La Bouffe!
(tucker!)
* Zucchini, leek and sweetcorn tart
* hand-made short pastry
* fried lardons as garnish (for the non-veggos)
with liberties taken
Obviously, food is important in any culture. But these guys (the French, as a whole, and my host family no exception) take it to an extra level.
Every meal - every meal, breakfast included - is served with full placemat, napkin, everything. It's a sit-down-with-the-family occasion. It takes at minimum an hour (maybe breakfast not quite an hour, but nearly).
The last couple of days are the first time since I arrived, where not every single meal has been taken out on the terrasse. It rained a couple of days ago, for the first (and only) time. Now that the canicule (heatwave) has broken, the last two mornings have been quite fresh, and breakfast was taken inside. Lunch and dinner are still possible outdoors. And why wouldn't you? - I mean, LOOK at that view.
We discovered a pantry moth situation, so on Tuesday we cleared out the entire kitchen cupboards and sprayed them down with vinegar, and while everything was out, I took inventory, amalgamated multiple opened things, tossed a few things, and now I have an exact understanding of what we have in store.
Also, the (happily extensive 😛) spice rack is now alphabetised. By French names.
* * *
I don't have many photos to show you, but on Sunday they held a Portes Ouvertes (Open Doors) day here, to launch their Global Explorers programme. A bunch of interested families rocked up to the manor. There was a kids' workshop in the morning, where the parents also could participate. We broke for lunch - people had been invited to bring a picnic; we don't yet have all the required certification for us (me) to be providing food for people. People were scattered casually all around the place, mingling, chatting, kids playing on the climbing equipment, chasing the chickens (kids, don't chase the chickens, they don't like it), chasing the rabbits (ditto).
Most of the people were Anglophones - the programme is designed to be English immersion. There are also a lot of ex-pats in this area, so it's helpful for them.
I made some new friends! - two ladies, both of whom are interested in crafts. I showed my knitting projects to one lady, and my drop spindles. She is very excited to possibly learn spinning! - she asked for, and received, a very large quantity of raw fleece as a present, which she currently has nooooo idea how to process, or what to do with it 😄 I am her new best friend. As I brought equipment for spinning but somehow neglected to bring any fibre to spin, she's my new best friend too! She lives about an hour and a half from here, on some mountain, completely away from everyone else, off-grid, so crunchy. I think it's amazing. I must find a time to go out there and see her.
One of the chickens fell in love with her!
After the lunch break, we split out into a group for kids and a group for adults. Caroline did a workshop for the adults, while I went with Alex to assist him as he delivered a talk on bees! He's absolutely amazing. He talked to them for an hour and a half and did not lose the interest of any of them. He knows exactly how to talk to everyone right at their level. There was quite a lot of clowning. Meantime, I chimed in now and then with 'fun facts' which he really appreciated, as I was speaking more to the adults than the kids, thereby keeping their interest.
He and I had discussed bee-keeping earlier in the week, and we both agreed that trying to light the smoker is really hard and we are both rubbish at it. He took me to his bee supplies guy, and we had a chat about the smoker, and the guy gave us some great tips on how to get the smoker to successfully light. In the workshop, he pulled me into this section, and we did in fact manage to make smoke! My bee-keeping friends in Sydney would be so proud of me!
I made the Mushroom Ragu from RecipeTin Eats, with Spaghettini, the other night. None of the kids are particularly wild about mushrooms, but I had bought 1.5kg of them, so we finally got through them all, with this dish finishing them off. In addition to champignons de Paris, which I was delighted to discover is the name here for what we call just plain "button mushrooms", it also has porcini mushrooms in it, which you soak in a cup or so of red wine to reconstitute, before straining (keep the liquid), chopping and sautéing. Add the chopped button mushrooms, cook them off, add a bunch of other things, add the liquid back in, etc etc. I found dried thyme and wow, did it lift this meal! I'm promising to leave mushrooms out of meals for a while!
The haricots verts were fresh-picked from our veggie gardens! It isn't canon with this dish, but they needed to be used.
* * *
Alex and I drove a couple of towns over to Mazères-Lezons. On the way we saw this tractor, lugging massive barrels filled with grapes! It's harvest season for the vineyards. There is an ENORMOUS "cave" - I think it's a co-op, where all the farmers bring their grape pickings and they are all made into the local wine.
The primary goal of our trip was to go to this store, which is absolutely massive. It is kind of like the biggest Woolies you've ever been to, with a Big W bolted on.
Oh, and also, you can rent cars there!
And indeed, I did rent a car! For suuuuuuper cheap. Like, €7 per day.
