French Food Focus

The last post! I've moved

2008-12-27T20:27:00.002+01:00

I've done it! Moved this blog. I got tired of the limitations of this software and created my own website.

Go to: www.frenchfoodfocus.com.

I've moved most of the 2008 posts over and will move most of the others over time. Bear with me as I do that and add what I hope will be some interesting new features to the website.

As allways I'd love to hear what you think.

A plethora of markets

2008-12-13T11:35:00.003+01:00

Why is it that this year we have Christmas markets running out of our ears?

There are at least five being held in nearby villages & hamlet's. In fact Linda is going to one in Caylus this afternoon. It seems to me that they are breeding like rabbits. Used to be just a year or two ago that there was only one Christmas Market in a nearby village; that was at Puylagarde.

Now there have always been Christmas markets in the larger towns and cities. The Christmas Market in the main square of Toulouse (Capital) is truly spectacular and the Cahors Christmas market is great. You could go on down the line from there, but there weren't many in the small villages. Not enough traffic one would have thought.

Perhaps its the economy; everybody out trying to make a few Euros? I strongly suspect that its mainly the same traders going from village to village selling the same stuff. Certainly my quick look at Caylus Christmas market this morning didn't reveal any truly local vendors.

Anyway, more power to them, they're very colorful and, hopefully, people will find something they like and the vendors will make a few Euros to help their Christmas budgets.

I did buy something at market on Thursday. This was at the seasonal market which is an off shoot of the main Villefranche de Rouergue market. Here in the 'halle' they sell only dead birds (chickens, ducks & geese mainly) and fois gras. This is the real deal straight from farmer to you.

Rob & I were checking out prices for next week when we'll probably buy our ducks & fois gras for Christmas. One of the larger vendors must have had a 100 pounds of fresh raw fois gras for sale, amazing! I've never seen that much fois gras in one place before.

I won't mention prices as I don't want to make those of you who don't live in the French country side to get too jealous. I will say, however, that Rob & couldn't resist buying 2 cuisse de canard each (a cuisse is the leg & thigh together). They were 2 Euros each and each one weights close to a kilo. These were big ducks believe me.

I'll cook them with lots of shallots & green olives very slowly in a covered frying pan on the stove top. Absolutely tender & delicious. I'll try to take some pictures as I do it.

Their hearts are in the right place

2008-12-09T12:26:00.006+01:00

These are pictures of what pass for Christmas decorations in our village. I don't think they'll win any prizes, but they are sincere. Its just that you have to know who did them.

They're done every year on his own initiative and, I expect, at his own expense by our village cleaner. This is the guy who sweeps the streets, cleans the public toilets, plants & weeds the public flower beds and so forth. Its not much of a job and I'm sure it doesn't pay much, but he's very happy to do it and to have a place in village life.

One sees him most days if you pass through the village; a cigarette in his mouth working away. He's fiercly proud and protective of the village. I remember when we first moved here & he was in charge of the village dump. You had to prove that you lived in the village to use the dump, normally by showing an electric bill. It took several times before he admitted that he knew us and let us in without showing our bill. Cranky is probably the best word to describe him.

Ok, so, so what? The point is that here in this small village they have found employment for this man. You see he's somewhat retarded. Not too the point of being institutionalized (although in some places he would be), but certainly enough to be normally unemployable. Not here though; here a place is made for him and the village looks after him. They do it gently, kindly and allow him his dignity.

So, nobody complains about his Christmas decorations. We praise him and them, we take a secret pride in them and when we see them we feel just a little bit better about ourselves for being part of a kind society.

I'm not sure if this system of kindness is true in the multitude of villages in France. I do know that in one of our neighboring villages the same sort of thing is true. There too the menial village jobs are done by those handicapped in some way. I suspect that at least to some degree it is a part of village life all over the country.

The French are, it seems to, me a kind people. Not in an ostentatious way, but in a collective unobtrusive manner. This weekend we have the Telethon to raise money for charity. This is a BIG deal and takes place all over France. Millions are raised. In our village it will be held in our Salle des Fetes and will be well attended.

Outside the shops the collections have started; a can of food, a packet of cookies, whatever. What's interesting is that the collectors are genuinely volunteers, young people & old, but obviously people giving of their time. You see no "commercial" collecting.

I remember that I found this approach a bit different when we first moved to France. After all the French do not make such a big deal out of the Holidays as do we Americans and the British for that matter; they're far more low key. My French friends gently pointed out that nobody anywhere in France would go hungry over this season. The general population would make sure that they didn't.

Yet another reason why we live here.

Deja Vue all over again.

2008-11-28T21:53:00.020+01:00

Still catching up. Here goes.

We had not one, but two Thanksgivings this year. For reasons explained in an earlier post we had our first Thanksgiving on last Thursday, the 20th. For that one we had 12 people and the menu was very traditional. Here are a few pictures:

(mainly during the prep stage as later I was too busy serving & eating to take pictures.)

So the menu was: Curried pumpkin soup with curry croutons followed by roast turkey ( I deconstruct my turkey by cutting out the backbone, taking off & deboning the legs then cooking them separately. Last year's Thanks giving post goes into great detail on this technique) with a sage & forcemeat stuffing, lots of vegetables and a gravy made from the turkey stock. Friends brought us fresh cranberries so we had a wonderful, but simple cranberry sauce.We then had the cheese course you can see pictured above.

(bursin,brique de vache, cantal-entre-doux, cratin, chaurce and blue de pays).

Desserts were a carrot cake that I made & a delicious cranberry & mincemeat pie by Linda.

Between our wine & some superb stuff brought by our guests we had some great wine. 14 bottles of it in fact!

A good time was had bt all. The French maybe don't quite understand the holiday, but they certainly relate to the occasion and the food.

Yesterday we celebrated our second Thanksgiving. Just 6 of us. Linda's sister & her husband and a pair of English friends who live locally part time.

Pictures:

The world's best potato chips. Made in Spain, hand made. Yummy!

The menu was simple, but different this time. We like the curried pumpkin soup so much that we had it again. The main course, however, was Beef Wellington. Friends from the states had brought us a whole filet of beef. So, as you can see abouve Linda did the whole Wellington bit: fois gras, sauteed mushrooms, madeira sauce and a puff pastry case. It was absolutely superb! The beef was excellent and perfectly cooked. Nice & rare in the middle bits as I like it, but closer to medium at the ends for others. We had sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts and broad beans as vegetables.

Dessert was as below. A simple chocolate mousse. Sinful, but delectable.

I think I like the idea of two Thanksgivings you get to see more friends & family that way. I hope your Thanksgiving was as joyful as ours!

Stuck!

2008-11-27T12:03:00.002+01:00

Got a bit of catching up to do as I've been busy. But I'll start with what happened yesterday.

It started simply enough. I went off yesterday morning to drive down to Carcassonne to pick up my brother & sister-in-law from the airport. Its a 2 hour drive, but they can fly into Carcassonne very cheaply on Ryanair. So there I was trundling down the Autoroute trying to understand some kind of intellectual debate on the 'Culture" station & only half succeeding. (Very intellectual that station with high flauting French & tenses I hardly know exist). All was well.

Then I arrived at the payage entering Toulouse. I always go through the lane where you pay with your French debit card; its quicker than going through one of the cash lanes & I don't use the Autoroute enough to justify one of the autopay systems. I'm constantly amazed that the French banking system can handle these tiny transactions; the toll is like $3.00, but it does and doesn't cost me anything. Anyway, this time the machine didn't like my card. I tried again, still didn't like it. A message came up saying "Your card is unreadable, try again of use a different card" So I blew on the card, rubbed to on my sleeve and tried again. It worked this time so off I went not thinking much about it.

I drove around Toulouse and picked up a new ticket as I left. Had a nice unevertful drive down the Autoroute to the CArcassonne exit. I was right on time to hit the airport just as the flight arrived. Put my card into the reader & it didn't work, tried again, still no luck, tried the blowing & wiping trice, that didn't help either. Tried more times, nope. The same 'illisable' message kept coming up. In desperation I pushed the red help button. (By now a couple of cars were behind me so I couldn't even back out. Needless to say they were getting impatient. I put my emergency blinkers on to indicate trouble.) The red button phone was answered. I told him the the mechine wouldn't read my card. I thought that somebody would come to help out, but no such luck. I started trying all the cards in my wallet. USA cash card. Nope! British cash card. No such luck! I even tried my carte Vital (French helth card) No Joy!
Finally I remembered my American Master card that I rarely use. Success!!! It worked!! I was through.

Got to the airport in time & picked up my relatives & headed home. Called Linda to say they had been on time & that we were on our way. She asked me to stop & pick up a couple of things from the store. OK. No problems at the payage with my mastercard. By now I've had a chance to look at my French debit card & to see that there's a large scratch on the magnetic stripe; no doubt this is why it won't read.

By the time we got to Montauban I was very low on gas. This was expected as I'd planned to stop for gas on the way home. Problem is that I like to buy my gas at the big Hyper markets since they're at least 10 cents a liter cheaper than anywhere else. BUT, they only take cash &, you guessed it, debit cards. Not to worry, we'll stop at the big Leclerc, do our bit of shopping and get cash from the machine there. I did have a 20 Euro note & some change; enough for the bit of shopping, but not enough for much gas.

As we drove into the Leclerc parking lot the range indicator on my car was reading 7 miles left. We're just about running on fumes, but we're OK. We go into the store and head straight for the cash machine. There it is - spead out all over the floor with a technician working on its innards. We'll get no cash here for a while. I think about for a bit & remember that there's a branch of my bank about a mile down the road. So we do our shopping & head there. Luckily I spot a cash machine that's even closer. It likes my American cash card & condesends to give me real cash money. Back to Leclerc & their cheap gas (1.05 Euro per liter. Only about $4.50 a gallon. & you think you're badly off. )

Fill the car & head home. No more drama's occur thank goodness.

My first action upon arriving home was to call my French bank and ask them to send me a new card. Think I'll deal in cash a bit more from now on. This cashless society works great -- most of the time!

Disappionted - so far that is

2008-11-12T12:08:00.002+01:00

So far Its been a disappointing year; for mushrooms that is. I love mushrooms and look forward every year to the fall crops.

First come the ceps. I've never had much luck finding them, but no matter its fun to buy them from the old boys who only turn up at market when they have ceps (or sometimes truffles) to sell. Their prices are good and they're fun to talk to if you can get past the accents. This year, however, to was too dry for too long & there weren't many ceps about. Only a few & those at silly prices. I do love my ceps, but not at 23 Euros per kilo! There were even some at a commercial stall from Belorous! A long way & they were pretty tired looking. Unfortunately, its dried ceps only this year.

Next come the field mushrooms or I should say usually next come the field mushrooms. Not this year. The only ones I've seen were last Friday when I played golf. There were lots on the course. I didn't pick any as I thought it wouldn't be quite right. (It would have been more rewarding than my golf which was even more terrible than usual that day) Beside I know where there are quite a few fields that support field mushrooms including our very own field. This year, however, so far no luck. Still its not too late so I live in hope.

To console myself I'm going to make roast chicken with mushroom & tarragon sauce. You might want to try it as its easy to do & quite delicious. Here's what you do.

Buy some chicken pieces. I like to use the leg/thight piece (cuisse in French), but you can use just legs, just thighs or even breasts if you want to spend more money.
Pre heat an oven to 180-190 degrees Centigrade. Put the chicken pieces in a roasting pan and season them with salt, pepper, garlic granules (or garlic salt, but if so don't use any regular salt) and herbs de Province. Be generous with the garlic & herbs.
Roast until nicely done, but not dried out. This should take 45 minutes to one hour. Its a good idea to start the chicken pieces with their skin side down, then turn them over about half way through cooking. A little basting won't go amiss either as it will help crisp up the skin.
While the roasting is going on slice up some regular commercial white mushrooms & if you have them rehydrate some dried wild mushrooms. (ceps are great as are morilles) After 15 minutes squeeze out most of the water from the dried mushrooms..
Take the chicken out of the oven when done & set aside to rest. Immediately put all of the mushrooms in the roasting pan & place the roasting pan ove high heat. Stir the mushrooms well to coat with the pan juices. Then stir frequently until the mushrooms are just barely cooked. They'll turn color & get a bit soft, but hold their shape. DO NOT COOK UNTIL THE MUSHROOMS GIVE UP THEIR WATER!!
Pour a generous amount of full cream into the roasting pan & mix well with the mushrooms. Cook quickly to slightly reduce the cream (by quickly I mean no more than 3-4 minutes). Now add a small handfull of fresh tarrogon & stir. (be careful as tarragon is quite strong & will overpower the other flavors if you use too much. If in doubt add a bit at a time & taste until you're happy that the tarrogan flavor is there, but not over powering.)
Plate up the chicken pieces and pour the sauce over. Serve with your choice of vegetables.

This simple dish is very satisfying, looks good and tastes delicious.

If only I can find some field mushrooms the sauce would be even better! I'll keeo looking, believe me.

Village life - ain't it great

2008-11-09T18:24:00.002+01:00

More village events this Sunday. This time it was the formal opening of our new village library.

Sorry, Its no longer just a library its a media center. Or at least that's how I translate Mediatheque! You can judge for yourself on its website. Which is http://mediatheq.fr/culture.ht. This was done by Michell our local guru.

Note that we have an English section in the library with over 400 books. Also note that the libraries of several of the local villages cooperate by sharing their book lists so you can check out a book from any of them & return it to any other. Neat huh?

As they always seem to do the local builders did a great job in renovating the building. It was pretty derilect before they started, but now is very modern inside with class & meeting rooms as well as the library. Outside its very much in keeping with the village style. Located just behind the school & Marie its very convienent.

You may remember that the one English canidate for the town council didn't quite make it in the election. Well, she's now running the library! And I'd say off to a great start (even though she upset the incumber 'librarian' who oversaw the little old library in the Marie, but that's local politics isn't it) what with an English section, computer classes going and so much demand that there are two set of English classes going for the children with lots of adults wanting in as well. This could well turn out to be a real special resource for our village.

It was great to see somewhere between 50-75 people turn out for the opening. The usual suspects made speeches, The Mayor, a politician from the Department and, of course, the new head of the library. (very nervous, but she made a good speech in French!) We had a specially written peom and a reading from a local author. (he reads beautifully!)

That's what I like about village life. Nothing dramatic, but everyone pretty much pulling together to make things better. The apero wasn't bad either.

New beginings?

2008-11-05T11:11:00.002+01:00

I don't normally get into politics on this blog, but at this historic moment I can't resist. I promise not to make a habit of it. Also, I'll try not to offend anybody. First a bit of history.

I was in the US Air Force stationed outside of Madrid when John Kennedy was elected. I can still remember the hope and excitment he generated. I can still remember, and yes still cry, when he made his 'ich bin ein berliner" speech. I still remember as does anyone over a cetain age where I was when he was assinated. In my case I was on an airplane on my way back home to the states when our pilot announced the news. Welcome home!! To this day I can't remember the trip from New York on to my parents home in California. I can still remember my shock to discover how many Americans did not like John Kennedy. You see, he was idolized by Europeans and non-Americans around the world. I just couldn't believe it.

I quickly found out how polarized our country was politically. There was or seemed to be no middle ground. You were either against the war & a left wing hippy or you were for it and a member in good standing of the John Birch Society. There was no room for a balanced political attitude. Or at least that's how it seemed to me. I didn't want to bring my daughters up in such an atmosphere and was lucky enough to move back to Europe where I stayed for 15 years.

My point is that it seems to me that in many ways we have a parallel situation today. The politics of polarization are back. The middle ground seems to have eroded away. People seem anchored into their positions. There are a lot of 'true believers' out there - on both sides. George Bush will leave a terrible legacy that will probably take years to overcome.

Now, Barak Obama seems genuine when he talks about change and about bringing people together. I wish him luck and goodwill; he will need both to unite the country. If, that is, its even possible. What I fervently wish is that he can capitalize upon the unprecedented goodwill he has with people around the world.

This is where I see a real opportunity. Like John Kennedy he has the opportunity to change the world for the better. Kennedy never realized his promise because his life was cut short. Obama assuming that he survives (I hate to say that, but assination is a real threat in my eyes) has a similar opportunity. The world is hoping for a better day; it is hoping that Barak Obama can lead the changes necessary and hoping that America can be in practice what it promises in theory.

I won't presume to tell him what to do. Some things are obvious. Close the horrible prison, get out of Iraq as gracefully as possible, leave Afganistan to the Afganistanis, stop Iran & North Korea's nuculear ambitions. Those things are obvious even though not easy. For the rest he will need to try to persuade Europe to step up to its responsibilities (for too long they have tried to have it both ways.), practice some tough love with Mr. Putin, encourage the Chinese to take on a wider positive role in the world (probably only they can really bring North Korea to heel), stop most of the ridiculous positions past policy has had in the Western hemisphere (its long past time that Cuba was treated like a neighbor.) and do whatever is possible to bring Africa into the modern world politicially. (tough one I know). Its a huge agenda, but most of it can mainly be accomplished by just sticking to what's made him so popular in the first place. A clear message for change, for inclusion, for a degree of humility on America's part and constant & clear communication which will abet the goodwill he has accumulated.

Barak Obama, like John Kennedy before him, has the gift of gab. He is a suberb orator, his words have the power to move people. I hope he will use that gift wisely.

That's my political post. I'll probably do no more. As an American abroad I have high hopes that with our new President we can once again begin to become a positive example. I'm heartily sick of having to apologise for my country.

Order Early!

2008-11-04T17:13:00.002+01:00

Ignoring the election until later I did something essesntial today. I ordered our Thanksgiving Turkey.

Now, you may think its a bit early, but here in France its not. You see the French like turkey, but as they don't celebrate Thanksgiving (unless that is they happen to be friends of ours. Our Thanksgiving dinner has become a minor tradition amongst our friends. La fete de Bonne Merci Donnee sort of) all of the butchers & super markets and turkey growers aim to have turkey's ready by Christmas. Thus, you won't see turkey anywhere except in flocks running around the local turkey growers plots in November.

For the past several years we were OK because our wine making friends Sarah & Dave's children raised turkeys amongst the vines in order to raise some holiday spending money. We could rely on them to feed up an 'early bird' so to speak. This year, however, Sarah said she couldn't find anywhere to buy the turkey chicks & besides a fox had moved into their vinyards. So no turkey, not even a chicken left!

Back to the drawing board. Fortunately, there exists in Villefranche a specialist shop, Au Fin Bec. They do nothing but birds. I went in today and was able to persuade Madam that I really did need a turkey on the 18th of November. After many mumbles about how it might not be ready and might be a bit small & scrawny she agreed to have it ready the monring of the 18th. I'm sure it will be delicious as the turkeys here really are very good.

Why the 18th you may be asking? Surely Thanksgiving is on the 27th this year. You are absolutely right, but this year we're celebrating a week early on the 20th & I wanted a couples of days leeway on the turkey. We're celebrating early because some dear friends have sold their house (just managing to sell a house at all is cause for celebration!) and are over closing the deal that week. As they won't be here for Thanksgiving on the proper day we decided to have an early celebration as a way to gather all of their local friends together for a proper send off. Since they are the only other 'local' Americans the rest of our friends aren't the least bit peturbed that we're a week early. So long as I serve my notorious four legged turkey and make carrot cake they're happy.

But that's another story. The turkey appears elsewhere on the blog I think.

So - if you are in France order early. If you're back in the states think of us on the 20th!

