Rural Life

Feeding people at the Comice in Vieil Bauge

Another insight into the Comice 2010 I'm afraid, but it has dominated our lives rather over the past few weeks at least.

I mentioned that there was a huge marquee for eating and dancing in as part of my last post.  To follow on from that, here are some scenes from Saturday evening, before we really got going.  There was no chance of taking photos on Sunday night - we were way too busy with over 2,000 meals to serve and clear up after.

Before the main service, the volunteers got to eat their meal (four courses with wine, naturally) and meet their colleagues for the evening and get their orders.  Here is Reynald Mesange passing on wisdom to some of the team.

Meals were served as the happy punters came down one of two lines (there were three lines on the Sunday), with John helping to keep the lines supplied with all they needed and me chopping bread in the background.  Here are the lines at a quiet moment.

The diners then turned right as we look at the image and went into the big marquee to eat - on Sunday night we had ushers moving people to empty and clean tables, but on Saturday night we could let them go as they wished.

I should say that this only shows one side of the marquee - to the right there is the dance floor and then further to the right there are more huge columns of tables and benches.

This shows the band set up - it was a six piece band who did the full range from musette and guinguette to the latest dance music from the charts, and in a variety of languages as well.

 

Soon there will be more, including the inter-village games and nice pictures of farm animals and tractors.  I will also do a full blog on the decorated floats, but that will take a lot of photo editing and I am due back at work next week for a day or two as well!

 
 
 
 

A Comice Agricole is big

and the one at Vieil Bauge last weekend was one of the biggest around.  We are still recovering from it all and trying to work through the photos, but to give you an idea that this wasn't just some little village fete type thingie, I show two photos below of the Comice site from the portion of field below where the Sunday morning ploughing competitions were taking place.  The photos almost meet up and beyond the edge of the one showing the right hand side of the space, there was a 17 hectare car park, while beyond the main show ground and the road was the site of the Saturday ploughing matches and livestock show.

So here is the left hand side of the site, not including the small fun fair further still to the left.  The giant marquee to the far left could seat 1,200 diners at a time, and leave space for a dance floor.

And this is to the right, and remember there is a slight gap between the two and then ever more stands with agricultural vehicles and then the car park further to the right as well.

Big, innit?

 
 

Dangers of putting out laundry!

It was fine and sunny for much of last week, so we took advantage and got loads of laundry done.  However putting some of it out on the line was a bit scary due to this monster, who at about 3 and a half inches long, can be a bit off-putting.  She allowed me, graciously, to carry on around her however, and had gone off on a different patrol by the time it was time to bring stuff in.  The poor focus is due to doing the photo on my mobile phone camera, which I still find challenging!

Apologies for being quiet over the past few weeks - John's party was tiring, then I picked up 5 days fee-paying work and then we were into the Comice.  That is over now and there will be a series of posts to show what we got up to, both in the run up to the event and over the 2 days of festivities as well.  Suffice it to say that it was a great success, an amazing achievement by the organising committee and I hope that the politics will abate soon!

 

Restaurant Review: Hotel du Chateau, Bauge

Life has been a bit hectic recently with John's birthday party organisation, so it was a wonderful surprise and very welcome to be taken out to dinner by our friends Angela and Ian the night before the big event.  We went to the Hotel du Chateau in Bauge as it was close, open and not full up.

I include the link above so you can see for yourselves what you get.  The dining room is light and airy with a few weapons of painful destruction around the walls.  There are a number of menus, but we went for the Menu du Chateau at 18,60 Euros a head.

We chose different starters.  The chaps had red mullet fillets on a sort of pizza style base, which was nicely balanced.  I had the goat cheese starter which turned out to be a sort of mousse and was very nice indeed with a well dressed salad to complement it.  Angela had the rabbit terrine which was also good and liberally spliced with pistachio nuts to make an interesting change.

We also managed to cover all the main courses on the menu!  I had the salmon escalope, which in true French fashion was served with beurre blanc sauce and rice.  If I am being ultra picky, I would have to say that the edges of the escalope were a little crunchy - no doubt from sitting under a heat lamp until the other dishes were ready, but the flavours were lovely.  Angela had the duck filet with Layon sauce - a very nicely judged dish, while the chaps had beef kebabs with a shallot sauce.  The meat was meltingly tender and they understood the "a point" cooking instruction.

On the pudding front, the panacotta was very good and well judged with the acidity of the fruit.  My tea mousse was nice but didn't go with the lime sorbet, so I ate one after the other, and both were fab.  The chocolate pudding was pronounced to be a suitable chocolate hit.  We had a nice pichet of local rose wine and a big jug of tap water that was refilled when down to a quarter.  Service was fine, and all in all it was a nice, convivial experience, with good food, nicely cooked - not haute cuisine with all that entails.

Many thanks to Angela and Ian for treating us.

There will be tales from the Party shortly, but as the Comice will be on us shortly, time is getting rather precious so apologies now for any delays!