BLURSDAY

It looks like they live on a golf links

It’s been a week of a whole lot of not-very-much-at-all. Which has been lovely! - it is doing me so much good. I feel like I'm on holiday, even though technically I'm working. 

It is the calm before the storm - we’ll be making up for it, starting Sunday, when a whole bunch of folks descend upon us.

I’m heartily and heartfully looking forward to the arrival of Lish, who hopefully won’t be discommoded by all the Papal stuff going on in Paris, as they attempt to navigate from the airport to the Gare du Nord (in the north of the city, obviously) to Montparnasse, which is in the south of the city, to get the TGV down here. No idea what the crowds are going to be like. 

Also my hostess’s mother and step-father arrive the same day. So we will go from dinner for six to dinner for nine!

Lish will stay Sunday night with us, then on Monday I will help them go get sorted into their own accommodation and their rental car. 

In the interim, I had to return Manuel Poo-Got back to the rental location, as he was due for recall for something or other. We swapped him out for his identical twin - I say identical, though as with all twins, it is helpful to have distinguishing features to be able to tell them apart. In the case of these guys (ok, cars), the new guy, I have decided to call him Miguel Poo-Got, is obviously the twin who got into a bar fight, and had his nose broken. 

I’m trying not to mind but really I just want a sticker on it that says CE N’EST PAS MOI QUI L’A FAIT! I liked the pristine and well-behaved Manuel. 

Dinner pics - photo dump

I've been calling for inspo from the kids this past week, as it has been so difficult to please them all. I think I've worked out that Zach doesn't like sloppy (saucy) food. Leah despises eggplant - which is unfortunate because it's one of the go-to's when you are cooking for vegetarians.  She's a dedicated carnivore. Chloé is the easiest - just a vegetarian. Also she doesn't like gnocchi. 

Fajitas, with
* chicken breast, dry-marinated for half the day in cumin, coriander, sweet paprika, oregano and salt & pepper. I bought it from a proper butcher and it was honestly the most tender chicken breast I've eaten In.My.Life. Better farming practices??? - or did the long marinade play a part?

* pan-fried capsicums & onions

* kidney beans

* Old El Paso (yes they have that here!!!) store-bought salsa

* sour cream. OK, crème fraîche. 

Yum! Five stars from all punters.

Beetroot & lentil rissoles, roast potatoes, garden green beans, nasty packet gravy that I found in the pantry

Credit: Vegan Beet Burgers

They were a bit dry. To be fair, I don't have a decent food processor here, so I didn't blend them as per the recipe - although I think that blending them would make them too baby-food-y. If I were to do them again, I would use a can of refried beans (not that you can get those here) to bind the rest of the ingredients. And I would  pan-fry them - I baked them and I'm not a fan. But the recipe is solid as a springboard. 

Noodle stir-fry, with Nagi "Charlie" brown sauce, and backyard egg omelette

Credit: RecipeTin Eats: Real Chinese All-Purpose Stir Fry "Charlie" brown sauce

Bangers and mash! These kids are half-English, after all! 

* Proper little chipolata sausages from the butcher

* celeriac and potato mash with heaps of butter

* steamed green beans (we are coming to the end of the season, but everyone just loves them) and broccoli

* mushroom and thyme velouté sauce

* bonus round of the nasty packet gravy for Leah, who is a Philistine, not gonna lie. We spent the entire meal referring to it as 'the horrible sauce', as opposed to the lovely mushroom sauce. Leah was unbothered. 

* Nagi's chocolate cake and chocolate ganache, made with crème fraîche instead of plain cream (because I can't find it in the supermarket), which gave it a lovely Zing!  

Credit: 

RecipeTin Eats: Easy Chocolate Cake

RecipeTin Eats: Chocolate Ganache

Usually we don't have dessert mid-week, apart from a Yoplait and/or a piece of fruit, but I let loose tonight because the parents were away 😜 And also Marcelle is so lovely and so helpful, that I wanted to do something a bit nicer for her than Yoplait.

Oh! - bonus round - I can't take credit for it - Alex made Pain Perdu for breakfast yesterday!  We know it as French Toast. 

Literal translation is 'lost bread' - it means leftover bread, that is now too hard to eat as-is, but you don't want to waste it. Soaked in milk and backyard eggs and pan-fried, served with the Golden Syrup that he brought back last week from his trip to London (you can't buy it here).  Super yummy! I don't usually have breakfast, but for this I made an exception!

Gan

I’ve been saying for days, or weeks, that I will have a walk down to the town, and this morning I finally did it. I find myself getting busy with things in the mornings, and by lunchtime it has become far too hot to go taking a walk (today it got up to 32C again). But the mornings start around 12C and they’re gorgeous. It's about 2.5km each way - downhill on the way out, uphill on the way back. 

