Rural Life

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!

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.

 
 
 

Cool for cats

After one or two stutters earlier in the month and in May, summer has finally arrived in Anjou.  This is wonderful, although it does bring its own challenges at times.  If you are covered with fur, however silky and lovely that fur is, when the sun is beating down and it is 28 degrees in the shade, you need to find somewhere cool to hang out.  Inside my car in the garage (on the parcel shelf - or cat lounger) is one good place, but Maigret doesn't do indoors if she can help it during daylight hours.  Well - you never know what birds, shrews, mice and lizards, not to mention bugs and butterflies, you might miss!  So she is here - somewhere!

I didn't really need the scarlet pimpernell to tell me that it wasn't going to rain, but it is nice to have that reassurance!

And finally, after the excitement of that first egg from Salt, I can confirm that she is up to four eggs produced, while Pepper is behind the game a bit with two (and I haven't checked yet today).  Salt's eggs are slowly increasing in size as can be seen by the row of three paler eggs (we have already eaten the first one), while Pepper's are tiny but a lovely chocolate brown colour.  That dark colour will fade as the eggs get larger and she gets more mature.  Incidentally, although they are tiny, Pepper's eggs are unlikely to be wind eggs (ones with no yolk) as they are egg shaped.  Wind eggs generally look like pingpong balls!

 
 
 

Fruit and eggs

Today is a great day - after weeks of no eggs of our own, indeed having to buy eggs - I found an egg in the hen house.  You can see it in the picture below (left), and I am pretty sure that either Salt or Pepper is responsible as it is a bit of an odd shape, as would be the case of a first offering.  It takes a few days to get the shape just right and even then, something can happen and affect it.  Looking at it (the one on the left) against the market bought egg, I suspect it was actually Salt who produced it, as she is a hybrid Light Sussex like White was and they seem to produce quite light coloured eggs.  I thought Pepper was nearly ready to lay, as I was putting her back in the run after one of her escapes on Saturday and instead of running away, she squatted and "assumed the position".  Billy next door would have been delighted I'm sure!  Anyway, they are both getting near maturity.

The weekend has been spent picking blackcurrants and making jam - 26 pots of it!  What I picked is shown below - about 9 pounds in total.  John went to admire the stripped clean bushes and came back to enquire as to whether someone had given me them as I didn't seem to have made much impact on the bushes.  I must pick more shortly but think I will try making cordial this time - we still have two litres of cassis we made in Worcester, so I don't think I want to go down that route, although it is very easy to do.

The final picture is pretty shonky, but gives you an idea of what I am keeping an eye on each day at least once a day!  I love fresh figs and while one of John's clients has a fabulous tree, clients come and go and cannot be relied on to supply our needs in the long term.  About 4 years ago I bought a fig tree at the local garden centre and last year in September it thought about having its first fig, and then changed its mind.  In March it had another go, and then got fed up of that too.  Those little nodules at the base of two of the leaf stalks could be more figs trying to come through.  There are loads more of them too.  If only the weather would warm up, the tree might start to get a move on and put me out of my misery of not knowing!  I'll keep you posted anyway.

  

Rendez vous in the garden

For the first weekend in June, the French have a festival.  Well it wouldn't be France without something to celebrate every week or so through the alleged fine weather.  This year the weather was mixed for the weekend of the 5th and 6th of June.  The Friday and Saturday were extremely hot - on the Saturday it reached 30 degrees in the shade in our garden by 11am and didn't start to cool down until 6pm, so we weren't that interested in going walking in exposed gardens.  The weather broke overnight with storms, and Sunday was cool, cloudy and dank - again not completely ideal for enjoying going round gardens.

We had received a programme for the Rendez Vous aux Jardins in one of the local free papers.  The offerings are a mix of gardens that are usually open, which are either free for the fete or have something going on - plant sales, demonstrations, guided tours, music, and gardens that are not usually open to the public.  We find these ones more interesting I must say.

