice day.
Happy Birthentines day Linda!
Baby, Its expensive outside!
Well, to paraphrase the old saying it is expensive
out there. Its cold as well or at least it has been for the past week or
so. Nothing like what I'm reading about in the Eastern USA. Anyway, I get
asked a lot about the cost of living here in France so I thought I might
bring my readers up to date a bit on that subject.
Its particularly interesting right now as the dollar
is making a modest comeback due to the Euro's problems with Greece,
Portugal, Spain & Ireland. Unfortunately the English pound is just sitting
there not doing much; still that's better than going down. Much of what
I'm going to say is based upon the fact that the dollar and the pound have
both depreciated fairly severely against the Euro. No question that the
Euro is over valued.
Suffice it to say that it hurts if you live in the
Euro zone and your income is in dollars & pounds as ours are. C'est la
vie as they say. We don't HAVE to live here, we choose to. Still,
however, its fun to complain.
OK, down to the nitty gritty- what do things cost?
Well for one thing the 11 ?
four course lunches I used to brag about now
cost $17. Not bad, but not the $11 they used to be. Gas? Don't ask; its
running around $2.00 per LITER! 8 bucks a gallon. & you thought you had it
bad. Decent beef in the supermarket runs around $10 a pound. Our monthly
electricity bill is around $300 per month, not to mention our gas central
heating bill which was nearly $1,800 for December & January. Wine is still
OK. We can get a decent red or white for about $4 a bottle. I could go on
& on, but won't I think you get the picture.
A note for my British friends. I
did a fairly detailed price comparison at a Sainsbury's supermarket in the
UK vs. our HyperU here during our recent UK visit. I'd say that the
British prices were at least 15% cheaper, maybe more. Petrol & Diesel are
about the same price.
Is there a point? Not really,
but I just wanted people to know how expensive thing have become. No
surprises if you come for a vacation. I did enjoy complaining though.
Bottom line? We still love it
here. I just hope that the Euro keeps sinking.
Age gap? Cultural gap?
I some times see things o0n the Internet that really
puzzle me. I wonder if I'm just getting old. Or maybe, perhaps, I'm really
losing my cultural roots. Let me cite a few examples of what I mean. (By
the way I'll really welcome comments on what I'm about to say. Is it just
me? Or....)
My first example is of a blog post I read just the
other day (from she of the prophylactic blog). This is supposedly a blog
about food, cooking and living in France. Not for the first time was was
baring her soul about her husband's illness. This isn't the first time;
she's gone on about him and her diabetes several times before. Now I'm as
sympathetic as the next person I like to think, I can't imagine airing my
private problems to the whole world. I guess I'm just too private a person
for one thing and not egotistical enough to think that the world would
give two hoots about my personal problems. I find it slightly disgusting
to be honest. I plea for attention?
Following on from that was the fact that she got a
whole ton (well, 39 or so) messages along the lines of "Poor you, how sad.
Wishing you the best... ad infinitum. I have no way of knowing how many of
these people actually know this lady or her husband, but I'd guess not
many. Again, why would anyone send messages of a personal nature to
somebody they only know via a blog on the internet. I just don't get it.
Which leads me to Facebook. This great cultural
phenomenon leaves me cold. I just can't see why anybody would put all this
personal information out there for the world to see. Then I just can't see
why anybody would bother to read it. If I want to communicate with my
friends there are plenty of ways I can do it; I can actually talk to them
face to face, I can talk to them on the phone (with or without video
camera). I can send them emails and I can even send them snail mails. All
of which I can do privately. I don't need to let perfect strangers know my
thoughts & actions, nor do I assume that they give a damn anyway. Again, I
just don't get it. Finally, I find Twitter
more ridiculous than Facebook. I can see it as a teen age fad, but from
what I read supposedly adult people are engaging in Twits (pun intended)
Maybe it really is just old age creeping up on me.
I've always thought that I was a pretty good communicator, but this stuff
is more like 'stream of consciousness' The keyboard has replaced the
shrink's couch. Cheaper I guess. Please
comment if you like, but not via Facebook or via a tweet.
If at first you don't succeed... Tried the bread again yesterday. This time it was
a great success. Light, crusty and delicious. Here's what I did. We probably should have waited longer, but didn't
as the bread looked good and smelled good. So I cut a couple of slices
off. Delicious! Light and delicious. Linda loved it. In fact we forwent
what we had planned for dinner and had bread & cheese then bread & jam
instead. Great recipe and very easy. I'll just prove the
yeast in future just to be sure. We'll also try some variations. Have a go. Its easy, cheap and good.
Doldrums
The January doldrums; they seem to happen every
year. The holidays are over, the bills are in, the weather's lousy and,
inevitably, we both have colds. Mine's almost over, but Linda's in full
spate. h well at least we don't seem to have the flu. Our friend Jean is
in the hospital with and a severe chest infection.
Anyway, the weather has brightened up a bit. There's
sun and the temperature is up to about 50F (9C).
I decided to try and make bread yesterday. Disaster!
Why do I bother to make bread in France? Just stupid I guess. This was a
no knead recipe I'd read a lot about. You can find it in the NY Times.
