the big bang

beautiful signage, does the job, i love it!

Monday 15th , woke in foetal position clutching my alarm clock, put it off successfully at six-thirty still asleep at well gone seven, i was supposed to be in Larroque at  seven thirty and it wasn't going to happen. three point five km mainly plain sailing apart from the last one and a half. We had had quite a weekend, and i decided to use two feet instead of two wheels.

today our school was at Philippe's place in the evening, he has been missing for three weeks due to his daughter getting married, tonight we had a song and a glass of champagne to celebrate Bastille day (yesterday) and the wake of hiss daughters wedding.

At the beginning of the week we went for a walk locally to us but completely uncharted territory for us, we were unaware of the beauty the height and the varied woodland. We also happened on a particular forest clearing which at the the weekend was going to become the Chasse cooking venue for three hundred people, it was difficult to get a mental picture

on how it would all pan out.                    

empty space, nice view

At eleven thirty we set off for Monleon, we all met up at Judith and Nick's first for a couple of glasses of limoux

before heading out to the Chasse on the edge of the forest.  At the entrance we were met by Michel who took our twelve euros each and a young french lad (my hero of the day)to prove that you had paid, bit like a nightclub, after that you can eat and drink until satisfied or you fall over. 

We were a little late arriving so there was no room for our party of eight, Marc and Nick took charge and stole a table top and some legs from somewhere and promptly put us in the middle of the throng, and in shade as it was one very very hot day. Aperitifs were next on the agenda, mines a pastis, but also rum or whisky or all three if you want, then back to your s seat for the arrival of food, until there are bums on seats they don't serve you, so i was busy trying to encourage our lot to sit down. First the loaf of bread, followed by a tasty bowl of rice mixed with tuna peppers, olives and tomatoes. Then follows tray full after tray full of sanglier(wild boar) couple of haunches of deer, lamb and some ordinary pork for the faint hearted. The young lad (my hero) who had been stamping everyone at the beginning then scanned all the tables for the next six hours putting down and replacing like for like one point five litre bottles of ice cold water and cold red wine. This was no mean feat as there were, we were told after over three hundred people.

After food followed eau de vie (NOT for the faint hearted) and Armangnac, followed by a nectarine to cleanse the system??!!, followed by cafe.

Then there was much congratulating of the chasse who had worked so hard, and then the dancing began, all in all a cracking afternoon. A couple of people including Michel, who didn't want his photograph taken, are after my photos as i was merrily snapping away all afternoon.

We also met some more interesting and new people, which continue to come out of the woodwork. Nigel and Hilary were  also there and our neighbours from Castelnau, with her family. 

Then it was back to Judith's at seven, after a long session left at eight for some bonding with the kittens and bed.

the hard working ladies providing all the dishes to go with the meat

a bit gruesome, wild pig, deer and a small haunch of lamb

all bums on seats 

nearly done, hot enough as it is without standing anywhere near these boys

michel from the chasse

the hard working head chef de cuisine

i'm sure that the cooks must be roasted as well

wine and water monitor

which particular haunch would you like?

colourful collection

congratulations 

serviette turning and congratulations two...

...and three, Judith enjoying herself

festivities well into late afternoon

the two hard working chefs now try to get everyone dancing

all ages and shoe sizes

cafe monsieur, madame

my hero of the (lots of ) hour

le potager continued

ready to be dipped and battered, and lightly fried, stuffed with lightly seasoned goats cheese

Hopefully i am not boring my readers, i was so excited by my first produce as well as my first batter and also my first battered courgette flower.... that i felt it essential to share this with you.

the finished result with a Provencal tomato, and a glass of tomato and olive dressing

delicious, bit of effort but worth it

Cycled this week, played some tennis and obviously cooked up some dishes in the kitchen.

it  has been very hot this week, and we have either been sheltering in our nice cool cellar or swimming in the local lac...not the one next to us yet, it is still to be tested, this could take a while, mañana, mañana, We are so near the Spanish border i think i should be allowed both languages at my fingertips, that will give me five words in total!!

Midweek i bought some sea bream, and Marc cooked them on the BBQ, they were so fresh they were absolutely fantastic, also i thought at a very good price (it was cheaper than Moxon's....sorry boys) i get a very fast lively french banter from my french fish lady that i cannot always keep up with, but she does not make me blush, unless i can't remember the french for something very obvious.

.

On Saturday night, the heavens had opened on Larroque and shortly after at Castelnau, we have never seen anything like  it. There was a river running through our hall with a torrent of earth from the garden….big clearing up op tomorrow.  I can't believe looking out of our back door it is about 5ml off from flooding right through the lounge to the bedrooms the water is three inches up my ankles, scary. It actually did some damage but not nearly as bad as it could have been if it had run through the lounge. Our old bedroom dresser will be hacked up for arty salvage via Marc and a few other things including my bike, helmet and gloves left to dry out in the sun. We will need a humidifier, Marc tells me to dry out the hall and sandbags for any future torrents.