Here's some of the pretty houses just in the 1km stretch of road from the main road to us (our driveway is one of a collection of driveways at the end point of the road, like a bunch of fingers off a hand). 

These chickens spend most of their days actually playing "Chicken" on our street! There are four of them. I could only see two when I took this, and at this point I was driving, so it was point-and-pray out the window to get this shot 😜

Here followeth a photo dump of of the Bastide of Gan. 

What’s a Bastide? I hear you asking.  Well, a Bastide is a planned medieval fortified town in southwestern France, built during the 13th and 14th centuries in regions like Gascony, Languedoc, and Aquitaine. It is designed around a distinct grid or checkerboard pattern, centered around an open market square surrounded by arcaded (covered) walkways.

Only one porte remains of the fortified wall. 

The only church in town - St Barthelemy (cool name!)

With a very cool ornate coat of arms!

... and that's basically it! - apart from the town square, which you've seen, from the pictures of the market day. It has a café/bar, and an Italian brasserie looking out onto it (I'm interested in trying the Italian joint some time), and some little shops. 

The advertising blackboard is all in Italian :) 

I walked some of the residential streets, nothing really much to see or report. I'm astonished at how unpopulated it is... where is everyone??? It was 10am and I think I saw four people out and about! I mean, it has a population of some five thousand.

On returning to the house, I unfortunately managed to forget the right security code to turn the house alarm off. I am sure that the siren inside oversteps the safe decibel range! Lucky I had my noise-cancelling AirPods on me! 

I had to phone my hosts, who had nipped over to Spain for lunch (as you do!), to get help to turn it off. Then I set about prepping for tonight’s dinner - the hosts would be out til bedtime, and the lovely neighbour Marcelle was to come in again and help with the kids’ homework/bedtime routines, while I managed the catering. 

I had the oven running, kitchen French doors open to the terrace and the sunshine, making a delightful chocolate cake mess of the kitchen, and a sweet inoffensive looking man in a SECURITY vest showed up.  This must be the least burglar-looking person he’s ever had to investigate :D  He was very nice, accepted my deep apology for making him come out. I explained about the problem with the code. We phoned my hosts who confirmed to him that yes, I’m supposed to be there. HIs base called them. It was all okay. 

We had a lovely chat. He was bouleversé at the notion of me coming all the way from Sydney just to hang out here! 

Then he left, and then THE ALARM WENT OFF AGAIN.  I’m never putting it on again. To be perfectly frank, I’d prefer that we were burgled.

The other MAJOR excitement of today was that the cat, Cleopatra, came into the kitchen and then suddenly started showing Extreme Interest in the kitchen broom. When I investigated, there was a Creature. I figured, Mouse. (In actual fact, we did later this afternoon also find a dead rat, thoughtfully placed for us at the front door. Thanks, Cleo! Also, Ew.) 

Oh. NOT MOUSE.

MOLE !!!!

Moles don't photograph well! He was scared silly, squirmy as anything, FAST, and most importantly STRONG. He was maybe 10cm long. Super soft fur! - but really SHARP claws! I could not get a grip on him at all. I ended up scooping him up in the dustpan and clapping an oven mitt over him, to be able to carry him back outside.  When I put him down, he disappeared amazingly fast into the leaf litter and presumably also dug away down. 

I was hoping to see a hedgehog (still hoping!) but this was actually just as cool! 

Fun fact: the French word for mole is 'taupe'. So when we are talking about the colour taupe in English, we are describing something as mole-coloured. I am enchanted! 

In other nature-related news, the kids found a deer antler and somebody's jawbone (I thought also deer, but Alex thinks sheep)

In other kid-related news,
here's a sample of the homework
that Chloé (age 9)gets from school
 - memorise this poem.

French schooling places emphasis on learning things by memory. I am constantly being surprised at the things they can recite by heart. I love that a lot of things are poems! 

6km recorded walk, total 14km in my day. I do buzz around a lot! 

 

These are the things I brought from home, for decoration for my room. Death is one of my favourite characters in the Terry Pratchett Discworld series. He's so chill with his cup of tea! That adorable knitted kitten was made especially for me by Astrid to bring. Apparently she's never making another one! (I think the pattern is really badly written). And the origami swans are made of cello sheet music, and they remind me of Lish. They all sit under a desklamp (like a streetlamp), and I can see them as I write here. 

Bonne nuit! 

 To Market, To Market*

*(no pigs were purchased)

I love this view of Gan - this amazing old tower/gateway thing.
It's near the centre-ville and I see it most times that I drive through the town. 

Wednesday is Market Day! 

