Sunday, July 27, 2008
Grundy County, Iowa
Our last two days in sunny Paris were enjoyable enough that Reed was sad to go on Thursday morning. We were gathering the bags to go to the metro station and on to Charles de Gaulle airport and Reed complained that Paris was so fun he didn’t want to leave. This was a surprise since he usually complains when he’s been forced to gad about but I guess having a second afternoon in the Luxembourg playground on Tuesday afternoon and then a visit to the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes AND the sewer museum on Wednesday really pleased him.
We took a picnic lunch of cous cous and baguette sandwiches and strawberry tart to the Jardin du Luxembourg to meet Jack, our old friend from Verderonne. We sat in the shade of a large potted lime tree next to the central fountain and watched the kids sail toy boats and got caught up with each other’s news. Afterwards we took Reed back to the play area and let him work off his energy for a few hours before we headed back to the apartment for another yummy pasta dinner. Wednesday the weather heated up so we kept looking for shade as we looked at the interesting assortment of animals at the menagerie. Reed spent about 30 seconds on each one – various birds, monkeys, turtles, spiders, antelopes, yaks, and so on - until we got to the fermette and the goats, where he quickly settled down for long petting sessions with the various friendly goats pressing themselves up against the fence. Reed seemed to know where to scratch them as they generally stood still for him for a very long time. He came away after about 15 minutes refreshed and ready for the snakes and lizards.
We stopped for a break at the tables in the shade behind one of the refreshment stands where Reed noticed a pigeon with a long strand of narrow plastic band wound around its leg, hopelessly tangled. He and Walt managed to capture the pigeon and between the three of us untangled the strand and released it to a light smattering of happy applause from the onlookers.
I had planned to spend Wednesday by myself wandering around Montmartre or visiting Sainte Chapelle and the Louvre while Reed and Walt went to the Eiffel tower, but decided that it would be more fun to do whatever Reed wanted to do. He nixed the Eiffel tower plan – “there will be too many people and we’ll have to wait in line!” – and chose the botanical gardens and the sewer museum instead. The sewer museum was a cool underground respite from the afternoon heat, if rather smelly, and Reed and I were rewarded with a glimpse of a real sewer rat who popped up out of somewhere I couldn’t see and scurried down the concrete passageway next to the narrow branch line of the canal-like sewer. My favorite part of the museum was at the end, watching the videos, and learning about the Paris sewer watch squad: the municipal employees who come in their little truck with a flashing light on top to rescue whatever important thing people have dropped in a storm drain. Like most French people, they seem unfailingly polite.
So, we still have the Eiffel Tower on our list of things to do in Paris, and we decided to do it next time, when Reed is old enough to stay up until midnight and we can go in the evening to see the city light up. And I will have to save Sainte Chapelle and the Louvre for the next time as well, along with many other parks and gardens. And is it possible we didn’t eat in a restaurant while we were in Paris for 3 days? Well, yes. We got free yogurt and cereal as well as croissants and baguettes and pain au chocolats from the boulangerie down the street as part of our apartment rental deal; we packed picnic lunches for our days out; we made dinner in the apartment with the delicious provisions from the corner grocery also just down the street. When you’ve got a bottle of 2 Euro rose’, fabulous lettuce, ripe tomatoes, 3 kinds of excellent cheese, pasta, cream, salt and pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a fresh baguette and a few slices of ham, there’s not any more a person needs for a great dinner. Why pay for a waiter to bring it to the table?
Our trip back to the states was uneventful, just long and tiring; fortunately we were welcomed in at the restful and restorative home of college roommate Ann and her husband Harry in Chicago, giving us a break in between the plane to Chicago and the train to Iowa. Now we’re back at my parents’ in Iowa, eating too much sweet corn and potato salad and chocolate zucchini cake, watching out the window as a severe thunderstorm threatens to flatten the crops and cause more flooding. It seems as appropriate place as any to bid adieu to this gastrosabbatical blog, and refer you to my other blogs, some of which will get more action than others as we get back into daily life in Idaho in a couple of weeks. For my ongoing food explorations, check out Palouse Locavore. For our family’s continuing battle to avoid gratuitous plastic, see A Plastic-Free Life, Sort Of. And will we be moving to France in the future? Time will tell, and so will one of my blogs.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Montmartre and Paris
Monday, July 21, 2008
Montmartre, Paris
We bid adieu yesterday to K and K, very sorry to have to leave but inevitably drawn towards home now that our time in France is almost over. We arrived in Paris and made our way to our studio apartment at the base of the Montmartre butte without any incident except for the entrance gate of the Montparnasse metro station going shut on me, pinching my shoulders in a death grip I slowly managed to extract myself from by brute force – backwards, of course. That’s what I get for trying to get through with Reed and myself on only one ticket, hustling Reed through first. Fortunately I was rescued by the kind young man behind me who beckoned to me to come through with him, since my ticket had been rendered invalid once used. So I snugged myself up against his back and we made it through together, yet another example of the kindness of French people.
We spent Sunday evening among the hordes of tourists, going up and down the stairs of the various levels below the face of the whipped cream edifice towering over the rest of the city that is Sacre Coeur church, and admiring the view of the streets falling away Montmartre to the rest of the city laid out below, before bathing in the miniature bathtub in our miniature bathroom in this typically tiny Paris apartment. Still, it’s ours for a few days, with our own mini kitchen and t.v. and it’s much better than a claustrophobic hotel room.
Today Walt had his day out and about alone while Reed and I went to the playground in Luxembourg Gardens, where we stayed from 11 am until 3 pm, breaking only for a lunch of a panini, quiche, and some ice cream at the Buvette café right next to the playground. I sat on a bench and read while Reed ran around with the other children of all nationalities and gave his utmost to the fabulous play structures. Unlike four years ago, this time he protested but only mildly when I said it was time to get back. I didn’t have to carry him kicking and screaming all the way back to the Odeon metro stop, thank goodness. This time we got to admire the wrought iron balconies and window grates and geraniums on windowsills that are everywhere in Paris, which must be my favorite thing about this city. On the way back home on the metro train I thought how nice it was to be getting to know that one little bit of Paris so well. Even though Reed and I aren’t charging around the city visiting lots of museums and all the other beautiful parks, I don’t mind. I’ve got this relaxed feeling about Paris, that we have plenty of time, and that we will have many other visits in which to discover new corners and new views.
We had a delicious dinner in the apartment of pasta with cream sauce, sliced tomatoes in vinaigrette, salad, cheese (Roquefort, fresh goat cheese, and Lou Perrac – a runny sheep’s cheese K&K introduced us to), melon, and chocolate cake. Walt’s headed out again for an evening walk and Reed and I have settled down for an early bedtime. Tomorrow’s another big day.
Montmartre, Paris
We bid adieu yesterday to K and K, very sorry to have to leave but inevitably drawn towards home now that our time in France is almost over. We arrived in Paris and made our way to our studio apartment at the base of the Montmartre butte without any incident except for the entrance gate of the Montparnasse metro station going shut on me, pinching my shoulders in a death grip I slowly managed to extract myself from by brute force – backwards, of course. That’s what I get for trying to get through with Reed and myself on only one ticket, hustling Reed through first. Fortunately I was rescued by the kind young man behind me who beckoned to me to come through with him, since my ticket had been rendered invalid once used. So I snugged myself up against his back and we made it through together, yet another example of the kindness of French people.
We spent Sunday evening among the hordes of tourists, going up and down the stairs of the various levels below the face of the whipped cream edifice towering over the rest of the city that is Sacre Coeur church, and admiring the view of the streets falling away Montmartre to the rest of the city laid out below, before bathing in the miniature bathtub in our miniature bathroom in this typically tiny Paris apartment. Still, it’s ours for a few days, with our own mini kitchen and t.v. and it’s much better than a claustrophobic hotel room.
Today Walt had his day out and about alone while Reed and I went to the playground in Luxembourg Gardens, where we stayed from 11 am until 3 pm, breaking only for a lunch of a panini, quiche, and some ice cream at the Buvette café right next to the playground. I sat on a bench and read while Reed ran around with the other children of all nationalities and gave his utmost to the fabulous play structures. Unlike four years ago, this time he protested but only mildly when I said it was time to get back. I didn’t have to carry him kicking and screaming all the way back to the Odeon metro stop, thank goodness. This time we got to admire the wrought iron balconies and window grates and geraniums on windowsills that are everywhere in Paris, which must be my favorite thing about this city. On the way back home on the metro train I thought how nice it was to be getting to know that one little bit of Paris so well. Even though Reed and I aren’t charging around the city visiting lots of museums and all the other beautiful parks, I don’t mind. I’ve got this relaxed feeling about Paris, that we have plenty of time, and that we will have many other visits in which to discover new corners and new views.
We had a delicious dinner in the apartment of pasta with cream sauce, sliced tomatoes in vinaigrette, salad, cheese (Roquefort, fresh goat cheese, and Lou Perrac – a runny sheep’s cheese K&K introduced us to), melon, and chocolate cake. Walt’s headed out again for an evening walk and Reed and I have settled down for an early bedtime. Tomorrow’s another big day.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Leaving Ella
The lovely Ella
Artichoke blossom
New ducks
We've come to the end of our WWOOFing days this time around and with some wistfulness and some anticipation for home we've prepared to leave the countryside and head to Paris for a few days of fun before our flight back to the U.S. I feel glad to have been here at XXX long enough to see Ella the goat recover and turn into a good little milker (with delicious milk!), to have gotten most of the garden weeded although I didn't make it to the beans, to have helped with some projects like getting the new patio area finished, and to have made some new friends, which was easy with K&K's wonderfully friendly friends (thanks everyone!) who kept inviting us all over for meals and feeding us copious amounts of delicious food washed down with equally copious wine. Last night we ate dinner at D and P's and were gratified to understand and participate in the French conversation, which all the English spoke since Jean-Francois, former mayor of XX, and his wife Christine were there as well. Jean-Francois is to mow the hay in the field we de-thistled, but unfortunately we'll just have to hear from K&K when the hay is finally cut. Despite dreaming about seeing it green and fresh Jean-Francois had other things to do first.
We've seen 10 young ducks graduate from the lawn to the pasture and have welcomed 5 new ducks and 2 chicks into the world, said goodbye to a sheep and a lamb and two chicks (Reed's favorite little black one that always was getting lost was taken by a fox or a crow earlier last week while we were celebrating Bastille Day in the village).
My hands are strong from milking (a bit stiff in the mornings) and roughened and dirty from weeding, my skin is brown from days in the garden and field, my hair has been somewhat bleached although I wore a hat on the hottest days, and I feel infinitely more capable of handling projects around my own little house and tiny yard, a miniscule space, really, compared to the places we've been working. If I can stay in the WWOOFing mindset - that is, I need to do manual labor every day in order to earn my bed and my bread - I might actually get some real work done!
Artichoke blossom
New ducks
We've come to the end of our WWOOFing days this time around and with some wistfulness and some anticipation for home we've prepared to leave the countryside and head to Paris for a few days of fun before our flight back to the U.S. I feel glad to have been here at XXX long enough to see Ella the goat recover and turn into a good little milker (with delicious milk!), to have gotten most of the garden weeded although I didn't make it to the beans, to have helped with some projects like getting the new patio area finished, and to have made some new friends, which was easy with K&K's wonderfully friendly friends (thanks everyone!) who kept inviting us all over for meals and feeding us copious amounts of delicious food washed down with equally copious wine. Last night we ate dinner at D and P's and were gratified to understand and participate in the French conversation, which all the English spoke since Jean-Francois, former mayor of XX, and his wife Christine were there as well. Jean-Francois is to mow the hay in the field we de-thistled, but unfortunately we'll just have to hear from K&K when the hay is finally cut. Despite dreaming about seeing it green and fresh Jean-Francois had other things to do first.
We've seen 10 young ducks graduate from the lawn to the pasture and have welcomed 5 new ducks and 2 chicks into the world, said goodbye to a sheep and a lamb and two chicks (Reed's favorite little black one that always was getting lost was taken by a fox or a crow earlier last week while we were celebrating Bastille Day in the village).
My hands are strong from milking (a bit stiff in the mornings) and roughened and dirty from weeding, my skin is brown from days in the garden and field, my hair has been somewhat bleached although I wore a hat on the hottest days, and I feel infinitely more capable of handling projects around my own little house and tiny yard, a miniscule space, really, compared to the places we've been working. If I can stay in the WWOOFing mindset - that is, I need to do manual labor every day in order to earn my bed and my bread - I might actually get some real work done!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Good Food from the Farm
Carol assumes her position in the garden
Reed cools off in a water storage tank
"Our" thistle-free hayfield, ready to cut
There are much worse jobs than weeding the strawberry beds, I've found. Sitting on a garden cushion, pulling out the mauvaise herbes (weeds), and popping ripe strawberries in one's mouth, warm from the sun... well, as I said, things could be worse. For instance, strimming (weed whacking) an entire small orchard since the riding lawnmower is out of commission and the grass was too tall for the small push mower. Phew.