The Boss is Away!

2008-10-18T16:36:00.014+02:00

The Boss is away and an old man's fancy turns to..... food! Linda is off in England visiting her sister this week so I've taken the opportunity to make a dish that she doesn't like, but that I love.

Namely Choucroute. This famous dish from the Alsace region of France has been one of my favorites every since I first had it many years ago at Brasserie Lipp. I won't pretend that my version is 100% authentic, but it is delicious and very easy to make if you have access to a decent charcouterie (or a good deli will do nicely)

Here's a shot of the bag everything I purchased came in, plus some Chef's lubricant.

As you can see the price came to 6.87 Euros. I'm not used to shopping for one so these ingredients made enough choucroute for two hungry people.

Here's everything unpacked. Namely:

Uncooked sauerkraut.
Cooked will do, but either type must be fresh.
Hot dogs. The old fashioned kind.
Good quality smoked bacon.
Garlic sausage, smoked if possible.
Coriander seeds & Juniper berries.

Some smoked porks chops can substitute for the sausage (or be in addition to). Here I can use lardons instead of sliced bacon, but I prefer to have the slab bacon cut to order as it has a stronger flovour.

In any case rinse the sauerkraut then squeeze out as much water as

possible using your hands. Repeat this three times.

Then, first cut up your bacon into lardon sized slices and mix it well into the sauerkraut. Place it into an over proof casserole that has a tight fitting lid.

Next cut up your sausage.

Then grind the coriander seeds & juniper berries up in a mortar & pestle as seen below.

Now sprinkle the herb mixture over the sauerkraut. Then arrange the frankfurters & sausage slices over the sauerkraut mixture.

Add enough dry white wine to just come to the top of the pressed down sauerkraut. Reisling is traditional, but any fruty dry white will do. I used a light chardonnay because that's what I happened to have available.

Put the lid on making sure its tight. If too loose make a little paste with flour & water to seal or place a sheet of parchment paper over the top to seal.

Bake at about 250 degrees F for at least 2 hours, longer won't hurt.

Here's the finished product. The traditional side dish is boiled potatoes, but I find the much too heavy so I don't serve choucroute with anything, anything that is except THE most critical ingredient of all!

LOTS OF GOOD DIJON MUSTARD!!

Lots of good white wine goes without saying although this is a dish that works well with a good beer. A 'brun' here in France is wonderful with it.

If you've never had this dish try it! Then let me know what you think.

Don't try to mimic the locals

2008-10-14T14:34:00.003+02:00

I always find it amusing when foriegners try to be 'local'. That is they try to mimic the dress, mannerisms and customs of the local populance. This happens a lot with ex-pats who come to France seeking to 'blend into the coutryside' and 'be like the French'. Now I think its great for we foriegners to try and fit into the local society. Obviously we should dress and act appropriately and we certainly should respect the local customs.

No, its the mimicing part and the part where things get carried too far that amuses me. Lets face it if I live to be a hundred I'll never be French. I might fake it with non-French people, but a French person will spot me as a phony instantly. ( when I travelled a lot I used to play a game as I sat around various airports. Spot the nationality! I got to almost a 90% success rate at doing it without even hearing the person in question speak. Shoes were the best giveaway.) Somehow we never quite get it just right no matter how hard we try. Does it matter? No, I don't think so. Most French people find foriegners fascinating; if you speak passable French so much the better otherwise trying out their English is fun too.

Where is this heading? Well, I have in mind a recent example to do with cooking. An American blogger of note recently did a piece on trying to make Aligot. Nothing much wrong with that except.... hardly anybody makes their own Aligot any more. (Aligot by the way is a local dish from the Auverne consisting of mashed potatoes, garlic, milk butter and , here's the key, a special cheese made only in the region) Its the very devil to make as its hard to get exactly the right cheese outside (unfortunately, this person didn't.) a very limited area (unfortunately this person lives in the wrong area to get the cheese) and, here's the really hard part, the seemingly endless stirring is very hard work. So much so that its considered a man's job. I've seen it made by our locals for a 'repas' and even took a turn at stirring, but it really is hard work.

So what everybody, almost, does is to buy their Aligot at market where there will normally be a specialist Aligot maker selling the stuff. Either that or the local will only have Aligot when out to a restaurant. Or if really desperate you can actually buy Aligot at the supermarket to heat up when you get home.

Well, unfortunanetly this person's Aligot failed. She could having been much more native if she's just gone out & bought some. (Although I'm not sure they sell it at market in her part of France)This person, however, is determined to be LOCAL!! Unfornately she usually just misses the boat or the cheese in this case.

Or & here's a 'local' tip. You can turn a 'failed' Aligot into a " Truffade" by adding a few lardons, flattening it into a thick pancake & frying it in a bit of pork fat.

New Twist on an old favorite

2008-10-09T10:38:00.002+02:00

I've always loved Prawns Bordelaise. Lovely prawns with a garlic & lemon sauce. Ymmmy! So, I decided to make them a couple of weeks ago having found some nice peeled prawns at market at a good price.

Now, I don't know about you, but I get confused amongst prawns, shrimp, scampi, gambas and so forth as to which is which. We seem to call them one thing in the states & another thing in England. Anyway in this case what I'm calling prawns would weigh in at about a 50-60 count. Fairly good sized.

Back to the recipe. As I looked in the fridge to get my prawns out I noticed that I had a nice bunch of mushrooms. Just ordinary cultivated mushrooms. (the French call them Champigons de Paris). Inspiration struck! Why not use them, so I did and the result was delicious.

Here's what you do:

Peel your prawns if not already peeled. Cut you mushrooms into slices at a right angle to the direction that they grow. (trim off any bits, but save & use the stems); make the slices fairly thick, say about 1/8th inch thick. Chop some garlic up finely. Cut a lemon in half ready to squeeze.
In an appropriately sized frying pan put in a good sized knob of butter. When it has melted & starts to foam dump in your mushrooms & garlic all at once. Toss continually until the mushrooms are just barely cooked. (you may have to add more butter). You do NOT want the mushrooms to give up thrir water!
Add the prawns and cook just until pink or if the prawns are pre-cooked just until they're hot.
Squeeze in the lemon juice to taste.
Artisticly arrange the mushroom slices & prawns over a bed of greens, your choice of type of greens (I use manch or baby spinach leaves)
Meanwhile quickly melt some more butter, add lemon juice & pour over the whole plate as a sauce.

That's it! It turns out that the mushroom/ prawn combination really worked well. The flavours compliment each other. I wouldn't use stronger falvoured mushrooms (wild mushrooms for instance) as they might overpower the prawns. As a bonus the colours look really nice on the plate.

Try it; you'll like it. Let me know what you think.

I've been busy!

2008-10-01T16:49:00.002+02:00

Sorry & all that. I haven't been around for nearly a month, I'm suprised that anybody bothers to look at the blog, but grateful that you do.

It has been hectic! A succession of three sets of visitors the last of whom left yesterday. The first set was a couple we haven't seen in years. They're newly minted Americans having become citizens just last year after living in the states for over 20 years. (origionally they're British) They were here ten days & said they had a great time even though they left with a touch of Francois's revenge and a ten hour flight back to California. Just goes to show how different set of bugs can get you if you're not used to them; none of the rest of us got it.

The second lot were friends from England, Northerners to be exact. They are a great couple & great guests. Tony & I took turns cooking & played golf whist the ladies did a bit of shooping. Copious amounts of wine evaporated somehow. We'll be seeing them again when we visit their new Florida house in January. Should be a lot of fun & a lot of golf.

Last, but not least we're my brother & sister-in-law. We always enjoy them as they're family & easy to get along with. We'll see a lot of them now that they've both retired. Derek & I played several rounds of golf as well as watching the Ryder Cup. The sisters did what sisters always do, they talked & shopped. Plenty to talk about as our neice, their daughter, is getting married here next June.

During all of this there was, naturally, lots of cooking going on. Many old favorites pus a couple of new inventions. I'll post about the new inventions over the next few days. Suffice it to say that we ate well both at home, at friends and at our favorite restaurant.

That's it for now. Promise to get back into the blog now that life has calmed down.

Wish we could spread our visitors out more, but they all guessed September would be good and it was. Spectacular weather all month. Its changed now and fall is upon us. Whoopee! Michael & I will go scrounging - apples, walnuts, hazelnuts, mushrooms (if we get some rain), figs and pears. Its a tough life in the country.

I love a bargain

2008-08-29T11:57:00.002+02:00

As posted over on eGullet we went to our favorite restaurant for lunch this week. It was delicious and a terrific bargain. I didn't go into detail in my post, but can here.

As an aside, ever notice how some bloggers make a point of linking virtually every post they do on eGullet to their blog. Not content with mentioning in their signature they stick in links. Some of these are pretty contrived. The self promotion sort of makes me uncomfortable.

Anyway, the favorite restaurant (Le Vieux Pont in Belcastel) has a 27 Euro three course set menu for lunch on weekdays. (The main menu is 51 or 43 Euros depending upon whether you have just a fish or meat course or whether you have both.) But what they do is to include all the little extras that come with the more expensive menus. In effect we ended up with 7 courses as follows:

Amuse One. A board with two miniture pancakes on sticks (one was with fois gras & the other smoked ham) plus a little pot containing a veretable puree with herbs over minced shallots & a touch of horseradish.

Amuse Two. Mashed avacodo (almost a guacamole) over tabulla.

Our Entree. A flaky pastry disc covered with flaked steamed cod topped by roasted tomato with basil & chives. Very delicate & very good.

Our Plat. Traverse de porc (meaty pork spare ribs) that had been confited with soya & sweet herbs. In a seperate bowl were rice noodles with julliened vegatables; these mixed well with the porc. Strong flavours, but very good.

Cheese. A generous wedge of local goat's cheese cut to your wish at table with a sprinkling of fresh walnuts.

Pre - dessert. Macaroons with chocolate & orange and a chewy toffee loaded with pistachio nuts.

Dessert. Fruit salad with finely minced fruits & in the center a crisp sugar biscuit roll filled with passion fruit. Light & wonderful. By far the best "fruit salad" I've ever had.

Post - dessert. Lemon granita with basil & cream.

All beautifully presented and served with charm. (in this restaurant everyone works to satisfy their guests. Each member of staff does whatever is necessary to make thing run smoothly. Even the co-owner/ Maitre d'hotel is not above clearing courses if needed.)

For wine we had a delicious Cotes de Roulission at 21 Euros. Well, actually we had 2 bottles.

What a deal is all I can say. The ambiance is every bit as good as the food & the prices.

So for those who spurn Michelin starred places, I say just keep trying. There are other places that equal Le Vieux Pont. The trick is in finding them.

Guess I'm just an old grouch

2008-08-13T18:17:00.002+02:00

Some of you reading this may have been following the discussion on eGullet about taking photographs in restaurants. If so, you'll know that I'm firmly against it. Never the less I have been willing to at least listen to arguments from the opposing sides, but reluctantly I've begun to come to the conclusion that we're dealing with a much more serious issue underlying this issue.

As I read the posts from the photographers I can only come to the conclusion that most of them seem to be of a mind set that says me... me...me !! I will do what I want, when I want to & where I want to and to hell with the rest of the world. There seems to be lip service at best to considering anything others might feel. No, I'll do what I want. The world is waiting for my artistic interpretation of the food I eat!

I find this unfortunate and having met many of these people find them unfortunate. No manners! Few morals! Little sensitivity! I could go on, but why bother. They love themselves to the exclusion of anyone else.

As my title says maybe I'm just an old grouch, but I do have a few manners and I do take the feeling of my fellows into account and I do wonder if the me.. me.. me attitude might have had anything to do with causing the financial chaos that's finally easing a bit. Certainly, there was little but immediate short term gain & fat bonuses in that whole fiasco.

Enough! I rarely let myself get carried away on this blog, but these photographic idiots pushed me a bit too far.

Sorry.

Here come the Plums !!

2008-07-27T14:22:00.006+02:00

Its that time of year again; the plums are ripe. More specifically the WILD plums are ripe. These grow in the hedgerows around our field and throughout our local countryside.

The plums taste good and make for wonderful pies, jams & jellies, BUT to most of our locals the plums have a far more important use. THEY MAKE THE BEST EAU DE VIE! This French moonshine is a delight to drink if one exercises care. The alcoholic content is way up there. I found out the hard way a few years back. I was foolish enough to try tasting the Eau de Vie of several local home distillers, all in one evening! As I rarely drink anything stronger than wine this stuff really went to my head. Never again!

So, to make Eau de Vie you collect the plums this time of year. It is important that you don't collect them until they fall to the ground. While still on the tree they're too green & don't have adequate sugar content. Having collected your plums you put them in a closed container and leave them there for the next 5 to 6 months. They will naturally ferment just as grapes do. You need a lot of plums since 10 liters of plums will only produce one liter of Eau de Vie.

In February you take your plum slurry to a local or more likely a traveling distiller. The making of Eau de Vie is closely regulated (although the law is flouted pretty widely. Kentucky & Tennessee have nothing on rural France when it comes to moonshiners.) You can, legally, make up to a liter for personal consumption without a license.

We have friends who inherited an Eau de Vie license when they bought their house. They could although they never did produce up to 100 liters so long as they paid their taxes on it.

In most cases you go to the distiller with not only your plums, but with your own wood for the fire, your own bottles and your own corks. He will build a fire to boil your plum juice and distill it with his equipment. Just like making brandy. He charges a fee and off you go. Our main local guy comes to a hamlet called Causvielle every February.

You now age your Eau de Vie for as long as you like. The longer the better. I've had some that is over 20 years old. It gets very smooth, but no less lethal at that age.

The above is a label I did for my friends who have the Eau de Vie license. Its a bit of fun, but the '1736' stone in the center is authentic. Its a picture of an actual stone embedded in one of their walls.

So that's what is done with plums in deepest France. A lot more fun than jams or jellies I think.

Tour de France - yet again

2008-07-23T10:29:00.002+02:00

We watched the start of a stage of the Tour De France for the fifth year in a row. This year the closest start to us was in Figeac. (Every year thr route of the Tour changes, but as we're in the SW we always seem to get a stage or two pretty nearby. Last year was Cahors, the year before Albi & so on.)
Figeac is about 35 minutes away normally, but since the tour was going to use the normal main road, the road was closed. Being local we knew how to get around this. We headed up & crossed the river at Cajarc and drove along the North bank. We were able to cruise straight into Figeac and were lucky enough to find a French parking place (A French parking place is one that isn't really a parking place, but doesn't block the road or someone's drive so you get away with it. See earlier post for a treatise on French parking.) just by the main car park. From there it was a short walk across the bridge to the promenade where the caravan was just starting to pass by.
The caravan is a whole parade of decorated cars & floats done up by the Tour's sponsors. Lots of loud music & pretty girls. Also, lots of free samples thrown into the crowd. Everything from hats to pins to candy to bottled water to I can't remember what else. The children go wild & scramble for the goodies. Its great fun and to be honest more exciting than the riders themselves.
Eventually here come the riders. At this stage they're just starting so the race really isn't on and they're going relatively slowly. Its a good chance to see them all up close. As they leave the town they take off and start really racing. The Figeac start was neat because the riders have to climb a steep hill immediately. Anyway off they went.
We went to a riverside cafe/hotel & had a beer. Very nice, but they didn't serve food. A good lunch after the start has become a Tour De France tradition so is important to us. This year we hadn't booked anything in advance. So, we asked at the cafe for a recommendation. They said we should try the 'Le Cuisine de la Marche'. Its just across the river behind the church they said. Off we went.
It was easy to find although on a very small street. A good looking menu if a bit more expensive than the norm so we went in. The place was very nicely decorated with well set up tables widely placed. Can we get lunch we asked? Do you have a reservation they asked? No we said. Ok they said would you like the table by the window? Yes, that looks great. When we sat down Rob was intrigued by the unusual way the napkins were folded. (Rob's children still run the restaurant that he & Jean started in Scotland) So much so that when the waitress came with the menus he asked for and got a demonstration on napkin folding.
My starter was a dish of escargots served with finely julienned vegetables all encased in a choux pastry shell. The sauce was very lightly creamed to allow the escargot flavors to come through. A nice dish & well presented. The plat was roast cannette. This duck was served on a large plate surrounded by beautifully done seasonal vegetables and with a smaller shallow bowl in the center. This bowl captured the duck juices and was lined with sauteed potatoes. The duck itself was very tender and there were three generous slice of magret plus a cuisse. Delicious! I had a nice cheese platter for dessert. Others had a dessert with three sorbets in small pots, each over a different compot. This was accompanied by two kinds of cake, one chocolate & one spicy. It was pronounced to be superb. It certainly looked superb.
Wine was a nice 2002 local Cahor.
Amazingly we were the ONLY customers! We kept expecting the place to fill up given the crowds on the streets, but nobody ever came. We asked Madame, the joint owner, about this & she said that Tour De France spectators in general were too cheap to pay for a good meal. She also said the they had a full house for dinner the previous evening as the sponsors & team members were not so cheap.
This echos past experience, but we still are amazed that quality restaurants should be empty with such a large crowd.
Anyway, we had a great time and will do it again next year. I need to add to my collection of Tour De France hats & T-shirts!

More local politics

2008-07-19T09:45:00.002+02:00

I've talked before about the change in our local town council. In general things seem to be going well, but as normal for small towns politics are getting a bit messy.

First, however, a follow up on the 'fete des mais' I now find out that doing the fete & putting up the maypole is a tradition whenever there is a new Mayor elected. How this ceremony got from being a festival honoring the Earth Goddess to one celebrating the election of a new Mayor is still a mystery. I'm researching as are several French friends. The second part of what happens is that the losing Mayor & Councilors have a tattered coat put up outside their homes. After talking this through with local friends we've determined that its the French equivilent of "losing your shirt"! They didn't do it in Parisot, but did down in Penne where a friend lives. The losing Mayor was not amused.
Another story that's now emereged. In Ginals, a neighboring parish, the locals held a meeting to talk about whether there should be a new Mayor & Council. The incumbent Mayor (age 86) showed up & forecefully said; "I am the Mayor! You can't have a new one!" The citizens were so outraged that they organized & made sure he didn't get elected again. They did put up a shirt for him.

Anyway the local politics. Parisot is just finishing renovating a building to be our new local library. It looks as if its going to be very nice. There has been a small library in the Marie for many years. It was looked after by Madame X, the local Doctors wife. Now with the new coucil ther's a plan to have an English section of the new library. A local & very politically connected English woman (she was a losing canidate for the council) was asked to organize the English section. Well apparantly she's been so overbearing that she's upset the incumbent librarian to the point where she loked up the library, threw the keys down on the Mayor's desk & resigned.
This has upset all the locals AND started to give the English who live locally a bad name. Truth be told this woman isn't even very popular within the foriegn community, but that's hard to get over, politely, to everyone. C'est le guerre. Linda came up to Madame X at a recent repas to say hello and got the whole story very emotionally. WE and other French friends are working to try to defuse the situation. It will be intersting to see what his honor the Major does about it.

Other new initiatives are going well. The Friday market is a real success with a few more stalls now. The Engish classes for the 3 to 5 years olds are going well. And everybody is gearin up for Festilac, our big blow out with fireworks at the end of the month.

More from the heart of France later.

