Bingo!

Bingo, house, lotto, carte en pleine, mad waving and jumping up and down! Who's listening..........  We've won...................... Making yourself heard over a throng of locals in the village hall which is just a five minute stroll from our humble abode here at Le Farat on a Friday evening is not as easy as it sounds, and woe betide me if I get it wrong and call out if I have made a mistake with my translation of numbers from English into French!  (I still have a bit of a problem with the 70's and 90's but generally not too bad and actually bingo helps!)

This year we have been active at the local Lotto evenings to help with fund raising for local groups and associations.

Our first outing this year was to the primary school lotto evening at the end of November. Proceedings start late here, and as it was for the school, all kids were invited. To sit down for the first call at 9pm is not unusual and to find you are still there at 1am with kids falling asleep on the floor seems to be the rule rather than the exception!

There were hundreds of donations from local businesses and all packaged beautifully.  The school governors presided over the event, with the bingo calling at a reasonable pace on the stage and there were occasional issues with a squealing microphone, so concentration was a must if we were to stand a chance of a prize.

After a few "kigne" and "carte en plein" a break was hailed and a mad dash to the canteen window in the Salle des Fetes for pancakes, cakes and drinks ensued.  Suitably refreshed we continued.  After two games we won! First it was our daughter who was sitting with a friend, she won local fruit juice, an entrance to a local museum, a discount of a takeaway pizza and 6 glasses.  Then it was my husbands turn for a win, however, he was not concentrating and half asleep, so therefore missed calling at the right time and lost out! Then just as the penultimate game was drawing to a close, I won too!  Yippee!  Added to our haul was a t shirt, cap, more fruit juice, discount off a new tyre and discount at a local restaurant.  We were more than happy!

On a roll, we turned up the following week at the local "Chasse" fundraising lotto.  Unsurprisingly, the prizes were mostly meat based!  The same order of proceedings ensued and after 10 games I was resigning myself that our winning streak was over.  However, our daughter, who had abandoned us for the second time in two weeks at a social event to sit with friends came up trumps and presented me with a prize of half a venison and a shoulder of sanglier (wild boar)!

Although I was over the moon to have won something, I was a little perturbed to say the least, that I was going to have to skin and butcher the meat and was secretly hoping that if I had won anything at all it would be sausages!  On joining the queue to collect our prize I was relieved to see that all was pre-butchered and frozen and being handed out from two enormous shopping trolleys ready to take home.

Now what.................! do I make sausages, or something more exotic, and if so how should I cook it?? May be as burgers on our lovely BBQ!

I do not feel I can be cheeky and ask the hunt, as last time I saw them I had to rather forcefully ask them to kindly remove their many dogs from the front lawn as they were using it as a loo!

www.lefarat.com

Christmas is coming and ...........the turkey is being evasive!

Since moving to France in 2010 we have been lucky enough to experience another style of Christmas. One that I much prefer, one that is less commercialised, less stressful and much more family orientated and most of all one that is all about good food and good company.

For our first Christmas en France we were invited to a neighbours on Christmas Eve.  After "Aperos" we went to mass at the local village church and returned an hour later to start our festivities.  We ate and talked, ate and drank, and ate again. A wide selection of local produce including some things we had never tried before, boudin blanc, jeruselem artichokes and wild boar, was on offer but no center piece of a large golden turkey for the meal.

The following Christmas we reverted back to a traditional English Christmas meal on the 25th to please all our visitors.  I tried to find a plump turkey big enough, but struggled to find anything appropriate or at a realistic price.  We therefore ended up with a capon, but despite the trimmings being prepared, a homemade Christmas pud and mince pies at the ready the bird failed to deliver. We were all hankering after a nice roast slice of turkey breast!

So last year I decided to go in hunt of a locally produced fresh bird!  First ports of call were local butchers of which there were a couple of recommendations, however any items of interest found were on sale at a considerable cost per kilo and a second mortgage would have been required for 8kg of meat!  I checked out the freezers at the local supermarket but no frozen birds or prepared turkey crowns in sight.

