A French Christmas
Oysters. The Arcachon oyster farmers have started their big push - over the next few weeks millions of the little knobbly critters will be slurped, still living, from their shells.
"It's like eating the sea", said one of the DEFLE lecturers. Strange to relate, I have never looked at the sea and thought "yum, yum...".
Foie gras. A Christmas without foie gras is pretty unthinkable. Oysters and foie gras. Perfect. The ducks and geese have been despatched and their big yellow livers are everywhere. The anti-foie-gras lobbyists insist that it is cruel while the foie-gras producers say that foie-gras has been produced here since Roman times and that the geese and ducks come running up to be fed. Or at least they did. Until they were despatched.
Bûches de Noël. In the absence of a Christmas pud or a good plum duff one eats a Christmas log - either a big cake-thing or a log made of ice-cream.
Poultry. You need your dictionary and a book of edible birds when you go shopping. After all, knowing that a pintade is a guinea-fowl, I think, doesn't help me all that much. What is a guinea-fowl, anyway ? If the poultry are too baffling you could always get a joint of venison or wild boar.
Chocolate. Essential. Yum !
Meanwhile 33 departments have activated their "Big Cold Plan" (Plan de grand froid) because it is really cold here. At present we are on stage orange of the plan - below zero at night but above zero during the day. At code orange extra temporary housing for the homeless is found. However, if it stays below zero during the day then we go to code red and the remaining homeless are ushered into railway stations and anywhere possible to spend the night.
Of course for us it is difficult to know whether France is genuinely a little colder than Britain (I have my theory that Spain blocks the Gulf Stream from reaching our shores) or whether this is an effect of global warming. Thankfully the cold, though sharp, is short. In February we'll be eating on the patio again, probably.
A friend, lacking confidence in our wood stove, brought round a fan heater yesterday while I was out. Pat forgot to mention that we already have a fan heater which we use as a fan-assist for the stove to blast the hot air round a bit. The stove works pretty well, though it does conjure up strange images in my mind as I stoke it - a mix of the Cannonball Express and Nebuchadnezzar's burning fiery furnace, heated seven times...
"It's like eating the sea", said one of the DEFLE lecturers. Strange to relate, I have never looked at the sea and thought "yum, yum...".
Foie gras. A Christmas without foie gras is pretty unthinkable. Oysters and foie gras. Perfect. The ducks and geese have been despatched and their big yellow livers are everywhere. The anti-foie-gras lobbyists insist that it is cruel while the foie-gras producers say that foie-gras has been produced here since Roman times and that the geese and ducks come running up to be fed. Or at least they did. Until they were despatched.
Bûches de Noël. In the absence of a Christmas pud or a good plum duff one eats a Christmas log - either a big cake-thing or a log made of ice-cream.
Poultry. You need your dictionary and a book of edible birds when you go shopping. After all, knowing that a pintade is a guinea-fowl, I think, doesn't help me all that much. What is a guinea-fowl, anyway ? If the poultry are too baffling you could always get a joint of venison or wild boar.
Chocolate. Essential. Yum !
Meanwhile 33 departments have activated their "Big Cold Plan" (Plan de grand froid) because it is really cold here. At present we are on stage orange of the plan - below zero at night but above zero during the day. At code orange extra temporary housing for the homeless is found. However, if it stays below zero during the day then we go to code red and the remaining homeless are ushered into railway stations and anywhere possible to spend the night.
Of course for us it is difficult to know whether France is genuinely a little colder than Britain (I have my theory that Spain blocks the Gulf Stream from reaching our shores) or whether this is an effect of global warming. Thankfully the cold, though sharp, is short. In February we'll be eating on the patio again, probably.
A friend, lacking confidence in our wood stove, brought round a fan heater yesterday while I was out. Pat forgot to mention that we already have a fan heater which we use as a fan-assist for the stove to blast the hot air round a bit. The stove works pretty well, though it does conjure up strange images in my mind as I stoke it - a mix of the Cannonball Express and Nebuchadnezzar's burning fiery furnace, heated seven times...
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