Perspective

On our trip to and from Bar-sur-Seine today, we couldn’t help but stop to take some photographs. The light was amazing, providing a real contrast in the layers between the forest, vineyards and fields.

Although the sun has come out it is still very chilly, and we look forward to lighting the fire at the end of the day, and enjoying a little tipple.

License to fit

A quick trip to the post office this morning to post Brian’s driving license. We had received a message from the ANTS website, asking us to now send in his driving license by registered mail. They had provided us an electronic attestation to print off and carry with us whilst he is without a license. In France it is a legal requirement to carry your drivers license and car documents with you whilst driving.

Fingers crossed he will have the replacement french one very soon.

Whilst we were out, we nipped to Weldom, originally to buy a couple more bits of wood to finish the shoe shelves, however we forgot they only sold it in packs of ten; which we really didn’t need. So Brian decided he would use what he had available in his wood store and probably join some pieces together if needs be.

Whilst we were there though, I saw some shelving which I thought would work well for me if it was tucked along the side of our fridge, it’s been a bit of a dead space. We knew it would fit, and after some discussion on which type to get, we plumped for the metal coated set.

We were soon bolting them together, and a short time later had them in situ. I’m loving the extra organisation they are giving me, it’s really cleaned up the space.

Shoe size

Work started early this morning; Brian was keen to see what his shoe rack idea was going to look like. I helped by sorting out the shoes into rows, so he could easily know the height for the next set. We know this will change over time, but the sizing for now is good and can be flexed in the future.

Soon he was in his groove, and making great progress.

I think it’s going to work really well.

Storage solutions

We woke to a gorgeous sunny morning, rich blue sky, and the brightness of the day pouring through the window, saying ‘Hello, spring is on its way.’

We had a little job we wanted to get done indoors, in the coat cupboard situated under the stairs. It has a redundant hot water heater in there, which we haven’t disconnected yet, so for now it will stay.

What we want to do though is to improve our shoe storage, and give ourselves more space for coats. Brian has an idea on how we could make this happen, and it means using some of the wood he had left over from the atelier.

Exit stage left

We’d seen this poster in the bar we have coffee in, and we worked out it was an amateur dramatics group who were touring the region with their play. When the landlady saw us looking at it she asked if we would be going? We strongly believe in supporting and being part of our community, so we decided it would be just the ticket, and maybe a great way to practise listening to french in a safe, and fun, environment too. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Sunday afternoon arrived, and although we were both a little tired, and probably would have settled for a cosy night in, we set off for the café early to grab a coffee before the show. We were hoping to get a drink before going to buy our tickets, but unfortunately none of the bars were open. A quick walk past the theatre showed that the hall was quite empty as well, so we had a little stroll around the town, then wandered back to the theatre hoping things may have warmed up. There were now quite a few people waiting to buy their tickets, which meant we could go in and quietly choose a couple of seats without drawing too much attention to ourselves. We joined the queue and were soon inside. As we entered the hall we saw the landlady, who was organising where people should sit. She saw us, and shouted across the room, ‘Les Anglais !’ So much for a quiet entry.

The ticket clerk asked if we had reserved seats, and I was about to reply no, when the rapidly approaching landlady said, ‘Bien sûr’, so apparently we had. Brian paid our 16 euros, and the landlady ushered us to some prime seats three rows from the front, worryingly just behind the seats marked ‘VIP’. We had planned to sit at the back, just in case the whole thing seemed too much, and we could slip out if needed, but we were now feeling very important, if a little closed in.

The theatre started to fill up, in fact it was soon positively full. There were people sitting all around us on newly brought in chairs, that had been found in the back, behind the stage. We were definitely here now for the duration.

We sat patiently, waiting for things to commence. By the time the show was ready to start the VIP seats in front of us were still empty. Suddenly there was a big hubbub, and lots of hand shaking and kissing, as our missing guests arrived. We had no idea who the people were, causing such a commotion and keeping us all waiting, but the Mayor and his party probably wondered who we were too.

The lights were dimmed, the music started, and on stage the landlady from the café bar appeared. She was brilliant in a cleaning lady roll, and she really came alive up on stage. Everyone who had been involved in selling tickets, seating the audience, and getting more chairs were all seen on stage at some point throughout the play.