For the past 10 years as we head to Auverse and Tours we have admired a house set in a park on the side of the road.  The house was often shuttered up and didn't look anything more than large and splendid and dating from about 1820 or so.  The grounds were interesting as they were very familiar in a funny sort of way, even allowing for the odd avenue of lime trees.  As this one was open for the fete, we decided to find out more.

We were met at the side door of the chateau by the lady of the house who took our money, gave us a map of the walks on offer and told us a bit about the place.  The reason it was familiar looking was that the park was designed to be like an English park - she mentioned a French designer from 1840, but he drew inspiration from Capability Brown.  We then set off to explore.  The first surprise was that this was not an estate dating from 1820.

As this image shows, with the remains of a moat, a fortified tower and old castle walls, the domain actually dates from about 1150 or 1200.  The park is designed to give views of each facade of the chateau, showing the different epochs of building.

At this point we were looking at the back of the 1820 wing, across meadows and copses.  As we admired the view a rather large hare lolloped along the path next to us.  We carried on round to see what the 1600-ish facade looked like, going past some magnificent London planes actually surrounded by other trees - in their natural habitat so to speak.  That sort of thing is impossible to photograph - you can't get the size and majesty well enough or the required definition - a phone camera is useless in these circumstances.  Instead enjoy the rather fine copper beech.

Not really the same house is it?  At this point we turned away from the house and walked along the remains of an oak avenue through more hay meadows.  We disturbed two fine red deer does, who charged off into the shelter of the woodland.  You could see where they were damaging the rather overblown hay crop, but I don't think the people at the chateau mind that at all.  The final view is of the front of the house with its French parterre and lime avenue, but much closer than you would see from the road. 

Anyway, we are very grateful for the chance to enjoy the park and understand more about the chateau itself.  I wonder where will go for the Rendez Vous aux Jardins next year?

 
 
 
 

Vine pruning

Before taking advantage of the weather to go and do the lawn, or at least the bits my little electric mower will let me do, I am taking a well earned rest with a cup of tea to recover from vine pruning.  We look after two rows of vines for a chum who isn't around often enough to do it himself, and in return, if we do it right, we get loads of grapes for making juice in the autumn.

In our experience, vines are not a low maintenance option for the garden.  For a start, there is the pruning, but indeed before you can start on that, someone has to clear the track for you to see what you are doing - this is more a strimming job, unless you go for the chemical approach and remove all competition for a few yards on either side.  So this is what faced me this afternoon.

John had been through with the strimmer last week, and if I wanted to catch the gap and assured dry weather, it had to be today.  Until I got up-close and personal with the vines, it was difficult to know whether they had flowered yet - if you see what I mean.

However once I was in there, I could see that most of the flowering was over and that some tiny grapes had started to form.  In this second pruning of the year, every growing shoot needs to be cut back to the flower bunch (and to ensure better fruit, I was mean and kept most of them to one flower truss per stem, rather than the two they wanted), while those shoots without flower trusses on need a bit of thought.  If the vine is less robust and well covered, then the leaves on such shoots will help to source food for the root stock, if the vine is vigorous, they need to be removed to ensure that the maximum effort goes into the fruit.

This gives me a vine that looks rather like this.

While the finished row looks like this - much less wild and woolly and more professional somehow!

And you are right, different row!  I did the photos to give me a breather after doing the first row and before tackling the second and then tidying up.  Each row is about 50 meters long and we have been working with the vines for three years now, after they had been neglected for about three years.  Last year we took about 80 kilos off for juicing, and we were a bit picky as to which grapes we chose.

I prune this lot four times a year - once in March to remove the old growth, once in May/June to get the early growth off, once in late July to get rid of another flush of growth and any late flowers, and at the end of August to let the sun get to the ripening grapes and allow air to circulate in those final important few weeks until harvest.  The grapes here are mostly small, black, full of pips but very yummy.  The juice is almost too rich to drink on its own and is either diluted with water or with other juices for a non-alcoholic cocktail.  Black grape juice is supposed to be one of those super foods.