Sunday 14th July Bastille day, did some clearing up and surveyed the devastation, did not last long, before you could say flood we were in Joe's bar drinking coffee with a largely cheerful English contingent all with various flood reports. after that we did a swift cheese lunch and headed to the weekend antiquities in Lannemezan some interesting stuff at interesting prices  but found a prize right at the end, some knobs at last for my pine chest at 2.50 each, bargain. 

Headed out at 8 ish pm for walk June and oz in the bar beckoned…joe bought the first round as he had done in the morning re coffee's which was very kind of him. Later were joined by Annabelle and clan, boyfriends , girlfriends, of James and Georgia, the Irving's, Piers and Hannah, and a host of the usual suspects, a couple were playing and singing the double bass and clarinet. A very pleasant evening, ending in fireworks let off in the square. Rumour has it that the pharmacy was practically set alight last year, but this bastille day ended loudly, but no damages. I left at 12.30 time for bed said Zebedee and left the hardcore to it.

au petit bonheur
olive oil infused with rosemary and new season garlic

looking for the marrow, it has put on amazing growth in the last few days
so pretty hard not to miss 

....and that will do very nicely for two greedy persons

once more held aloft, this is our first baby (sorry about the undies in the background
you cannot get the staff)

finished result, pork mince, onion, garlic, Dan's paprika, a few herbs and a dash of chilli flakes
baked in the oven and topped with parmesan for the last ten mins

one of my three mouseketeers....D'Artignan with Marc

le bon potager avec soleil

My mini potager is now bearing some fruits, I have tomatoes showing, my chard is ready to pick and my courgettes male and female are blossoming. Marc says he has eaten the courgette flowers before, and i have told everyone over the last five years that you can eat them...but i never have, only because you have to more or less pick them and eat them (see link below) they open up in the morning and by the evening they are very much closed, so you need to pick them on the morning you are going to eat them and put them in a zip lock bag, and then put them in your salad box. I am going to stuff mine for lunch with herbs and mozzarella dip in batter and lightly fry.

I grew cosmos from seed which has taken a long time but has finally taken off.  I lost three cucumber plants from the market as baby plants but have grown four from seed. Coriander, lettuce, sweet peppers, sorrel and purple basil all did well to begin with, but the utility room is just to hot.

At the start of the week i was given an old french recipe, for maybe some insects but on further reading it is good for any fungus or parasites in the soil and so rich in minerals it's good for us to.

for further reading on the uses and benefits of the nettle

The old french recipe is simple, boil up lots of younger stingers, perhaps twenty tops and just cover in boiling water. Later when it has cooled down sieve the nettles to put in your spray.It can also be used as a feed slightly more diluted as it is rich in minerals.

one bucket with some nettles

nettle  concentrate (that's what i am calling it) for my sprayer

chard looking ok, have lost a few outer leaves to munchers

our very first coeur de boeuf

concumbre from seed

my first courgette in France!
delicious recipes for courgette flowers

small courgette flying saucers from seed...i do not know how well they will do in pots

Other things that are doing well in the garden despite early negligence, not being here or having the energy to prune, is the grapevine and the Mirabelle plum. The Mirabelle has had high winds late on to knock the fruit off and an obnoxious spring to slow down the whole process but is still looking good.

still laden with fruits, and this time we will be competing with the birds from the start

the utility room which happens to be wall to wall glass and a very easy way to germinate my seeds

la visite du père

Last week was the arrival of mon pere

We started a massive clear up for ourselves, added impetus that dad was coming to stay as well. Marc did a fantastic job downstairs and i cleared the upstairs half and made our tv room look like a bedroom, all looked very good.

Sometimes i find that you need the arrival of a visitor to kick start you into a mega cleaning action.

However things did not go to plan on Wednesday, dads train was delayed (the euro star part) so he missed his connection from Paris to Tarbes and will have to get the tgv down the following day. I spent the evening worrying although i had managed to contact him on his mobile and he seems tired but fairly unphased by it all, had to cancel Tony who was on his way to pick him up at late at night. He will arrive in the afternoon the following day, so we will go and pick him up. 

The next day i checked that dad was on the train and i was relieved to find that he is on his way but major floods in Lourdes and Pau further hampered his long journey turning the whole thing into a bit of a nightmare, he needed a bus from Pau to Tarbes because of the flooding and we picked him up around about two thirty at Tarbes. 

Three days before the whole of the Haute Pyrenees was on red alert ie severe weather conditions and when dad was travelling down, mid France was on orange alert, bad enough, so Paris was looking dodgy weather wise

So that afternoon we sat and talked and the day after we chilled also, because i think we were all a tad tired.