July 4th - again, but a bit diffrerent

2008-07-10T10:53:00.002+02:00

I've been reading other expat's blogs about doing 4th of July celebrations so I guess I should mention what we did this year.
Most people seem to try to do 'American' cooking; key lime pie, chocolate cake, ribs, BBQ & the like. The French seem to appreciate it, but it gets a bit boring after a while. There's a write up somewhere here in this blog about what our friends did in past years. Burgers, hot dogs (not appreciated.) & so forth. In that case the locals didn't quite get it about what the 4th was so it ended up being the D-day party.
Anyway, this year I decided that a more challenging meal and very Californian (I did grow up there) would be to do a Mexican meal. The challenge was to get the ingredients; cooking the meal was relatively easy. This was new territory for our French friends as well as most of our other friends. We were only 14 people so the crowd was smaller than usual. Of those only 4 of us were Americans; the rest a mix of Brits & French.
We started with a cold melon soup. This from a Mexican recipe in Diana Kennedy's book. Very good it was & very easy to make. Fortunately, nice sweet melons are in full season now and they substituted nicely for the Cantaloupes called for. The rest (Potatoes, milk and eggs) was easily found.
This was followed by guacamole with salad on the side. The salad was from Mary's garden picked that morning so was fresh & delicious. The avocados were easy, I just had to buy in advance so they could ripen up. Making up the herb mixture only required a bit of tweaking. (cumin, coriander, paprika, mace, oregano, S&P. All dried) to get right, but was Ok. Fortunately I have a good market source of fresh cilantro and was lucky enough to find some nice hot little red chilies. (don't know the variety). The rest was easy. AND! Our local Casino store is actually stocking Tortilla chips. Whoopee! It was a very good guacamole if I do say so myself.
Next we did do- it-yourself tostadas. Most of the toppings were easy. We used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream which I cannot find in France. I made my own salsa. Shredded cheese is easy to get if you are OK with Emmental. Tomatoes & lettuce are easy. I made my own refried beans from red beans that I'd cooked the night before. We decided to make these beef as opposed to chicken or pork tostadas so I fried up good quality ground beef with onion & green pepper plus pretty much the same herb mix you'd use for Chile. It worked well. Some searching allowed us to come up with pre-made flour tortillas. These turned out OK although I would have preferred a larger diameter.
We demonstrated how to fry a tortilla then smear it with refried beans, a topping of the beef then down the line with tomatoes, lettuce, yogurt, cheese & lots of salsa. Everyone had fun doing it and the tostadas were not bad at all. The refried beans I think caused the most comment as they were good & nobody other than the Yanks had had them before.
We finished off with fried bananas & ice cream which while not too Mexican went well with the scheme of things.
All in all a fun meal. I do think, however, that we may have confused some of our French guests. They now think Mexican food is typical American food. That's OK as in some ways it is in the same sense as are the European dished that we've made our own.
I'll have to start thinking about something new for next year. In the meantime this Sunday evening we're going to our local village repas to celebrate July 14th. The French independence day. Alway a good do with some fireworks afterwards.

Lamb - up close & personal

2008-06-27T10:45:00.004+02:00

I had a new experience this last week. Watching the lamb I was buying from a live critter running around his field to a cut up carcass ready to go in my freezer. Here's the story.

My friend Rob who's a semi-retired farmer (I don't think farmers ever fully retire, certainly Rob won't) asked if I wanted to buy a lamb as he was going to slaughter one of his. I said I'd have half since I don't currently have freezer space for more. I also got to thinking that carnivore that I am I've hardly ever seen the whole process through from live animal onwards. ( I quit hunting deer many a year ago.) So I asked Rob if I could be there as he did everything. No problem says Rob.

Rob was a good choice to watch as not only has he been a sheep farmer (he still has 2,000 acres in Scotland that one of his son's runs) he is also a Master butcher who had his own shop. Thus he really knows what he's doing. Currently he only has half a dozen sheep since that's all Jean, his wife, will allow. So I was in good hands.

The weather cooled down last Monday so Rob called & I went over in the early evening. He had penned up the three lambs and grabbed & brought out the one that was to be killed. Rob admits that even though he's been a farmer & butcher for many years he still has to psych himself up to do the actual killing. (Note I deliberately didn't take any pictures as this is a family friendly blog. At least so far.) A quick plunge with a very sharp knife and the jugular vein was cut. Brain death was virtually instantaneous as the blood supply was cut off. It took longer for the rest of the body to shut down, but there seemed to be no pain.

That was the hard part for me and I think for Rob as well. Next came the skinning. (I asked, but apparently there is little market these days for lamb pelts.) Rob carefully cut the skin around the ankle bone leaving a strip which he cut down towards the foot. This became a 'handle' for later. The foot as then cut off at the ankle. This was done for each leg and then the skin inside each leg as cut up to the body and peeled off. At this point we hung the lamb up using a stick pushed between the bone & tendon of the rear leg above the ankle. Thus the lamb was hanging head down. Rob then very carefully cut the skin up the belly from the rear to the neck. He started separating the skin from the body by pulling with one hand while pushing inside with his other hand clenched into a fist. This continued until the skin on the legs could be peeled back (at about this point Rob carefully cut around the anal area.) after which the skin on the back side was peeled off fairly easily. At the end all the skin & pelt came of including that on the head.

We now had a bare carcass. The innards were held in by a membrane. Rob carefully cut the membrane as I positioned a wheelbarrow underneath. Everything including the anal area came out cleanly & together. Most was cut out leaving only the heart, liver, pancreas and kidneys still attached.

Finished! I was amazed at how little blood there was other than at the beginning. We now hung the lamb in Rob's barn, high up, to fully drain. After a few hours it was moved inside to a cool place to hang for two days.

Two days later, this Wednesday, I went to watch Rob cut up the lamb. I'm always fascinated by how easy professional make doing things look and this was no exception. Rob started by cutting off the breast at both sides. He then cut through the neck to detach the head. Rob then cut (sawed) straight down the backbone as in this case we were dividing the lamb in two. Next off came the hind leg (which we're eating this Sunday) This I asked Rob to bone and to cut off the shank. Next came the shoulder which we cut into two pieces since a whole shoulder is too much meat for just Linda & I. We then cut 2 four rib racks and a couple of dinners worth of the remaining ribs. Rob rolled & tied the breast and cut out the nice neck pieces. I took home some of the liver & one kidney which we had for dinner that evening. Delicious!

The dressed whole lamb by the way weighed 15.8 kilos. (35.2 pounds approx.) Rob sold it to me for 10 Euros per kilo which is a very good price hereabouts.

All in all I'm glad I watched the whole thing. I learned a lot. I doubt that I'll ever kill & dress my own meat, but I learned a lot about cutting up the carcass and how to maximize the usable meat.

I'm not going to have any qualms about eating this lamb at all. I think he'll be even more delicious than if he were anonymous.

Fete des Mais - Part 2

2008-06-23T15:31:00.015+02:00

Having planted our Maypole we all decamped to out local lake. This was in aid of planting a tree, introducing the full new council and, this being France, having a meal and a bit to drink.

Here's the whole council. And here's our very happy new Mayor!

After mercifully short speeches the beer & wine started flowing and the conversations really got going. This was a great chance to bring ourselves up to date with many local friends, get the latest gossip and socialize in general. I for instance ran into friends whose 13 year old son is getting into tennis, but has nobody to play with. I'll probably regret volunteering, but we start next Friday. Can my ego stand getting walloped by a teenager? Probably yes & the exercise will do me good.

After a few goutte's (drops) we all trooped off to the tables under the trees for the repas. In addition to wine we had a buffet selection of several salads, slices of roast pork, pizza slices, cornichons, bread, cheese and fouace (a local kind of cake). It was pretty nice spread all in all.

I'm not going to try to describe the rest of the day, but I will leave you with some pictures of our wonderful friends & neighbors in the village. A bientot!

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A good time was had by all. By the way that's Madam Le Mayor taking the video.

People are great!

La fete des Mais - a tradition revived. Part 1

2008-06-22T11:51:00.010+02:00

This morning our new town council resurrected an old tradition: "La fete des Mais". Literally "the Corn Festival", but really a very old tradition honoring the Earth Goddess which goes back to pre-Christian times. It typically held on the Sunday following the longest day of the year.
Here is the painted tree ready to be put in place. This is the traditional offering. The location was outside the village, but still in the commune. Just outside in fact of the new Mayor's gate. Interesting.

As you can see we had a pretty good turnout both young & old. About 75 people I'd estimate which is not bad for a commune of only just over 400 people.

We had some nice decorations as well as a 'friendly' drink before the actual raising of the pole. I must say that the raising was dome most efficiently. The guys seemed to be well organized and know what they were doing. Here's a pretty self explanatory set of pictures of the process. For the sake of scale I'd say the pole is about 50 feet high.

For the rest of the story see part 2 as this was only the start of the day's festivities.

You just have to love France and the French when they do things like this. They do them well, wholeheartedly and with a great sense of occasion and propriety. I love it!

Le Vieux Pont - Again

2008-06-08T12:38:00.002+02:00

We went to Le Vieux Pont in Belcastel for lunch yesterday. There were 8 of us at table. Linda & I, our in laws plus our friend Pat & three of her friends. It was particularly interesting in that Pat & her friends are all retirees from P&O's catering division. Thus a well traveled and very knowledgeable group food wise.

We all opted for the 4 course menu. After pre-amuse amusées followed by an amuse our entrée was a choice of either Fois Gras de Canard mi-cuit or Gambas with local vegetables. I had the Gambas which were delicious & accompanied by artichoke, leek and mangetout with a light melange of sauces.
Mains were a fork tender pieces of beef (It looked & tasted like fillet, but wasn't.) with girolles, potatoes and a truffle sauce. The alternate was a lightly poached then grilled piece of cob with spring vegetables. Very very tasty.
Cheeses as always here were local with a selection of maybe 10-15 types. Cabecous, St Nectaire & ,of course, Roquefort.
My dessert was strawberries done several ways with a wild strawberry soup complete with straw. Really nice & light. Others had the chocolate medley of 4 different chocolate desserts.

Overall a nice meal in great surroundings. The room was full as is normal with quite an eclectic crowd. As we were finishing an extended French family, about 15 of them, came in to start celebrating Grandmother's birthday. They were having so much fun we wished we could have stayed.

We enjoyed the company so much that they're all coming to our place for dinner tomorrow. Belly pork is the main course. Not as refined as the restaurant, but very satisfying.

Cost of Living

2008-05-30T18:32:00.002+02:00

I was a bit surprised at a comment my Menu post on e-Gullet received. Something to the effect that what did the relationship between the $ & Pound vis-a-vis the Euro have to do with the price of meals in France.

Thinking about it the commentator was right. It has nothing directly to do with the cost of meals in France.

I didn't make my point clearly. The point was that if you are a tourist from the USA or Britain the exchange rate has made France & its meals far more expensive than last. Or if you live in France, but your income is in dollars or pounds your cost of living has gone up pretty dramatically over the past year. The 100 Euro meal is now $160 instead of $130 for instance. Live here and multiply all of you expenditure by the same factor & it starts to pinch a bit.

Inflation in Euro terms has also accelerated here in France. Not just gas & diesel, but all kinds of things. ( I still haven't figured out why the price difference between petrol & diesel has almost disappeared. Diesel used to be about 20% cheaper; no more.) Fruit & vegetables have really accelerated. Fish is way up & getting scarcer as the fishermen protest by not going out. Lots of other things are up as well.

A while ago we briefly considered moving back to the states. Our Euro valued house would translate into a lot of dollars, but we rejected the idea. Too many negatives & too far from family.

Anyway, if you are coming to France on vacation let me know & I'll send you the write up I did on how to enjoy France yet save money by doing many of the things the locals do.

In the meantime we'll just ride this out until the currencies regain their common sense.

Local Restaurant List

2008-05-29T17:06:00.000+02:00



Name	Prices	Food type	Dave

The Glebe	10.5€ for 4 courses, wine included	Local style, good & abundant, better selection than most	Very pleasant 'truck stop' style. You won't go away hungry. Madam is nice.
Ravel	10.5€ for 4 courses, wine included	Similar to the Glebe. Not as much selection.	I like it as well as the Glebe. Also its closer to home.
Auberge de La Castille	9€ set light lunch. Dinner from 23€	Local style, but with some extra unuaual dishes. Serge tries hard & his presentation is good.	Good solid place to eat. Has improved after a bad spell in the past.
La Renaissance	9€ set light lunch. Dinner from 23€	Traditional with some pretensions. Also inexpensive Lunches	Haven't been for a while, but it was Ok last time.
Il Cappello	About 10€ and up	Good range of plats, salads, pizza, pasta * desserts. All well done.	A favorite. Nice ambience, good food & reasonable prices.
Au Rince Cochon	Lunch menu about 14€, Dinner around 23€	Very nice food, good imagination & presentation.	Liked it the one time we've been there. Will definitely go again.
La Corniche	20-30€	Mix of tradition & imagination. Can be uneven, but always pretty good.	Our last visit was great. We had a really nice Sunday lunch. Better than our expectations. Try again for sure
Le Moulin de Varen	25€ +	Traditional local dished done well plus some more imaginative attempts.	New ownership & we haven't been. An unknown.
Les Jardines des Therms	25€ +	Very good cuisine well presented. Patio is the best place to eat.	I liked the food a lot. Dining room a bit cavernous & staff willing, but not expert.
Le Saint-Mamet	Lunch menu about 14€, Dinner around 23€	Nice, imaginative cuisine. Changing menu & a nice dining room	Prefer lunch to dinner here, always good.
Fleur de Lotus	Varies	Range of Far Eastern cuisine. Good, nicely served. Dining room nice.	Its good to have an alternative cuisine.
Eskualduna	Lunch t 14€, Dinner 23€	Grilled beef & fish. Best beef in the area. Great 'salad' bar	Really good beef is scarce, they have it here. Great ambience n
Delice du Portugal	Lunch menu 14€, Dinner 23€	Portuguese specialties. Said to be good, but haven't tried it	Must go, but the steak across the street keeps calling.
La Grange du Cros	12€ Dinner! Including wine	Good simple fare, nice host, nice ambience	Haven't gotten in yet. Very busy. Friends all like it.
L'epicurien	About 35€ for dinner	Very good & well done food. Highest quality in immediate area.	Really good. Food, presentation, service all excellent
Le Vieux Pont	Main Menu is 49€ Can spend more	THE best for miles around. 1 Michelin Star, but deserves more. A great eating experience	Love this place. It has it all & does it without pretension. GO!
Les Gorges de l'Aveyron	About 35€ for dinner	Pretty classic, but well done	Haven't been so am going on reports
Le Clos Gourmand	mid- 20's for dnner	Nice local cusine in a pretty room	enjoyed it the last time we were there.
Chez Danny	Cheap, no more than 20€	Eclectic. Can be very good.	You just have to go & hope.
Ferme du Mas Monille	inexpensive set meals	Farmhouse + barbeque.	I find it fun & food Ok. Linda not so keen.
Auberge de L'Hirondelle	Inexpensive, but very good.	Quality & presentation a cut above most.	Highly recommended. Really excellent value.
Le Claux de la Bastide	15€ weekdy lunch. Set menu at 24€	Excellent. Very, very good.	Only been once, but will go back. Had amazingly good beignets. Not sure if they do dinner.
Le Domaine du Cedre	Lunch € 18	Fairly classic, nice presentation. Simple, but good menu.	Really good. We go here for lunch when playing golf. Always good.
Creperie du Chateau	15€ dinner menu	Crepes; simple local dishes, but very well prepared.	Simple, good, views are great from the terrace.
La Bergerie	27€ for a 5 course dinner menu	Superb! Great food served & presented beautifully. A bargan!	For 33€ you can get appropriate wine with each course. Try it!!
Restaurant de la Valle	12€ for lunch	Quality & quantity very good. Lunch price includes wine & coffee.	A cut above the other cheap lunch places. Very convienent from CDM.
Segalar	12-14 € for lunch.	This is France! Really good, mainly locals, no décor, hard to find. Worth the effort.	Great fun especially for Sunday lunch. People watching is a free extra.
Chez Sara	Cheap, pizza less than 10€	Cheap & cheerful. Good pizza's. Usually a plat de jour.	Great place for kids & dogs. Grown ups will like the relaxed pace.

Maybe not summer yet? A dish for all seasons

2008-04-30T10:51:00.003+02:00

Having gotten some guff about jumping the gun on summer with yesterday's menu I though I'd do a dish today that can be served at any time of the year.

I come up with this one for a dinner party for 14 people. Linda just can't seem to not invite people so we end up with these numbers. We had three courses;

Entrée: Braised Endive with a walnut & blue cheese topping

Plat: Roasted chicken parts with a mushroom & tarragon sauce

Cheese: Of course, but I can't remember which ones except I know I bought a superb raw milk Camembert.

Dessert: Carrot Cake. A favorite.

I'll concentrate on the recipe for the chicken dish even though the endive was a big hit as well.

Ingredients:

Chicken pieces. Number depending upon how many you're feeding. I like to use the leg/ thigh piece, one per person.
Mushrooms. I use a mix of dried reconstituted wild mushrooms plus lots of standard white cultivated mushrooms.
A brunch of fresh tarragon.
Full cream
Herbs de Province.

Method:

Brown the chicken pieces in a bit of oil & butter on the stove top. Salt & pepper to taste.
Place them, skin side up, in a roasting pan and season with salt, pepper and the HdeP.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes. Make sure the skin is crisp by using the grill if needed.
Meanwhile chop the mushrooms into medium sized chunks.
Remove the chicken pieces from the pan & pour off most of the chicken fat.
Fry the mushrooms in the roasting pan tossing frequently until they just soften & scraping the pan to release the chicken juices.
Add the cream. Enough to make a good thick sauce. Reduce as necessary to thicken.
Add a good handful of the chopped fresh tarragon and mix it in. Remove from heat.
Pour sauce over the chicken pieces and serve immediately.

I served this with Garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed carrots & Broad beans., but use whatever vegetables you like and are in season.

A good oaky chardonnay goes well with this.

Our guests seemed to like the dish & there were lots of questions about the 'mystery' ingredient. No mystery, just the fresh tarragon blending very well with the mushrooms.

Try & you'll see!

Summer? Maybe?

2008-04-29T11:15:00.002+02:00

Has summer arrived? Well, maybe. At least the other evening it was warm enough to eat outside on the veranda. We had friends coming over in any case so I decided to do a "Summer" menu. Here's what I came up with.

Entrée. I did a garlic soup. This is an adaptation of a Jacques Pepin recipe. Its best done with fresh garlic. Chop up one leek, one onion and about 8-10 crushed cloves of garlic. Sautée them in a bit of oil for just a couple of minutes. (DO NOT let them brown at all!) Add 2 cups each of chicken stock (unsalted) and water. Add about 1 pound of potatoes which have been peeled and cut up into cubes. Gently boil for about 1/2 hour. Let cool a bit then puree the mixture. Meanwhile make some croûtons from day old bread. Before serving add one cup of cream or milk. Garnish with chopped chives. Because of the cooking this soup is very mild and silky smooth. I like it best hot, but its good at room temperature as well.