Last night some English friends of K & K's came over for dinner and K made a fabulous meal of stewed lamb (from their own lamb) with carrots and onions (fresh from the garden), couscous, and green beans (fresh from the garden). To make the lamb he just cuts it into small pieces and cooks it slowly for a long time with the onions, carrots, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and a small tin of tomato paste. It goes fabulously with plain cous cous. A nice touch for people who like a little heat is some harissa paste, which is a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern stuff made from chiles.
Then for dessert he made a vanilla sponge cake baked with cherries (from their own tree) underneath. Mmm. The unique thing about this sponge cake was that the recipe calls for it to be steamed - but K just cooks it in the microwave. There are few baked things that I would recommend actually doing in a microwave but this is one of them - it was delicious and done in just a few minutes.
Recipe: Vanilla Sponge Pudding (from Marguerite Patten)
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
few drops of vanilla
3 Tbsp. milk
Cream together butter and sugar. Whisk eggs well and add gradually to butter mixture. Mix flour and baking powder, mix vanilla and milk. Fold the flour and milk alternately into the creamed mixture. Grease a 5 cup ceramic baking dish, pour in the batter, and cook on high in a microwave until risen and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Alternative: spread jam or fruit in the bottom of the baking dish before adding the cake batter. Serve warm with cream or creme fraiche. Serves 4 to 6. To make a lemon sponge add the freshly grated zest of a lemon to the butter and sugar, and replace some of the milk with lemon juice or a bit of lemon flavoring.
The other night we had some lamb and green beans and I also made some mashed potatoes, also with potatoes straight from the garden. I've never had brand new potatoes before, with the skins so thin they almost come off just scrubbing them in the sink. K & K have been waiting patiently for the tomatoes and they're almost ready - so hopefully we'll get to eat some of them before we leave in a few days. The artichokes seem to be done, but that's okay - three or four artichokes per person over the course of a couple of weeks in mid-summer is about perfect.
A good way of eating cold cooked green beans is in an olive oil/balsamic vinegar vinaigrette, with either finely chopped onion or shallot and some salt. You boil the fresh beans for a few minutes in salted water until they're perfectly tender and then immediately pour out the boiling water and replace with cold water. Pour off the warm water a few times and replace with cold. When the beans are cold, dress them with the vinegar, oil, salt, and onion, and voila - salad.
Because K and K have some good fruit trees we've been eating as much jam on our toast in the morning as we like, and sometimes we get canned peaches to mix in with our oatmeal. And for special occasions, elderflower champagne - delicately sweet and refreshing and bubbly; or for after dinner, vin de noix - a fragrant liqueur made from green walnuts. These recipes I do not yet know, but I will be seeking them out! The French and other Europeans have so many kinds of homemade cordials, liqueurs, wines, and sparkling drinks and everyone we've stayed with has had a supply tucked away in the pantry that they made at one time or another, along with the ever popular French drink called eau de vie - which is really strong homemade booze. I'm sure I couldn't drink more than a thimbleful of eau de vie, but elderflower champagne is a different story. Such a delicious alternative to the same old things from the store.
Reed cools off in a water storage tank
"Our" thistle-free hayfield, ready to cut
There are much worse jobs than weeding the strawberry beds, I've found. Sitting on a garden cushion, pulling out the mauvaise herbes (weeds), and popping ripe strawberries in one's mouth, warm from the sun... well, as I said, things could be worse. For instance, strimming (weed whacking) an entire small orchard since the riding lawnmower is out of commission and the grass was too tall for the small push mower. Phew.
Last night some English friends of K & K's came over for dinner and K made a fabulous meal of stewed lamb (from their own lamb) with carrots and onions (fresh from the garden), couscous, and green beans (fresh from the garden). To make the lamb he just cuts it into small pieces and cooks it slowly for a long time with the onions, carrots, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and a small tin of tomato paste. It goes fabulously with plain cous cous. A nice touch for people who like a little heat is some harissa paste, which is a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern stuff made from chiles.
Then for dessert he made a vanilla sponge cake baked with cherries (from their own tree) underneath. Mmm. The unique thing about this sponge cake was that the recipe calls for it to be steamed - but K just cooks it in the microwave. There are few baked things that I would recommend actually doing in a microwave but this is one of them - it was delicious and done in just a few minutes.
Recipe: Vanilla Sponge Pudding (from Marguerite Patten)
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
few drops of vanilla
3 Tbsp. milk
Cream together butter and sugar. Whisk eggs well and add gradually to butter mixture. Mix flour and baking powder, mix vanilla and milk. Fold the flour and milk alternately into the creamed mixture. Grease a 5 cup ceramic baking dish, pour in the batter, and cook on high in a microwave until risen and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Alternative: spread jam or fruit in the bottom of the baking dish before adding the cake batter. Serve warm with cream or creme fraiche. Serves 4 to 6. To make a lemon sponge add the freshly grated zest of a lemon to the butter and sugar, and replace some of the milk with lemon juice or a bit of lemon flavoring.
The other night we had some lamb and green beans and I also made some mashed potatoes, also with potatoes straight from the garden. I've never had brand new potatoes before, with the skins so thin they almost come off just scrubbing them in the sink. K & K have been waiting patiently for the tomatoes and they're almost ready - so hopefully we'll get to eat some of them before we leave in a few days. The artichokes seem to be done, but that's okay - three or four artichokes per person over the course of a couple of weeks in mid-summer is about perfect.
A good way of eating cold cooked green beans is in an olive oil/balsamic vinegar vinaigrette, with either finely chopped onion or shallot and some salt. You boil the fresh beans for a few minutes in salted water until they're perfectly tender and then immediately pour out the boiling water and replace with cold water. Pour off the warm water a few times and replace with cold. When the beans are cold, dress them with the vinegar, oil, salt, and onion, and voila - salad.
Because K and K have some good fruit trees we've been eating as much jam on our toast in the morning as we like, and sometimes we get canned peaches to mix in with our oatmeal. And for special occasions, elderflower champagne - delicately sweet and refreshing and bubbly; or for after dinner, vin de noix - a fragrant liqueur made from green walnuts. These recipes I do not yet know, but I will be seeking them out! The French and other Europeans have so many kinds of homemade cordials, liqueurs, wines, and sparkling drinks and everyone we've stayed with has had a supply tucked away in the pantry that they made at one time or another, along with the ever popular French drink called eau de vie - which is really strong homemade booze. I'm sure I couldn't drink more than a thimbleful of eau de vie, but elderflower champagne is a different story. Such a delicious alternative to the same old things from the store.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Bastille Day in France
>The two teams we played play each other
Girl guides get wild
Mesdames celebrating Bastille Day
Monday, July 14th is Bastille Day in France, the anniversary of the day the French Revolution really got underway, when they dumped the monarchy. Every little town had some kind of fete yesterday and we attended the one nearby in tiny XXX, which started in the blazing afternoon sun with a petanque tournament. We didn't realize when we went with K and K that we'd end up playing in this tournament - we thought we were there to watch - but what the heck, we said, pourquoi pas? Walt and I played first against the two teenage boys, Thomas and Charles, and we took an early lead of 6 to 3. Then our concentration faltered and they went on to win 13 - 7, although we made them fight for every point and we had quite a few really excellent shots. Our second opponents were Michel and Michel, older gentlemen; we gave them a run for their money but I ended up being their best player a couple of times, when in trying to knock out one of their balls out I actually bumped it closer to the cochonet. But again, it wasn't a complete rout, with a final score of 13 - 6. Our final match was against K and K, and we beat them 13 - 1, a humiliating defeat for the English, tongue in cheek.
The petanque tournament was accompanied by what had to have been a CD of New Wave Hits of the 80s - which in the movie of my life is THE soundtrack of my college years. Can you remember Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark singing Electricity? Or Video Killed the Radio Star? If you can, try to imagine it blasting out a speaker while a bunch of old French guys play petanque in the shadow of a Romanesque church while their wives hustle around organizing the food and a bunch of girl guides in uniform play tennis nearby. That's Bastille Day afternoon in France.
The other thing we didn't realize when we started playing the tournament was that the losers get treated to a drink by the winners, taking the sting out of defeat, for sure.
We hadn't originally planned to stay for the community dinner either but we were all having such a nice time, the weather was so lovely in the shade, and everyone was so friendly that we joined the crowd for the meal of carrot slaw, celery root slaw, grilled steak (local beef) and frites (french fries), bread, cheese, and fruit tart for dessert. It was during the meal, after our hunger was satisfied but before the cheese and dessert had been served, that we began to see the silly side of the French come out, a really amazing capacity to have good honest fun shared by young and old alike. The small crowd was enlivened by the presence of a visiting troupe of girl guides, all dressed in their khaki shorts and blue camp shirts. As Walt said, it is impossible to be pessimistic about the future when you're in the presence of a group of adolescent girls. First they started grooving a bit to a particularly good song that they all liked, and the next thing we knew they were on their feet, waving handkerchiefs in the air, joined by most of the citizens of XXX - I think it was a favorite French song although I don't know if it was patriotic or not. A few songs later a conga line was formed, and then a human tunnel. Then everyone kept dancing, old people, kids, teenagers, girl guides, French, English, Americans.
Finally, it came time for the fireworks, a small but well-organized and crowd pleasing display that lasted about 5 minutes. Fireworks are fabulous when you've been fed well, danced to the Village People, had a few glasses of rose', and spent the afternoon concentrating on nothing more and nothing less than getting a heavy metal ball as close to a little wooden ball as possible. Reed and I covered our ears and he was quite tickled to see them, old enough, perhaps, for the first time, to really appreciate the spectacle. We got home at 11:30 pm and fell into bed, partied out.
Girl guides get wild
Mesdames celebrating Bastille Day
Monday, July 14th is Bastille Day in France, the anniversary of the day the French Revolution really got underway, when they dumped the monarchy. Every little town had some kind of fete yesterday and we attended the one nearby in tiny XXX, which started in the blazing afternoon sun with a petanque tournament. We didn't realize when we went with K and K that we'd end up playing in this tournament - we thought we were there to watch - but what the heck, we said, pourquoi pas? Walt and I played first against the two teenage boys, Thomas and Charles, and we took an early lead of 6 to 3. Then our concentration faltered and they went on to win 13 - 7, although we made them fight for every point and we had quite a few really excellent shots. Our second opponents were Michel and Michel, older gentlemen; we gave them a run for their money but I ended up being their best player a couple of times, when in trying to knock out one of their balls out I actually bumped it closer to the cochonet. But again, it wasn't a complete rout, with a final score of 13 - 6. Our final match was against K and K, and we beat them 13 - 1, a humiliating defeat for the English, tongue in cheek.
The petanque tournament was accompanied by what had to have been a CD of New Wave Hits of the 80s - which in the movie of my life is THE soundtrack of my college years. Can you remember Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark singing Electricity? Or Video Killed the Radio Star? If you can, try to imagine it blasting out a speaker while a bunch of old French guys play petanque in the shadow of a Romanesque church while their wives hustle around organizing the food and a bunch of girl guides in uniform play tennis nearby. That's Bastille Day afternoon in France.
The other thing we didn't realize when we started playing the tournament was that the losers get treated to a drink by the winners, taking the sting out of defeat, for sure.
We hadn't originally planned to stay for the community dinner either but we were all having such a nice time, the weather was so lovely in the shade, and everyone was so friendly that we joined the crowd for the meal of carrot slaw, celery root slaw, grilled steak (local beef) and frites (french fries), bread, cheese, and fruit tart for dessert. It was during the meal, after our hunger was satisfied but before the cheese and dessert had been served, that we began to see the silly side of the French come out, a really amazing capacity to have good honest fun shared by young and old alike. The small crowd was enlivened by the presence of a visiting troupe of girl guides, all dressed in their khaki shorts and blue camp shirts. As Walt said, it is impossible to be pessimistic about the future when you're in the presence of a group of adolescent girls. First they started grooving a bit to a particularly good song that they all liked, and the next thing we knew they were on their feet, waving handkerchiefs in the air, joined by most of the citizens of XXX - I think it was a favorite French song although I don't know if it was patriotic or not. A few songs later a conga line was formed, and then a human tunnel. Then everyone kept dancing, old people, kids, teenagers, girl guides, French, English, Americans.
