Rural Life

Petanque - it is a serious game!

Last weekend saw John and I give up most of Saturday to help out with the Comite des Fetes.  Normally, at this time of year, it would be the fete champetre (literally outdoor festival) for the village, with petanque, dancing, a pig roast, the Cadets de Baugois and the Bauge Twirlers, plus a nice firework display by the lake.  This year we didn't do the full fete champetre - not because of the pork related death last year, but because with the Comice coming up, people are volunteered out and our village only has the right to one firework display per calendar year.  This year has to be reserved for the Comice.

Instead we just had the petanque competition.  As John and I are not usually involved with that, we didn't realise how big and how much work it would be.  Three weeks before hand, I had done my usual 100 km circuit round local villages to the east, distributing posters in bakeries and supermarkets.  On the day, we turned up at about 1pm, and were there until gone 9pm.

The technical bit is getting everyone signed up, teams assigned numbers and then the whole business of pool A, pool B and the qualification rounds.  As we are not French, we are not in the know, by Cyril, assisted by Patrick and Philippe got everyone signed up, allocated and ready to go by 2:15pm (not bad, considering they were supposed to start at 2pm - result in fact!).

Once things were underway, running the bar ran in waves.  All quiet during the rounds, then a mad rush for lager, glasses of wine, bottles of cola and other juices.  As more teams got knocked out however (all teams played 3 times, but winners played considerably more), the breaks got shorter and shorter.  We had 48 teams playing - this is what it looked like in the early stages.

 

We also tried to feed people snacks during the tournament, to soak up some of the beer and wine, and increase the profit margin from the event (this will be converted into prizes for the bingo session in October).  Roger was on his own with the snack stand for most of the time, but Philippe manned the chip fryer when needed.

The last teams, fighting for the Pool B trophy finished their game at about 9pm, but which time the food stand and bar had been packed away.  For those who did well, it was an expensive and boozy affair, as if you won, it seemed to be the form to buy the losers a drink.  The losing semi-finalist for Pool B - a charming but scrawny individual who seemed half man and half lizard - must have put away the best part of 2 bottles of rose - at which point he lost as he could hardly stand up.  His team mate caused the only sour note of the day, as he too was well oiled and started to fling his fists around.  A bear-hug from Roger from the food stand sorted that out however!

A typical summer day in rural France in the holiday season, all in all.  And it should be noted that when Marie-Jean and I did the rounds of the pitch to collect debris, we found just 4 beakers and 10 chip wrappers - everything else had been handed in or put in black bags by participants themselves.

  
 

Restaurant review: Aux P'tits Oignons, Echimire

It seemed like an awful long time since I did one of these, so John thought we needed to go out and find a nice menu ouvrier so that I would have something to write about.  Today it was one of the places nearest to us, in the next village, but on the main road from Bauge to Angers - Aux P'tits Oignons in Echimire.

As by lunchtime, it was over 28 degrees in the shade, no one was interested in eating out on the terrace - besides despite it being in a village, lorries hurtle by all the time in a most alarming manner.

We have resisted trying here for quite a while on a rather philosophical point - you can see the blackboard by the road, and they write the lunch menu on it each day, but so small you can only read it by stopping the car and getting out, which defeats the point.  However, today we succumbed and we are glad we did.

This is one of the cheaper menus ouvrier (9.50 Euros including wine or cider, coffee extra), taking advantage of the VAT reduction.  You can get a meal if you turn up until about 1:30pm, and there are a lot of smallish tables so you don't have to share.  When you turn up and have found a table, you are given a bowl of bread and can go to the buffet of starters.  There was perhaps not enough raw salads (only radishes - tomatoes and slices of cucumber might have been nice), but otherwise a very fine selection and the rillauds and pate were very tasty.  

For main there was a choice of four main dishes, and most of them came with a choice of salad, chips, haricot beans, broccoli or salsify.  The mains were steak, andouillette (if you know what it is, you will know if you like it or not, but most English loathe it), fish in sauce and pasta gratin with bolognaise sauce.  We had the fish and the pasta and both were good, plain, tasty home cooking and generous portions.  The steaks looked good.

The cheese course was a plate left at the table with a selection of seven well kept cheeses, while pudding could be selected from the chill cupboard and there were about eight different things.  We went for creme brulee, which was much richer and creamier than usual and well dosed with vanilla.

Overall, we thought it was excellent value, the rose wine was perfectly pleasant, and while not haute cuisine, it was designed to do what was needed - feed a worker so that he has the energy for an afternoon's hard graft, and be an enjoyable experience so that he will go back again.  Don't make the mistake of expecting fine and fiddly food at one of these lunchtime stops.  In general they can also spot a tourist from a worker, so John and I generally get moved through courses quickly (we look like workers, even if we speak funny), whereas obvious holiday makers seem to go at a more leisurely pace.

Aux P'tits Oignons is also a hotel with a small number of rooms (no idea of the quality or price of these) and does do evening food and caters for parties there or at your own venue.  We have been there (a couple of years ago now) for a cous cous evening where the pudding was a Baked Alaska - we thought that a bit expensive, but things might have changed now.

 

Dodgy shells and new toys

New chickens are always a bit of a worry.  You don't know what little friends they bring with them, how trainable they will be (yes, you can train chickens), how quickly they will get into lay and whether they are likely to go broody at the drop of a hat.  We have had a few interesting issues with Salt and Pepper since they arrived.

We hadn't expected Pepper to be the dimmest escape artist in the area.  We hadn't expected her to continue to produce tiny eggs.  We didn't expect her to get "jumped" by Billy on one of her wanderings - we have to be careful what we do with her eggs for a while on that basis.  We didn't expect Salt to attack Nibbles one day when she was out for her walk (Nibbles is a cat), as she is the most scared chicken of all time.  We certainly didn't expect her to lay two eggs in one sitting, but she has done just that - twice!

Here is a clutch of three eggs I got from the coop one day.  I could tell they were all pullet eggs as none was very large - but we only have two pullets.

It was only by looking very closely at one of the eggs that we could see what had happened.  Salt laid two small eggs rather than a double yolked egg (double yolks are fairly common with young birds who aren't sure how to do things), and had got a reasonable shell on one (bottom left) but the top egg had a very delicate shell.  You can see the issues in close up a bit better.

The band around the middle is the thinnest possible layer of egg shell over the egg membrane.  We ate both eggs very quickly - shell is wonderful as it helps to preserve the contents of an egg - both were prefect, tasty, with very erect egg white.  You will only find that feature with very fresh, new eggs.  We hope Salt will calm down soon however, as two eggs in a day isn't normal and therefore isn't good in the long term for chickens.

On a totally different note - as it was stinking hot here over the weekend, we had a BBQ.  I had a load of lamb ribs in the freezer, so defrosted those and made a garlic and mint marinade with the help of my new toy - a herb mincer.  I was quite pleased with the results as it made a good coating structure for the meat.  I don't know how well it would work with tarragon or with basil, but as I have both in the garden, I will be able to find out, and report back.

As an added bonus for the meal, I made a potato salad with the results of an escaped tiny potato that grew in the pea bed.  As the peas are finished, I pulled them up and dug up the potato to see what I had got, prior to replanting the bed with lettuces for our party later in the summer.  I was very impressed to find a pound and a half of perfect Charlotte potatoes, which made a delicious salad to go with the lamb and the sausages.