Plat. This is a fish stew, sort of. In the morning of dinner or better yet the previous day make up a nice batch of gnocchi. NOT the traditional potato based ones, but those based upon using a 5 egg choux pastry base. (let me know if you need the recipe.) As you make the pastry add a good tablespoon of Dijon mustard and a generous handfull of grated Gruyeres cheese. Finely chopped chives are another good addition to the gnocchi. Pipe the Gnocchi directly into just barely boiling water, cook, spread on sheets & freeze.
For the fish use salmon, a white fish of your choice (roughly a pound of each) & calamari. Cut the fish into bite sized cubes and fry gently in oil until just browned. Do not fry the calamari. Using a shallow baking dish put in about a tablespoon of capers and two tablespoons of chopped fresh tarragon. Add the fish & calamari. Add roughly 2 cups cream. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes. Take out & add some frozen peas and the gnocchi straight from the freezer. Push down to make sure they're covered & return the dish to the oven for another 10 minutes. Serve straight from the oven onto heated plates.

Cheese. This being France we normally have a cheese course. I leave the selection up to you & your cheese shop.

Desert. I was trying to recreate a desert we'd had at a local restaurant. I succeeded fairly well; certainly our guests liked it. So make a pate Brisée. (let me know if you need a recipe.) Roll this out into a pie tin or, as I do, onto a perforated pizza round. Buy about 6-7 stalks of rhubarb and three cooking apples. (I like Grannies). Cut the Rhubarb into about one inch lengths, place in a sauce pan, add two table spoons sugar,a teaspoon of powdered ginger & one tablespoon water & gently cook for 10-15 minutes. Be very gentle here so the rhubarb softens, but doesn't turn to mush. Peel & core the apples then slice them into thin wafers. Put a mixture of 1/2 powdered almonds plus 1/4 each of flour & sugar onto the rolled out pastry. Place the apple wafers around on this mixture. Put the rhubarb on top of the apples. Sprinkle over this a crumble mixture (let me know if you need a recipe.) If you're using the pizza round you now need to bring up & crimp the edges of the crust.Now bake in a 380 degree oven for about 40 minutes or until the crust starts browning. It may be necessary to turn on the broiler to get the crumble to brown, but be careful. Let the pie cool a bit then serve with good quality vanilla ice cream.

Voila! An early summer menu. Have fun with it & if you do decide to try it let me know what you think.

Exceptional Meals - Truffle mania

2008-04-12T10:39:00.002+02:00

Over on eGullet I described our best ever bouillabaisse eaten during a vacation at Bandol. There I promised to describe a second memorable meal that took place during the same trip.

As mentioned on eGullet the deal was that one of the three couples would choose & pay for a restaurant each week, the rest of the time we shared all costs. The week it was my Sister-in-Law's turn she came up with a restaurant that she had read about in an English Sunday news paper. It sounded good; a young Chef, the restaurant in an old farmhouse, lots of local fresh ingredients. Sort of sounded as if you ate sitting around a table in a farm house kitchen. So I called and made a reservation for the next night.

The next morning I suggested that we explore the area and see if we could find the restaurant as I wasn't 100% sure that I'd understood the directions. Off we went in our holiday gear, shorts & shirts. As it turned out we found the restaurant, Chez Bruno, without difficulty. I decided to go in as it was now lunch time and check that our reservation was OK. Our first clue that this restaurant was not the simple place we had expected was when we were greeted in the car park by a young man in spotless white jacket complete with epaulets. The second clue was that as we entered the restaurant along an arcade there were boxes of wild mushrooms on one side & boxes of truffles on the other. Multiple thousands of dollars of truffles. In any case they did indeed have our reservation and having seen what a great place this was we were really looking forward to our dinner.

Only one problem; the ladies weren't about to go to dinner in a place like this dressed the casual way that they were. (All the French having lunch were casually, but stylishly dressed) Neither were they about to let we guys go dressed as we were either. No problem really we'd just take the autoroute home via Toulon, change clothes and return. Simple until disaster struck. As we entered the Autoroute a horrendous thunderstorm struck. The works! It was so bad that we could only manage 30 KPH on the Autoroute. Then we hit Toulon in the middle of the thunderstorm in the middle of rush hour! Virtual grid lock. We finally made it home, but told the ladies that they had 20 minutes only to do their turnaround. They made it!

Meanwhile we'd been looking at the maps & trying to find a way around Toulon so as to avoid the traffic. The thunderstorm was still raging. (We learned the next day that it had been the worst storm in decades & that several people had been killed during the storm) We found a route & decided that Leo would drive while I navigated so off we went. The traffic was still terrible, but our route through side streets seemed to be working. At one point we we were going up a steep hill on a street with 3 inches of water cascading down it when a car two ahead of us stalled. No hesitation! Go Leo, up on the curb and around the stall. Eventually we made it through Toulon and the storm abated. We were an hour late at the restaurant, but were still greeted warmly and with sympathy.

There were no menus. Bruno himself, all six feet, 300 pounds complete with beard, came to the table and described the meal we were to have, five courses. All in a local French dialect of course. When he finished Leo piped up: "could you please repeat all of that in English please" A hearty laugh and Bruno was gone. Every course except dessert featured truffles, wild mushrooms or both. Absolutely delicious. Truffle soup. Bar with a truffle & mushroom sauce. Mushroom & truffle sautée. Fillet steak with truffles. Very nice local cheeses and a wild berry compot for dessert. A splendid meal and given the circumstances unforgettable.

Afterwards we got a tour of the basement kitchen complete with life sized oil painting of Bruno. No ego this man. It was only much later that we learned of his reputation and as far as I know the restaurant is still going.

The storm had passed so we had a peaceful and contented ride home.

Star mania - is it really fun?

2008-04-09T11:46:00.002+02:00

I've been reading reports of visits to France revolving around food & restaurants and it set off my muse mode. Is it really fun/ enjoyable to eat at Michelin starred restaurants five nights in a row? Not even taking into account the cost this, to me, gets to be a bit much.

At today's ridiculous exchange rate we're talking something like $300 per head - right? Every night? I don't care how much money I have I still find that a bit silly. Ok; once in a life time experience & all that I guess, but why not just come back more often?

I love to eat & I value great food, but too much too close together devalues the whole experience. One, or at least I, gets sated if I have too many of these meals to close together. A truly outstanding restaurant meal once a month does me with a good restaurant meal thrown in once a week.

Beyond all of this is the fact that spending a lot of time & money in top French restaurants doesn't do a lot for understanding or enjoying French culture & society. Far better to go to the sort of places John Talbot reviews regularly on eGullet. Those are the places where the French go where one sees true French life. (Question? Next time you are in a top French restaurant in Paris see if you can count the number of ordinary French people dining; not the tourists & not the obvious expense account types, but real couples or families. Interesting?)

I guess that I'm just not there on this. Trophy restaurants? Oneupmanship back home? Whatever? Guess I'm getting old & grouchy, but maybe older & wiser a bit.

Maybe somebody can explain the allure to me?

Pancakes by another name

2008-04-07T11:18:00.002+02:00

Another day another repas. This one, last Friday, was with the mixed French/ English crowd. 14 French, 5 English & the lone Yank. The venue was a cooking school in the back of beyond. It was sort of near the pretty little village of St. Andre de Najac in the middle of Aveyronaise country side. We liked it immediately because as you drove into the little hamlet there were signs saying no smoking in this entire place!

The dining room was pretty, exposed stone walls, beams and a nice staircase going up. The propriétaire greeted us warmly in both languages then, he determined to practice his English talked to us in that language whilst we equally determined answered in French. After a few minutes we all had a good laugh. We were also introduced to our Chef, a hearty lady from Brittany. And then to table!

- The amusées were a perfect whole long radish complete with leaves placed upon your napkin; then a dish with thinly sliced radish, a little pot of cauliflower foam & broccoli foam and pieces of rolled crepe with a tuna & herb filling. Thus our first pancake.

- Next came a bowl of poached cod with carrots & shallots in a clear chicken broth. This was accompanied by a think buck wheat galette. Very nice and our second pancake.

- This was followed by a croustillant de crottin de Chavagnol. The infamous little droppings! (see previous post for explanation) The cheese had been almost melted and placed inside the croustillant. This was served with a fig compot.Guess what? The croustillant was a very thin crepe cooked at high heat so that it was crispy. This worked quite well & was our third pancake.

- Finally, dessert. You guessed it; a crepe. This filled with a creme Anglaise and served with a wonderful orange & Grand Mariner sauce. Our 4th pancake.

Coffee & rich chocolates followed. Wines were a red & a white from the Tarn; a Count's estate no less. They were Ok, but nothing special.

An interesting meal with some good conversation even though I was having problems hearing with that many people talking in a noisy room. 20 Euros plus 9 Euros for the wine coffee, not bad.

We said goodbye the the chef & the owner and the evening was topped off by the sight of a tiny hedgehog trundling across the road. We had to stop & shoo him off.

Language lessons

2008-04-01T11:37:00.002+02:00

I've been thinking about language and wondering how to ever get fluent in French. Somehow, I don't think I'm ever going to truly get there. But I'm having a lot of fun in the process of trying.

The recent episode was posted on eGullet and was all about crote, crottins & bouse. All words describing various forms of dung in French. Only funny in context when you had a bunch of English vying with a bunch of French to see who could come up with the most dung describing words in their language. I think 'ka-ka' in English was the final winner!

Still they don't teach you these words at school and trying to learn to speak 'familiar' everyday French is not easy. Slang is difficult in any language; just think of the howlers that come up between the British & the Americans who speak sort of the same language. All one can do is to keep trying.

One thing that I have learned over my many years of living in countries other than where I grew up is that trying to learn the local cultures and value systems is every bit as important, perhaps even more so, than learning the local language. Time after time I've seen sympathetic souls with poor language skills more readily accepted in local society than those who are more fluent in the language, but don't try to understand what makes the locals tick.

Thus my piece of philosophical bit of advice for today; when planning a visit to foreign climes study the culture first, then the language.

Endive & Smoked Salmon Salad

2008-03-27T21:56:00.003+01:00

I've been messing around with endive. Here we get the Belgian kind, nice tight heads and this time of the year at really great prices. So I was thinking salad since most other salad ingredients are either poor quality, expensive or both this time of year.

Here's what I came up with; it pretty simple. inexpensive and tastes great. Or at least Linda my wife & chief critic thinks so!

For 2 generous servings:

2 heads of endive
2-3 oz of smoked salmon
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Juice from 1 lemon Plus the zest from the lemon
A few springs of fresh dill
A couple of tablespoons of chopped chives
Sale & pepper to taste

Put the olive oil , lemon juice & zest into a bowl & mix with a fork.
Cut off the root end of the endive, remove any bad outer leaves & chop the endive into about 1/2 inch rounds. Separate the rounds well & place in the bowl.
Mince the smoked salmon into small pieces & add to the bowl.
Chop the dill then add it and the chopped chives to the bowl.
Season with salt & pepper.
Mix everything very well & let rest for a few minutes.
Serve on plates at room temperature & garnish with a spring of dill & a chive flower if available.

This turns out to be a nice combination of flavors.

Enjoy & let me know what you think if you try it.

Out with the old!

2008-03-19T16:12:00.002+01:00

I talked a while ago about our local elections and how they work. Well last weekend and the one before the voting took place. Nationally, Mr Sarkozy got a lesson in humility as the nation turned left. Maybe he'll pay more attention to government now and a little less to his new wife.

Anyway none of that matters in our village. We threw out the old guard decisively! In the first round 9 of the 'new' candidates got in. Only 2 of the old guard made it; one of these was the old Mayor. Last weekend 3 of the 4 remaining seats were taken by the new comers.

I'm told that the new Mayor offered the Deputy Mayorship to the outgoing Mayor. (Apparently he's very good at the paperwork.) Don't know if he's accepted or not.

Now the new council will have to make good on their 19 point political agenda. I hope so as they seem to have some good ideas.

Hopefully they will do better at it than Mr. Sarkozy.

24!

2008-03-18T10:31:00.002+01:00

24! No, not the TV series, but the number of people we had over the other night. This started as a simple pot luck plus some singing with the people from Linda's conversation group. As is usual with my gregarious wife these thing tend to grow. It started with 12 people who might come & ended up at 24. I've come to expect it.

The conversation group is a mix of British & French. The idea being that the French help the Brits with their French and the Brits help the French with their English. Makes for some extremely lively conversation to say the least. The other night the numbers of each nationality were roughly equal; slightly more French than Brits I think. Anyway, a good time was had by all. The conversation (and the wine) flowed freely in both languages. Once the guitar came out and the singing started there was no stopping everyone. Linda had down loaded the lyrics of a number of songs in both French & English so as to help things along. Singing "Blowin in the Wind" in French is an interesting experience as is trying "Rain drops keep falling on my head". Most people finally left about 1:30 AM. All the Gendarmes had surely gone to bed by then!

As this was a pot luck we had an interesting range of food. Linda had done the main course; one of her dynamite mussaka's which everyone loved. The English mostly brought wine. From the French we had several nice salads and a range of desserts . The champion was Bernadette (she & Pierre were late due to having to get the cows taken care of.) She jokingly said the she'd killed the pig the day before & brought him with her today. She brought; friton de tete, ham, several pates and dry sausage. This along with the charcutière that Christine had brought made a great starter. We ate well. Fortunately we have a large room so with the folding table, both leaves in our regular table and lots of plastic chairs we were able to seat everyone.

We or somebody else will do this again in addition to the regular group meeting that is held every other week in a tea room. It was great fun and did a lot for local relations.

Well, I told you so!

2008-03-04T21:05:00.005+01:00

Yes, I did warn about false spring a couple of posts ago. And I was right. Normally I hate "I told you so's", but just occasionally its nice to have been right and to have said so.

The wonderful few weeks of great weather we've been having ended today. Max temperature was 5C (41F) and we had our first snow in a year even though it didn't stick. The picture above shows the sleet that had accumulated on our BBQ. Unfortunately you can't really see the sleet coming down in the daff's picture, but it was. The other pictures just show so0me of the blossom and other flowers coming out in the garden.

Perhaps the old adage "March comes in like a lion & out like a lamb" has some merit. Or is that adage supposed to be the other way around?

Something amazing is that two weeks ago Linda was having tea with Collette & they were talking about the fine weather. Collette said; "don't worry by March the 5th it will be cold again!" How did she know? I wonder if there is a French equivalent of The Old Farmer's Almanac?

In any case the forecast is for unsettled & relatively cold weather for the next ten days.

My next forecast is an old one: "beware the ides of March!"

Sunday, Sunday, so good to.....

2008-02-22T10:40:00.003+01:00

Sunday in France. Busy mornings, quiet afternoons & evenings. I think its been that way for a long time and long may it remain so. Truly a day of relaxation; a time to think and a time to be with friends & family.

It seems quiet in the morning, but only if you don't know the score. Sunday morning is for church and/or the market or a last minute trip to the local shop and, for sure a trip to the bakery for bread and, perhaps, a fancy dessert. Its also a time in the summer when brocantes (flea markets) and vide greniers (garage sales) are held. The Sunday markets are particularly important as they're where you catch up on all the latest gossip.

Thus the local shops, bakeries and markets are open, but not much else. The local gas station will be open if there's a market, but not if not. We do have one of the large supermarkets over in Villefranche opening on Sunday morning, but they're the only one. This Sunday morning opening by the way is a main reason why most of these same shops are closed on Monday. Everybody needs a full day off.

Sunday afternoons are for eating and spending time with family and/or friends. Mostly this is done at home, but in our area almost every restaurant puts on a special Sunday lunch. Many of the local families go out to eat on Sunday about once a month. Its a treat for everybody & gives 'the cook' a Sunday off. If you want Sunday lunch at one of the better places then you'd better make a reservation otherwise you'll be lucky to get in. On the other hand you'd better eat lunch or have food to hand Sunday evening as you certainly won't find an open restaurant anywhere around here.

I'm afraid that the above is part of "old" France;the way it used to be all over. These days I think that the French who live in cities & larger towns are going the way of the states. Sunday is just another day with most things open. A pity, I think.

If Sunday lunch is at home as it most often is then its a long drawn out affair. Many small courses served with plenty of time between each one. The Sunday lunch I described a couple of posts ago took over 4 hours and was pretty typical. Contrary to popular opinion not a lot will be drunk at these lunches. Most French women we know drink very little; an apero & a glass of wine with the meal - that's it. The men drink more, but still not a lot. An eau de vie or digestif to finish is traditional.

Its a nice way to spend Sunday and reminds me of my childhood when we did much the same. Its nice that many of the French are keeping up the tradition as are the Italians and the Germans. The British, unfortunately, seem to be going the way the states have.

C'est la vie I'm afraid.

Spring? I wish, but.....

2008-02-12T11:30:00.000+01:00

We've been having 'spring' weather. So far two weeks of sunny days with temperatures in the 60's and with a forecast of at least another week to come. Has spring arrived? I wish it had, but I sincerely doubt it. Its just too early global warming or not.

Those false prophets, the almond trees, are out in blossom, but being a native Northern Californian I don't trust them. They used to fool me - no more! I'll rely on more reliable signs. The snow drops have been out for couple of weeks. That's about right. The crocus's have also been out for a while.

Pretty aren't they? The daffodils only came out 2-3 days ago. Again, about right.

Look at these guys, however, we have a ways to go I think.

The bud is from our nectarine tree, hopefully this year we'll get more than two fruits, but maybe not as the tree's new.

So, all in all I don't think Spring has sprung as of yet. Its on the way for sure, but don't pay any attention to mensongere prophets. (untrue or false that is.)

Cook some more winter meals & don't put away your warm clothes just yet. Here's a reminder a picture taken about this time of the year two years ago.

French for lunch - the rest of the meal

2008-02-12T09:22:00.000+01:00

Sorry I'm so slow about posting. After the terrine near disaster the rest of the meal went well as I was cooking old favorites & comfort food.

Here's the table all ready to go with the entrée in place.

Linda does this really well. Note her pretty flower arrangements. Not easy at this time of year.

Here are the main course dished ready for the oven. Tunnel boned leg of lamb with rosemary, garlic & anchovies. Roasted roots (carrot, parsnip, garlic cloves, shallots & turnip) Oven roasted potatoes with duck fat and fresh thyme.)

This all seemed to go down well. The lamb was nice & pink and the potatoes browned & crisp, the roots were their usual delicious self.

After a suitable interval we had a simple salad to cleanse our pallets ready for the cheese. The salad was just gem lettuce and a creamy vinaigrette.

Next came the cheese

We had laguiole, St Felicien, St Augur and Blue de brebis. A nice simple selection.

I didn't take a picture of dessert which was a carrot cake because I forgot to. Suffice it to say that it was a good cheese cake and it disappeared rapidly. We drank a nice bottle of champagne that Patrick had brought with it. That went down well as well.

I did, however, remember to take a picture of the bread which is a very important part of any French meal. There were three kinds from our favorite shop in Villefranche; campagne (white), Rye and multi-grain.

We finished with coffee and a long discussion which solved all the problems of the world including our upcoming local elections, Sarkozy's marriage and the state of French & English rugby.

We slept well that night contented that we'd both improved our French and our friendship with our neighbors.

We live & learn - Terrine making

2008-02-06T17:33:00.000+01:00

As explained in my last post I was concerned to make a good impression food wise on our French friends. Thus I thought that a pork terrine with cornichons & shallots would properly impress. Only problem was that I haven't made a terrine in years; pate yes, but terrine no. I was, however, using a recipe from 'The Cook's Book' so I should have been OK.

Things went well at first. I soaked my pork hocks for 24 hours.

They came out looking fine.

Then they went into the stock pot for about 3 hours at a slow simmer.

So far so good. After the hocks cooled I shredded the meat and added chopped cornichons and shallots. I also dissolved some gelatin leaves into about a pint of the stock.