Finally, it came time for the fireworks, a small but well-organized and crowd pleasing display that lasted about 5 minutes. Fireworks are fabulous when you've been fed well, danced to the Village People, had a few glasses of rose', and spent the afternoon concentrating on nothing more and nothing less than getting a heavy metal ball as close to a little wooden ball as possible. Reed and I covered our ears and he was quite tickled to see them, old enough, perhaps, for the first time, to really appreciate the spectacle. We got home at 11:30 pm and fell into bed, partied out.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Neolithic Field Trip
A French friend, Christine, took us on a field trip on Sunday to the Tumulus de Bougon - an archeological site dating to neolithic times - 7000 years ago - that consists of a group of burial mounds. They made a little room with rock walls, some big rocks from 35 to 40 km away and little rocks taken from a little quarry right beside the tumulus, covered the top with a huge slab of limestone, and then built a wall out of a circle of rocks and filled in the space with gravel. Then they built a smaller ring of stones on top of the gravel and filled that in, and so on, until there was a big mound going up to a sort of peak. Then the bodies or bones were buried inside. This site is the oldest known burial site in Europe, with the most intact tombs. Pretty cool. They don't know much about why they built them this way, or why some of them are rectangular and some are round and some are oval, why they are oddly shaped, why some of the inner chambers are round or rectangular or with a domed roof, why some of them had adults and children and stone and bone tools and dogs and why some were just adults. Those neolithic people didn't leave a lot of clues unfortunately. But as a result of this field trip I now know the order of prehistoric eras: early, middle, and late paleolithic, megalithic, neolithic, bronze age, iron age. Nothing like a field trip to help a person make sense of stuff she was supposed to have learned in school.
Christine brought along a neighbor boy, Nathan, aged 9, to be a companion for Reed and they had fun running around despite not being able to communicate very well and not being allowed to climb on the mounds. My favorite part of the day was the picnic, eaten under the glass roof of the renovated 18th c. barn near the tumulus site. This kind of roof would be expensive but wow, what a way to renovate an old barn. My imagination has been fired up. It was comfortable and airy and bright, with a garden in the middle. We had leftover lamb, a chard and bacon frittata that I made, zucchini cake that I made, cold cooked green beans (the first from the garden!) with balsamic vinegar and olive oil (the French eat balsamic vinegar a lot, as do the Italians, and it comes from Italy I think, but I don't know its history very well - I'll try to find out more about it!), potato chips, bread and fresh goat cheese, and some other tidbits.
The little black chick keeps getting lost and I think that after I've rescued it twice I might not be able to find it this time. This morning I got it out of the middle of the pigpen, just before the pigs noticed it. Ella the goat is recovering from her ailments - no more blood in the milk and some E45 cream (something K had around from when one of the pigs was all broke out in an allergic rash) on the udder is working wonders. The thistling isn't finished but we've made great progress, and tonight we're all invited to some friends for dinner.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Life, Death, and a French radical
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
It's finally dark at 10:45 pm. Chicks and ducklings are especially vulnerable to crows and foxes and hawks so as dusk falls we make sure everyone's under cover and warm. The 5 brand new ducklings come from the barn into the house, the 3 newish chicks go from the ark in the yard to the barn, the 10 teenage ducklings go into the ark, and the chickens and ducks tuck themselves in to their chicken house which is actually a stone cow shed with a tiled roof that must be 200 years old. I'm not sure if the floor is made of dirt or rock; I'm raking up the mixed chicken manure and straw on the floor and carting it to the garden and so far I haven't reached what I think is the bottom. Occasionally I uncover a rock which I toss into the corner and there is a small pile collecting there.
Yesterday was so hot and muggy we could hardly move; pulling thistles for an hour and a half was torture. Then what we thought would be a storm blew through last night and it cooled off and rained just a bit so that today was about 60 degrees and cloudy - it was heaven in the hayfield aside from my wet feet. I pulled thistles in the bottom of the field close to the stream, where the wet ground made it very easy to pull the thistles, the mint grows thickly so every step smells refreshing, the water is gurgling by, and the grass issn't as tall as on the upper field so it was easier to walk. I was quite happy down there by myself for a couple hours while everyone worked further up. We had two more WWOOFers arrive yesterday evening and they energetically pulled thistles too so we really feel we're finally making progress. The garden looks good as well since Walt has been planting potatoes and hoeing in his spare time and today Margherita (from Greece) weeded too. The weather today was also conducive to the sheep butchering that K and D had scheduled for 10 am. It all went pretty smoothly I guess; I stayed in the hayfield although I was somewhat curious. Reed watched and told me about it later, and we talked about how it was always sad when an animal has to die so we can eat, but wasn't it good the sheep was happy right up to just a few minutes before it died? Sadder than the butchering was the lamb that died from an unknown cause just the other night, and the chick that drowned in a shallow bucket of water in front of the house last week. Now the excellent mother hen only has 5 chicks to watch over instead of 6. Reed was relieved that the drowned one wasn't his favorite little black one, which he feeds out of his hand and lets sit on his arm.
Ella the goat started getting blood in her milk last week so I started milking her twice a day instead of once to try to keep her from getting mastitis, but she's also got some kind of sores on her udder in several places which seem to bug her when I'm milking. First I tried cleaning her udder with salt water and then I left it alone and now I'm putting olive oil on it to see if that helps heal it up. She's such a sweet girl most of the time, except when she's being an escape artist. Her horns were cut off by her previous owner and she's brown so she looks very much like a deer, and her bleat is very dainty. I'll be glad when her milk clears up completely so we can drink it again.
Walt and I got to walk into the village of XXX just a kilometer away on Sunday before lunch, on a tractor trail between fields and hedges and across the stream, the same one that runs at the bottom of the hayfield. Just outside town on the main road we walked past a large group of senior citizens who had parked their cars on a gravelly pullout under some large trees and who had set up long tables and were having a picnic lunch, right there between the road, the ditch, and the cow pasture. They all nodded at us and smiled in a friendly way when we wished them bonjour messieur-dames and bon appetit!
XXX is small enough not to have its own tiny grocery store, but at least big enough to have a small post office, a bar/restaurant, and a boulangerie/patisserie. We sat in front of the 12th century Romanesque church and ate our pain au chocolat, and then headed back home, only to be hailed by a scruffy looking guy that we'd seen on our way into town on his bike. He had sussed us out as not the average foreigners, somehow, and when he discovered that we were American and not English he invited us in for a drink, in his modest apartment in a large old house in dire need of repair. He didn't apologize for the clutter, simply said we can't expect a man living alone to do the housekeeping. I have a feeling he's one of those tenants that the landlord would like to get rid of but can't, in this land of strong tenant laws.
We sat at the two chairs at the kitchen table while he prepared me a glass of sweet lemonade and Walt a cold alcohol-free beer. His walls were covered with posters and photos, one of him much younger with an accordion, another of his communist father, others of the Greenpeace and 70s hippie variety. First he explained that he didn't have coca cola, and when we said that's okay, we don't drink coca cola, he said, of course, you are normal, yes?; then we basically provided a receptive audience for his views on the ubiquitous English settlers in France, the ubiquitous American culture, the idiocy of the French farmers who spray poison on their fields and who grow GMO crops, the d--khead across the road with remote controlled gates and a video security camera that our new friend likes to moon occasionally etc. etc. He gave us a tour of his lovely organic garden, a mix of flowers and vegetables, let us smell the disgusting smell of fermenting nettle tea that he puts on his crops and he gave us two huge heads of lettuce that we accepted gratefully and ate for lunch and dinner on Monday. We finally said goodbye after admiring his pink and green painted motorcycle, amazed at the interesting people you'll meet when you're not in a hurry on a Sunday afternoon.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Sheep aren't smart but they can jump!
WWOOFer Kate arranges the onions, garlic, and shallots to cure
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The second day of thistle removal has made a real visible difference in the hayfield and since 1) young thistles will pull straight up out of the ground root and all and 2) a nice breeze kept us somewhat cooler today I thought, maybe I could handle having a 5 acre hayfield. All it would take is one spring and summer of walking regularly through the field every other day and hand pulling thistle until you’d eradicated it, and then checking carefully once every spring after that.
We’ve also learned about fencing for goats and sheep. These are all things we could read in a book or ask my dad about, I’m sure, but there’s nothing like hands-on experience, right? You’d think sheep would be more docile but no – they’ll push over or jump over or trample a wire fence to get to the grass that’s greener on the other side, so the only way to keep them from doing that is to make the fence posts very strong, the fence fairly tall, and with a wooden rail on the top AND a couple lines of barbed wire to keep them from pushing on it or climbing up on it.
I got up early this morning by this house’s standards – 7:30 – and got the animals fed and watered and weeded some more onions before breakfast. The five adolescent chickens have taken to following me when I’m weeding because they can find lots of tasty bugs where I’ve pulled up weeds. They’re starting to feel like my little pals and I certainly enjoy their company and their soft little clucks. There is also a mother hen with 6 young chicks in the yard; she is the model of a mother hen, too. The other day the old cat – not a threat to the chickens at all – was sitting too close to something the hen wanted her brood to be able to eat and she puffed herself up and flew at the cat like a fire breathing dragon. And who would have guessed that baby ducks will eat mice? One of the ten young ducks in the yard is quite a hunter, the other day he had a mouse, a slug, and a snail, not to mention all the bugs and grass normally on offer at the lawn buffet.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The second day of thistle removal has made a real visible difference in the hayfield and since 1) young thistles will pull straight up out of the ground root and all and 2) a nice breeze kept us somewhat cooler today I thought, maybe I could handle having a 5 acre hayfield. All it would take is one spring and summer of walking regularly through the field every other day and hand pulling thistle until you’d eradicated it, and then checking carefully once every spring after that.
We’ve also learned about fencing for goats and sheep. These are all things we could read in a book or ask my dad about, I’m sure, but there’s nothing like hands-on experience, right? You’d think sheep would be more docile but no – they’ll push over or jump over or trample a wire fence to get to the grass that’s greener on the other side, so the only way to keep them from doing that is to make the fence posts very strong, the fence fairly tall, and with a wooden rail on the top AND a couple lines of barbed wire to keep them from pushing on it or climbing up on it.
I got up early this morning by this house’s standards – 7:30 – and got the animals fed and watered and weeded some more onions before breakfast. The five adolescent chickens have taken to following me when I’m weeding because they can find lots of tasty bugs where I’ve pulled up weeds. They’re starting to feel like my little pals and I certainly enjoy their company and their soft little clucks. There is also a mother hen with 6 young chicks in the yard; she is the model of a mother hen, too. The other day the old cat – not a threat to the chickens at all – was sitting too close to something the hen wanted her brood to be able to eat and she puffed herself up and flew at the cat like a fire breathing dragon. And who would have guessed that baby ducks will eat mice? One of the ten young ducks in the yard is quite a hunter, the other day he had a mouse, a slug, and a snail, not to mention all the bugs and grass normally on offer at the lawn buffet.
Thistles in the Hay
Walt and Rosie after the weeding
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
We both worked on the thistles this morning in the heat and humidity, some of the hardest work I’ve done for a while. Slogging through an uncut hayfield and then gingerly trying to gather – wearing two pairs of gloves - the thistles that Walt has cut with his loppers and put them onto a tarp to drag up the long slope back to the goat and sheep fold… there’s still quite a lot to do, it feels like we hardly made a dent in almost 3 hours. An important lesson learned here, that at Chateau Lasalle was just theoretical knowledge: don’t buy more land than you need. Walt asked me how I would handle this thistles in the hay problem and my first reaction was, sell the field! My next reaction was, mow it for a whole year multiple times without harvesting the hay, and then, get some donkeys to add to the sheep and goats and let them keep it trimmed after the haying.
At the bottom of the field is a fairly big stream, with lots of trees keeping it in the shade. Right now because of all the rain it’s a little muddy and a little too big for Reed to putter around in, making dams and such. But maybe it’ll come down later in the week.
I’ve started several projects and haven’t finished any of them but I guess that’s par for the course here. The onions are partially weeded, the thistles have been started, the chicken house cleaning out project has started, and we mowed some of the lawn this afternoon with the small mower since the riding one is still out of commission. The grass catcher fills up after just a couple minutes so it really takes two of us to mow, one to mow and the other to fill up the wheelbarrow with clippings and take them to the compost and the various animals.
Our lovely meals continue here, lots of fresh tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, homemade mayonnaise and hummus, Kate’s seed bread and lemon bread and macaroons and jam tarts, lamb ribs, roast new potatoes, roast duck, etc. etc! Our hosts were in town today and I got dinner and managed to overcook the roast duck but it was still edible, fortunately.