Just flour, salt, instant yeast and water. Mix them together until they
form a mass then let rise for several hours. Only mine didn't; rise that
is. Bad yeast? Maybe. I went ahead anyway. I rolled the dough out onto an
oiled surface, turned it onto itself and was ready for it to go into the
oven.
Why toast? Because we were having home cured bacon
and eggs for dinner. Our friend Rob had taken advantage of a sale and
bought us a large piece of belly pork then he'd salted it to make bacon.
(Amongst his many other jobs Rob learned to be a master butcher). He
brought it over the other day. Most of it is in the freezer, but we kept a
big piece out. Delicious!
Seemed a bit strange, but I had a glass of red wine
with my bacon & eggs. Linda being more traditional had tea.
I'll try the bread again, but I'll prove the yeast
next time.
In any case it helped lift the doldrums.
Comfort Food
Even though its warmed up and the snow has all
melted its still winter and we need something to keep us warm. Good old
comfort food fills the bill so that's what we're having for lunch
tomorrow. Everybody probably has their own favorite comfort foods, but
what we're having tomorrow is a selection of our favorites. We have two
local friends coming over plus an American wine merchant who we've never
met before. He's a friend of our friend Scott Parisot. (Scott has visited
a few times tracing his family history. With a name like Parisot this has
got to be the place, right?)
Before I get into the food I'd like to tell you
about an experience I had today. I went to Caylus to buy some vegetables
for tomorrow and on the way home I stopped up at Paul's to buy some wine.
He was a bit slow in coning, but when he did he asked if I'd like to see
something. Although I wasn't quite sure what it was he wanted to show me I
said yes and we set off across one of his fields. On the other side was
what looked like a chicken coop at first glance. It was actually a trap
for foxes. There was a live rooster in the middle with a cage at either
end. When the fox enters the cage he steppes on a flap which closes the
door behind him. Sure enough there was a fox in the trap. He was unharmed
and absolutely beautiful. His coat was glossy and he was in excellent
shape. I don't think Paul had the heart to kill him, but I suspect he'd
get a hunter up to do the deed, after all the fox had eaten 15 of Paul's
chickens. Such is country life. We'll follow that with roast belly pork. Cooking
the belly pork is easy. Just cut through the skin at about quarter inch
intervals, then add some salt and cut one onion per person in half. Place
the pork cut side up with the onion underneath in a roasting pan then
roast at about 180- 200 degrees F for 3 more more hours. Near the end turn
on the grill portion of your oven to crisp up the skin. Watch carefully as
its easy to burn the skin if you're not careful. When done cut into slices
along the lines you cut through the skin. We're going to serve this with the roast onions,
Lyonaise potatoes and green beans, but any selection of hearty vegetables
will work equally well. Dessert is going to be a Tarte Tatin. There's a
recipe somewhere on this blog or I can recommend Julia Child's recipe. If
in doubt email me & I'll happily find a copy of the recipe for you. Since our American guest is a wine merchant we're
looking forward to what he may bring. And just in case of need we're
prepared to dip into what I bought today from Paul. I'm trying not to think about the fate of that
fox.
For Sale by Owner
That's right. We're selling our house. Actually, its
been for sale for some time, but I haven't mentioned it here on the blog.
Since the article in International Living was published there have been a
lots of hits on this blog and a few e-mails asking about the house.
So, if you would like to have a look go to:
www.campdelmas.com.
This is the website that I put together for selling
the house. Its pretty comprehensive, but we'd be happy to answer any
questions anybody has.
The first question that's always asked is, what is
the Price and secondly, why are you selling. Well, we're selling because
we want to downsize. This house at over 3000 square feet plus a large
garden and a swimming pool which has become more work than Linda or I want
to do. We would like a much smaller place that's more easily maintained.
Part of the house only gets used when we have gite customers plus lots of
family visits, but it needs to be kept up all year round. I'm 72, nearly
73, and Linda is nearly 62 and we've both decided that we'd like to do
things other than keeping a large house in tip top shape.
The next question we get asked is "where will you
move to?" The honest answer is that we'll decide once the house is sold.
The most likely scenario is that we won't move far at all. Probably less
than 5 miles. We love this area and have made many good friends here so
have no real incentive to move out of the area. If we can find the right
plot we may even have a house built to our specifications. The idea of a
small modern house is appealing, but on the other hand we'll look at some
local cottages as they do have a lot of charm. Once this house is sold
we'll have a close look at what's available and make a decision. Luckily
for us we have several friends who will happily rent us a place locally
while we look.
The website above and our website for the gite
(www.camp-del-mas.com.)
have a lot of information about this
wonderful area of France. One would look hard to find a better place to
live all things considered. As a place to retire to its very hard to beat.
We're also, increasingly, finding younger people moving to the area; they
telecommute or run business from home or are crafts people of various
types. They enjoy all of the attractions of the area plus finding it a
great place to raise their children in a sane and safe society.
So, have a look. Spread the word. Its a great house
in a wonderful location. There's even an incentive. You can save 5% off
the price by buying directly from us without an agent in between. This is
the commission we'd normally pay if we sold via an agent.