The mix looked & tasted good. At this point things looked OK.

The recipe calls for lining the terrine pan with multiple layers of cling film. I did this with no problem, but there didn't seem to be neatly as much overlap as the recipe indicated.

As I started to fill the terrine it became obvious that my terrine was far too large for the amount of mixture. The mixture should have filled the terrine to over flowing. It actually came about two thirds of the way to the top. Well I didn't have a smaller terrine so I continued on.
First I filled the terrine with the gelled stock then I cut and put a piece of cardboard on top & pushed it down - hard. Then I wrapped the whole thing in more cling film.

This wasn't going to do what it was supposed to; namely to put pressure on the mixture to 'glue' it together. So off came the cling film & on went as much weight as I could find.

36 hours later the terrine came out of the fridge. As you can see it didn't look too bad, but there was no way the terrine could be cut into nice neat thin slices. It just sort of fell apart.

The solution was to place pieces of the terrine onto endive, add a few pieces of the cut up aspic and some mustard cream sauce with a bit of parsley for decoration.

It didn't look too bad, the French loved it and it tasted good.

There were, however, lessons to be learned from what could have ended up as a fiasco.

Make sure you have the right size terrine!
Shred your port hocks much more finely.
Chop you cornichons & shallots more finely.
In fact I think it would be best to pulse the whole mixture in a food processor. Not to a paste, but to a much finer mix than I had.

I'll try again.

Having the French for lunch

2008-02-05T17:06:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday we had a group of French friends over for a Sunday lunch. We were, finally, returning some great meals and getting our social scales back into a better balance. Although we always look forward to doing a meal for our French friends there are two things that make me more than a bit nervous beforehand.

The first as you might expect is language. Although far from perfect my French is mostly adequate for social conversation even though my grammar stinks. No, my problem is hearing & thus comprehension. I'm hard of hearing and even though I have the latest hearing aids I still have problems; especially in noisy situations like a lunch where everybody is talking. (an unkind ignoramus recently accused me of being too stupid to program my own phone. Any of you with hearing difficulties will know that phones are exceedingly difficult. Ah well.) So, even though I literally hear what people say many times I have difficulty understanding. This is true in English and, not being my native language, even more so in French. In any case last Sunday worked well. Our friends are understanding & tolerant and we ended up having some interesting conversations. Try explaining the American primary elections system in French for example.

The second is the food. Not all of our French friends are good cooks. (I can remember one cous-cous that was ghastly!) Still they are all knowledgeable eaters and as an American I want to give them something a bit special. Sort of national & personal pride rears up. I really need not worry as the French are far too polite to say anything negative in any case, but if I'm honest I want to show off a bit. Thus I put quite a lot of thought into what to serve.

There were seven French plus us. I decided on a menu which was a combination of some old standby dishes with a couple of new things thrown in. We had:

- Various nibbles.

- A starter of pork & parsley terrine with aspic & mustard cream sauce

- A main course of tunnel boned slow roasted leg of lamb with anchovy, garlic & rosemary.

- This was accompanied by roasted roots (potatoes, carrots, shallots, turnips, parsnips and garlic cloves) and sauteed broccoli.

- A simple salad. lettuce with creamy vinaigrette.

- Cheese. Salers, St Felicien, St Augur and Blue de Brebis

- Carrot cake with fromage blanc frosting

For wines we had a Languedoc Chardonnay and a Spanish Trebillino. I brought in the Spanish wine just to keep everybody on their toes. Its a very nice wine.

In the end a very good time was had by everyone. Our friends arrived at 12:30PM and left at 17:30 PM. Five hours is pretty typical for a French Sunday lunch.

The best compliment was when our friend Jacques said that I cooked like a Frenchman. With heart. I was touched!

I'll write up some of the cooking with pictures over the next few days.

offal - wonderful!

2008-02-02T22:25:00.000+01:00

Yummy! We're just home from our offal outing and boy was it good.

Jean had done little starter of home cured ham , slaw with apples and a bit of her fig chutney on the side. Very nice. Then the offal. The fresh lamb liver was out of this world; the heart & kidney complimented as did the soft poached egg & caramelized onions and shoe string potatoes. I thought I'd died & gone to heaven. This meal took me back to my youth and I loved every morsel.

AND we had crepes after all! I bet we were one of the few if not the only gathering to have rice flour crepes. You see Jean is allergic to wheat & it's derivatives so she decided that to make crepes she had to use her rice flour. Thus a rice flour batter cooked in the normal way then topped with freshly squeezed lemon, yellow raisins and sugar. Pretty darn good. Not elegant, but different and eminently edible.

Can't say that I've had many more enjoyable meals recently. Great fun.

And a PS about the cooking. Our friend Jean is blind yet is one of the best & most imaginative cooks I've ever met. Good for her. We're not allowed to use the "B" word anywhere near her.

More offal

2008-02-02T18:11:00.000+01:00

Here it comes again; more offal. We were planing a quiet evening when our friend Robert called. Would we like to come to dinner? Well thank you yes, but what's the occasion?

No, not the La Fête de la Chandeleur that people over on eGullet are talking about. That sounds interesting if you like crepes which I do, but I'd already decided that I wasn't going to make them for our French friends tomorrow for lunch. Try making decent crepes for 10 people AND still enjoying lunch. No thank you. Wasn't going to make them tonight either.

Anyway, no no real occasion, says Robert, its just that I've slaughtered a lamb that was being rejected by it's Mother and Jean & I are going to cook the offal tonight. We'll have liver, kidneys and heart all served with frites. Well who could resist an invitation like that? So we're off shortly to the feast. Fortunately Linda had not actually seen this particular lamb so she's Ok about eating it.

Suspect that we may also drink a glass of wine or two. We really should in the spirit of the fete drink some cider, but much as I do like good French cider it doesn't go all that well with lamb offal.

Think of us as you munch your pancakes and celebrate the official end of the Christmas season.

Offal - Awful?

2008-01-25T16:40:00.000+01:00

A few things I've read recently and a trip to the hyper market today got me thinking about offal and how in the states it seems to be increasingly unpopular, the same is true in England as well. Yet it seems as popular as ever here in France. Maybe its an Anglo-Saxon thing?
I'm old enough to remember that my Mother (who was not much of a cook) used to cook offal. We had liver, beef heart, & kidneys that I can remember. I also remember that pickled pigs feet which came in a big glass jar were a real treat. I still like all of those things.
In France everything is used it seems. And many of the offal items are not exactly cheap either; they're certainly not virtually given away, if you can find them, as they are in the states & England. There is a huge variety of 'bits & pieces' that one can buy. I'm going to go through as many as I can remember with some purely personal comment upon my like & dislikes.

LIVER. I like liver; especially calves liver. It needs to be gently cooked and the traditional bacon & onions do go well.
KIDNEY. Again a thing I like. I'm lucky enough to be married to a Northern English woman who knows how to make steak & kidney pie to die for. Her suet dumplings to go with it a equally heavenly.
TESTICLES. Can't think of a more honest name & I hate the euphemisms. In any case I'm pretty neutral about them. I'll eat them if presented, but I'd probably never order them in a restaurant. Too many other things I like better.
TRIPE. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing much to like or dislike about tripe. It doesn't have much taste or character as far as I can tell. I do, however, like some of the dishes that its put in. Its one of local local specialties here and they do some nice dishes.
STOMACH. Otherwise known as haggis in the English speaking world. It very much depends upon how the haggis is made. I've had awful & I've had divine.
TÈTE DE VEAU. Yummy! A favorite dish. Rarely bad & usually delicious.
HEADCHEESE. Another euphemism, but I love it anyway. I am especially fond of the French version studded with chopped up little cornichons. I've also had a form of rillettes made wholly from bits of a pigs head. That was pretty nice too.
TROTTERS. Pied de porc in French. As I mentioned above I like them pickled. Most of the other ways I've had them are Ok, but pretty tasteless in my opinion. I did have some which had been marinated, pounded flat & roasted which were wonderful. This was at a restaurant in Madrid & I've never seen them done this way again.
PIGS EARS. The French love these, but I've never seen the attraction. Again, fairly tasteless in my opinion. Now then when we used buy baked pigs ears for our dog sthat was different story. They loved them!
QUEUE. Pigs tail, another thing the French seem to love. I can't say that it has much taste, but it does seem to add a certain nice consistency to the dishes where its used.
PATES, TERRINE'S & MOUSSES. Most tend to use offal of some sort even if its only liver. Anyway there are few that I don't like. Its great fun here to go into the charcuterie and have choice of 8-10 or more to choose from. Love it!
FRITTONS. I don't know just how local these are, but they are a type of pate made with various bits & pieces including types of offal. I've seen them made from duck, veal and pig. Some taste pretty good others are a bit off putting.
Around here there is another type of fritton as well. This is a duck's carcass (the breasts, legs & thighs have been removed.) which has been slowly cooked in duck fat so the meat that left has been turned into comfit. I only know of one place to buy them already done, but you can buy the raw carcasses fairly easily. Probably not really offal, but sort of in the same vein. Its an interesting alternative to using the carcass for making stock.
STUFFING. Most forcemeat stuffings are all the better for having the bird's offal included as are gravy's.

What have I missed? Don't know, but if anybody wants to remind me feel free.

Bottom line is that overall I like offal more than not. We'd have a poorer diet & cuisine without it. So...

Vive la France! for keeping it going.

THE ham - its been a long wait

2008-01-24T11:59:00.000+01:00

There he is the whole ham. Notice how beautifully he's wrapped? Sort of ugly isn't he, but having waited a year for him he's beautiful to me and to my friend Andrew. The ham is the result of our adventure last year of joining in with French friends to butcher a whole pig. Well, actually it turned out to be two pigs as there were quite a few of us. (I've written up the whole adventure earlier in this blog.).
Because it was the first time for Andrew & I we sort of wimped out and decided that we would share half a pig between us. We had a great time during the whole process and both ended up with lots of several kinds of sausage and several kinds of pate. These were easy to divide up. For the ham we had to wait for it to cure. Local lore says that takes one year; who are we to argue. (The cure by the way is a simple salt cure not much else.) So the ham was finally ready a week or so ago & our friend Jacques brought it over for us. We now had the problem of how to divide the ham in two - equitably!
After considerable thought it was our friend Robert who came to our rescue. Rob is a retired farmer/ jockey/ butcher. He reckoned that he had a way to cut up the ham so the ended up in four pieces that could be equitably shared. This sounded better than sawing it down the middle which was the best the Andrew & I had come up with so we agreed to let Robert have a go.

Rob started by cutting off the hock.

As you can see the ham has a really nice color and is tender & moist. Of course we had a taste. It is great! Wonderful flavor, not too salty. I think our French experts we were working with knew what they were doing. Its for sure we didn't.

Next Rob cut out what he called the 'chine'. It the smaller piece in the middle of the picture. Apparently this is a different set of muscles .

Now came the cut cut where Rob took out the leg bone and then cut the ham into two large pieces. These were the Topside and the Silver side. (if I got it right the Silver side is the inside of the pig's leg and the Topside is the outside of the leg.)

The piece in the center of the picture is the topside (or at least I think it is. We'd been drinking wine as we watched Rob so I wasn't paying as close attention to what he was doing as I should have.)

In any case it was now time to divide up as we had four pieces of ham plus a bone.

I asked Andrew to choose first as I'd dragooned him into the whole thing to begin with.

Here's what he chose. The chine & the Topside.

I got the silver side, the hock and the bone. We're both happy.

The whole thing has been a great experience. We'll probably do it again next month.

The frugal shopper - French style

2008-01-17T12:08:00.000+01:00

I recently read about buying foie gras here in France now that its on sale after the holidays. That's good advice because it really is much cheaper than normal. Still foie gras is expensive even at half price. That got me to thinking about frugal shopping for food here. Eat well, but save money. Its possible if one sticks to seasonal items, has a freezer and learns the ropes. In other words learn to food shop the way the French housewives do. They are in a word - frugal.

Now, when it comes to the big holiday meals the French don't count the cost. They buy whatever they want at whatever the cost. Foie gras at full price, oysters, expensive cuts of meat, cheeses, pâtisserie desserts, chocolate, the lot. But in everyday cooking they tend to be frugal. They follow the seasons, they use the markets and they prepare slow cooked meals with inexpensive ingredients.

Here are few of the things I've learned from them:

A freezer is necessary so the one can take full advantage of the sales. Especially the meat sales.

Meats: Follow the sales for sure. Beef & veal is always pretty expensive; even when on sale. Lamb is normally expensive, but does go on sale. For example I'm going to buy a couple of half lambs today at 5.30 euro per KG. (a little under $4.00/lb.). Pork is of very high quality here and is inexpensive. When on sale its really cheap. Belly pork for $1.50/lb for example. The pork sausage (de Toulouse) is both wonderful and moderately priced.
Birds range in price. There is cheap battery chicken, but a proper free range bird is relatively expensive ($7-8.00/lb) When available fresh duck leg/thighs are very cheap. Breasts are normally not cheap at $8-9.00/lb. Turkey breasts & leg/thighs are cheap. Recently our local supermarket has been selling quail from Spain at a very low price.

Vegetables: The first rule is to buy from the market whenever possible. The produce will be cheaper in most cases and fresher. Winter is difficult as the imported stuff is relatively expensive & the quality not that great. Leeks are a real staple here being local. Cauliflower and broccoli are also good. Onions, shallots and potatoes stay inexpensive. Most other veggies start to get expensive.
Given what's available we have adopted the French custom of having lots of soups. A staple here are the various kinds of squash & pumpkin which make for great soups as, of course, do the leeks.

Fruit: Apples are the best bet here as there a lots of local varieties (my favorite stand at Villfranche market always has at least ten types available + great cider!) Oranges & Clementine's come in from Spain with good quality & price. Pears are good. Pretty much everything else suffers.

Cheese: There's not too much seasonal price variation, but there is a lot of 'quality' variation. For example; plain old brie vs. brie de meux vs. raw milk brie. The price difference is about 3X per pound. Or take the range from Cantal to Salers. Here price about doubles from $6.00/lb to about $14.00/lb as you go from Cantal-jeaune to cantal- entre doux to cantal- vieux to Laguiole to Salers. All the same cheese family, but a huge difference in price. There's also a large variation in price amongst the range of blue cheeses. Then there is in addition a huge range of 'manufactured' or 'commercial' cheeses. (sort of the French equivalent of Velveeta) These are cheap & some are actually edible.

Charcuterie: The range is so large that its hard to make comparisons. Certainly the pre-prepared dishes are expensive in general although things like celeris rave & carrot salad are cheap & good. Pates range from very expensive to pretty cheap depending upon ingredients. Rillets tend to be a great buy as are fritons. One could totally eat from the charcuterie, but it would be expensive.

General food stuff: Basics are reasonable and there's not a lot of variation. We find most ready meal type packaged goods in the freezer or on the shelves to be pretty awful. See my comments about the Uk equivalents. Jams, jellies, chocolate, snacks and so forth are abundant & cheap.

We've been out of the states too long to make comparisons, but we do find things cheaper here than in England.

Overall though we find it fun to be frugal. Shopping & eating like the French is no hardship; we enjoy it. We still revert to & enjoy eating occasional American or English meals, but by & large we're becoming more & more 'French"

A better mousetrap?

2008-01-11T10:37:00.000+01:00

We've been having a plague of mice this winter. Living in the country as we do we expect to get the occasional mouse in the house especially in the winter. Normally we get two or three between November and March.
This year its been over twenty! I'm catching nearly one a day. Our neighbors all seem to have the same problem. For whatever reason (global warming? Carbon emissions? ) the mouse population seems to have exploded. I'm even catching them in one of the spare bedrooms which isn't used at all and has absolutely no source of food for a mouse. I've been around outside and blocked up every conceivable place where I think a mouse might get in. No luck. The little devils are so small that they can squeeze in just about anywhere.
Up to a few days ago I was using conventional mouse traps. You know, the wooden ones with a spring, a wire arrangement and a little platform for the bait. I was using two, one under the kitchen sink & one over in the spare bedroom. The bait was a bit of cheese or, this being France, a small piece of pate. As mentioned this was working pretty well, but I did have a number of misses where they got the bait, but didn't get trapped and there were days when I forgot to reset that trap(s).
The other day mouse droppings turned up in the linen room so Linda asked if I'd get more traps as it didn't seem that two were enough. So while we were in Villefranche I dropped into Pole Vert. (Now, you have to get you 'Verts' straight in France as there is Pole Vert and there is Point Vert. Both national chains. Pole Vert is a post of farmer's hardware store. An amazing mixture of stuff for the farmer, everything from clothes to machinery to pipes to horsey stuff to mouse traps. Point Vert on the other hand is a combination of garden stuff plus general hardware. Everything from plants to fertilizer to pipe fittings to wine to clothes to, yes, mouse traps. Whatever, both seem to do pretty well & are fun to wander around being pretty good for one's vocabulary of farming & garden items. Not as much fun as the quincaillerie though.)

Sure enough Pole Vert had a stock of the classic mouse traps. So I picked up a couple, but there right next to the checkout counter was a display of SUPER CAT!

I've read a saying somewhere to the effect that "build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door." I don't know who said that, but it has always stuck in my mind. Well It seems that somebody has built a better mouse trap!

Here it is the Super Cat mouse trap. This is the picture of it closed. They come two to the pack and cost about 4 bucks. The promise is that they're easy to use, safe, effective and require no baiting.

Naturally, I had to buy a two pack to try out.

So, when we got home the first thing I did was to read the directions. (being a BSEE I do stupid thing like reading directions)

So simple that even I could understand them. Push down the lever and remove the cap on the bait platform.

Once a mouse is caught just push down the lever again to drop the corpse into the garbage. Your trap is the automatically reset.

Couldn't be simpler.

So I set both traps and placed them. As a test I also set my old conventional trap next to the Super Cat under the kitchen sink.

Super Cat worked! I caught three mice in a row. AND the mice preferred. if that's the word, Super Cat to the old fashioned trap.

In fact after a few days of this I'm not catching mice any more. I think Super Cat has cleaned them all out.

Thus, it looks as if somebody has actually invented a better mouse trap. I was intrigued and noticed that there was an Internet address on the packaging (www.swissinno.com) so I had a look. Turns out that this company makes a number of interesting products including 'humane' version of the mouse trap. They've just introduced a trap for voles & moles which I'm trying to buy as the moles are chewing up our lawn and, so far, traps, noise makers and bombs (yes, really!) haven't done the job.

All I have to do is find somebody in France who stocks the mole trap.

Local politics - the same the world over?

2008-01-07T11:03:00.001+01:00

We went up to the village hall yesterday at lunch time for the village New Years celebration put on by the Marie. About half the village attended. (our whole commune has 450 adults plus children) We had mulled wine, orange juice, crisps, olives and galette. (The village can't afford the 'galette des Roi' that's traditional in homes.) A good time was had by all.

It was nice to be greeted warmly by so many of our neighbors. Beaucoup de bise were exchanged. These are kisses on the cheek; more friendly that a simple handshake and a sign of acceptance. Everyone wishing everyone a happy new year. Nice party.

I couldn't, however, not notice that the real politics are starting. We have our local elections coming up for the Mayor and the town council. (All 14 of them. Seems a lot, but then again why not.)

The current Mayor was working the room like a pro. He even tried out his English on us! He's running for election to be Mayor for the first time in his own right. He became Mayor this time when his predecessor retired; he was the Deputy Mayor so automatically stepped up.