I’m going to try to get up early to weed, since I usually wake up at 6:30 anyway and then just lay in bed for a couple hours, not wanting to disturb Reed. Tomorrow I’ll just sneak out quietly and hope he sleeps late. It’s hard to get him to bed before 10 or even 11 with the light lasting so long.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
We both worked on the thistles this morning in the heat and humidity, some of the hardest work I’ve done for a while. Slogging through an uncut hayfield and then gingerly trying to gather – wearing two pairs of gloves - the thistles that Walt has cut with his loppers and put them onto a tarp to drag up the long slope back to the goat and sheep fold… there’s still quite a lot to do, it feels like we hardly made a dent in almost 3 hours. An important lesson learned here, that at Chateau Lasalle was just theoretical knowledge: don’t buy more land than you need. Walt asked me how I would handle this thistles in the hay problem and my first reaction was, sell the field! My next reaction was, mow it for a whole year multiple times without harvesting the hay, and then, get some donkeys to add to the sheep and goats and let them keep it trimmed after the haying.
At the bottom of the field is a fairly big stream, with lots of trees keeping it in the shade. Right now because of all the rain it’s a little muddy and a little too big for Reed to putter around in, making dams and such. But maybe it’ll come down later in the week.
I’ve started several projects and haven’t finished any of them but I guess that’s par for the course here. The onions are partially weeded, the thistles have been started, the chicken house cleaning out project has started, and we mowed some of the lawn this afternoon with the small mower since the riding one is still out of commission. The grass catcher fills up after just a couple minutes so it really takes two of us to mow, one to mow and the other to fill up the wheelbarrow with clippings and take them to the compost and the various animals.
Our lovely meals continue here, lots of fresh tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, homemade mayonnaise and hummus, Kate’s seed bread and lemon bread and macaroons and jam tarts, lamb ribs, roast new potatoes, roast duck, etc. etc! Our hosts were in town today and I got dinner and managed to overcook the roast duck but it was still edible, fortunately.
I’m going to try to get up early to weed, since I usually wake up at 6:30 anyway and then just lay in bed for a couple hours, not wanting to disturb Reed. Tomorrow I’ll just sneak out quietly and hope he sleeps late. It’s hard to get him to bed before 10 or even 11 with the light lasting so long.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Deux Sevres
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Happy Birthday to my brother Doug and also to my friend Gretchen in Sitka!
Summer heat arrived here yesterday after a long, cool, wet spring. Now it’s hot and humid, with the grass and weeds gone crazy and everywhere the nettles and brambles trying to claim back this farm. It is a 15 acre place just a few kilometers from the nearest villages, with a medium sized old stone farmhouse and several stone outbuildings. We’re just about an hour east of the Atlantic ocean, and the weather here is relatively temperate, as evidenced by the artichokes in the garden.
The owners have made a nice sized potager/kitchen garden, and have quite a few chickens and ducks. Right now there are 10 young ducks, 5 half-grown chickens, and a mother hen and her 6 chicks who have free range of the yard, plus another couple dozen adults in the poultry house and fenced in area. There are also 3 goats, some sheep – one ewe has triplet lambs - , and 2 young pigs who are eating and growing fast, destined for bacon. We give everybody some grain in the morning and stale bread from the boulangerie. They don’t really need it, since there is plenty of grass, but K explained that it’s nice to keep them in the habit of coming when you call, in the event they break the fence yet again. The mother hen comes into the kitchen when she thinks it’s time for her and the family to get their grain ration. Altogether with the two dogs and 3 cats there are 60 some animals here.
I learned that it is possible to milk a goat that hasn’t had a kid. Maid milking, K called it. Ella the goat is giving a couple of cups a day now and I’m sure her production would increase rapidly if Kate started milking her twice a day instead of once. Reed had her milk on his cereal for breakfast and I’ll start having it too unless she wants me to try to make cheese.
We have been enjoying our sunny room upstairs in the farmhouse and fabulous cooking by both K and K. She makes pies and cakes and cookies and bread and he makes everything else and so far we’ve enjoyed fresh tomato soup, quiche, potato salad, tomato salad, artichokes with butter, lamb stew, jam tarts, macaroons, ginger cake, and lots of good bread and cheese. We were offered the whole weekend off work but I feel funny about eating meals and not doing any work so on Friday I did a little weeding in the strawberries and yesterday I weeded most of the day, getting through the artichokes and asparagus and starting in on the onions, and also picking strawberries. Last night was a huge thunderstorm but today is sunny again – I’m taking Sunday off while Walt works on cutting down the thistles out in the hayfield before it’s time to make hay this week or next.
Happy Birthday to my brother Doug and also to my friend Gretchen in Sitka!
Summer heat arrived here yesterday after a long, cool, wet spring. Now it’s hot and humid, with the grass and weeds gone crazy and everywhere the nettles and brambles trying to claim back this farm. It is a 15 acre place just a few kilometers from the nearest villages, with a medium sized old stone farmhouse and several stone outbuildings. We’re just about an hour east of the Atlantic ocean, and the weather here is relatively temperate, as evidenced by the artichokes in the garden.
The owners have made a nice sized potager/kitchen garden, and have quite a few chickens and ducks. Right now there are 10 young ducks, 5 half-grown chickens, and a mother hen and her 6 chicks who have free range of the yard, plus another couple dozen adults in the poultry house and fenced in area. There are also 3 goats, some sheep – one ewe has triplet lambs - , and 2 young pigs who are eating and growing fast, destined for bacon. We give everybody some grain in the morning and stale bread from the boulangerie. They don’t really need it, since there is plenty of grass, but K explained that it’s nice to keep them in the habit of coming when you call, in the event they break the fence yet again. The mother hen comes into the kitchen when she thinks it’s time for her and the family to get their grain ration. Altogether with the two dogs and 3 cats there are 60 some animals here.
I learned that it is possible to milk a goat that hasn’t had a kid. Maid milking, K called it. Ella the goat is giving a couple of cups a day now and I’m sure her production would increase rapidly if Kate started milking her twice a day instead of once. Reed had her milk on his cereal for breakfast and I’ll start having it too unless she wants me to try to make cheese.
We have been enjoying our sunny room upstairs in the farmhouse and fabulous cooking by both K and K. She makes pies and cakes and cookies and bread and he makes everything else and so far we’ve enjoyed fresh tomato soup, quiche, potato salad, tomato salad, artichokes with butter, lamb stew, jam tarts, macaroons, ginger cake, and lots of good bread and cheese. We were offered the whole weekend off work but I feel funny about eating meals and not doing any work so on Friday I did a little weeding in the strawberries and yesterday I weeded most of the day, getting through the artichokes and asparagus and starting in on the onions, and also picking strawberries. Last night was a huge thunderstorm but today is sunny again – I’m taking Sunday off while Walt works on cutting down the thistles out in the hayfield before it’s time to make hay this week or next.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Petanque
Our favorite chat de la brousse
Eric taught us how to play petanque, or boules, while we were at Hameau de la Brousse. The balls are made of metal and heavy, and about the size of a baseball. There is a smaller wooden ball called the cochon, or something like that, something to do with a little pig. There is some minimum and maximum distance that the wooden ball has to be thrown from the playing line, and then you try to get the metal balls as close to the wooden ball as possible. There are several kinds of throws, one just to get the ball in there, one to knock another player’s ball away and replace it with your own, and another to drop your ball in to a specific place without hitting someone else in front closer to the pig. Generally you hold the ball in the curve of your palm with the ball facing the ground and throw by lifting your arm and flicking your wrist and hand upward. Whoever has the ball farthest away has to go next, so whoever is winning gets the last play. Whoever gets the closest metal ball to the pig wins a point, and if that person or team has another 1 or 2 or however many balls close to the pig without someone from the opposite team having one closer, they’ll get another point for each ball. But if the 2nd closest ball is someone else or another team, the winner just gets the 1 point. The perfect ground is a little sandy but not too soft; we played on the gravel driveway fairly well although it was tricky because of the varying amounts of gravel and the slope too. Petanque turned out to be the perfect game to play while we were waiting for dinner to be ready – you can drink a little wine, take your turn, talk. No wonder we see retired people playing petanque in the early evenings in so many places. I guess we learned it just in time, now that both of us are above the age of 40.
We had some pretty wonderful meals our last few days at la Brousse: stewed chicken in tomato herb sauce with polenta; cabbage gratin; Normandy style crepes (by Eric) with sautéed mushrooms, ham, grated gruyere, sautéed leeks, and eggs; lots and lots of leftover borscht; couscous with a Moroccan style vegetable stew and merguez sausages on the side; pre-cooked quinoa sautéed with olive oil and diced onions. The strawberries ran out – kaput – so we ate Helene’s cheesecake for dessert for a while, and then I made a North Douglas Chocolate Cake, my favorite from the Fiddlehead cookbook, which was well received but it could have been better because the tournesol oil I used instead of canola was too strong, I should have used melted butter instead. So when the subject of gateau des carrottes came up and I offered to make one, I used melted butter and was not sorry. The recipe came from Sheila Lukin’s international cookbook, and the cake was called Berthe’s creole carrot cake or something like that. I left out the coconut and the pineapple, since I prefer a simpler carrot cake, but Walt and Eric saw the walnuts in the ingredient list and quickly measured them out and chopped them up for me quite finely. I also had to substitute the light brown sugar that we had at la Brousse with the white sugar called for in the recipe, and I didn’t precook the carrots, as Helene recommended just using fresh grated carrot instead.
You might think with all the changes a disaster was in store, but the result was absolutely spectacularly good – we served it without frosting with a crème fraiche and mascarpone mixture on the side. Eric could hardly stand it; he applauded and was almost moaning in pleasure as he scarfed down two big pieces, and Amandine gave me a hug and said MERCI!! When I get ahold of the cookbook I will definitely put the recipe into my favorites file, and post it in this blog. North Douglas chocolate cake too, it’s wonderful when made correctly. Of course, it always helps when you have Brittany butter at your disposal, there’s nothing better.
We said our sad goodbyes yesterday morning to the other WWOOFers who remained (Ragi, Phi Lee, Amandine, and Eric), Iva and Yuki having left the day before already, making a hole in our la Brousse lives. We left the last pieces of carrot cake for Eric to eat, and waved goodbye to Helene as Michel drove us down the driveway and on to Angouleme to the station. It was a short train ride, just two hours in total on two trains, and happily, our new situation in Deux Sevres is very very pleasant, and the bed more comfortable. Reed is thrilled because there are baby chickens and ducks everywhere, plus goats and sheep, and two little pigs, and he has a bunk bed in which to sleep, that he’s already turned into a tent using extra blankets.
Eric taught us how to play petanque, or boules, while we were at Hameau de la Brousse. The balls are made of metal and heavy, and about the size of a baseball. There is a smaller wooden ball called the cochon, or something like that, something to do with a little pig. There is some minimum and maximum distance that the wooden ball has to be thrown from the playing line, and then you try to get the metal balls as close to the wooden ball as possible. There are several kinds of throws, one just to get the ball in there, one to knock another player’s ball away and replace it with your own, and another to drop your ball in to a specific place without hitting someone else in front closer to the pig. Generally you hold the ball in the curve of your palm with the ball facing the ground and throw by lifting your arm and flicking your wrist and hand upward. Whoever has the ball farthest away has to go next, so whoever is winning gets the last play. Whoever gets the closest metal ball to the pig wins a point, and if that person or team has another 1 or 2 or however many balls close to the pig without someone from the opposite team having one closer, they’ll get another point for each ball. But if the 2nd closest ball is someone else or another team, the winner just gets the 1 point. The perfect ground is a little sandy but not too soft; we played on the gravel driveway fairly well although it was tricky because of the varying amounts of gravel and the slope too. Petanque turned out to be the perfect game to play while we were waiting for dinner to be ready – you can drink a little wine, take your turn, talk. No wonder we see retired people playing petanque in the early evenings in so many places. I guess we learned it just in time, now that both of us are above the age of 40.
We had some pretty wonderful meals our last few days at la Brousse: stewed chicken in tomato herb sauce with polenta; cabbage gratin; Normandy style crepes (by Eric) with sautéed mushrooms, ham, grated gruyere, sautéed leeks, and eggs; lots and lots of leftover borscht; couscous with a Moroccan style vegetable stew and merguez sausages on the side; pre-cooked quinoa sautéed with olive oil and diced onions. The strawberries ran out – kaput – so we ate Helene’s cheesecake for dessert for a while, and then I made a North Douglas Chocolate Cake, my favorite from the Fiddlehead cookbook, which was well received but it could have been better because the tournesol oil I used instead of canola was too strong, I should have used melted butter instead. So when the subject of gateau des carrottes came up and I offered to make one, I used melted butter and was not sorry. The recipe came from Sheila Lukin’s international cookbook, and the cake was called Berthe’s creole carrot cake or something like that. I left out the coconut and the pineapple, since I prefer a simpler carrot cake, but Walt and Eric saw the walnuts in the ingredient list and quickly measured them out and chopped them up for me quite finely. I also had to substitute the light brown sugar that we had at la Brousse with the white sugar called for in the recipe, and I didn’t precook the carrots, as Helene recommended just using fresh grated carrot instead.