We were trying extremely hard to understand what was being said, and follow what was clearly a very chaotic and comedic play. The audience were in hysterics, and I was just laughing at the audience laughing; I think Brian thought I understood more than I did. After the show we compared notes, and I actually think Brian had got way more of the story than me. We’d pieced together a very peculiar plot of illicit drugs, women of the night, an adulterous husband, a policeman under the influence, and a wife who’d accidentally put the cat in the washing machine. A typical French farce we guessed.

After the second act, when we had been sitting down for two hours, struggling to understand and getting a bit fidgety, the landlady appeared on stage dressed in a teddy bear onesie. She recited a short dialogue, and the lights went up. Everyone - well we thought everyone - started to leave.  We made a dash for it, to avoid the crowd of some two hundred people or so driving out of the market square. Once we got outside though it became apparent that it was just a cigarette break. ‘What shall we do?’ I asked Brian. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure I can go another hour, I think this must be our cue to leave’.

We jumped in the car and started for home. It had certainly been an interesting afternoon, and the play was probably brilliantly written, if only we could have followed it, but we’d done our bit, given it a good go, and felt it was okay to quit there. I think the saying is ‘Exit stage left.’

February newsletter

Periodically, throughout the year, we produce a newsletter about our region. Just in case you are not subscribed to our newsletter, I have included a link to it here.

In the latest edition Brian has introduced a new mini feature, ‘a Sip of Champagne', which will focus on a single aspect of Champagne and its production, to help enhance our readers knowledge and experience. We also include details on upcoming events, which make a great days out.

Double treat

I felt totally spoilt yesterday, as we went to some friends for dinner. It was a really wonderful evening, chatting, laughing and enjoying delicious food and gorgeous wines.

The meal culminated in homemade ‘crêpes Suzette’, served with a bottle of Vouvray, late harvest Chenin Blanc. A perfect pairing and all rather delicious.

I now feel the need to learn to make crêpes and not pancakes. Such a well presented and very tasty dessert to serve.

Fête de la Chandeleur

It’s pancake day in France today. On 2 February every year, ‘La Chandeleur’ is celebrated as the day of the crèpe. For us though it’s a chance to cook pancakes.

La Fête de la Chandeleur is 40 days after Christmas, and culminates in a feast day. it’s actually the official end of the Christmas celebrations, so anyone who hasn’t taken down their decorations will have had to do so today.

I would say pancakes are slightly thicker than crepes, although I made mine this morning with 50% einkorn flour, and 50% gâteau flour; which has baking powder added, so it made them a bit lighter in texture. We prefer them this way now. Brian couldn’t resist getting involved and flipping one.

I just love pancakes. Cooking them reminds me of my childhood, watching Mum making a stack of pancakes for tea was a real treat.

L’anglais

Tuesdays are when we have our weekly French lessons. We are diligently trying to learn our French grammar, building the right foundation for understanding and speaking the language. We decided early on that learning French was very important for us to be accepted, so we started our learning whilst we still lived in the UK. We got very distracted though with day-to-day living, and found it difficult to find the time. Now that we are living in France we make sure that we practice regularly, and there are obviously many more opportunities to experience real life situations.

My understanding of French grows with every new aspect of the language I learn, and more and more I find I can follow the thread of what people are saying. I try to listen in on conversations in the markets, or cafés that I don’t know the subject of, to see if I can pick up on what they are talking about. One of my biggest challenges though is just making simple conversation. If there is a purpose for what I need to say, I’m better, but to start a simple conversation, beyond ‘How are you? Isn’t it a lovely day’ is very awkward for me. I’m picking up more vocabulary now though, and I am pushing myself and trying hard to form casual sentences. I feel that I’m making progress.

Brian throws himself completely into speaking, and is far better at it than me, but for some reason he finds it hard to understand what’s being said. I think he tries to translate words as he goes, rather than listen to a whole sentence and then piece it together, which means he ends up missing whole chunks of what’s been said. Between us though we seem to get by, mostly!

What we have found are some very patient French friends, who also help us and support our learning. Along with listening, watching French news programmes, Duolingo, written material, and the day-to-day living, we are slowly getting there. The main thing is, we are both really enjoying learning French. it can be a lot of fun, and what’s the worse that can happen? So far, we are only aware that we’ve missed one appointment, nearly employed a plumber by mistake and bought a lamp we didn’t want! We have definitely discovered that there is no easy way to learn a foreign language, certainly later in life, but I can recommend it as a great way to keep your brain active.