By 19th Dec I was getting desperate.  On my way back to the car after another fruitless search on market day, I put my head inside a large makeshift marquee that had appeared near the church at the weekly farmers market.  There, inside, were farmers wrapped in thick coats sitting on wooden benches puffing on cigarettes deep in conversation, but most importantly an array of birds on straw with their legs tied together. Chicken, duck, capon, guinea fowl and the all important turkey, but all in fine fettle and certainly not oven ready! 

With no choice I took the plunge and haggled with a farmer who had a very nice big black Norfolk type turkey.  After completing the purchase he handed over the bird.  I politely asked if he could do "the deed" for me as I was not experienced in such matters.  Rather horrifically for me he said he could not kill it as it was not allowed at the market. I would have to take the bird home and do it myself!  Rather red faced (and no doubt with a lot of sniggering, by the locals)  I left the market carrying the bird upside down whilst it flapped and squalked its way with me back to the car. I could not look it in the eye for I knew what its fate would be.  I was terrified I would get attached and it would become another member of the growing menagerie!

The road trip of 10 minutes home was traumatic to say the least, and by the time I was within site of the house I could no longer cope with the noise or smell coming from the back of the car.  I took a short detour to the local farm and knocked at the door asking for help.  In true neighbourly style my lovely neighbours took the matter in hand.  All was dealt with very quickly and in no time at all I was back in the car with an oven ready bird for Christmas feeling very proud, if a little sad.

After careful preparation the beautiful bird was placed centre stage on the dining table on 25th Dec for all to see. It truly was wonderful and really tasty.  From now on its fresh all the way for me, despite the effort needed.  I may need to bribe the neighbours to enlist their help again with a couple of turkey and stuffing sandwiches though!




*89152098*-

Busy In The Jam Factory

Très bonne ta confiture de fraise!

High praise indeed, so thank you to my dear friend Alexandra. However, when you are surrounded by such an abundance of fresh fruit and produce it would be an absolute travesty not to make the most of it and indulge in a little jam making which calls for more than the standard size of cooking pot!

I say a little jam making: strawberry and black cherry jams plus three litres of elderflower cordial in the bag, with plums, apricots and greengages coming up in a few months  Oh, and that’s before we even start to discuss the pâtés and chutneys again.

So why so busy with all this? Well, it just seems to be as much a way of life down here as anything, etched into the culture in much the same way as the other stereotypes from France like Petanque and Pastis in Marseilles or Café Culture in Paris. Our little corner of the Tarn et Garonne on the edge of Gascony and the Gers, feels very much like the beating heart of France when it comes to gastronomy. I know many others like to stake that claim but there really is a culinary vein that runs throughout.

Of course there is one other reason for all these preserves: they are much appreciated by guests here at our Chambre d’Hôtes and Gîtes at Le Farat (www.lefarat.com), which means so long as we keep receiving the compliments then the jam factory will remain fully operational!

A successful 2011!

After the initial worry this time last year of not achieving the bookings that we would require to survive and continue the dream, I now realise I was stressing over nothing! Bookings took off and all the guests we have had here have loved their holiday with us. What a relief!

The summer was fantastic, with a small blip in the middle of July and the hot weather lasted well in to October with us organising a BBQ in the middle of the month and sitting outside in T shirts until after midnight! The locals though thought we were mad and were wrapped in jumpers and fleeces from 10.30pm! But still not bad for October.

We managed to get out a bit more as a family in 2011 too. We attended the locally hyped "Au Fil de l'eau" and were not disappointed. It was a fantastic theatrical open air evening production telling the history of the region over the past 150 years. It is set along the banks of the Canal des deux mers (which goes from Bordeaux to Toulouse) with 400 cast members as well as animals and lots of ancient vehicles spanning 100 years. Well worth a visit if you are in this area at the beginning of August!

We also went to Cordes sur Ciel, a bastide hilltop village, Albi and the Toulouse Lautrec gallery, which was only 90 minutes from us here. The Cathedral at Albi is a huge brick built structure with the most amazing paintings on the ceiling, we learnt lots about Toulouse Lautrec and his work and finished the day in a cafe over looking the market square, lovely!

As a special present to ourselves over Christmas, we took the family skiing in Saint Lary situated on the edge of the French Pyrenees. We stayed in Arreau village just 10 minutes from the slopes and drove up the mountain each morning to the chairlifts. The snow was great, although not deep, but plenty for us for a few days of fun. It is such a bonus to be able to hop in the car at Le Farat first thing in the morning and be skiing in the mountains before lunch!