You might think with all the changes a disaster was in store, but the result was absolutely spectacularly good – we served it without frosting with a crème fraiche and mascarpone mixture on the side. Eric could hardly stand it; he applauded and was almost moaning in pleasure as he scarfed down two big pieces, and Amandine gave me a hug and said MERCI!! When I get ahold of the cookbook I will definitely put the recipe into my favorites file, and post it in this blog. North Douglas chocolate cake too, it’s wonderful when made correctly. Of course, it always helps when you have Brittany butter at your disposal, there’s nothing better.
We said our sad goodbyes yesterday morning to the other WWOOFers who remained (Ragi, Phi Lee, Amandine, and Eric), Iva and Yuki having left the day before already, making a hole in our la Brousse lives. We left the last pieces of carrot cake for Eric to eat, and waved goodbye to Helene as Michel drove us down the driveway and on to Angouleme to the station. It was a short train ride, just two hours in total on two trains, and happily, our new situation in Deux Sevres is very very pleasant, and the bed more comfortable. Reed is thrilled because there are baby chickens and ducks everywhere, plus goats and sheep, and two little pigs, and he has a bunk bed in which to sleep, that he’s already turned into a tent using extra blankets.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Tranquil Again
Views at Hameau de la Brousse
It feels like the end of summer camp; all the Le Printemps sans Chapiteau actors, technicians, musicians, and organizers packed up with our help, kissed us all on both cheeks, and left yesterday after a very successful, well-attended performance of La Mouette on Friday night. La Mouette means The Seagull, it is one of Chekhov's most famous pieces, I think, full of people who are in love with the wrong person. The show started around 9 pm on Friday night and I helped take tickets. Fortunately it didn't rain, but it did get pretty chilly by the time the show was over around 11 pm. Everyone was wrapped in the blankets that Michel and Helene keep just for this purpose. But nobody minded; the play was riveting, the actors were funny, tragic, and compelling, and the setting was absolutely magical. The director used the entire park surrounding the stage for some of the action and it was very dramatic to have lights out in the trees and on the limestone cliff walls below the hameau where the amphitheatre is set. They had 3 curtain calls to a standing ovation.
Reed stayed up to watch the play too, and although he was cold and thirsty and couldn't understand a word he wouldn't leave or let one of us take him back to the room, because he wanted to see it. After watching the rehearsals on Thursday from his little rock platform on stage right, he was tickled when he recognized bits of the action and he especially wanted to see them use the big spot lights on the metal towers behind the bleacher seating. I think it was pretty magical, too, to see the people we had been eating with all week transformed into their characters. There was also a neat technical feat of making it rain outside the big French door type windows at the back of the stage which Reed was pretty excited about. Afterwards, we all hurried back to the main building where Helene had a huge pot of hot borscht waiting for us, followed by cheesecake, which we were eating at 1 a.m. with everyone, basking in the post-performance glow and the expansive good moods of all the actors. Fortunately Reed was quite happy to climb into bed as soon as the play was over.
We were nearly at the capacity of the kitchen, dining room and the dishes and silverware and so on, feeding this group lunch and dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; the dishwasher was running constantly to keep up and all of us were peeling and chopping veggies for hours before each meal, it seemed. Fortunately Reed discovered on Tuesday that he loves loading and unloading the dishwasher so he was always checking the machine to see if one load was done so he could put all the dishes on the shelves, add the soap, and then push the buttons. Sometimes there is something like this that he'll take to wherever we're WWOOFing which kind of makes up for the extra work he creates at times. He's also been helping Walt with some of the landscaping and gardening which always perks up the exterior of wherever we're WWOOFing. And again, I'm amazed at what he'll eat when I haven't cooked it, there's nothing else, and when he's really hungry from the lack of snacks: Waldorf salad heavy on the celery, lentils, squid in cardamom sauce, anchovy spread, spicy merguez sausage, fig crisp, curry etc. Of course there was lots of stuff he loves anyway like quiche, spaghetti bolognaise, cheesecake, rillettes, stewed peaches with honey, and walnut cake.
This afternoon Eric took a group in his yellow Kangoo to some place on the river to swim and Walt and Reed went with him; it's just now starting to rain so hopefully they got a chance to get in the water before the weather got wet. We're tired from all the work this week and also from the hard work we've been doing to learn French. But we've made progress - last night Eric was talking for several minutes at his normal speed to other French people about bicycles in various cities like Paris, Lille, and Amsterdam, and I understood almost everything he said. And I've learned the difference in pronunciation for "vu," "vous," and "veux"!!
It feels like the end of summer camp; all the Le Printemps sans Chapiteau actors, technicians, musicians, and organizers packed up with our help, kissed us all on both cheeks, and left yesterday after a very successful, well-attended performance of La Mouette on Friday night. La Mouette means The Seagull, it is one of Chekhov's most famous pieces, I think, full of people who are in love with the wrong person. The show started around 9 pm on Friday night and I helped take tickets. Fortunately it didn't rain, but it did get pretty chilly by the time the show was over around 11 pm. Everyone was wrapped in the blankets that Michel and Helene keep just for this purpose. But nobody minded; the play was riveting, the actors were funny, tragic, and compelling, and the setting was absolutely magical. The director used the entire park surrounding the stage for some of the action and it was very dramatic to have lights out in the trees and on the limestone cliff walls below the hameau where the amphitheatre is set. They had 3 curtain calls to a standing ovation.
Reed stayed up to watch the play too, and although he was cold and thirsty and couldn't understand a word he wouldn't leave or let one of us take him back to the room, because he wanted to see it. After watching the rehearsals on Thursday from his little rock platform on stage right, he was tickled when he recognized bits of the action and he especially wanted to see them use the big spot lights on the metal towers behind the bleacher seating. I think it was pretty magical, too, to see the people we had been eating with all week transformed into their characters. There was also a neat technical feat of making it rain outside the big French door type windows at the back of the stage which Reed was pretty excited about. Afterwards, we all hurried back to the main building where Helene had a huge pot of hot borscht waiting for us, followed by cheesecake, which we were eating at 1 a.m. with everyone, basking in the post-performance glow and the expansive good moods of all the actors. Fortunately Reed was quite happy to climb into bed as soon as the play was over.
We were nearly at the capacity of the kitchen, dining room and the dishes and silverware and so on, feeding this group lunch and dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; the dishwasher was running constantly to keep up and all of us were peeling and chopping veggies for hours before each meal, it seemed. Fortunately Reed discovered on Tuesday that he loves loading and unloading the dishwasher so he was always checking the machine to see if one load was done so he could put all the dishes on the shelves, add the soap, and then push the buttons. Sometimes there is something like this that he'll take to wherever we're WWOOFing which kind of makes up for the extra work he creates at times. He's also been helping Walt with some of the landscaping and gardening which always perks up the exterior of wherever we're WWOOFing. And again, I'm amazed at what he'll eat when I haven't cooked it, there's nothing else, and when he's really hungry from the lack of snacks: Waldorf salad heavy on the celery, lentils, squid in cardamom sauce, anchovy spread, spicy merguez sausage, fig crisp, curry etc. Of course there was lots of stuff he loves anyway like quiche, spaghetti bolognaise, cheesecake, rillettes, stewed peaches with honey, and walnut cake.
This afternoon Eric took a group in his yellow Kangoo to some place on the river to swim and Walt and Reed went with him; it's just now starting to rain so hopefully they got a chance to get in the water before the weather got wet. We're tired from all the work this week and also from the hard work we've been doing to learn French. But we've made progress - last night Eric was talking for several minutes at his normal speed to other French people about bicycles in various cities like Paris, Lille, and Amsterdam, and I understood almost everything he said. And I've learned the difference in pronunciation for "vu," "vous," and "veux"!!
Friday, June 13, 2008
It's all highbrow in France...
Walt stayed at the hameau with Reed the other night and ate with the technicians while the rest of us piled in some cars and drove to a nearby town where there was a kind of potluck buffet meal (repas) of mediocre quiches and pizza and then a poetry reading of two poems that had to do with bulls and maybe Picasso written by one of France's most famous poets. Of course I can't remember his name but one of the poems was called La Corrida. I didn't understand much but I enjoyed the setting - in the garden of a beautiful little chateau - and the performance; it was more of a dramatic reading than just a poetry reading. For La Corrida, they passed around glasses of red wine before they started. Since the performers were wearing red and black and had red cloths to drape on the chairs and the candleabras were full of red candles burning brightly, it was all very dramatic. Even better were when the bats started flying around because of all the insects attracted to the lights. Afterwards the twilight view over the hills dotted with lights from hamlets and villages was really beautiful, I could see how a nobleman surveying his territory would have felt like a king in that chateau in the evenings.
This is all part of a Open Skies (Ciel Ouvert) series of summer artistic events in this region held in unusual outdoor spaces that Michel and Helene have helped facilitate. The next night we quickly washed up the dishes after dinner and piled in the cars again, this time for a film being shown inside an actual old quarry, or carriere. It was immense, and once we got inside, a little chilly; cave temperature of course. If I'd realized I would have worn socks. The film was a collection of 5 short films made by one director; a couple of them it was easy to understand the gist of it but a couple of them were absolutely inscrutable unless you understood French well. The funniest one was a couple about to get married, who suddenly were confessing to each other all the things the other person didn't know. The man doesn't like meat, he broke a vase on purpose, etc. etc. Then the woman admitted - and in this part I was so excited because I could understand it all and I could even laugh - that everything she had ever served him to eat she had bought at the deli or traiteur; the worst part was getting rid of all the packaging. And the final blow - she was brunette, not blond. Completely brunette. The look on his face was priceless.
Eric, the WWOOFer from Lille, told me he was looking forward to seeing the film because he hadn't been to the cinema for a long time; he also said he hoped it wasn't too highbrow, although he didn't use that word because there isn't a translation for highbrow in French. Then, just as I was about to say facetiously, but isn't everything in France highbrow? he said but of course, everything in France is like that!
The actors and musicians are pretty pleasant to have around, many of them are downright friendly and will in good spirits correct your French nicely and others are simply pleasant. Last night their dress rehearsal was delayed by the rain and everyone was gathered in the big room downstairs where a few of us were playing a dice game called Yams and Reed was painting with watercolors and loading dirty dishes into the dishwasher and putting away the clean ones. Tonight is the big spectacle, a piece called La Mouette based on something by Chekhov. I'm very curious to see everyone in their parts. We will eat dinner early tonight and then have borscht afterwards. Today the person who seems to be the person in charge of all the paperwork, Cecille, presented Helene with a big bouquet of flowers and she gave us WWOOFers a couple of chocolate toolboxes. Everything in finest chocolate, the box, the wrenches, the tape measure, bolts, etc. These are tucked safely away in the pantry for us to share later.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Let the excitement begin...
This Friday is a performance of some kind by a touring theatre troup called Le Printemps sans Chapiteau. A chapiteau is a big tent and apparently they used to use a big tent but now they don't, therefore, they are sans chapiteau. They'll tour all summer and finish up at the Avignon festival in July. Well, yesterday the big truck with all the gear arrived, and for dinner we had 15 people at the table. Helene cooked a feast: caesar salad, white fish (hake) baked on a bed of leeks, and of course we had strawberries for dessert. This morning our work was helping unload the truck. Reed sat off to the side playing peek a boo inside two big plastic tree pots while the rest of us hauled staging, bleachers, lights, electrical cords, speakers, etc. etc. out of the truck and then assembled the bleachers. We stopped at 10 a.m. for coffee, or water with almond syrup, no food, no potato chips, no donuts, no croissants, (the French don't really snack, that's why they don't get fat) before getting back to it until about 12:30. That took us up to lunch, for which Helene had once again cooked a treat, for 22 of us. Salad of regular buttery lettuce with vinaigrette, frittata with potatoes, anchovy spread to go with the bread, squash in a spicy sauce, cheese platter, and for dessert, strawberry apple tart. Mmmm.