Running against him is the owner of the local pharmacy. He's younger, but an outsider having only been living in the village for a couple of years.

So to start with we have the incumbent who has been living in the village for many years running against the new comer from outside. (The villagers say; "he's a Parisian." Now I don't know if he really comes from Paris, but they call most French outsiders Parisians just as they call all foreigners "les Anglais" whether or not they come from the UK.) The old guard versus the new. Add to that the fact that the Mayor is a staunch Socialist and the challenger a fan of Sarkozy and you have nice left right split. This is a pretty conservative area so being of the right is not necessarily a bad thing.

The challengers accuse the Mayor of being stogy and do nothing. They want the village to be more dynamic. Issues are things like why hasn't the Mayor sorted out the cafe situation? (The local cafe is closed because the license holder (unfortunately a drunk) is banned from opening due to poor hygiene in the cafe. The owner would like to reopen, but can't get the license off the holder.) Why can't the local shop be combined with the Post Office to the benefit of both? The Mayor is also accused of being uncommunicative preferring to do things then inform people. And so it goes. Why was a house out of character allowed to be built in the village?

The incumbents say that the 'newcomers' just want to stir up trouble; that all they have are pipe dreams and what do they know about the 'real' village anyway. "We have a nice village let's keep it that way. Don't rock the boat."

Now in these elections there can be an open slate or a closed one. In the open slate its each person who's standing is voted for individually. One votes for up to 15 people (including the Mayor's position.) In a closed slate one votes for a selection of candidates as a block. That is if its a full slate one can only give it all 15 votes. The Mayor has opted for a closed slate. (remember he's a Socialist and party oriented), but he only has 9 people on his slate. The challengers are still gathering potential names, but... They already have two 'foreigners' signed up. Both British! Will the true locals accept them? The rest of the open slate so far tends to be the younger people of the village.

This is getting interesting. I'll keep you posted as the campaigns progress.

I expect that anyone reading this who lives or has ever lived in a small town will find all of this familiar. Politics are politics methinks.

Food Shopping The UK vs. France

2008-01-06T12:00:00.000+01:00

One of the things about being a 'foodie' is that one can't resist food shopping. So, although I didn't do much cooking during our recent trip to the Uk I did go food shopping several times with both my daughter-in-law and my sister-in-law. Both are pretty good cooks and like to experiment. We had a lot of fun going around the big supermarkets, mainly Waitrose who seem to be the upmarket supermarket of choice in England. I must say that their stores are very well laid out and that the checkout system is superb. (you could pick up your own scanner & log things in as you put them into your cart. Then, if you used the store's card you could check yourself out. An honor system of sorts, but pretty neat if you're in a hurry.)

Here are my impressions of what I saw as the major differences in shopping in a Uk as opposed to a French supermarket.

Ethnic foods. No comparison. The Uk markets have a very wide range of cuisine, everything from Indian to Thai to Japanese to American to, yes, French. Our average French market has a pretty poor selection of anything that isn't French.
Preprepared foods. Again no competition; the UK markets are stuffed with preprepared everything and the quality looked pretty good. Expensive though and I prefer to cook from my own raw ingredients.
Meat. Trade offs. The beef looked better and was cheaper. Lamb was about the same in price & apparent quality. France won hands down when it came to pork. The precut sections were similar except that in France there is a lot of 'offal' on offer. The 'bespoke' butcher section in France had a much wider selection of meats available. Overall I think I prefer the French market.
Vegetables. The French markets are far superior. Not quite as wide a range of specialty items, but much better quality. AND the French prices are far lower. (this doesn't include the outdoor markets which in France are better yet. Can't say about the English outdoor markets as I didn't have a chance to try one.)
General stuff. On basics the markets are pretty much equal. The English have far more snacks, nibbles and so forth. The French have a lot more non food items being more Hypermarketish in style. No big deal here.
Wine. The English have range. Wines from all over the world. The French have price. Overall they're at least 40% cheaper on an like for like basis as is possible to work out. For example: I can buy a perfectly nice drinkable bottle of red wine in France for about $3.00. An equivalent in England would cost $5.50 and that would be on sale. I did like the range in England, but at the same time I've found that as one buys wines from the various regions of France one gets almost as much variation in style, taste & terroir as one gets from around the rest of the world.

Ideally one would combine the best of both countries into one perfect supermarket. It would a dream to shop in, but would probably go broke. We've chosen France and are happy we have. Although the lack of ethnic things is frustrating at times I can go to the Herb Lady at market and get pretty much any condiment I want. In England the charcuterie & fromagerie departments are only a pale imitation of the real thing.
Bottom line comes down to price. Overall I think our food bill in France is about 20% cheaper than it would be in England. That's not counting wine. If we were to buy lots of preprepared stuff in either country then our bill would go way up.

Moral? Live in France, cook from scratch and drink lots of wine.

England? Its a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there!

Back Home again

2008-01-04T12:28:00.000+01:00

Here we are back home in France. Well, actually we've been home a few days since we wanted to attend a New Year's eve bash at our friend's chateau. This we did & had a great time; the party pooper was Rupert who made it clear that he wanted to go home to his bed about 1:00AM.
The journey home from England was traumatic. All the first part was fine and our hotel in Neufchapel-en-Bray was good as was the dinner they served. We started off the next morning (Sunday) and got as far as a freeway services area just North of Orleans. We stopped there and when we tried to go the car key refused to work. It just would not turn! Its one of these fancy electronic keys. Thinking it might be the batteries I did manage to find some, but that didn't help. No way to get in touch with a Mercedes dealer on Sunday. Eventually we called our friend Jacques. He agreed to go to our house, get our spare key & bring it to us. FIVE hours of driving!! Each way! Fortunately the spare key worked. We finally got home after midnight. If ever there was a true friend Jacques is the one!

Weight wise I didn't do too badly over the Holidays. Back to 195 pounds so only a 3 pound gain. I'll work to get that off and then go for the rest of the weight I'd like to lose.

Not much cooking over the Holiday period. I did do a deconstructed turkey for Christmas day. (we went over to our relatives neighbors for Christmas lunch. The turkey, rib roast, all the trimmings, cheese and superb homemade Christmas pudding flambe! Super meal, very traditional.) I also, by request, did a vegetarian main course for my niece. (sauteed red onions; baby corn, mange tout & carrots; brie, double cream, herbs de province and a puff pastry top. all done in layers. She seemed to like it.)

Lots to talk about so there will be a few posts to come. Also I got a number of cookbooks to play with Jamie Oliver's latest "Cooking at Home"; "The French Laundry Cookbook" and 4 individual recipe books from Larousse Gastronomic. (this is in addition to the monster main addition which I already had) Plenty of food for thought so to speak. Recipes to follow.

Slow roasted belly pork tonight; Yummy!

PS: My ham from last year's pig has arrived. Its huge. I'll post pictures.

Cassoulete? Was it real?

2007-12-18T12:58:00.000+01:00

I ended my last post mentioning making a cassoulete with Louise. Now given my persinikityness about cassoulete I have to ask if this effort was a real cassoulete or just a fancy bean stew. I'm going to describe how Louise & I made it and let you be the judge.

First, Louise went shopping for ingredients. She got a nice ham hock, 3 lamb shanks and a pound of local sausage. (The local sausage seemed to have quite a bit of filler in it & wasn't as good as an all meat Toulouse sausage.) We had brought over a large can of duck confit from France. (I actually prefer to use the canned confit even though I can buy individual pieces or easily make my own when at home in France. Normally the canned stuff is nice & tender and you get quite a lot of extra high quality dick fat.) Louise found some nice dry white beans, not lingots or tarbais, but they were fine. We had the rest of the ingredients available; vegetables for the mirepoix, tomato puree and our herbs. Not to mention a bit of strong red wine.

So, we browned all of the meats, boiled the beans in lots of water for 15 minutes then added garlic (1 head) and the puree to that pot. We sweated the mirepoix for about 20 minutes then added it and the herbs (juniper berries, thyme & herbs de provence) to the bean pot. We let everything rest for half an hour then started our assembly.

Now here was a problem. We didn't have a cassole or other large crock. We also were limited by the oven height of Louise's AGA cooker. The solution was a deep stock pot that just fit the oven with it's lid off. We covered it with foil fot the first cooking. We built up the layers of meat & beans finishing off with the confit. We'd got the bean liquid abour right & only had to add about 1/3 bottle of wine to cover. Into the oven it went for about 3 hours.

The 'cassoulete' then came out & rested for a few hours. It then went back into the oven, uncovered. After about 45 minutes it came out & got its first bread crumb topping. After another half hour, when the crumbs were browned nicely, we pushed the crumbs down into the pot and added the second crumb layer. When this was nicely browned we were ready to eat.

The dish was delicious, all 8 of us throughly enjoyed it. Was it a cassoulete? Well, the ingredients were all there for a classic dish. We could have used a better sausage and the bean to meat ratio was a bit off; we needed more beans. It turned out that the lack of a big earthen ware pot didn't seem to matter from a taste point of view. Of course the presentation wasn't nearly as nice, but it looked good once on the plate.

You be the judge. Sorry that I didn't take any pictures, but you can use your imagination.

I'll be interested to hear any opinions.

Travel Tales & a bit of cooking

2007-12-16T10:52:00.000+01:00

We started our journey to England for the holidays on Thursday morning. We had great weather for the trip; sunny & crisp. The car was packed to the gills what with us, Rupert, lots of wine, Christmas presents and What seemed to me to be Linda's entire wardrobe. Off we went.

Near Chateauroux we decided to take a Western route via Rouen instead of our normal route via Paris. Mistake! All went well until we hit Rouen at rush hour. It turns out that the route wasn't all auroroute as we thought, but went through an industrial area with lots of traffic lights. Very very slow. It was 18:30 by the time we got out of the congestion. We stopped so Roop could do his stuff & Linda could call the hotel to tell thm we're running late. The room was fine, but she was told the the dining room closed at 20:30. Gulp! we were 228 kilometers from the hotel & very hungry and fog patches were developing. OK, off we went at a great rate of knots (I hit 160 kph quite a lot of the time) fortunately the traffic by now was very light. We took our autoroute exit for the hotel at 3 minutes to eight. We'd travelled just over 1,000 kilometers. Safe for dinner we thought.

Mistake! I'd printed off detailed maps of exactly where the hotel was, but we still couldn't find it. After wandering a bit we called the hotel again & got directions. Turns out that Google maps had it wrong. The street address for the hotel came up in the wrong village. Even though by now we were really late the hotel had saved a meal for us. A cold meat plate folowed by a sauteed chicken dish followed by a nice cheese plate followed by an excellent creme caramel. Not haute cusine, but good & satisfying.

After a good sleep & breakfast we're off to the channel tunnel. Now, as you may know the English have a thing about dogs. Thus we had to report to the Animal Control Center building with Rupert and his passport. (before we left home he'd been examined by our vet, given worming pills and a shot) So, he gets his chip read Ok, but on his passport it turns out that although the vet has stamped it for his rabies booster shot she hasn't signed it. Big problem. On his vaccination record she has both signed & stamped the shot. The French official says he will FAX copies of both documents to England and then get permission to let him in even though his paperwor is not quite right. He does this then starts calling his collegue in England & calling & calling. The guy is not answering. Nearly an hour goes by. What if they won't let him in? Disaster! Finally the French official (who by the way has been very friendly, encouraging & helpfull throughout) sends the guy a fax asking him to call him immediately. This works and much to our relief we're cleared and off. In the end we were only 20 mnutes late, because originally we were very early. You've just got love this bureaucracy?

The trip acroos England to the kids house is easy, no bad traffic, even the dreaded M25 is lear, and we arrive in good shape to a warm welcome and a nice meal. Gosh, but the Grandkids are really getting grown up.

The next day Louise & I decided to make cassoulete for dinner, but that's another post!

Frosty French morning

2007-12-12T16:13:00.000+01:00

We woke up this morning to brilliant sunshine and frost. We've been having some much needed rain so we welcomed the sun. Also, the frost made the ground firm so we decided to take one of our favorite walks both Rupert & we love this one hour walk.

It around Causseviel a small hamlet at the end of a dead end road. The country side is rolling and is a combination of meadows and woods. Some are lush and others are 'causse' which is very rocky & sparse. Its only a five minute drive from our house.

Off we go!
We start off a small lane with a cross & head down this track. Field on both sides. Normally there are cows, but not this morning. Expect we'll see them later in a different pasture.

Here comes Roop flying back to us. He's got his coat on just in case the "chasse" sould mistake him for a small brown bear. I think he's having fun!

We stop so Linda can photograph these beautiful leaves. Gorgeous aren't they?

Roop on guard. Who knows what he sees? "Why are we stopped? Let's go!

More beautiful leaves. The Winter colors are superb.

Off we go again. We're working our way along the bottom of a hill. Soon we'll start up a bit.

We've just turned right & started up. I've always particularly liked this stretch of path. There's a beautiful field off to the right with a small pond for the cows and a path that leads over to La Cazoul.

Here are our regular cows. They've moved to a different field. Pretty aren't they. If you look very closely you can just see the leader's collar & bell.

More cows. Different breed; milkers these. They're getting their hay.

The view opposite the 2ond lot of cows. Lucky cows to have that. The village in the distance is Pech Bernu, population 14. 16 in the summer when our American friends are in residence.

A little abandoned barn. These dot the countryside relics of a more prosperous past. I can't help looking at them & thinking gee, I could buy that & fix it up as a summer place for next to nothing. Dream on!

And so we reach the juniper patch and we're nearly all the way around. Just a right turn past some great stone walls and down the hill to the car.

A beautiful morning, one of our favorite walks and a happy dog. A happy Linda & Dave as well. We're privileged to live in this beautiful country where walks like these abound.

Diet - No, I haven't given up

2007-12-09T18:14:00.000+01:00

I'm stuck at my 10 pounds weight loss & have been for a while, but I'm still trying. This 190 pound barrier seems to be a tough one.

I think I'm at a point where I'm to strategise just continuing to keep the 10 pounds off over the holidays and then make a big push for the second 10 pounds in January.

Last night we went to special Greek evening at a friends restaurant, tonight we're having slow roast belly pork and Wednesday we're out for dinner. Thursday we leave for England and a round of visits with kids & grandkids, Linda's family and friends. I'm going to be hard pressed to keep the 10 pounds.

Its a tough life.

Good Deed for the day

2007-12-06T12:00:00.000+01:00

As Rupert & I were pulling out of the drive on our way to his morning walk we had to stop for a van coming up the lane. This is a pretty rare sight as we get 5 cars a day if we're lucky. Well not only did we have to stop, but the van driver got out & waved me down! A closer look revealed that there were two vans both from Salson who are a local dealer in household appliances.

We hadn't ordered anything from them recently although they got all of our orders for major appliances when we redid our kitchen. Still, I recognized the driver as he had delivered to us back then. Hummmm... what's going on?

Turns out he's looking for a Mr Stanley. Do I know where he lives? Well, no I don't, but I do know that there are some English people who live down the road a ways. Perhaps this is Mr Stanley? Wait, I say, I'll go ask my wife. She doesn't know either. I go back out & he shows me the delivery slip. Mr Stanley, Lacaou. Ah HA! I'm pretty sure Lacaou is where I think the nameless English couple live.

Follow me I tell them I know where Lacaou is. Ok, but they decide to turn around instead of following me up the lane. Now this is dangerous as the lane is one way. (Jacques found this out to his cost, but that's another story.) Anyway I went up, turned Left, drove down the road towards Caylus & waited for them. Sure enough they appeared and then followed me for the few hundred yards to the lane on the right up to Lacaou. I waved, they waved and Rupert barked. Good deed for the day done.

This is typical of the local Gallic logic. They came to us because they knew we were English. (well I'm American, but let's not get into nuances here.) Because we're Anglais the French automatically assume that we know every other English person within a 10 mile radius. Logical isn't it? Not true of course, but virtually impossible to convince the locals otherwise.

This happens pretty frequently with the Mail lady. Any letter that has an Anglo-Saxon name on it which she doesn't know gets delivered to us in the hope that we'll know. We only recently found out that she keeps trying until she finds the addressee; if we don't know she takes them to Micheal & Ruve & if they don't know she goes to Denise & Alan and so on.

Guess what? The Gallic logic works. Most of the time the letters get delivered to the right party and people do get found. I'm sure that Mr Stanley is now enjoying his new appliances whatever they may be.

Paris - It ain't all bad

2007-11-29T18:29:00.000+01:00

After all the bad press Paris has been getting lately what with strikes, riots and general grittiness I thought it might be a good idea to redress the balance at least a little bit with a true story of how nice Parisians can be.
Now, I am not an admirer of cities in general. I must say, however, that after San Francisco Paris is pretty high on my list. I've been going there for over 40 years and still like it. Like all big cities Paris is a better place to be a tourist in that as a place to live in. Unless, that is, you're reasonably well heeled. Of course then anywhere is a better place than if not, but I digress. At any rate this story is true and happened just last week on Thanksgiving day as a matter of fact.
A friend of ours had to leave our Thanksgiving lunch to go down to Montauban to pick up her parents who were supposed to arrive from England that day BY TRAIN! Of course the strikes were on so she really didn't expect them to arrive, but since she hadn't heard she had to go down just in case. The parents who are 88 & 82 were coming from England via Paris. They were warned & advised not to try the trip, but too wait as they had to change trains in Paris which also involved getting across town from on station to another. Difficult with the strikes. They came anyway not bothering to let anybody know about their progress or lack thereof.

In Paris They were helped by a succession of kind people (bear in mind that they speak very few words of French) First somebody helped them off the train & snagged a porter for them. He then barged them to the front of a very long taxi line & grabbed the next cab for them. The taxi driver hailed another porter for them at the other station. He took them right to their train and made sure they had good seats. Nothing but kindness & efficiency. What strikes? What rudeness? They arrived exactly on time fresh as daisy's.

Its doubtful that this happens all the time, but it does happen. For my money Paris ain't all that bad. And you can still eat well for not a lot of money if you know what you're doing.

Diet - Day whatever In the doldrums

2007-11-29T18:11:00.001+01:00

Well. I'm just hanging around 191 to 193 pounds and have been for the last week. This 190 pound barrier is proving hard to break.
Guess I've just got to try harder. It would help if I were stricter with myself. I have had a few glasses of wine and even a piece of carrot cake on Thanksgiving. Straight & narrow is what I need.

I bought some dry sausages (three for 10 Euros) at market today. I got capes, torus & Avyronaise varieties each about 200 G, not bad. He's always at the Thursday market. When I bought my Butternut squash the girl on the stall asked how I was going to cook it. (Cut in half length ways. cut deep grooves into each half in both directions, a good dab of butter in the cavities, then plenty of fresh grated nutmeg all over & bake in a hot oven until done) We got through all of this except the nutmeg. I couldn't remember the French word for it. Its muscade. Think we got there using other word & gestures.

Otherwise cold & quiet. Did have friends over for a light supper and poker the other night. I won. Too bad we don't play for money.