Now sitting here in front of the wood burner, the heat of summer seems a distant memory. We have woken up to snow this morning and the grass is white, the pool has snow over the cover and the roofs of the Mediterranean clay tiled buildings look strange covered in the white stuff!
This is only the second time we have had snow here and not what we had expected when we moved south from the UK but our daughter loves it!

Irrigation irregularities

This summer in South West France has been a dry one and the weather warmed up earlier than normal so arable and animal farmers as well as the fruit producers have all been suffering quite badly.

Having planted a number of fruit trees and made a vegetable garden (in retrospect if we had known how dry it was going to be we probably would not have bothered this year!), keeping everything watered was another large job on the ever increasing job list.

Fortunately, we were lucky enough to have bought a lovely property in Tarn et Garonne that had irrigation already installed in the lawn. We held off for as long as possible as we didn't want to waste water in any way, but when the lawn turned a nasty brown and the fruit trees started to wilt we knew it was time to take action.

All farmers here have access (for a small fee) to the water supply pumped from the river Garonne, and then pay on a meter each year for what they use. Our irrigation supply was also fed in the same way. The supply point was located across the road from the main house on the edge of the field and had to be accessed across a rather dodgy plank and a ditch, then you had to grapple with a large pipe and a wheel to connect to the supply, not something I enjoyed doing amongst the long grass, so not an easy process and not one to be undertaken in flipflops!

My husband Nick was dispatched with a spanner to turn on the supply and I stayed in the garden to shout back to him when the water came through. After much shouting and hollaring followed by short tempers and an amount of spanner throwing, we gave up. The water was only trickling through the pipe and was not enough to fill a watering can let alone irrigate the garden!

We put in a call to the Marie and a village official turned up a few days later to sort it all out . A new pipe cap was fitted, a new meter and a new valve. Great, we thought, we can now put the watering can away! .......NO

The water was still only just trickling out, we put in another call to the Marie and the official came back but explained that as far as he was concerned all was in order, and said the problem must be somewhere in our 5 acre garden. Great, needle and haystack sprung to mind!

I therefore took the bull by the horns and went to see he local farmer (where I had been fruit picking) and in my best fluttery eye look, asked if he could come to investigate the problem!

It worked! He arrived with a spanner and disappeared into the field with my husband. After a short while, success!

As it turned out, we had a dead snake in the pipe blocking the valve and as soon as that was removed, little jets of water started sprouting out of the ground all over the garden and I could almost hear the plants going aaaaahhhhhh!

The garden will now soon be nice and green again and my veggie patch will be brimming with produce!

Fruit, fruit and more fruit!

In amongst our guests arriving and leaving, I have been busy making jams, chutneys and fruit leather to enjoy through the winter.

I am currently innondated with reine claude green gages and merabelle red plums. I have made plum crumble, compote, jam, chutney and am considering plum leather. This is a fruit pulp that is smoothed on to a piece of greaseproof paper and dried in the sun. Once dry, it is then cut and rolled like a fruit winder and kept in an air tight jar until required. I have already made the apricot version and its yummy and a very healthy snack instead of chocolate!

The jam cupboard now is full of apricot, plum, damson, strawberry and cherry jam, tomato puree, plum and chili chutney and soon to be added is red onion chutney. More than enough to keep us and our guests supplied well into 2012!

First big change over day!

Well the season has now started for us in ernest. We had our first gite guests arrive last Saturday, family of 4 including a 3 month old baby a 2 year old plus an aupair.

As hoped the initial reaction was what I hoped for and they loved the gite and surroundings, which is a constant thrill to me. Everyone settled in well and all were soon in the holiday mood lounging by the pool.

The weather unfortunately, has not been the best, we have had a few days of sun and a few days of cloud, but still nice an warm. After advising on nice places to visit, booking restaurants and being a taxi service on occasions the week drew to a close. The family moved out............in to our B&B for an extra night, they just couldn't bring themselves to leave! It was a squeeze with the au pair as well and we finally decided it would be more comfortable for the au pair to go in our spare room in the main house.