Here's just a couple of pictures to whet your
appetite.
Front of the house with the village in the
background.
One end of the living room showing the fireplace
with wood burning stove.
The whole of this room is nearly 700 square feet.
Home Again - Barely
Well, we made it home from England Saturday night,
but just barely. I'll talk about our very enjoyable trip to England and
Scotland in future posts. This post, however, is about our travel
adventures. They started on December 22ond and ended on January 8th.
Those of you who live in Europe or have been
following the news will know that the weather during the period has been
unprecedented; lots of snow and freezing all over Europe. Just when we
chose to travel in our rear wheel drive car some 3000 plus kilometers. Our
excuse is that we didn't know it would be that way that long.
Still, we were very lucky as we managed to miss most
of the really bad driving conditions.
We started off just after the snow had melted at
home and drove through the night up to Calais. It was cold especially
North of Paris, but the roads were clear. We were able to get an earlier
channel tunnel crossing. (by then all the fuss about the Eurostar trains
was over) This turned out to be a very good thing as it put us on the M25
around London earlier than the commute hour. There was lots of slush on
the road, but the traffic wasn't bad. Past London the M4 was bad, but
again not too much traffic and we were able to chug along at a reasonable
rate. The secondary road from Swindon to Chichester was snowy, but OK as
they had gritted it. The steep hill down into Stroud was much better than
anticipated. And so we arrive at Linda's daughter's house safely after
about 12 hours of driving.
We had a wonderful Christmas and performed the
families traditional Boxing day walk with X-mas cake & sherry up on the
downs in the snow & ice.
On to Menston near Leeds. No driving problems at
all. We stopped on the way to visit Linda's brother for a cup of tea and
excellent home made mince tarts before arriving at our sister & brother in
laws house. We had a nice quiet time. Linda stocked up on her stuff & I
hit pay dirt at St Gemmas charity shop. Hundreds of used books at 50p
each. I really stocked up. New Year's was fun and w only had to walk 50
yards down to the neighbor's for dinner. I got a great beef hit with a
superb Beef Wellington that Tony had done.
Our challenge now was to make it up to Scotland.
There'd been more snow & cold weather, but the reports weren't too bad. As
it turned out once we made it over to the M6 motorway everything was clear
and there was virtually no traffic. Glasgow was easy except for major
roadwork's and so onto Callander. Once past there we called ahead as we
knew there was no way we'd get up the single track road to the hotel. We
parked at the head of the valley & Rob came & got us in the Range Rover.
Good thing as on the way in we had to rescue another wedding guest who had
a car just like ours. She just couldn't get up the hill, too much wheel
spin. We had a great dinner that night and a nice, but cold walk in the
morning. The wedding was that afternoon OUTDOORS! It was a beautiful
location what with the lochs & the mountains. It was cold, but clear and
there was a roaring fire and hot drinks being served. Much more on the
wedding later.
Our drive back to Menston was, thank goodness,
uneventful. Next day we headed for Sandwich. The main motorways were OK &
traffic wasn't bad. The problems started as we neared Sandwich and got off
the main roads. There was quite a bit of ice on the road. We made it and
were warmly received by our good friends. We had planned to stay two
nights, but the weather forecasts were getting worse & worse. So we
decided to head home a day early. We left about 07:00 which as it turned
out was a good thing as the police closed many roads around Sandwich
because of ice & drifting snow in the high winds. It was a bit scary, but
we made it to the tunnel OK.
We had already decided to take the long way home via
Bordeaux. This avoids the high hills down the center of France from
Limogne onwards. Its longer (1100km), but lower. This ploy worked well as
the roads were clear even though the temperature was just below freezing
all the way. As expected our problems started as we headed West after
Bordeaux. Once past Agen on the A62 motorway we started hitting snow; it
was both on the road & in the air. We toddled along at a reasonable rate.
Eventually we came up behind a snow plow which was spreading grit & salt
so we. and several other cars, followed him at 35 miles per hour until we
reached our turn off ay Montauban.
Montauban was OK and all was well until Caussade. In
Caussade it didn't look as if they'd even tried to clear the roads, but we
made it through to Septfonds. Past Septfonds there is a long fairly steep
hill which I had been dreading. We barely made it up. I was doing my best
to balance forward motion against wheel spin and succeeded by the skin of
our teeth. After that the road is pretty straight & flat until Caylus. At
Caylus you have to go down a steep hill through the town then back up
another steep hill. I really was anticipating that we'd never make it up
the hill. Thank goodness for trucks & gritters they'd cleared the road
enough for us make it up. We didn't exactly sail up, but we made it with
no real difficulty.
We now only had about 8km to go and the road is
straight & flat. It was very very slippery, but no problem. We reached our
village and slowly eased our way down the hill to home.
Linda was greatly relieved; I was exhausted, our
house sitters were amazed that we'd made it and Rupert was delirious with
joy at our being home.
What a journey. I just can't believe how lucky we'd
been with the roads & driving. As far as I know this has been the worst
sustained spell of weather for many a year in Europe. But, between the
driving adventures we had a great time with family & friends.
More tales soon in future posts.
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