Pate and cheese for lunch and trout fillet (from our Wednesday fish van), with fried cucumber and a noilly prat cream sauce, taken from Rick's French odyssey and adapted on the fish front by me.

notre dame de garaison or mini Lourdes

Friday was a dull wet day, although bright with mountains in full beautiful view when i went for a walk with Shirley this morning and cycled over to Larroque at seven. Shirley and i went for a long walk, upwards from Larroque, we had amazing views, cycled back for breakfast with dad (m still coaching tennis) Then dad and i  went for some veg, bread and papers. Later I minced and cut up a 4 kilo pack of pork it has made 8 packs for 12c euros, 3 packs of mince, 4 packs of chops and some escalopes. One of my bargains from Ecomarche (small french supermarket chain) 

but today was party time and the the longest day June the 21st. signalling summertime and an invitation to Monleon to Marianne and Per's to celebrate Swedish style, with flowers in our hair. Marianne and Per had a very ingenious way of getting people to mingle and to sit with other people than their partners. At the beginning of the evening we were all given lines from a song, the guys had the lead line and they had to find the females with the second line and all the songs were different. So my line was "here we go again" and my male lead had on his card "mamma mia" and Mark had Elvis "are you lonesome tonight"

Most of the atelier, (our school class) and new people that we had not met turned up a nice mix, and a really enjoyable evening. Dad seemed to enjoy himself. Marianne and Per had put the most generous humongous effort over the food and all the trappings. Traditional Swedish food, lots of herring in different guises, right up my street, smoked salmon, and an array of desserts to choose from. In between Marianne was up and down the tables with mini bottles of ice cold schnapps of many different flavours alongside the beer. Topped off with generous cartons of wine for the English gang, who couldn't cope with beer and schnapps. All  was still well in swing when we left at 12.30.

I  learnt tonight that my post, re Gingembre actually made someone other than myself cry....someone that i had not even met.

Groggy start on weather front, and late start, after a late night,  I raced around our market with Marc, but not enough time. Marc went  back for our wine from the market and then  made me breakfast , left for Ali and Chris at 9.30

arrived to find Ells and Ali already stuck in. Left at one, Marc did what is becoming my fave scrambled eggs with Harissa and my fave salad. Also success because the farine de chiche pois that i had managed to order a few days ago, turned up

This afternoon we went to Notre dame de Garaison, http://fmaquaire.free.fr/Incontournables/garaison1.html

dad and i got picked up for the guided tour by a nun from Brazil. I was happy with myself that i understood lots that she was telling us. It is an interesting place and very attractive in the much needed sunshine

Tonight we had some nuts and snacks outside in the sun, which was great, as dad is not here for long and the weather had been pretty poor for his first couple of days.
Marc cooked pork chops with capers and a cider butter vinaigrette, spinach, tats for the boys and rocket yum.

finished with strawerries and the rest of the apple ice cream

Brighter this morning, Marc went off to coach tennis and I went to plant cosmos, as you do. This morning after brekkie we joined Hugo and Anthony for coffee in Joe's and watching the people walk by. I ended up doing an extended interview with Jessica Ennis???  (but that is another story for later)

This afternoon went to the garden in Thermes, la source which was brilliant, very nice guy …my french is definitely coming on, from the point that i was just trying not just to listen but communicate back and being understood.
Earlier this week a very big triumph as i had manged to communicate to the bank that i had a credit card but without a personal code, that is now sorted, big high five. It is slow but it 's coming.

Rebecca called and we went to see kittens that one of his cats has just had they need to be left with mum for a few more weeks and they are very pretty, more than that they are gorgeous and if they turn out anything like the three previous escapees, cute.
I cooked chicken stuffed with goats  cheese and thyme on a bed of toms and courgettes for supper,  then dad, Marc and I watched skyfall.

Tuesday a bit overcast , spent the morning trying to find out whether dad's train was running ok..it's not, so we will need to take him to Pau, the other part was trying to find a restaurant open for this evening.Four down we decided that maybe all was shut on a Tuesday evening and we should buy something, So dad bought duck confit and ham from our butcher, and melon and strawbs from our veg lady. 

Walked with dad in the afternoon and went to the Ecomarche with dad,  presents for cat sitters and friends.

This morning got up at the crack of  dawn, 4.30 to take dad to the train station, Marc drove and had researched the trip as we have never been to la gare in Pau before.  We got him on the train half an hour before he was due to go. I hope he had a good time ....he said that he had and despite mixed weather, it wasn't cold and we had a few hot ones as well

Nice evening, warm and sunny almost feels like summer!!!

i can lead her up the garden path anytime....purrfect

Before dad arrived, i did some garden weeding  with my little ginger helper. He is cute cuddly and adorable and very purry, he tried to hijack my weeding sac or tools, eat the grass in front of me or sit on my knee, lovely but difficult to carry out any gardening. After lunch collected dad who was already waiting for us but glad to have ended a long and protracted journey

just looking....

I'm going to be p's ginger stand in

I'm almost a big boy, i might be only nine months old

i like to play

i can do all the right poses

...and finally I'm too sexy for my purr!