New guests arrived in the gite just 3 hours later. Fortunately, the cleaning had been done and beds made but I was in the middle of cleaning the BBQ and had to shake hands with mucky greasy fingers looking like something the cat dragged in, sooo didn't want to look like that!

Still, all the hard work is worth the initial ooohs and arrrhs, which is what it is all about - makeing sure that our guests are happy and pleased with their holiday accommodation.

Now the beds are stripped and everyone is settled and happy, I am off to start the washing and ironing.

Happy days indeed.

Harvesting fruit, wheat, barley and ceps!

Harvest is in full swing, there are dust clouds from fields in the valley and on the horizon, wasps a plenty amonst the fruit trees and Ceps (or Porchini mushrooms) if you know where to find them in abundance too.

We were invited to tea this evening up to the farm to enjoy the fruits of their harvest. There we ate some new things to us, including cucumber jam, which was surprisingly nice, haricots vert with boiled potato and pesto, taboulet, and BBQ ribs and the all important cep which had been sliced and cooked in salt, pepper and garlic. all finshed off with an apricot and raspberry klafouti and plenty of wine, yum.

The conversation was interesting and we learnt about the tradition behind eating cold soup and when the bowl was empty filling it with wine, after drinking the wine from the soup bowl then filling it with soup again before wiping it all clean with bread! Waste not want not!

Now feeling very full and ready for bed

Wine Festival in France

After a hectic few weeks dashing about between France and the UK for work, fruit picking cherries and apricots in France and running the house, we finally had time to participate in the wine festival "Fetes de Saint Noe" in Auvillar this year.

Being the second time we had witnessed the event, we knew what to expect, music, dancing, wine and more wine!

The festivities started on the Saturday morning with a procession of men and boys in traditional costume carrying trees cut from beside the river Garonne and after parading round the village after about an hour the largest tree was erected at one end of the village and all participants were offered wine and sugared brioche. We all then moved on into the centre of the village for a lunch organised by the Marie and the Tourist Office. After further festivities and plenty of drunken dancing, after dark all met outside the church and followed the priest in a candle lit procession to a shrine to bless the vine and the forth comming wine harvest. More dancing to live music til the early hours made it hard to get up to make the sunday morning mass (and we did not actually make it) Late morning children of the village visited every household and gave a small flower as a gift from the commune. After lunch everything kicked off again with another procession with shepherds on stilts, farmers in traditional costume, traditional dancing and an "Umpah" band. Make a note for your diaries next year as it will be in May and is always well attended.

Dog emergency!

Yesterday afternoon after having returned from yet another airport run and feeling rather tired, I decided to take 5 minutes out for myself and take the dogs for a wander around the garden. The weather was hot, with a few clouds looming in the distance and the wind was still, it was bliss. The dogs were racing around the garden chasing after sticks and were having a great time playing tug of war to see who was the strongest and take the prize. Obviously the Labrador, Bailey was the strongest but the Jack Russell Nemo, was clever enough to snatch it away when Baily's interest waned.

However, on throwing the stick for the umpteenth time, this time it didnt fall flat and stuck in the ground, Nemo was first to get to it, I heard a sharp yelp and rushed to find him covered in blood. Panic ensued and I immediately (in my white trousers!) rushed to open his mouth and find the cause of the problem. Fortunately nothing was left inside but a huge hole under his tongue. I found a hose pipe and preceeded to rinse his mouth thoroughly. Blood everywhere, I carried him into his bed where I left him to make some phone calls and get advice from a vet.

I need to point out at this stage that we have only been here a year and although my spoken French is much improved and my understanding of written French is quite good, I am still a bit scared of the phone, as local accents and speed of the language makes it difficult for me to understand everything.

However, I found a vet that spoke a combination of English and French and between us we established that if there was no evidence of the wood remaining in the wound, I was to keep him calm and give him some antibiotics (fortunately we already had some) and hopefully he would improve. The poor little thing was holding hid head low, dribbling and looking very sorry for himself.

I gave him his tablet, a good cuddle, washed him down and wrapped him in a blanket for the night. Fortunately, this morning he is much improved and although still looking dejected, I carried him out to go to the loo and he ate a biscuit and drank a little water.