I just have to take each moment as it comes, because I have no idea what's going to happen next - will the performers arrive? Who is this guy with the long hair and pale skin who looks like a musician who just arrived? Will we be 30 at dinner? Will I be working in the garden, the kitchen, or helping the roadies? I never know until it's time, since my French isn't good enough to catch the logistics discussions. I don't worry about it though. Eric is very helpful with his English, and my consolation is that Stuart, a fellow Welshman who lives here at the hameau ("fellow" because I have Welsh blood too) understands even less.
I've been feeding Reed early and getting him to bed by 8 or 9 since we haven't been eating until then or even later. Last night he was homesick and sad about our decision to let Fiona stay with her current caretaker (who will give her a home where she can nap on the furniture), so I made him pancakes which he ate with strawberries and strawberry jam. But tonight I think we're all going out to some small performances in some villages and then having a picnic. That's all I know. After lunch Yuki and I helped Helene make a salad with beets, zucchini, carrot, parsley, fennel, and quinoa, and she is also making some kind of savory bread pudding that also has beets in it. She's working on a Russian theme - thus, the beets. Oh, because the theatre thing on Friday has something to do with Chekhov! I'm sure I'll understand more as the week progresses.
I just have to take each moment as it comes, because I have no idea what's going to happen next - will the performers arrive? Who is this guy with the long hair and pale skin who looks like a musician who just arrived? Will we be 30 at dinner? Will I be working in the garden, the kitchen, or helping the roadies? I never know until it's time, since my French isn't good enough to catch the logistics discussions. I don't worry about it though. Eric is very helpful with his English, and my consolation is that Stuart, a fellow Welshman who lives here at the hameau ("fellow" because I have Welsh blood too) understands even less.
I've been feeding Reed early and getting him to bed by 8 or 9 since we haven't been eating until then or even later. Last night he was homesick and sad about our decision to let Fiona stay with her current caretaker (who will give her a home where she can nap on the furniture), so I made him pancakes which he ate with strawberries and strawberry jam. But tonight I think we're all going out to some small performances in some villages and then having a picnic. That's all I know. After lunch Yuki and I helped Helene make a salad with beets, zucchini, carrot, parsley, fennel, and quinoa, and she is also making some kind of savory bread pudding that also has beets in it. She's working on a Russian theme - thus, the beets. Oh, because the theatre thing on Friday has something to do with Chekhov! I'm sure I'll understand more as the week progresses.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Not a weed
Views of Hameau de la Brousse
And more about what we eat...
The lettuce in the garden at La Brousse isn't quite big enough to harvest yet but no matter, the dandelions have been up for weeks and when their leaves are small and tender they are good to eat. A little bitter, yes, and also a diuretic, but high in vitamin C I think, kind of a spring tonic, to drink a lot of water and eat a salad of "pissenlit" (literally translated means pee in the bed). It amused me on Saturday morning in the garden to be given a basket and instructed to harvest dandelion leaves from the row of them growing in the garden. Of course they're everywhere else too and if we get hard up for the cultivated ones we can always just go around and harvest them from the strawberry beds.
And more about what we eat...
The lettuce in the garden at La Brousse isn't quite big enough to harvest yet but no matter, the dandelions have been up for weeks and when their leaves are small and tender they are good to eat. A little bitter, yes, and also a diuretic, but high in vitamin C I think, kind of a spring tonic, to drink a lot of water and eat a salad of "pissenlit" (literally translated means pee in the bed). It amused me on Saturday morning in the garden to be given a basket and instructed to harvest dandelion leaves from the row of them growing in the garden. Of course they're everywhere else too and if we get hard up for the cultivated ones we can always just go around and harvest them from the strawberry beds.
Charlotte aux Fraises
Helene slices the charlotte
Eric (French), Ragi (Norwegian), Regis (French), and Amandine (Belgian)
Michel cleans up the charlotte
Saturday night, late dinner of delicious pizza - nothing like Pizza Hut, it was agreed, and all were happy to hear Reed had never been there - and the crowning glory, a strawberry charlotte constructed by Amandine from the strawberries that Eric, Amandine, and I had harvested Saturday morning in the blazing sunshine.
As Walt and Reed and I were hungrily waiting around, having helped make the charlotte, prepare the pizza toppings, gone for a walk, read for hours, with still no sign of dinner being served, I realized that the key difference between the US and France is that for the French, dinner IS the entire point of the evening, there is nothing more important, in general, that will come after it except conversation. Whereas in the US, usually dinner is something we do first in the evening, followed by other things: a movie, reading a book, playing cards, watching t.v.... so when the pizza was finally served at 10 pm it was with a palpable sense of drama and lots of bravos.
The dessert was cheered, and second helpings taken all around, until finally Michel provoked a lot of jokes by continuing to cut tiny slivers, just a bit more, over and over again.
Eric (French), Ragi (Norwegian), Regis (French), and Amandine (Belgian)
Michel cleans up the charlotte
Saturday night, late dinner of delicious pizza - nothing like Pizza Hut, it was agreed, and all were happy to hear Reed had never been there - and the crowning glory, a strawberry charlotte constructed by Amandine from the strawberries that Eric, Amandine, and I had harvested Saturday morning in the blazing sunshine.
As Walt and Reed and I were hungrily waiting around, having helped make the charlotte, prepare the pizza toppings, gone for a walk, read for hours, with still no sign of dinner being served, I realized that the key difference between the US and France is that for the French, dinner IS the entire point of the evening, there is nothing more important, in general, that will come after it except conversation. Whereas in the US, usually dinner is something we do first in the evening, followed by other things: a movie, reading a book, playing cards, watching t.v.... so when the pizza was finally served at 10 pm it was with a palpable sense of drama and lots of bravos.
The dessert was cheered, and second helpings taken all around, until finally Michel provoked a lot of jokes by continuing to cut tiny slivers, just a bit more, over and over again.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Hameau de la Brousse
Hameau de la Brousse
We’ve moved on to our next WWOOF host after Chateau Lassalle, after we said goodbye yesterday morning to the Cutts family in Aignan. It’s never easy to go after sharing peoples’ lives for a couple of weeks, doing the dishes, dealing with cranky kids, enjoying good meals and staying up too late, worrying about the weather… but we consoled ourselves with the thought that we’ll be back in the Gers in a few years, hopefully.
Steve took us to the train for what was for us a very easy 3 hours of train travel from Mont de Marsan to Bordeaux to Angouleme. Helene picked us up and ran some errands with us in the car and then we came back to Hameau de la Brousse, which is out in the rolling countryside very near the border between the Charente and the Dordogne. Hameau means hamlet, and this hamlet, a group of houses and barns, is owned entirely by three artists who have slowly renovated the whole place into houses, a gite, artist studios, performance spaces, etc. There is a huge garden and a park area in which there is a sort of natural amphitheatre, a river, a pond, limestone cliffs, and old quarrying caves that go into the cliffs. We’re out in the middle of nowhere and don’t mind at all, it’s so interesting.
There is quite a community of people here, several other WWOOFers, all younger than us of course, one from Austria, one from Japan, one from Norway, one from Belgium, a couple of friends of the owners, some paying guests, a resident artist, all of whom add up to a lot of mouths to feed. But with so many WWOOFers we get a lot done and the dishes don’t take too long. Things are surprisingly clean and organized for a place that gets so much traffic in the kitchen – this must be due to Helene and Michel’s skill at making lists of things for their WWOOFers to do immediately after breakfast. They are easy going and friendly and also organized and efficient – which is great, because it means meals are on time and the bed sheets are clean.
We’re eating very well – all the food appears to be organic and so far it’s been vegetarian although I’m told that only one of the WWOOFers is vegetarian. Last night it was sautéed carrots, millet mixed with bulgur, dandelion salad with vinaigrette, and strawberries and cream for dessert. Lunch today was scalloped squash, dandelion salad, leftover bulgar/millet, cheese, and more strawberries. And dinner this evening, spicy red beans and squash, rice, dandelion salad, and even more strawberries with cream. And always lots of sourdough bread and butter. And no, I’m not tired of the strawberries yet – they are fabulously fresh and delicious, straight from the garden. Helene isn’t tired of the strawberries either, tonight I saw her brazenly licking her plate after she’d eaten her dessert. Everyone rushed off after dinner to the theatre event happening down in the hameau’s park, something about “And Zeus created his woman…” but Reed was tired enough that he took himself to bed to read so I stayed in the room with him to help him get showered and ready to sleep. He’s having to adjust to being the only child again after having Ella to play with for the last two weeks. But there are plenty of friendly cats, a couple of dogs, and some chickens that he can visit with, and an amazing amount of really varied and interesting outdoor space complete with sculptures, caves, woods, stone steps, and numerous paths to follow. You can visit the website by clicking on the title of this post above.
We’ve moved on to our next WWOOF host after Chateau Lassalle, after we said goodbye yesterday morning to the Cutts family in Aignan. It’s never easy to go after sharing peoples’ lives for a couple of weeks, doing the dishes, dealing with cranky kids, enjoying good meals and staying up too late, worrying about the weather… but we consoled ourselves with the thought that we’ll be back in the Gers in a few years, hopefully.
Steve took us to the train for what was for us a very easy 3 hours of train travel from Mont de Marsan to Bordeaux to Angouleme. Helene picked us up and ran some errands with us in the car and then we came back to Hameau de la Brousse, which is out in the rolling countryside very near the border between the Charente and the Dordogne. Hameau means hamlet, and this hamlet, a group of houses and barns, is owned entirely by three artists who have slowly renovated the whole place into houses, a gite, artist studios, performance spaces, etc. There is a huge garden and a park area in which there is a sort of natural amphitheatre, a river, a pond, limestone cliffs, and old quarrying caves that go into the cliffs. We’re out in the middle of nowhere and don’t mind at all, it’s so interesting.
There is quite a community of people here, several other WWOOFers, all younger than us of course, one from Austria, one from Japan, one from Norway, one from Belgium, a couple of friends of the owners, some paying guests, a resident artist, all of whom add up to a lot of mouths to feed. But with so many WWOOFers we get a lot done and the dishes don’t take too long. Things are surprisingly clean and organized for a place that gets so much traffic in the kitchen – this must be due to Helene and Michel’s skill at making lists of things for their WWOOFers to do immediately after breakfast. They are easy going and friendly and also organized and efficient – which is great, because it means meals are on time and the bed sheets are clean.
We’re eating very well – all the food appears to be organic and so far it’s been vegetarian although I’m told that only one of the WWOOFers is vegetarian. Last night it was sautéed carrots, millet mixed with bulgur, dandelion salad with vinaigrette, and strawberries and cream for dessert. Lunch today was scalloped squash, dandelion salad, leftover bulgar/millet, cheese, and more strawberries. And dinner this evening, spicy red beans and squash, rice, dandelion salad, and even more strawberries with cream. And always lots of sourdough bread and butter. And no, I’m not tired of the strawberries yet – they are fabulously fresh and delicious, straight from the garden. Helene isn’t tired of the strawberries either, tonight I saw her brazenly licking her plate after she’d eaten her dessert. Everyone rushed off after dinner to the theatre event happening down in the hameau’s park, something about “And Zeus created his woman…” but Reed was tired enough that he took himself to bed to read so I stayed in the room with him to help him get showered and ready to sleep. He’s having to adjust to being the only child again after having Ella to play with for the last two weeks. But there are plenty of friendly cats, a couple of dogs, and some chickens that he can visit with, and an amazing amount of really varied and interesting outdoor space complete with sculptures, caves, woods, stone steps, and numerous paths to follow. You can visit the website by clicking on the title of this post above.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Auch Kosh B'gosh
Street in Auch
Cathedral in Auch
Chateau Lassalle
Life has been lazy since the vernissage since I worked up a credit of my hours, leaving me only 6 or so to work over these past couple of days. Sunday I sat around reading and felt guilty when we were fed roast potatoes and lamb chops for dinner after having done nothing all day long except washed some dishes; and Monday I weeded in the vegetable garden for a few hours, washed dishes, tidied up the kitchen, and then cooked a huge quantity of baked macaroni and cheese for dinner, since we had thawed out a very large block of cheese on Saturday which somehow did not get served on Saturday night.
Steve had offered to take us somewhere and today he had business in Auch, the departmental capital of the Gers, so he knocked on the gite door at 9:30 and asked if we wanted to come along, which we did, since he also offered to take us out for lunch! Auch is about an hour drive away, to the east, and we drove through a couple of lovely towns on the way there and back, including Vic-Fezensac and Barran.