Well, okay. If you want the damage waiver, that's another €10.
Plus, then they charge you per km driven, at €0.30/km. So don't go driving to Nantes or anything. But for trotting around this immediate area, it's going to be fantastic!
It's a very nice car. A late-model Peugeot 2008.
I sent this photo home, and Ferdi wrote back and said 'a manual Peugeot', and my Siri has taken to reading me my incoming messages, and he pronounced it 'Manuel Poo-got'. So that's my car's name now!
Everyone, meet Manuel!
He's more or less the same size as my car, maybe a bit bigger (I'm still getting used to it) - but a lot less daunting than the gigantic (to me) VW 9-seater which is Alex & Caroline's vehicle! I was really not looking forward to have to drive that! So this is a wonderful solution.
Driving a manual car on the wrong side of the road, it's a bit exciting! I get in and turn it on and start chanting 'to the right, to the right' 😝
* * *
The day after I got the car, they sent me off to do the market on my own!
How exciting.
Here's a lovely place in the little village of Gan. The wing on the left has been beautifully renovated, all the windows are new etc. The middle and right wings are definitely a work in progress.
Look at these beauties. The placard in the next picture is affixed to the left-hand side of the left building.
This looks really intriguing, and when I am not on a mission to buy goat cheese and fresh baguettes, I'm going to check it out in more detail! Watch this space.
At the market, my curiosity was piqued by this placard - I mean, can you get non-vegetarian chillies? 😶
We met this guy last week, and Caroline asked him about the possibility of lessons for Leah. He's been up to the house a couple of times. Everyone, meet Ludovig! He writes and sings his own songs.
I basically fell out of bed, sculled one cup of tea, and beetled straight out the door to the market. So I may or may not have shouted myself a pain au chocolat for my belated breakfast.
It doesn't matter how fantastic your time in France is, nothing beats your first
pain au chocolat of the trip.
On Wednesdays the children don't have school, so it's a family lunch all together. There was spaghetti with mushroom ragu left over, so we heated that back up. I made a salad with the new produce from the market, and also shown are the week's new cheeses (chèvre, Comte and Brebis) and fresssssssh breads.
The first session of Global Explorers went very well!
It does make it quite tight, when that finishes at 5pm and then to get out to Wednesday night church, we have to leave by 7pm (and please remember the whole meals-take-an-hour window!)
So I planned something that would be quick-ish. I had a quinoa-lentil mixture that had been leftover and frozen from a few meals ago. Defrosted that, zhoozhed it out with sautéed onions, zucchini and sweet corn, added some Mexi spices, halved and stuffed some red capsicums, made a gratin from breadcrumbs and grated cheese, and baked them. Pretty good! And we got out the door on time!
with liberties taken
I had planned to go out for the day on Thursday, but due to a couple of things, that didn't happen - so I spent a happy day playing Alchimie in the kitchen.
Alex is finding that just bread isn't cutting it for him for breakfast.
So I made a batch of granola.
Someone posted a reel on Facebook for making Fig Leaf Syrup - so of course I *had* to try that with the leaves from our enormous tree! It's ... interesting.
For Thursday lunch, we (just the adults) had the remaining stuffed capsicums.
The cheese and the bread don't come out for dinner!
After lunch, I made these fabulous little beauties:
To make a typically French biscuit, in France, from a recipe written by a Frenchman who just happens to live in Sydney , is a bit like taking coals to Newcastle
(or, as I've discovered, here you say "porter l'eau à la rivière")
Asian food products are pretty thin on the ground here. The supermarket doesn't even have tofu!!! So I made a batch, out of red lentils.
And finished up the day's effort with Firecracker Beef for dinner! - with the Tofu dusted in cornflour and curry powder, and shallow-fried until crispy, for the vegetarians.
This is the only way I enjoy tofu at all. Gotta say, the lentil tofu is much more flavoursome than regular tofu! And it's fast to make!
This meal was the most well-received by the kids of anything I have cooked since I got here. The pickiest child ate everything, didn't have to be badgered, seemed to really like the spicy sauce (although I had been assured that nobody can tolerate heat), and was cheerful throughout the meal (also a first 😜). This may well have had something to do with me showing them all the just-made biscuits and saying they could only have one for dessert IF they ate all their dinner with NO delaying and importantly NO whining. The message was taken well to heart, and we all had a very pleasant meal.
I would like you to check this out. This is this week's menu for lunch at the school. Every French child gets a full cooked three-course meal, every day.
The Pryenées-Atlantiques and I bid you Bonne Nuit!