Sticks are now banned in this house and even though the dogs love racing to get them, balls are the order of the day from now on, as I do not want a scare like that again! Oh............the drama's of daily life!

Feeling punch drunk

What is wrong with me today? not firing on all cylinders and normally I am a domestic goddess in the kitchen but I burnt the biscuits I was making for my daughters school event this evening and now in a desperate attempt to cook something new as the biscuits could not be saved, I cannot concentrate on the recipie for millionnaires shortbread and not only burnt the shortbread and the caramel to go on top but now I have tried to cut it, it has crumbled into millions of pieces! I think I will give up, sit down and have a drink........................perhaps thats whats wrong with me, I need a large glass of red!

I will just have to cover the burnt offerings in icing sugar, perhaps they will not notice!

Medieval Festival in Auvillar

Auvillar "d'un plus beaux village de France" in deepest South West France never ceases to amaze me with the events and activities going on. This sleepy little bastide village of around 1000 residents is perched on a hill over looking the River Garonne in the Midi Pyrenees and awakens from is temporary winter slumber in a blaze of glory around April each year.

Inhabitents swell in numbers for the summer and the village rises to the influx of tourists by putting on a show in every sense of the word. This year through the winter the narrow cobbled streets have been renewed, antique style street lamps been repainted and renovation work on some of the old buildings has started in ernest. The first big event of the year was at the end of April when for the first time the village hosted a medieval festival.

Locals, people from neighbouring villages and towns, tourists and pilgrims walking the Saint Jacques de compostelle all gathered to witness the all day spectacle.

Knights on horses, medieval ceremonies including a wedding outside the church, jousting, sword fighting, fire eating and open air plays as well as a medieval supper occupied everyone for the day which again was blessed by fantastic weather. Even the children were catered for with rides on the jousting horses, play sword fights and a set of stocks took centre stage for a while when parents (who didn't need much ecouraging) put their kids in them for the customary photographs.

The next festival (St Noe) is 18th and 19th June where the village celebrates the vine and blesses the forth comming wine harvest in a traditional way. As always its is an excuse for a good old knees up with of course plenty of wine!! Make a date in your diary and check our availability.

Coypu

Living here in France there are a number of wild animals here that we just don't see in the UK. Birds such as hoopoe, hawks and cranes and mamals such as wild boar and coypu as well as many reptiles and lizards. We have seen a lot of them in the garden and most are welcome!

However, recently we have found that the lake is being trashed by an animal and all of the plant life is systematically being eaten which in turn will cause a problem for the fish.

Therefore, I took it upon myself to speak to one of the local farmers to try and find out what was causing the problem. I was told a ragondin (coypu) was likely to be the issue and that he would come and set a humane trap to see what we could catch.

He arrived with a rather large cage of about 1m in length and baited it with apple and maize. After a few days we noticed the trap had gone off and the bait gone, on looking inside we discovered we had caught a moorhen! We let the poor stressed duck go and reset the trap once more.

After two further days, bingo we had our beast! yep a ragondin. We all went to take a closer look at the animal and found that it was much larger than we had expected. It was the size of a very large cat or small round dog. It had the most hiddious teeth, webbed back feet and a rat like tail. In addition (probably due to it being stressed) it made a horrible hissing noise followed by a deep growl! We promptly called the farmer who came to take it away and now the vegitation around the lake is growing back and happy fish once more.

I have not asked the fate of the beast, but like to think the farmer released it back into the River Garonne a few miles away!

Wild Orchids

Being a country girl at heart and loving all things associated with it, I have been amazed this spring with the variety of wild flowers we have growing here in France.

When we first moved into our old house in Newbury Berkshire over 16 years ago we had a number of wild orchids growig in the garden but unfortunately over the years they disappeared, which was sad.

Here however, we are blessed with not one variety, but I have seen three this year and all totally different. In the UK I am sure our garden would be designated a SSSI (site of special scientific interest).

I have checked the web and we have the following

Bee-orchid. Ophrys-apifera. Ophrys-abeille
Green winged orchid. Anacamptis morio. Orchis bouffon
Lady orchid. Orchis purpurea. Orchis pourpré

How exciting, I am on the look out for other varieties now!

Update May 11. Two new varities found today, images uploaded but am yet to find out what they are! can anyone help?