In Auch we parked in a big shady parking area under plane trees and walked a block down to the front of the massive Cathedrale de Sainte-Marie – from the 15th and 16th centuries, mostly gothic but with some Renaissance elements. The impact of it was slightly muted by the scaffolding obscuring half of the front façade, but the right upper façade had been restored recently and it was interesting to see the contrast from the older, dirtier and more pitted surface to the newly cleaned and renovated stonework. We discovered that this cathedral – an Unesco world heritage site - is on the pilgrim route to St. Jacques de Compostelle in Spain, and I was excited to see a real hiker come up the stairs from the river towards the cathedral on the marked pilgrim route; a woman probably in her 60s, all alone, with walking stick, back pack, dirty boots, and obviously tired knees.
We ate a good lunch at a café near the cathedral courtesy of Steve – Walt and Steve had the menu du jour with potatoes, turkey or beef, and haricots verts (green beans), and I had a tartine – basically a big piece of toasted bread – covered with goat cheese, ham, and honey, and then broiled until the cheese is all melted and warm. It came with a green salad and some roast potatoes. Reed ate a little of both Walt’s and my lunches and plenty of bread, and of course helped Walt eat his dessert, a big waffle with some raspberries and whipped cream. I’m told we’re to have confit of duck for dinner, which is an unexpected treat: duck thighs that have been preserved in their own fat, with potatoes sautéed in said fat.
In America the fact that the French people drink lots of wine and eat plenty of fatty food yet are still very healthy is known as the French paradox, but in Europe this phenomenon is called the Gascoigne Paradox, where the traditional specialty food and drink are red wine, armagnac, foie gras, and confit.. I hope that the Gascoigne Paradox applies to visitors like us, because I love confit and Steve does not stint on the red wine at dinnertime. It’s easy not to stint on the wine because you get it from the local “cave,” filling up your own gallon or larger containers with the stuff out of big tanks like at a gas pump. It is easy to drink, inexpensive, and good. You transfer it into your own empty bottles at home for serving at the table.
Cathedral in Auch
Chateau Lassalle
Life has been lazy since the vernissage since I worked up a credit of my hours, leaving me only 6 or so to work over these past couple of days. Sunday I sat around reading and felt guilty when we were fed roast potatoes and lamb chops for dinner after having done nothing all day long except washed some dishes; and Monday I weeded in the vegetable garden for a few hours, washed dishes, tidied up the kitchen, and then cooked a huge quantity of baked macaroni and cheese for dinner, since we had thawed out a very large block of cheese on Saturday which somehow did not get served on Saturday night.
Steve had offered to take us somewhere and today he had business in Auch, the departmental capital of the Gers, so he knocked on the gite door at 9:30 and asked if we wanted to come along, which we did, since he also offered to take us out for lunch! Auch is about an hour drive away, to the east, and we drove through a couple of lovely towns on the way there and back, including Vic-Fezensac and Barran.
In Auch we parked in a big shady parking area under plane trees and walked a block down to the front of the massive Cathedrale de Sainte-Marie – from the 15th and 16th centuries, mostly gothic but with some Renaissance elements. The impact of it was slightly muted by the scaffolding obscuring half of the front façade, but the right upper façade had been restored recently and it was interesting to see the contrast from the older, dirtier and more pitted surface to the newly cleaned and renovated stonework. We discovered that this cathedral – an Unesco world heritage site - is on the pilgrim route to St. Jacques de Compostelle in Spain, and I was excited to see a real hiker come up the stairs from the river towards the cathedral on the marked pilgrim route; a woman probably in her 60s, all alone, with walking stick, back pack, dirty boots, and obviously tired knees.
We ate a good lunch at a café near the cathedral courtesy of Steve – Walt and Steve had the menu du jour with potatoes, turkey or beef, and haricots verts (green beans), and I had a tartine – basically a big piece of toasted bread – covered with goat cheese, ham, and honey, and then broiled until the cheese is all melted and warm. It came with a green salad and some roast potatoes. Reed ate a little of both Walt’s and my lunches and plenty of bread, and of course helped Walt eat his dessert, a big waffle with some raspberries and whipped cream. I’m told we’re to have confit of duck for dinner, which is an unexpected treat: duck thighs that have been preserved in their own fat, with potatoes sautéed in said fat.
In America the fact that the French people drink lots of wine and eat plenty of fatty food yet are still very healthy is known as the French paradox, but in Europe this phenomenon is called the Gascoigne Paradox, where the traditional specialty food and drink are red wine, armagnac, foie gras, and confit.. I hope that the Gascoigne Paradox applies to visitors like us, because I love confit and Steve does not stint on the red wine at dinnertime. It’s easy not to stint on the wine because you get it from the local “cave,” filling up your own gallon or larger containers with the stuff out of big tanks like at a gas pump. It is easy to drink, inexpensive, and good. You transfer it into your own empty bottles at home for serving at the table.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
La Vernissage
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Chateau Lassalle
Sometimes in the early morning the sun streams through the bedroom window of the gite directly on to me in bed so that I throw off the covers and just bask there for a while like the sun-loving little green lizards that are everywhere in France. The birds are singing in the trees out in the pastures and gathering bits of wool from the fence to line their nests, and if it’s sunny the sheep are up early too, baa-ing for who knows what reasons.
The other morning I was awakened by insistent and persistent baa-ing; it went on for such a long while that I finally decided someone was in distress. I went out in my pajamas into the dewy grass between our terrace and the sheep’s new pasture, expecting to see someone tangled in some wire, to discover a big lamb had climbed onto the concrete cover of what I’m guessing is a septic tank and he was stuck there, about 2 feet above the ground, too scared to jump and ignored by all the other sheep who were probably thinking, just jump! I made a purposeful move towards him without knowing what I was going to do and the lamb, more scared of me than the distance between him and the ground, suddenly leaped, landing without any harm. I went back inside to bed and enjoyed the calmer baa-ing that followed.
The sun shone in this morning and I luxuriated in it, knowing that the vernissage went off fairly successfully last night although the crowds were not quite as large as hoped. But the weather really has been quite unseasonably cool and rainy and people are not getting into the festive summer going out kind of mood that they normally would be in by now. Apparently there is even some flooding that affected Nanette’s home, the friend who came to cook the curry on Friday and who did so much in the kitchen last night for the vernissage. Her husband Geoff, on his way home at 2 a.m., drove down into a dip in the road that turned out to be as deep as the windows of the car, which is now ruined.
Steve and a journalist at the vernissage
I spent the whole day cleaning out refrigerators and preparing the temporary “kitchen” workspace out in the big shed where the exhibit and party was held. Steve created a counter by strapping a large tabletop onto an antique single metal bedstead (the head and foot “boards” were level with each other), and I scrubbed down one of Steve’s wooden workbenches as a place to dish up the food. We filled up the sparkling clean fridges with tabbouleh, drinks of all kinds, Thai chicken curry, and sausages and smoked duck and pate and then I swept and swept until the concrete floors in the work area and around the “bar” were presentable, while another friend of Karina’s arranged flowers in old steel florists’ buckets for the tables and the children made themselves useful for a short time by following my directions to unstack all the chairs and put them at the tables.
Karina at the vernissage
I spent all Friday afternoon baking brownies for the vernissage in the new oven in the chateau kitchen which was tricky because the heat only comes from the bottom and I was having a hard time regulating the temperature, which caused more than one batch to be burnt on the bottom before the top was even done. But I eventually got them done and they were delicious, made with rich French butter, dark cocoa powder, and type 45 flour which is meant for gateaux, or cakes. Considering how much work the brownies were and how essential they were for the meal I was quite surprised that the person given the job of bringing out the double-stacked and foil-wrapped trays from the chateau to the party kitchen was 4 year old Ella. She squeezed them a little but didn’t drop them, so kudos to her.
Ready for the vernissage
I’ll see if I can remember the recipe, it’ll be in weights since that’s how the French and English measure for baking instead of using volume.
Carol's Chateau Lassalle Brownies
115 grams butter (1/2 cup I think)
7 g sugar (2/3 cup I think)
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 g dark unsweetened cocoa (1/3 cup I think)
2 g all-purpose or pastry flour (1/2 cup I think)
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. baking powder
Melt butter. In mixing bowl, mix sugar and eggs, add melted butter and vanilla and mix well. Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl and mix well, add to butter mixture and whisk gently until just combined. Spread in a buttered 8 x 8 baking dish and bake at 350 degrees F (175 C) until just barely done, probably 25 minutes. Don’t disturb the pan while baking. The top will look shiny and not quite done but will spring back if you touch it very gently and won’t sink when you take it out of the oven. Let cool in the pan, or let cool for just a few minutes before slicing into squares and removing gently from the pan while still warm, with a flexible spatula.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
A walk in Aignan
View east from the gite at Chateau Lassalle
The Romanesque church in Aignan
View of Aignan, looking towards Pyrenees obscured by haze
Yesterday the afternoon got sunny after a rainy morning so after I cleaned up from weeding and painting some new shutters I walked into town and then through town to the communal forest and the little lake hiding way back in its depths. The lake is man-made and there’s also a small man-made sandy beach with some water slides. A boy was fishing from the bank and had some small successes in the short time that I was there. Because of the recent rain the air feels humid and the ground smells ripe, the woods were thick and overgrown. One farm I walked by had fresh haybales at the edge of the field, smelling warm and sweet. The neatest thing I saw was the old lavoir, a kind of communal clothes washing fountain, just outside town. There was a pond above it full of water lilies, its water dripping through a crack in the wall into the lavoir itself which is now slimy with algae. The benches on two sides of the square pool were still intact and the tiled roof supported by very old handhewn beams is also still intact. We mentioned it to an Englishwoman last night who was visiting - former area residents who have moved back to London - and she thought it would have been so fun to go and do the washing with all the other women… and Karina noted with some irony how much “fun” it would be to haul all your laundry down the hill and then back up it again, wet and heavy.
The Romanesque church in Aignan
View of Aignan, looking towards Pyrenees obscured by haze
Yesterday the afternoon got sunny after a rainy morning so after I cleaned up from weeding and painting some new shutters I walked into town and then through town to the communal forest and the little lake hiding way back in its depths. The lake is man-made and there’s also a small man-made sandy beach with some water slides. A boy was fishing from the bank and had some small successes in the short time that I was there. Because of the recent rain the air feels humid and the ground smells ripe, the woods were thick and overgrown. One farm I walked by had fresh haybales at the edge of the field, smelling warm and sweet. The neatest thing I saw was the old lavoir, a kind of communal clothes washing fountain, just outside town. There was a pond above it full of water lilies, its water dripping through a crack in the wall into the lavoir itself which is now slimy with algae. The benches on two sides of the square pool were still intact and the tiled roof supported by very old handhewn beams is also still intact. We mentioned it to an Englishwoman last night who was visiting - former area residents who have moved back to London - and she thought it would have been so fun to go and do the washing with all the other women… and Karina noted with some irony how much “fun” it would be to haul all your laundry down the hill and then back up it again, wet and heavy.
Friday, May 23, 2008
A little bit of French heaven
Friday, May 23, 2008
Chateau Lassalle, Aignan
We seem to have landed in paradise, or at least almost paradise; here there is weeding and renovation work and I think in paradise there won’t be weeds…. But nevertheless we are in WWOOF heaven.
Our hosts are Steve and Karina, originally from England, who are the same ages as Walt and I; they have 2 boys aged 12 and 9 and a little girl aged 4 who is outgoing and well adjusted and seems to like playing with Reed just fine. There’s only been blood drawn once and that was from Reed’s nose, when he bashed it on Ella’s head when they were jumping on the trampoline. Steve and Karina moved to the Pyrenees in France in the early 90s and bought Chateau Lasalle about 7 years ago. It’s a substantial stone house with parts of it dating back to the 1500s and maybe even earlier than that. Steve does a bit of everything – taking care of the land, gardening, working on the house, running an antique business, putting on art shows – and Karina is a freelance journalist. I've put a link to their website, www.oldfrenchstuff.com, in the title of this post.
We’re staying in the two bedroom gite that used to be a concrete block pig stable that Steve transformed into a lovely and comfortable little dwelling with a view of the east pastures where the sheep and two donkeys graze. You can always tell when people have a sense of design and Steve and Karina obviously do; the gite is decorated simply but with southern French style: lovely old pieces of furniture, lots of cushions with richly colored fabrics, blue and white walls, terracotta tiles on the floor, yellow and mint and pumpkin orange trim, framed antique postcards of the Chateau and Aignan, etc. And they feed us lunch and dinner every day; lunch is usually bread, salad, ham and salami and pate, and cheese. For dinner we’ve had roast chicken with chickpeas, roasted red peppers, and sweet corn; and last night was garlic parsley mashed potatoes and stewed beef from a taureau, a bull, which was killed in the bullfight held in Aignan twice a year or so. Apparently every little town in these parts has a bullring. Steve and Karina never go to the fight itself, but enjoy the meat, which is very rich and tasty. Steve says these bulls live a fabulous life, with acres and acres all to themselves for 3 years, until it all ends in a single bad afternoon. We drink wine that they get from the local cooperative; they take their empty bottles in and fill them up from the tap, like getting gas in the car. It’s cheap and good.