Jacques Viguie - a fond farewell & dignified passing

2007-11-27T16:41:00.000+01:00

We lost a friend today.
I remember when we first bought our house here we would fly in then all jet lagged wake up early the next morning. We'd see the smoke rising from the boulangerie chimney and know that all was well. Jacques was making bread. When we moved here permanently Jacques was one of the first to greet us as new neighbors; he and Madame Viguie were the first of the villagers to invite us to their home. (funny how after 6 years she is still Madame & I have no idea of what her Christian name is, but Jacques was always Jacques.) We were invited for "un petit gout" (a little taste). We weren't sure what that might be but found out that it was succession of small dished accompanied by appropriate drink. Jacques was particularly proud of his very own eau de vie. First we had the 'new' stuff, then the very old stuff. Wonderful, but watch out!
Slowly we learned more about Jacques; ex pig farmer, ex truck driver, retired bread maker. And what bread! Real country sourdough with crust that is out of this world. (I say is because after a two year plus apprenticeship with her father his daughter, Monique, took over the business & moved it to Villefranche, Jacques retired. She now has three shops & her father used to go every morning to bring back the bread for the village. What happens now?) He did his military duty in Algeria & didn't like it. In fact he liked right where he was in the village. He was born here & died here; a content soul.
Yet he was well informed about the world, curious and inquisitive. Jacques always had time for a chat & a laugh. He walked by our place several times a week with his dog, Olga. We'd try to chat & the dogs would play. I say try because there was a real language problem what with my pathetic French which he had trouble understanding & my inability to penetrate Jacques' local accent. His native language was Occitan & he started learning French when he was 6 years old & started school. Somehow though we communicated, somehow I came to regard him as a friend. He was always there, he was always positive and one knew you could count on him. I remember a typical Jacques deed; some friends came to visit & were having trouble finding our house so they asked at the boulangerie (a good tip by the way; if you want to find somebody in France just ask there.) Jacques promptly got in their car and brought them to our place. He was that kind of man.
I'll miss him. We all will.

That was obvious at his funeral today. It was a wonderful, dignified and moving occasion.Very fitting.
As is the French custom we all waited outside the church. The coffin arrived with an honor guard of war veterans from nine surrounding communes their flags draped in black, the coffin draped in the French flag. They entered the church followed by the family (Linda & I almost lost it then seeing poor Madame Viguie, her head bowed, grieving in public. She is such a private person. Jacques was her best friend as well as her husband) We then all filed in. The church was full, it was standing room only. The singing was beautiful and local; perhaps not the best choir, but they meant every word. The communion service was very moving. We did lose it when Jacques younger daughter got up to speak: "Papa...." Very very moving. Her last conversation with her father.The coffin and the honor guard left followed by all of us. A simple, heart felt service.
The French do these things so well. I was proud of them, proud of our village, proud to be part of it.
Farewell Jacques!

Deconstructed turkey Part #2

2007-11-23T12:39:00.000+01:00

Sorry I didn't have time to post yesterday, but with 16 for Thanksgiving lunch all of whom arrived at 2 PM & left just after 7 PM there just wasn't time. I did, however, manage to take a few pictures.

Here's the turkey after 1 1/2 hours in the oven at 375 F. (Note: I forgot to take the turkey out of the fridge at least 2 hours before it went in the oven. If I had it would have been further along after this time.) At this point the leg/thighs were at 160F.
After 10 more minutes the leg/thighs came out just as they reached 168 F. The breasts were at 145F. They got basted again & were left in for 20 more minutes. Two hours total and the temperature was 151F when I took them out. 15 minutes later they were at 160F. The carcass was then left to rest for another 25 minutes.

Here's what was left after carving (sorry I was too busy for picture taking as we carved & served up.) As you can see there's nothing left on the carcass. Note the the inside of the ribs is just barely pink showing that the breasts were just cooked through. I didn't carve the leg ends, but kept them for later use. Same with the wings.

Here'e the result. Lots of nice white meat slices surrounded by dark meat fillets. This served 16 people with plenty to spare. I did cheat in that this was a 4 legged turkey so I had plenty of dark meat. We also had a ham which I'd brined & baked.

We had coco beans with glazed onions and balsamic vinegar, roast potatoes, saute carrots AND the pease pudding shown below.
The pease pudding is a dish from the North of England where Linda was brought up. Its absolutely delicious if made correctly as Linda does. Its an ideal accompaniment for ham.

We also had a bit of cheese. This is our friend Jacques idea of restraint when it comes to cheeses. Only nine different varieties.

Carrot cake for a truly American touch. This one was particularly good if I do say so myself.

Finally, a little chocolate mousse with whipped cream just in case anybody was still hungry.

So for us a wonderful Thanksgiving shared with close friends. Our French friends are beginning to look forward to it as much as we do.

PS: I'll post of the diet separately, but I can say that I was able to be pretty good. Tiny dessert portions. My only downfall was the Domaine de la Ramaye wine. Just too good to pass up.

Deconstructed Roast Turkey - Part #1

2007-11-21T19:36:00.000+01:00

This is the first part of doing a deconstructed turkey. The great thing about deconstructing the bird is that it makes it much easier to roast, much quicker to cook & far easier to carve. My method is based upon a technique I originally saw in a book by Julia Child & Jacques Pepin. I'm indebted to them .

Here's the bird & the knives I use for the deconstruction.

You start by putting the bird breast side down on a chopping board. Make sure the neck & wishbone are removed. Make cuts on either side of the backbone. Then using the cleaver and the heavy chef's knife start cutting through the carcass down both sides of the backbone.

Continue cutting and chopping (when necessary)
until you have completely removed the backbone.

When the backbone is completely removed wash the cavity and trim any loose pieces.

You can now chop the backbone into several lengths have some nice pieces for your stock.

At this point it is a good idea to cut off the wing tips. (last joint on the wing).

Now remove the leg & thigh as one piece by carefully cutting around them at the carcass. Normally, the joint attaching the thigh to the carcass is easy to find and the attaching meat & tendons simple to cut.

One the leg/thigh pieces are removed chop off the end of the leg (if present. Some birds already have this bit at the end with the unfeathered skin removed)

We are now ready to start de-boning the leg/ thigh pieces.

First make sure that your boning knife is very sharp.

Lay the leg/thigh cut side up on your cutting block and start by making a cut along the line of the thigh bone from the 'knee' to the carcass end. Now gently cut along both sides of the thigh bone then slide your knife under the bone and cut towards the carcass end to free the meat.

Continue cutting and trimming right up to the knee joint.

Now move to the leg end and follow the same technique of cutting along the bone. (now towards the knee joint) then one either side and finally sliding under the leg bone.

Now the slightly tricky part. Carefully cut around the knee joint. This takes a bit of patience as you feel for the meat and try to avoid cutting through the skin.

Make sure that you cut out the "knee cap" (I'm not sure that's what it really is, but its the right shape & is in the right place)

Finally, the bones will come free and you have more scraps for your stock.

The pictures above are of the boned leg/thigh on the left & the same leg/thigh rolled over and put back together.

In case I get too busy tomorrow here's what comes next.

Grease a large baking tin.
Place your stuffing on it in a mound then place the turkey carcass over it, breast side up. Use your fingers to push in any stray bits.
Place some more stuffing in the leg/thighs & close them with skewers or sew them up. Place the leg/thighs in the roasting tin, cut side up.
Salt & pepper the lot & place in a pre-heated oven at 375 F.
Baste frequently after the first half hour. Turn the leg/thighs over so that the skin side is up after 45 minutes.
After 1 1/2 hours the leg/thighs should be done. (170 F in the thick part) Take them out to rest.
Check the breast meat every 10 minutes and take it out when its temperature reaches 150 - 160 F. Let rest for AT LEAST 20 minutes, 30 is better.
Put the leg/thighs back so it looks like a whole turkey again & show it off the the assembled hoards.
Now take it all out & carve. For the leg/thighs you should be able to pull out the leg tendons & just carve nice pieces.
For the breast it is easiest to carve off a whole breast by cutting down the side of the carcass. You can then carve the breast ACROSS THE GRAIN into nice slices.

Voila! there you have it . Turkey the easy way. Delicious

Diet Days up to 20 Quick report on a bit of progress

2007-11-21T15:38:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update as I'm busy getting ready for Thanksgiving. I've made a bit of progress since my last report. (apologies for doing day 14 twice. Good trick if you can pull it off)

Today's weight was 191.8 pounds, 13 stone 9.8 pounds, 87.23 kilos.

Cumulative weight loss is now 9.8 pounds, 4.45 kilos.

Breaking the 13 stone 10 pound barrier is important psychologically as its usually a stumbling block for me. Hopefully, if I can be sensible tomorrow, I can keep going at a steady rate. Only 10 pounds to go.

Activity as per usual; walks with Rupert, some shopping, visiting friends, not drinking wine. Pretty quiet really. Drove over to pick up the turkey from the vineyard yesterday & bought some wine to take to England. Interesting the turkey was 57 Euros, 15 liters of wine was only 35 Euros. Go figure! Did a lot of preparation this morning including making a carrot cake with fromage frais frosting.

Nothing spectacular in the eating line although last night we did sample the curried pumpkin soup and the ham I've brined & baked for Thanksgiving. Both were good except that Linda wants to tweak her soup a bit. Don't know why as I thought it was great.

Next comes turkey preparation. She's getting deconstructed. I'm going to take pictures & attempt a recipe for this blog. Probably too late for Thanksgiving, but maybe good for Christmas or New Year.

Diet - days 14 & 14 Hanging up

2007-11-17T17:28:00.000+01:00

Flat is the word. The same weight for two days in a row. And we're going out to dinner tonight.

I'm at 193.2, 13 stone 11.2 pounds, 87.82 kilos.

I'm struggling to get past the milestones of 13 stone 10 pounds and/or a total loss of 10 pounds. As I think about it I remember at around this weight there is for me a sticking point. I seem to hover around this weight and find it hard to get below.

Persistence is what I need to practice so I will.

Today was a big relief. We took Rupert to a vet in Cahors to see if we could get to the bottom a of persistent cough he has had for over a month. He's had several exams by Huguette, our regular vet whom he loves, then x-rays which showed an abscess, then lots of anti-biotic' s which cured the abscess, but not the cough. We were getting really worried. Today they put him out and used an endoscope to see down his throat. They found a large piece of bone or wood stuck pretty deep down. They were able to push this on down into his stomach where it should pass on through Ok. Soft foods for a while, but no cough thank goodness.

Eating? Nothing too special. Good old fashioned pork & beans which I made from the hock of the ham I'm brining for Thanksgiving the other night. Then baby back ribs yesterday for dinner. I call these our free ribs since I get them when I buy my pork bellies at about $1.50 per pound. I just have to cut them out. Don't tell the French though as for some reason they don't seem to have discovered just how good the ribs are.

A poser for you. At the market in Cahors today (while we waited for Roop to come out of it) one of the butchers was selling. "souris agneau" Literally translates to Lamb mice.
Anybody know what part of the lamb this might be? I can tell you that its not a 'funny' bit.

Does cassoulete have a soul?

2007-11-14T12:12:00.000+01:00

Every fall one of the things I look forward to is the first cassoulete of the year. Its become a yearly ritual since we moved to France to have a cassoulete lunch with lots of friends every year. Sometimes it just lunch, sometimes we organize a country walk before lunch so as to have a 'proper' appetite for the cassoulete. We're fortunate in that there are lovely walks you can take straight from our house. One of the advantages of country living, I guess.

In any case this year there were 14 of us for the cassoulete. Six of whom were visitors from the states & England. Thus it was two, not one, cassoulete's that I made. Now I do enjoy the whole process of making a cassoulete, it somehow epitomizes to me the essence of country cooking :French country cooking in particular. Thus I make my cassoulete slowly and carefully taking my time over each step. The recipe is my own developed over years of experience (There is a pictorial version of my recipe earlier in this blog), but true to the origins and the ingredients of the dish which are not far away here in South West France. Thus, it has duck, pork in various guises, white beans, tomato and so forth. In my case I add lamb as well which is a more Northernly variation.

Now, there are nearly as many cassoulete recipes as there are cassoulete makers and I'm all for variation and updating, deconstructing and all that. BUT, I do think that in a dish like cassoulete there are proprieties to be observed. By all means do what you wish, but don't go too far and still call it cassoulete. Call it whatever you like. (for example; I recently saw a "cassoulete" made with canned Spanish beans. NO, please call it Spanish bean soup or something else, not cassoulete)

Which leads me to my original point; does cassoulete have a soul? In my opinion yes. One brings together a set of ingredients, a method of preparing and cooking and love and care as one does it so that what emerges is a dish with soul. The dish becomes evocative of a place and a society. It has soul because you put your soul into it as you go through the creative process which produces this dish.

I would contend that given the wherewithal I could make a cassoulete and serve it anywhere in the world and evoke in the eaters who had been to SW France a sense of that place. And for those who had never visited France a slight glimmering of what France and the South West in particular is all about.

By now, hopefully, you will have realized that I'm using cassoulete as a metaphor for those many things that identify a country, region, society. It could be steak & kidney pie in England or Osso Bucco in Italy whatever. It need not be food; a French cafe is as surely only French as an English pub is English. These symbols identify a culture.

Which sort of leads me to where I want to end up. That is with a plea to respect those symbols that identify a culture. Listen, observe, partake and above all feel what is symbolic of that culture. Only then will you begin to understand that culture, begin to appreciate it and begin to feel comfortable in it. It s worth the effort - believe me.

Make a cassoulete or your favorite evocative dish. Do it with care and love and I think you will agree with me: Yes, a cassoulete does have soul.

Diet - Days 11 & 12 a leap forward

2007-11-14T11:55:00.000+01:00

Well a little progress at last. I hate these pauses in weight loss even through I know that they're inevitable.

Anyway, today I weighed 193.2 pounds, 13 stone 11.2 pounds, 87.82 kilos.

That's 2.1 pounds, almost a kilo in two days.

That's 8.4 pounds, 3.82 kilos since I started.

I'm pleased, but would love to make 10 pounds within the next couple of days so as to reach the halfway mark. Thanksgiving is coming up in a week so I'd like to be in good shape by then. I'll be as good as possible even though we're having 16 to Thanksgiving lunch. If I can be good on the wine the desserts won't pose a problem.

Monday we had a light lunch and had poached salmon & chicken breast with a flavored mayonnaise sauce and multiple vegetables for dinner. One glass of wine. Yesterday we were out a lot so had substantial cheese & pates for lunch, but only a meat salad with cornichons that I bought from the traiteur for dinner.

I'm encouraged, feel great and can feel the weight loss in the way my clothes fit.

Diet - Days 9 & 10 Creeping

2007-11-12T19:45:00.000+01:00

I managed to go through these two days and have a small weight loss. About 1/2 pound which is Ok I guess all things considered.

Present weight is 195.3 pounds (13 stone 13.7 pounds, 88.77 kilos)

Thus, I've managed a little over 6 pounds since I started. I've just got to keep it up.

From an eating point of view I'm a bit surprised. On Saturday I kept strictly to the method and my weight was flat.
On Sunday we had friends over for lunch so I cooked. Cold mussel with Ravinole sauce & mussel soup; slow roasted belly pork with roasted cauliflower, onions & saute courgettes; cheese and baked apple (heirloom, of course) with caramel & lemon cheese. Three glasses of wine. Hardly a light meal. I lost 0.6 pounds. Go figure!

I'll just have to keep going.

TarteTatin The Old Fashioned Way

2007-11-10T17:39:00.000+01:00

I've been threatening to post this recipe for some time. Finally, here it is. I've called this 'The old Fashioned Way' because its the way I've been making Tarte Tatin for some 25 years. Think I first learned how to make it from Julia's original book. This is the stove top method and I'll readily admit that it more work & messier than doing it in the oven, but Linda (who hates me getting caramel all over the kitchen) prefers it despite that & I think I do too. Besides its far more dramatic. Get your friends to watch you & Ohh & Aww!

Equipment: A good knife, an apple corer, an 8 or 9 inch non-stick frying pan (preferably with a removable handle, but if not a handle that will stand oven heat.), a mixing bowl and a flat plate for the finished tarte.

Ingredients:

6- 8 apples, Granny Smith's by preference, but in case apples that don't fall apart when cooked.
One lemon.
1 & 1/2 cups of sugar.
3 oz unsalted butter.
Enough pate brise (butter pie crust) to cover an 8-9 inch pan.

Method:

First core the apples then trim the end flat & peel.

Cut each apple into 1/8ths

Peel the zest off of the lemon, juice it and put both juice & zest into the mixing bowl along with 1/2 cup of the sugar.

Add all of the apples & give a good stir with your hands to coat the apples throughly.

Now, melt the butter in the frying pan and add the remaining cup of sugar.

Stir gently, but constantly. Do not panic as the mixture goes all bubbly, then separates just keep stirring until it starts to smoke. When that happens turn off the heat.

Now comes the first tricky part.

Start laying the apples pieces on their sides around the perimeter of the pan.
Obviously you need to be very careful as you do this. A wooden spoon to nudge the pieces around helps.
Continue until you have completed a first layer, then start a second.

Put the pan back onto a medium high heat. Using a bulb baster or a spoon start basting the apples.

You will need to do several basting's. ( About now turn your oven on to 200 degrees C.)

After 5 minutes or so cover the pan for 5 minutes. Then uncover & baste, then cover again.

Give the apples about 15-20 minutes of cooking time. You will see them start to soften. Get you crust out and start rolling it out. You need the diameter of the pan plus a goodly bit to trim.

Turn the heat off. Fold the crust in half & gently lay over the pan.

Trim the crust all round & tuck it into the INSIDE of the pan. Poke a few vent holes in the top.

Place the tarte in the top half of the 200 C oven and bake until the crust is nicely browned. (About 15 minutes) (NOTE: If your pan has a removable handle great. If not then put the pan in the oven & leave the door open a bit at the top if the handle won't fit.)

Take the pie out (WATCH OUT FOR HOT HANDLE & PAN!!) and check to see that the caramel is fairly thick by tilting the pan. If it runs too easily place the pan back over medium high heat on the stove top for a few more minutes.

You are now ready for "the moment of truth". Let the pie cool for no more than 3-4 minutes. Get the plate the pie will be on and place it, inverted, on top of the tarte.

Quickly, but smoothly turn the tarte over as shown.

Gently lift the pan off and....

With any luck the tarte comes out whole.

If not usually you can repair any minor damage.

Let the tarte cool & then serve. My preference is to serve Tarte Tatin at room temperature, but it delicious at any temperature and accompanied by Cream, Ice cream or Creme fraîche.

If you prefer a more golden color for your tarte simply don't cook the caramel until its as dark brown as shown before putting the apples in. Take it off heat the moment it starts to smoke. The caramel will be less thick, but still delicious.

Enjoy. I'd love to hear how your efforts come out and how easy or otherwise the recipe is to follow.

Diet - Days 7 & 8 Holding my own

2007-11-09T22:46:00.000+01:00

Sorry that I missed day 7. No news, however, is no news. The past two days I've just stayed flat from a weight point of view.

Don't know why Wednesday was flat as I neither ate or drank anything I shouldn't have. Just one of those flat periods where the body is adjusting.

Thursday I was lucky to stay flat what with a glass of wine at lunch plus sharing the wonderful wine described in my last post with Linda & Jacques. But somehow I did.

Today I was good food & drink wise so we'll see what the scales say in the morning.

I'm just about ready (having done up all of the photographs) to post a detailed pictorial recipe for Tarte Tatin. That should be fun and is a wonderful dessert for Thanksgiving.