Let’s see how we progress over the next 12 months.

Hang ‘em high

As you know Brian loves to use his laser, so when I mentioned that it would be really good to get our two newly framed charcoal sketches up in the Jeroboam, it wasn’t long before he had his laser set up ready to put the hooks in exactly the right place.

I’m never really much help in doing these little jobs, other than ‘encouragement’ and maybe handing him his tools.

The day soon drifted by, and I’d realised we hadn’t taken a photograph of them both up on the wall. So we went and made the bed up, and Brian took a photograph using his wide angle lens.

The pictures really add to the warmth of the room.

Tea and cake

The garden was looking very pretty with a light frosting of snow. The air was dry and very cold. We both brought a few logs in to get the fire started. The plan was for a quiet day in, catching up on some reading and our French practice.

I lit the fire, whilst Brian made us some tea, cut a slice of homemade apple cake and we were set up for the afternoon.

Bread run

We woke to a beautiful chilly morning, with a little flurry of snow still floating from the sky, and there was a small dusting of snow covering the village. Brian wanted to nip out early to get the bread, as we have friends staying over tonight for dinner. So he wanted to be sure he got what he wanted.

Bread on board, he headed home. It’s about a 30 minute round trip, but he loves doing it as it’s a chance to listen quietly to french radio en route, trying to pick up the conversations and understand what is being talked about.

I have to admit, I had stayed in bed, it was warm and just too inviting to relax for another ½ an hour. I knew he would try and snap some photos, and was looking forward to seeing them on his return.

He arrived home to a toasty looking house, with a warm welcoming glow of light at the window. Fresh baguettes, croissants and coffee for breakfast, what a delight!

Tubs of joy

I wanted to buy a few more bulbs for the house; I don’t think you can ever have too many, and the thought of spring bulbs warms me, and fills me with smiles. So we visited our local garden centre to see what they had in. I managed to find a few tubs of daffodils that were just starting to poke through, so are probably a couple of weeks away from flowering. I think these will work well in some pots I have.

After a quick coffee, we nipped to the Intermarché to do some shopping before heading back home. They had some massive pomelos in, which I was very tempted by, as they were more yellow in colour, and much bigger than the ones I’d bought from the market! I resisted though.

I couldn’t resist the choice of apples though. I bought a couple of types to make an apple cake, which makes a great dessert served with vanilla crème fraîche.

Pomelo

Yesterday I made some Pomelo marmalade, and this morning I couldn’t resist but enjoy it on a fresh piece of hot buttered toast. Of course I had to use salty butter (sea salt crystal butter).

I hadn’t really heard or seen pomelos before, but last week I saw some at the market and decided to buy 3 to make some marmalade with. They are larger than a grapefruit, and apparently are used to cross with oranges to produce grapefruits.

I thought I would be able to treat them similar to lemons, but once I’d done some research on them I realised they are a lot more bitter than a lemon, and have a tougher pith. Also, the flesh is quite course in texture.

I spent a good hour or more peeling off the outer skin, careful not to take too much pith. I then separated the flesh from the pith, and shredded the outer skin, putting it with the flesh, and any juice, into my jam saucepan. Then I tied all the pith, and all the pips, in some muslin, and placed that in the pan as well. After that, I just barely covered it with water and got it up to a rolling boil. You need to keep squeezing the muslin bag, throughout this process, as this is where the natural pectin to set the marmalade comes from. I used a potato masher to do this.

I’d put a saucer in the freezer so I could use this to test the setting point of the marmalade. You just drop a teaspoon of the marmalade onto the cold saucer, leave it for a couple of minutes, and if it wrinkles when you tip it, it’s ready. I think it boiled for about 30 minutes. It’s best to leave it for about 5 minutes after turning the heat off to cool slightly before putting it in the prepared sterilised jars. I made about 6 jars, and couldn’t resist trying it at breakfast this morning.

Although preparing the fruit was a bit of a faff, it tastes delicious.

Blocked in

Whilst I was working through the last of our boxes, Brian was finishing off the staircase to the atelier. He has made such an excellent job of it, and I can’t wait now to get up there and have a good clean up.

