Local politics - the same the world over?

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

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

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.