Only in France - Episode 127

2007-11-09T09:41:00.001+01:00

A diversion from the diet posts is in order. Yesterday I had one of those French experiences that seem to only happen here and which make me love living here. Not surprisingly it concerns wine!
Yesterday morning I played golf with my usual two partners. It was foggy & pretty cold & I played even worse than my normal pathetic round. The good news was that our favorite restaurant was open again. (They've been closed a lot since the owner's wife has been away helping her seriously ill father. Unfortunately he has now died. You learn these things as a regular patron.) The daily lunch was excellent as always (poached egg with a scallop sauce, Grilled pigeon breasts and a passion fruit sorbet surrounded by spicy bread cubes) I tried to order a favorite wine, but it was all gone so I tried another & that was all gone as well. (This is a small place so their cellar is good, but shallow. They can't afford to keep a large stock.)

At this point the owner/chef proposed a wine that wasn't on the list. Thought we'd like it & it was the same price as the others. The wine turned out as expected to be local. It was a 2003 La Combe d'Aves from Domaine de Ramaye. It was absolutely superb! This wine could hold its own against virtually anything I can think of. WoW! So, we asked exactly where it came from & it turned out that it was only about 15 minutes away. We had to go, so off we went.
The directions were spot on. Through Gaillac, take the Montauban Road, at the roundabout turn towards the church then take the small lane to the right just before the church. We went up this lane for about a kilometer and there was Domaine de Ramaye on our left. The sign on the gate said that they were open from 2:00 PM as it was 2:15 we were just about right. We drove into a nice, but very ramshackle garden. Walnuts, Apples & leaves all over the ground. There were a couple of cars and a huge Mas (chai, properly, I guess) covered in Virginia creeper. Beautiful. On the left was a sign & an open door to the tasting room.

In we went. It was dark & there was nobody there. We called out, but still nobody. I found the light switch. Still not bright, but we could now see all the the wine around us. Lots of it in all shapes & sizes. Still nobody. We found the price lists and descriptions. Turns out that they make a range of 6 different wines; three reds & three whites. Prices are Ok; the Le Combe d'Aves we want is 14 Euros. Not bad for a wine of this quality. Still nobody.

We go outside then knock on the door of the main house, no answer. We wander around back. The wine making area is open with the key in the lock, still nobody. I go back & honk the horn on the car - loudly & repeatedly - no luck. By now we're very determined. We will buy this wine! Eventually, we spot a car parked about 150 meters up the road; maybe this person knows something? So we get in the car & drive up. Ah ha! Half a dozen people in the vineyard. Are you from the Domaine we ask? Oui. Can we buy some wine? Oui, peut-être.
A little reluctantly Madame comes out of the vineyard and heads towards the tasting room. (Turns out that they are harvesting grapes for the late harvest wine called Le vin de l'Oubli, this is sort of like what they make in Germany called "ice Wein". But that's a whole new story.)
We get to the tasting room and start getting the story of the Domaine and the wines. Its all very interesting especially as many of the grapes they grow are very old varieties. Her husband, M. Michel Issaly, is the wine maker. He is dedicated to using the latest modern techniques to improve the quality of his wines, but still using the traditional local varieties of grapes. He's succeeeding in our opinion. the La Combe d'Aves, for instance, is aged for 32 months in old oak barrels. He makes a nice 'house' wine for only 4 Euros a bottle.

I find a price list which shows the La Combe for years from 1999 & older. The 1999 is only priced at 15 Euros; gosh a one Euro premium over the 2003 sounds a pretty good deal to me. Is it even better I ask? Of course says Madame, but you can only buy one bottle. We're running out. Ok I decide to buy a 12 bottle case of the 2003 plus my alloted bottle of 1999. Madeame say Ok, but she has to get her husband as she doesn't know where he's got the 1999 hidden. He comes down from the vineyard and manages to find 4 bottles. Two for me ^ one each for my friends. We settle up. (nothing rustic about paying, they take every credit card known to man.)

Its only taken us just short of an hour to buy our wine. But, we had a lot of fun & a minor adventure doing it. Next time I'm going to buy some of the 'lost' wine. (Le vin de l'Oubli means "forgotten wine!)

When I got home our friend Jacques was there doing some painting so he, Linda & I shared the 1999 along with some garlic sausage & olives. The wine really is superb and I was doubly chuffed to be able to share it with Jacques who knows his wines.

Once again an experience that can only occur in France. The people, their character and way of life have an endearing quality that is hard to match.

Have a look at their website: http://www.michelissaly.com/index.php. And try the pigeon recipe.

Diet Day 6 Back on track!

2007-11-07T11:33:00.000+01:00

A much better day. Great weight loss today. Linda say the diet only blog is getting boring; so I've included a recipe today. Its for the lamb stew we had for dinner, one of my favorites.

The weigh in: 195 pounds, 13 stone 13 pounds, 88.6 kilograms.

Weight lost: 1.4 pounds, N/A, 1.1 kilogram.

Cumulative weight loss: 6.8 pounds, 1/2 stone, 3.1 kilo.

What did I do? Took a relatively short walk with Rupert then went to market at Caylus to get fresh vegetables and olive oil. Most of the rest of the day was on the computer making booking for our Holiday trip to England, fixing a problem on a friend's website and starting a new website for another friend. Then I did some cooking, nothing fancy.

What did you eat? Lunch was simple. White bean soup that Linda had made with cheese & pate on Swedish crisp bread. Dinner is going to be (its simmering away as I type this) Lamb stew with lentils accompanied by Brussels sprouts. What follows is the Lamb stew recipe.

Ingredients: Lamb bits ( can be neck, breast, belly, but in any case cheap cuts. Here I buy poitrine which is belly. Its cheap, has lots of flavor and is easy to work with.
Mirepoix ( carrots, onion & celery chopped medium fine in this case.
Green lentils
Garlic (roughly chopped)
Stock (lamb, beef, vegetable whichever you prefer)
Tomato puree
Red wine.
Fat ( for browning the lamb - I use duck fat, but olive oil works as well.)

Method:

chop up the lamb into easily handled pieces.
Brown the lamb throughly in the fat using a deep pot.
Lower the heat & add the mirepoix & garlic. stir well.
Let the mirepoix sweat for about 10 minutes.
Add the lentils.
Add the stock until everything is almost covered.
Add the tomato puree.
Add enough red wine so that everything is just covered.
Simmer partly covered for roughly 1 1/2 hours stirring occasionally (until the lentils are soft.)
Check seasoning. Check liquid level (adding or reducing as necessary)
Serve with vegetables.

This stew is very simple, but absolutely delicious. It doesn't look great, but don't be fooled. And it fits my diet!

I'm really encouraged. Can't wait to see how this continues. The rate of loss is bound to slow up.

Diet - Day 5 Progress resumes - barely & a recipe

2007-11-06T18:54:00.000+01:00

Well at least I lost something, its not much, but better than nothing.

The weigh in: 196.2 pounds, 14 stone 0.2 pounds, 89.2 kilograms.

Daily Weight loss: 0.2 pounds, N/A. .09 kilo

Cumulative weight loss: 5.4 pounds, N/A, 2.45 kilograms.

What did you do? Morning walk with Rupert as usual. Linda & I went on a major food shopping expedition to Villefranche. Bought mounds of vegetables & fruit plus meats & fish. Our local Hyper Market (HyperU) really is very good, not quite up to outdoor market standards, but more than acceptable. Had a good visit with first Huguette (Roop's vet & our friend) then Jacques (another friend). Quiet evening.

What did you eat? Lunch was cheese, pate and salad. When our visitors were here we had serrano ham & olives and I allowed myself a full glass of wine (didn't want Jacques to drink alone). Then we had a roast chicken stuffed with garlic and broccoli, coco beans and gravy.

Now you know why the weight loss was so small. Even though I waited until I had quite a bit of food on my stomach before drinking the wine it still slowed things up. Better tomorrow.

Diet Day 4 Could have been better

2007-11-05T20:50:00.000+01:00

No progress today. No loss, but no gain. Not unexpected as I'll explain later.

The weigh in: Everything the same.

Daily weight loss: Zero

Cumulative weight loss: As before.

What did you do? Linda, Rupert & I took a good walk even though it was a bit foggy and cold. Up through some woods, along nice tracks, then a road and finally back to our starting place. Went home and had a look at the Sunday paper then got ready to go out to lunch at some friends house. Nice lunch (described below) with nice people and good conversation. Lunch broke up about 5:00 PM. We went home & rescued poor Rupert who had his legs crossed by then.

What did you eat? Going out to lunch at friends is difficult. In this case there were cashew nuts that I could nibble (although I think I had too many) and leave the potato chips and bread with a caviar like spread alone. I had a small glass of orange juice. Dinner was a really good chicken corma. I had a good sized portion of that along with lots of string beans. Did not eat the rice or roast potatoes. There was a fruit salad for dessert (this was in addition to the plum crumble). I had a small portion. I also had about 1/2 a glass of red wine about halfway through the meal.
At home later in the evening I had a cheese plate with cucumbers & dill pickles.

Now you know why I didn't lose any weight yesterday. We'll see what happens today.

Diet - Day 3 Keeping going

2007-11-04T20:56:00.000+01:00

Third day's over and not bad at all. Easy enough to keep off the bad stuff except that I do miss my glass of wine.

The Weigh in: 196.4 pounds, 14 stone 0.4 pounds, 89.3 kilograms.

Weight loss day 3: 1.6 pounds, Not relevant, .72 kilogram.

Cumulative weight loss: 5.2 pounds, 2.36 kilograms.

What did I do? Started with a good long walk with Rupert; over an hour. Then ran some errands in Caylus. Did a bit of computer work. The afternoon was mainly more shutter sanding & painting. Finished by reading & TV watching. A pretty quiet day.

What did I eat? No breakfast as is normal for me; just decaf coffee. Lunch was a 3 egg cheese (laguiole) omelette with a large salad (mache, cilantro, tomatoes, cucumber & creamy vinaigrette.).
For dinner we had Toulouse sausage with broccoli and coco beans. I had a small Cabecou (goat's cheese) cheese on Swedish crisp bread as a sort of dessert.

Another good day from the weight loss point of view. I just hope this loss rate keeps up for a while.

Diet - Day 2 Settling in

2007-11-03T16:41:00.000+01:00

The second day was fine. I enjoyed myself all day and managed to lose a bit of weight.

The weigh in: 198 pounds, 14 stone 2 pounds, 90 kilograms.

Day's weight loss: 0.8 pounds, Not significant, 364 grams.

Cumulative weight loss: 3.6 pounds, Not significant, 1 kilo 636 grams.

What did I do? Most of the day was taken up with Golf. I picked up one friend then another and off we went to the mighty 6 hole course near Gaillac. Cold & foggy, but no matter. We played round the six holes and I played well by my pathetic standards. Even managed a par on the 6th. It was still to early of lunch so we played 3 more holes. I should have quit while I was ahead, I was awful.
Tragedy, our favorite restaurant (and the real reason why we play golf here) was closed. So, off we go to a nearby town where there is a cafe that does lunches. 11 Euros for three courses including 1/4 liter wine. I must say the 'Madame' was not exactly a bundle of joy, pretty surly actually. Still she condescended to let us order lunch. I'll describe the lunch below, but suffice it to say that it was good. The cook wasn't surly.
Got home about 4 PM and did some more shutter work then dinner then a quiet evening. (nice documentary on Johnny Cash on TV.)

What did I eat? I was in a rush to get away in the morning so I only had part of my cup of decaf coffee. The three course lunch menu at the restaurant offered a plate of cold meats (charcuterie ) as one of the choices. Nice selection including a homemade rabbit terrine en croûte. I didn't eat the pastry. The main course was a pork steak with a mushroom sauce. Very good indeed. It came with roasted potatoes which my companions were happy to have. One could have dessert or cheese so there was an easy choice. Three kinds. I drank water and my friends were delighted to share my wine.
At home Linda had been slow roasting a shoulder of lamb for most of the day. A large portion of this plus leeks, peas and more cauliflower made for a nice dinner. Didn't have any cheese afterwards.

Day 2 worked even though I'm finding it a bit hard to change my bad habits. Past experience tells me that it will get easier as the days progress. I hope!

Diet day 1 - off to a good start

2007-11-02T18:19:00.000+01:00

Well, here we go the first full day on the diet. Results?

Weigh in: 198.8 pounds, 14 stone 2.8 pounds, 90.34 kilograms.

One day weight loss: 2.8 pounds, 1.27 kilograms.

An auspicious start even though I'm sure much of the loss was simply getting rid of stored water. Still its encouraging to start off with a bang. I know that it will get harder later.

What did I do yesterday? Started the day with a walk with Rupert (our standard poodle & my avatar) We went for about an hour through the woods & along a low ridge. We both had our international Orange garments on since the local hunt was around & we didn't want to get shot by accident.
After that I spend a good portion of the day sanding & painting shutters. Not a job I enjoy, but they need it & winter's coming on. Had a restful evening with TV & reading.
A reasonably active day which I think helps even though this diet isn't about exercise particularly.

What did I eat? The day started with a big mug of coffee as is normal. Yesterday, however, the coffee was decaf instead of fully loaded. Montignac advises that caffeine is bad for you and your weight. I doubt that its a big deal, but giving up caffeine is no big deal either so why not.
I never eat breakfast, so I didn't. Never have & think the 'importance' is vastly overblown.
Lunch was two big bowls of Linda's homemade vegetable soup (delicious) and a selection of cheeses; about 5 kinds and probably roughly 3-4 oz in all.
Dinner was salmon steaks, pan fried in butter. With these we had large portions of braised leeks and cauliflower two ways. One way was simple steaming & the other was oven roasting. The oven roasting was superior. Was going to have cheese for dessert, but wasn't hungry so didn't.

Thus ended day 1. Successful as it turned out from the weight point of view and no big sacrifices from the food point of view. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Diet - D-day est arrive!

2007-11-01T17:32:00.000+01:00

November 1st; D-day. I go onto the Montignac Method as of right now. (well, not actually, I started this morning with decaf coffee and had vegetable soup & a selection of cheeses for lunch. Its now about 5:30 as I write this.)

So far so good, I've survived 9 hours. Don't feel particularly hungry, but I'm sure I will enjoy my dinner. (grilled salmon with cauliflower and leeks)

Ah! The dreaded weigh in. 201.6 pounds, 13stone 5.6 pounds, 91.6 kilograms. Yuck!

Not my worst, but really bad. Not a surprise, but I had sort of hoped I'd be under 200.

The target is: 182 pounds, 13 stone even, 82.7 kilograms.

Twenty pounds weight loss seems such a nice round number and as I lived in England for many years I sort of got used to thinking of my weight in stones. Thus 13 stones, another nice round number.

Wish me luck as off I go. First results tomorrow.

Diet - Montignac Deconstructed

2007-10-31T12:56:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned yesterday I think that both the books and the website make the Montignac Method seem to be more complicated than they actually are. After all in a nutshell the Montignac Method is: Eat no simple carbohydrates. That's it fundamentally. There are, of course, various tricks, tips, subtleties and other minor factors, the heart of the method is: Eat no simple carbohydrates.
The main simple carbs are: sugar, white flour, white rice and potatoes. Carrot, parsnips and beets also fall into this category as does Malt (sorry beer drinkers) Its all to do with the so called glycémic Index which you can read all about in the books or better yet get listed on the website. So, you don't eat any of these things. This only leaves all of the meats, fish, eggs, cheeses and a whole host of vegetables and fruits that you can eat. Not exactly restrictive is it.
I will mention some of the subtleties as I go along since none of them are essential to success, but may help a bit.
Tomorrow is for real. We've just come back from a nice dinner at friend's house. Although it wasn't bad as far as Montignac goes I would have had to change the way I ate this meal had it been tomorrow.
I'll weigh in in the morning and publish that weight, my target weight, what I ate during the day and roughly what I did during the day tomorrow in the evening my time. (Exercise isn't a part of this method from a weight loss point of view, but I do think it helps one's well being in general so I'll be doing a bit more than I have been.)

Wish me luck!

Diet - Montignac & me.

2007-10-30T16:59:00.000+01:00

D-day is only two days away so I've been re-reading my old copy of Montignac's Dine Out & Lose Weight. This has reminded me of how much blather there is in the book to explain what is essentially a very simple concept and way of eating. There's all kinds of repetition and scientific gobbledygook. Even an old engineering type like me gets bored with it. I'll give you my condensed version of the diet later (or at least my interpretation.)

About me, however, there's not a lot to say. I'm a 70 year old American who has been living in rural France for the past 5 years since my retirement from the business world. Food and cooking are passions which I now have the time to indulge in. I've slowly been putting on weight because I have not been following the Montignac method strictly enough over the past few years. Its time to get it off. Also, I just had complete blood tests and for the first time in a long time my carbs are out of whack - got to get them down.
I first got into Montignac in about 1989 when I was living in England. My job (head of marketing for a division of Xerox) took me all over Europe on a very regular basis. Knowing that I liked good food my colleagues and business contacts were quick to take me to good restaurants spread around the 14 main countries we worked with. With that plus regular trips back to the states & frequent trips to Japan,the weight piled on! My wife, Linda, read about Montignac and bought me a copy. I read it, it made sense to me so I tried it. 8 pounds in the first week! I was amazed and delirious! So I kept it up and pretty quickly got down to my target weight of between 180 - 185 pounds. I then stayed there for years as I was good about following the maintenance phase of the diet. I started drifting upwards as I neared retirement due to NOT following the method. Then France with too much good food, too many visitors who like to eat & drink, too many good dinners (ones I cook or elsewhere) and without question too much wine. So here I am too fat and determined to get back to where I should be.
The Montignac Method is the solution for me. It has worked for me in the past and I'm confident that it will work for me this time. So long, that is, that I follow it carefully & fully. That's why I've been re-reading the book. I want to make sure I'm remembering what I need to do correctly. I've also been looking at the Montignac website to see how the method has been updated over the past few years. I think I've got it. And I think its far simpler than either the book or the website make it sound.
That's why tomorrow my blog will be about My interpretation of the Montignac Method and how to follow it in both of it's phases.
Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting chapter!

Its diet time in rural France

2007-10-29T17:11:00.000+01:00

First an apology for the funny font sizes in the last post. I can't seem to get rid of them no matter how I try to edit. I'll try not to do it again.

November 1, 2007 is D-day. I will start my diet this Thursday. What I'm going to do is a weigh in Thursday morning. I'll then publish my weight each morning thereafter along with a description of what I ate and drank the previous day. I'll also include an account of my day in terms of exercise or lack thereof.
I'm going to put up a post or two on eGullet announcing my intent and inviting others to join me in trying to lose weight. Not a competition; more of a mutual aid group. I reckon that going public is a great incentive for keeping with the diet. It certainly will be for me.

I will be using the Montignac Method because I've used it before. For those interested here's a link to the website: Montignac website There has also been considerable discussion about Montignac on the French forum of eGullet. Here's that link: French Forum Link

In the past Montignac has worked for me and I've found it pretty easy to follow. I bit difficult during the phase 1 weight loss time, but pretty easy in the phase 2 maintenance period. Last time I did this seriously I lost just over 20 lbs in a couple of months. I don't think I have that much to lose this time, but I'll announce my present weight and my target on Thursday. The Montignac method is sort of a thinking man's Atkins. No simple carbs; sugar, white flour,potatoes, white rice or alcohol during the weight loss period then in moderation afterwards. Its not about calories, you eat as much as you want within reason. Cutting out my wine will be the hard part for me I know, but I've done it before.

Tomorrow, I'll talk a bit more about Montignac and myself in preparation for starting on Thursday.

Meanwhile - Think about whether or not you might care to join in.