All this is in exchange for Walt and I each working 30 hours a week. Next weekend is an opening – another vernissage!, for those who remember our first experience at Verderonne last September – and we are busy making the front garden and terrace look terrific, as people who come to the opening will be offered a meal for a certain amount of money and they’ll be served outside if it’s nice. I’m weeding garden beds and raking gravel pathways, and Walt is helping Steve prepare the soil and get a new hedge planted around the perimeter fence of this part of the garden which will look nice and also keep the dogs in. My back is killing me but once my muscles get back in shape for bending over I’ll be fine. Next week I’ll help Karina start to get the food ready. I think I’ve just agreed to bake a load of brownies to put in the freezer, and I need to help her think of a starter too. It’s tricky, because she doesn’t know how many people will eat. So she has to prepare loads, and then put whatever’s left in the freezer.
The vernissage is a display of about 40 posters from 1968, especially from the month of May, a time of great civil unrest in France – they even call the people who were participating in the demonstrations “sixty-eighters” – soixante-huitards, I think. Steve is framing all the posters, which Karina inherited from her parents who were quite active in the demonstrations and were in prison in 1968. Her mother must’ve gotten out sometime, though, since Karina was born in July of 68.
The weather here is warm, and yesterday we ate ripe cherries from the tree; today we had salad from the first lettuce harvest of the season. The wisteria climbing up the front pillars of the house bloomed a month ago and so did the iris, and the lavender is just about to burst into purple glory. Everything is lush and green, and this morning we worked in the rain for a while, not minding it since it wasn’t cold. We sleep with the French doors in the bedroom open and wake up to birdsong, and sometimes a little donkey braying.
Chateau Lassalle, Aignan
We seem to have landed in paradise, or at least almost paradise; here there is weeding and renovation work and I think in paradise there won’t be weeds…. But nevertheless we are in WWOOF heaven.
Our hosts are Steve and Karina, originally from England, who are the same ages as Walt and I; they have 2 boys aged 12 and 9 and a little girl aged 4 who is outgoing and well adjusted and seems to like playing with Reed just fine. There’s only been blood drawn once and that was from Reed’s nose, when he bashed it on Ella’s head when they were jumping on the trampoline. Steve and Karina moved to the Pyrenees in France in the early 90s and bought Chateau Lasalle about 7 years ago. It’s a substantial stone house with parts of it dating back to the 1500s and maybe even earlier than that. Steve does a bit of everything – taking care of the land, gardening, working on the house, running an antique business, putting on art shows – and Karina is a freelance journalist. I've put a link to their website, www.oldfrenchstuff.com, in the title of this post.
We’re staying in the two bedroom gite that used to be a concrete block pig stable that Steve transformed into a lovely and comfortable little dwelling with a view of the east pastures where the sheep and two donkeys graze. You can always tell when people have a sense of design and Steve and Karina obviously do; the gite is decorated simply but with southern French style: lovely old pieces of furniture, lots of cushions with richly colored fabrics, blue and white walls, terracotta tiles on the floor, yellow and mint and pumpkin orange trim, framed antique postcards of the Chateau and Aignan, etc. And they feed us lunch and dinner every day; lunch is usually bread, salad, ham and salami and pate, and cheese. For dinner we’ve had roast chicken with chickpeas, roasted red peppers, and sweet corn; and last night was garlic parsley mashed potatoes and stewed beef from a taureau, a bull, which was killed in the bullfight held in Aignan twice a year or so. Apparently every little town in these parts has a bullring. Steve and Karina never go to the fight itself, but enjoy the meat, which is very rich and tasty. Steve says these bulls live a fabulous life, with acres and acres all to themselves for 3 years, until it all ends in a single bad afternoon. We drink wine that they get from the local cooperative; they take their empty bottles in and fill them up from the tap, like getting gas in the car. It’s cheap and good.
All this is in exchange for Walt and I each working 30 hours a week. Next weekend is an opening – another vernissage!, for those who remember our first experience at Verderonne last September – and we are busy making the front garden and terrace look terrific, as people who come to the opening will be offered a meal for a certain amount of money and they’ll be served outside if it’s nice. I’m weeding garden beds and raking gravel pathways, and Walt is helping Steve prepare the soil and get a new hedge planted around the perimeter fence of this part of the garden which will look nice and also keep the dogs in. My back is killing me but once my muscles get back in shape for bending over I’ll be fine. Next week I’ll help Karina start to get the food ready. I think I’ve just agreed to bake a load of brownies to put in the freezer, and I need to help her think of a starter too. It’s tricky, because she doesn’t know how many people will eat. So she has to prepare loads, and then put whatever’s left in the freezer.
The vernissage is a display of about 40 posters from 1968, especially from the month of May, a time of great civil unrest in France – they even call the people who were participating in the demonstrations “sixty-eighters” – soixante-huitards, I think. Steve is framing all the posters, which Karina inherited from her parents who were quite active in the demonstrations and were in prison in 1968. Her mother must’ve gotten out sometime, though, since Karina was born in July of 68.
The weather here is warm, and yesterday we ate ripe cherries from the tree; today we had salad from the first lettuce harvest of the season. The wisteria climbing up the front pillars of the house bloomed a month ago and so did the iris, and the lavender is just about to burst into purple glory. Everything is lush and green, and this morning we worked in the rain for a while, not minding it since it wasn’t cold. We sleep with the French doors in the bedroom open and wake up to birdsong, and sometimes a little donkey braying.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
French customer service not an oxymoron
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Aignan, Gers, Gascogny, France
A long day of travel can sometimes be uneventful and sometimes can be full of surprises, like yesterday, when the guard on the train came through and started asking everyone about their destinations and telling them in many cases they’d have to get off and change to a bus at Limoges because of a fire on the tracks or station at Perigueux. No trains running between Perigueux and Bordeaux, I guess. Our ticket said we were supposed to go straight through from Lyon to Bordeaux with no changes. So we didn’t understand what was happening and he didn’t take time to talk long with us, which left me feeling quite frustrated; but a helpful young Welshman who was fluent explained what was happening. So we loaded our stuff onto our backs and disembarked at Limoges along with many others, and then I showed the guard our ticket and our final destination and asked if it was possible we’d be still arrive at the same time to make our connection and he said in more French words, Stay on the train until Perigueux! I’ll talk to you more in a little bit! So back on the train we went.
Turns out there was not a hope of us catching our connection from Bordeaux to Mont de Marsan, since we had to take a bus instead of the train from Perigueux to Bordeaux, stopping at all the stations that the train would have instead of just cruising along at 110 km per hour on the motorway. It was a leisurely trip for 100 km through the beautiful evening light down many a winding road. We left around 7:30 and finally got to Bordeaux at 10 pm, just after sunset, after seeing so many picturesque little villages we started to feel there would be no end to them. Then, Bordeaux! Entering Bordeaux across the Garonne River on what is I believe the St. Emilion bridge, lit with lovely rococo streetlamps, and all the street lights on the strand and the massive yet delicate looking buildings reflecting in the water, well, it was tres jolie, to say the least. It was a much better view than I ever had when I visited the city 18 years ago and stayed at the auberge jeunesse/youth hostel. I was so glad we ended up on the bus at that point because we would have never gotten that incredible view if we’d come on the train. Even Reed was enchanted.
After leaving the Jura, we’d meandered slowly across the high elevation of the Massif Central, looping slowly from Lyon up to Roanne and Montlucon and then back down to Limoges. The northern Auvergne was beautiful and remote, but obviously just enjoying their spring. But when we got south to Perigueux and then down further to Bordeaux, you could just feel the warmth radiating from the earth, like the Jura was Canada and Gascony is Southern California.
Don’t let it be said that the French don’t understand customer service. Sometimes they may choose not to do it – maybe keeping their job doesn’t depend on their people skills - but when they do it they do it extremely well. Kind of like experiencing the affection of a cat as opposed to that of a dog. Because of the train delay we had to spend the night in Bordeaux. Arriving at 10 pm, we first schlepped our stuff across the street to the hotels we could see – all full. So when we returned to the train station information and help office and explained that we’d just come in on the bus because of the fire at Perigueux and therefore had missed our connection, not only did they immediately start looking for a room for us, they gave us some boxed lunches, bottles of water, and when they were unable to find a room at the usual places where the hotel will bill the railway, they apologetically asked if we would be willing to stay where we would pay up front but then be reimbursed by the railway. They also paid for the taxi to and from the hotel and the station. And they upgraded us to first class for the last leg of the journey.
Our room was in the non descript Accor Etap hotel but it was clean and comfortable and had a shower with hot water. Fortunately we had traveled with a great deal of food – leftover quiche and meatballs and fruit and a baguette BLT and so on – but the fresh bottles of water they gave us were very welcome, since the very slow train we were on most of the day had no beverages available and our 3 water bottles had been emptied much earlier in the evening. By the time we were in bed it was my birthday and I got kisses from both my boys in honor of the occasion.
Aignan, Gers, Gascogny, France
A long day of travel can sometimes be uneventful and sometimes can be full of surprises, like yesterday, when the guard on the train came through and started asking everyone about their destinations and telling them in many cases they’d have to get off and change to a bus at Limoges because of a fire on the tracks or station at Perigueux. No trains running between Perigueux and Bordeaux, I guess. Our ticket said we were supposed to go straight through from Lyon to Bordeaux with no changes. So we didn’t understand what was happening and he didn’t take time to talk long with us, which left me feeling quite frustrated; but a helpful young Welshman who was fluent explained what was happening. So we loaded our stuff onto our backs and disembarked at Limoges along with many others, and then I showed the guard our ticket and our final destination and asked if it was possible we’d be still arrive at the same time to make our connection and he said in more French words, Stay on the train until Perigueux! I’ll talk to you more in a little bit! So back on the train we went.
Turns out there was not a hope of us catching our connection from Bordeaux to Mont de Marsan, since we had to take a bus instead of the train from Perigueux to Bordeaux, stopping at all the stations that the train would have instead of just cruising along at 110 km per hour on the motorway. It was a leisurely trip for 100 km through the beautiful evening light down many a winding road. We left around 7:30 and finally got to Bordeaux at 10 pm, just after sunset, after seeing so many picturesque little villages we started to feel there would be no end to them. Then, Bordeaux! Entering Bordeaux across the Garonne River on what is I believe the St. Emilion bridge, lit with lovely rococo streetlamps, and all the street lights on the strand and the massive yet delicate looking buildings reflecting in the water, well, it was tres jolie, to say the least. It was a much better view than I ever had when I visited the city 18 years ago and stayed at the auberge jeunesse/youth hostel. I was so glad we ended up on the bus at that point because we would have never gotten that incredible view if we’d come on the train. Even Reed was enchanted.
After leaving the Jura, we’d meandered slowly across the high elevation of the Massif Central, looping slowly from Lyon up to Roanne and Montlucon and then back down to Limoges. The northern Auvergne was beautiful and remote, but obviously just enjoying their spring. But when we got south to Perigueux and then down further to Bordeaux, you could just feel the warmth radiating from the earth, like the Jura was Canada and Gascony is Southern California.
Don’t let it be said that the French don’t understand customer service. Sometimes they may choose not to do it – maybe keeping their job doesn’t depend on their people skills - but when they do it they do it extremely well. Kind of like experiencing the affection of a cat as opposed to that of a dog. Because of the train delay we had to spend the night in Bordeaux. Arriving at 10 pm, we first schlepped our stuff across the street to the hotels we could see – all full. So when we returned to the train station information and help office and explained that we’d just come in on the bus because of the fire at Perigueux and therefore had missed our connection, not only did they immediately start looking for a room for us, they gave us some boxed lunches, bottles of water, and when they were unable to find a room at the usual places where the hotel will bill the railway, they apologetically asked if we would be willing to stay where we would pay up front but then be reimbursed by the railway. They also paid for the taxi to and from the hotel and the station. And they upgraded us to first class for the last leg of the journey.
Our room was in the non descript Accor Etap hotel but it was clean and comfortable and had a shower with hot water. Fortunately we had traveled with a great deal of food – leftover quiche and meatballs and fruit and a baguette BLT and so on – but the fresh bottles of water they gave us were very welcome, since the very slow train we were on most of the day had no beverages available and our 3 water bottles had been emptied much earlier in the evening. By the time we were in bed it was my birthday and I got kisses from both my boys in honor of the occasion.
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