We will need to be a little bit careful using the stairs for now, as he has the light and handrail still to put up, but the main thing is it’s all blocked in and the soot cannot get up there anymore.

Finally

We seem to be whizzing towards the end of January. It is still somewhat chilly here in France, with night time temperatures below freezing point, but I think that will change over the next couple of weeks. January here really feels like a month of hibernation, for me it’s a month of trying out some new recipes, cleaning out some cupboards, and dare I say it, finally unpacking the last of our boxes from when we moved to France two and half years ago. I just hadn’t felt like doing it before, or didn’t need to do it, or had other more important things to do, whatever the reason, this week feels about the right time to make it happen.

We also practiced making hot chocolate, the french way, by melting chocolate into the milk. A rather tasty mid morning hot drink.

Let it shine

I discovered a little tip on how to easily clean silver that’s really worth knowing. I had quite a bit of silver plated cutlery that was certainly in need of a good clean, as the plating had started to tarnish quite badly, so I thought I’d follow the tip and try to clean some teaspoons I had first.

You start by lining a dish with tin foil, then you sprinkle in some bicarbonate of soda, lay the silver items in, then pour on hot water. You then leave it for about 30 minutes, before cleaning them down with an old dry cloth.

Voila, shiny spoons.

I couldn’t help myself once I’d done these, I then started cleaning all the old knives, forks and spoons that I had stored in the kitchen drawer. I went on a bicarbonate frenzy. I have to say though, it does end up smelling a bit odd after a while. Nothing a good scented candle wouldn’t fix though.

Follow the line

There were a few bits Brian needed to do to our reclaimed door, mend a damaged corner, replace the handle mechanism, and add some new hinges.

I had heard him come back indoors and thought it was time for a coffee break, but I could hear him rustling in the kitchen, “what are you looking for?” I enquired. “I need a felt tip pen”. “Okay, rather than use my kitchen one, I’ll get you one from the desk”. I wasn’t sure why he needed it, but he did say he might damage the point.

“I’ll put some tea on” I said. “Okay, I’ll be about 20 minutes.”

20 minutes later.

Strike

We woke late this morning, not sure why, but we were both in need of a lay in. Snow had fallen over night and the morning sun was already warming the rooftops, and the snowy roofs were starting to melt.

It’s a day of strikes in France today, they are striking against the raising of the age of retirement. It is being proposed to move the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64, the proposal is for this to happen gradually, a slight rise every 3 months, over the next 8 years. Most people in France do not have a private pension, and rely on the state pension only, so any changes to the retirement age affects a large percentage of the population directly. So I don’t really see much getting done anywhere across France on a day like today, except maybe Brian, who would like to complete the doorway off to the atelier.

I want to just make a quick pudding for dinner later. I have some croissants that we hadn’t eaten, and had gone a little bit stale. So I’m making them into a croissant, butter pudding, my french take on a bread & butter pudding. Instead of spreading the butter on, I melt some and brush it on with a pastry brush. This helps ensure the lighter make up of the croissant is covered, and that the ones on top crisp nicely. I like to soak it in the fridge for a few hours before it’s cooked, so it’s nice and moist when it comes out of the oven.

Just limescale

It was a tad chilly outside today, so we thought we’d do a few jobs in the house. The tap on our bathroom sink, upstairs was becoming really difficult to turn off, it would feel like it was closed, but it still had further to turn. I’d asked Brian if he could take a look at it. After he had fixed the cold tap in the kitchen, I thought why not give it a try. He soon had his tools gathered, and set himself up for the challenge.

I must admit no sooner had I got back from sorting some washing out than he had taken the tap off, cleaned it up, and popped it back on. ‘What was up with it?’ I asked, ‘just limescale’, apparently nothing that a good clean inside wouldn’t fix.

I think this then gave him the confidence to address the ‘La Pavoni’, our coffee maker. He knew this needed descaling but had been avoiding it. Having a lot of limescale buildup is one of the challenges living in a predominantly limestone area. I got the descaler out for use with kettles etc, and left him to it.

It wasn’t long before he had cleaned all the major elements down, inside and out, polished it, so it was gleaming, and started making us a much needed espresso. Quite a successful morning.