Today, in addition to the produce purchases, I was tasked with seeing:

Marc, the knife-sharpener (oh no, I just realised I did not get a photo of his genial self)

These photos will blow the mind of any Australian, for whom the knife laws are very strict! - in Australia, no purchases by anyone under 18 years of age, certainly no carrying in public unless under lock and key. Here in France, these knives just lay around in open cases, one of them not even covered!

Marc is at our local market every second week. We have been waiting eagerly for today, to get a couple of the knives I'm using in the kitchen sharpened. I took them wrapped in a fabric shopping bag. He charges €5 per knife. I now have a chef's knife (sort of) and a smaller knife that are wonderful to work with. He handed them back to me wrapped cleverly in some newspaper taped with silver duct tape 🤣 - which I am now continuing to use as my knife safety holder. 

Next I went to a little booth/trailer (which I also forgot to photograph!) where a lady does on-the-spot sewing repairs. One of the kids' sneakers had its velcro closure tearing off. She did a quick and fantastic job replacing the velcro, in the time it took me to go around and make my food purchases.

The French are big into repair/re-use/recycle, it's very impressive. 

I saw this Very Good Boi sitting so neatly and quietly at one of the brasseries in the centre-ville. 

It was maybe the second time since I've been here that we had rain - a storm had been predicted overnight but did not quite eventuate, but it did rain, and the morning was cool and still and grey when I got up. 

All the mountains were obscured by mists. Beautiful. 

And finally, soup weather!!!! 

I made Pumpkin Soup for lunch (Wednesdays the kids are home from school so it's family lunch), served with bread fresh from the market (so good), and cheeses and ham to fill in the cracks. And then fresh fruit - I found some perfect little pink-cheeked pears at the Bio shop 😊

And then it was immediately time to start dinner! - Wednesday afternoons are our busy day and I have to be extremely organised. I thought something that I could cook ahead of time and then just warm through right on dinner time. 

Spinach and Leek Quiche (with ninja zucchini because I thought it wasn't going to be big enough), with a salad because we didn't have salad at lunch time. 

Oh Thursday, I took a little drive out to the village where Lish will be renting an AirBnB (about 10km up the road from here).

It's ADORABLE.  I don't have any info on any of these photos, but just take a look at how cute it is!  

This is actually the street (if you can even call it a street) where Lish's accommodation is!

The main (and nearly the only) street through town. In that white building with the black sign, is an English tea salon. I will enjoy visiting there when Lish arrives!

I am feeling the need to grab a book from this little street library, by way of a souvenir of my trip!

Église Ste. Catherine

Another in my series of whimsical door knobs!

The only bar in town! - and apparently just purchased by a group of five young guys. Facebook - Les Moutchassss

I was on school pickup duty.  The kids are at two different schools so there's a bit of driving around the town to scoop everyone.

There's a big area just across the road from the primary school, where the old French dudes meet (every day, from what I've seen - whether it's the same guys or different, I haven't yet worked out) to play Boules. For the Italians reading this, it's probably very similary to Bocce. 

I was enchanted to see that they have these ingenious things - a magnet on a strap, which enables them to pick their balls up without having to bend over!
They didn't seem to mind me photographing them,and we exchanged
a few genial pleasanteries. 

Dinner was a succcess - RecipeTinEats: One Tray Moroccan Baked Chicken with Fennel & Chickpeas, with sides of young green beans from the garden, and roasted sweet potato. 

My knitting group expanded further, with Leah starting her first square. 

I don't think she has the tenacity that Chloé has. Let's see. 
Chloé has now changed from red yarn to blue yarn, and only has a few more rows before she can take her third colour. I'm very impressed with how quickly she is picking it up! 

Friday and Saturday were pretty nothing, just more of the same old, same old ... bumming around in this gorgeous corner of the French countryside, cooking up stuff, knitting other stuff, hanging out with French kids. Bliss. 

🦔

Apparently hedghogs are a thing in this part of the world!!! I want to see a hedgehog so bad!!!  

Friday night is pizza night! - this week I bought pizza dough from the boulangerie, and the pizzas did not puff up to ridiculously epic proportions :) (I did love the baguette dough ones last week though, and I'll get that dough again in preference)

Chloé gets to spend a half-hour longer with me after her siblings have gone to bed. We knit and we chat. I am really enjoying our time together. Here she is modelling my WIP - she picked out the colour scheme for me. She does not yet realise that the completed project will be my gift to her 💚💛

Leah has been begging for gnocchi, almost since I got here. On Saturday I had the runway to be able to make some! 

Look how YELLOW the pastry is! - the eggs from our hens always have really outstandingly bright yellow yolks.

Pan-fried gnocchi, with a Puttanesca-style sauce (hold the anchovies)

The Pic du Midi d'Ossau decided to show up this morning wearing a soft cloud scarf. 

À très bientôt!