Don`t forget the Rennies, Mum!

As I was saying yesterday, you have to be a hearty eater to appreciate French hospitality at Noel!  Not that I am for a moment complaining, mind. We have eaten all sorts of tasty and exotic food at the Christmas meals over the years, for example sanglier (wild boar) and ostrich!  This year, the Christmas menu was a little more down-to-earth, but equally delicious and equally challenging for the digestion. It went like this:-

     Aperitifs Peanuts, crisps etc with very assorted drinks.
     Entrée No 1  Choice of salmon or oysters. See photo on right.
    Entrée 2 Slices of foie gras with fruit.
    Main course Chicken cooked in Vin Jaune, duchesse potatoes in white sauce, with morilles, green beans tied in little bunches
    Cheese course
    Desert   Buche and /or mince-pies
    Coffee + digestif....

 A sterling test for anyone`s digestion, especially as loads of wine was offered to accompany the various courses. Incidentally, oysters are one of the few French foods I cannot bring myself to eat. I have eaten snails(in fact we ate them during this stay) I have eaten frog`s legs, I have even eaten andouillettes though only the once, but oysters `transcend the outer confine` as Kai Lung expressed it. It`s bad enough that it looks like a watery sneeze in a sea-shell, worse that it is raw, but the crowning horror is that it is still alive!!! You put a squeeze of lemon on it and the poor thing flinches. No, oysters are way beyond my limit for things that are even vaguely edible.. Garfield the cat advised `Never eat anything that is on fire` and it`s good advice, but I have eaten Crepes Suzette all ablaze and it was far superior to those disgusting oysters!!  Luckily, not all the French are that keen and an alternative of salmon was chosen by almost half the diners.

   Our contribution to the feast was one of the cheeses, a goat`s cheese sur feuilles that some of the northerners particularly like and some mince-pies prepared by the delicate hand of Mrs Noah herself, as evidenced above.
  Well that`s enough food thoughts for today--it`s made me feel quite hungry and I`m off to find something for tea
     
     Bye for now!

A Week with the Ch`tis.

Regular readers of this blog ( I believe there are one or two) may have noticed we have been off the air for a week. This is of course due to the fact we have been enjoying our annual Christmas visit to Lille, in the extreme north-east of France to stay with our good friends Cécile and Patrick. Cécile we have known since she came to stay with us at Plymouth as a sixteen-year-old étudiante, and Patrick a few years less when she married him. In fact Kim`s first visit to France, and the start of an on-going love of the Country, was to attend their marriage. Then as now they and their family made us so welcome that we can heartily endorse the reputation of the Ch`tis, the people of the north, for friendly hospitality!

  But lets start at the beginning, the trip up. It is no small problem of logistics to transport ourselves, the three dogs and a load of presents some 630 kilometers to the north-east. When I add that this is done with our old Peugeot 106 the feat is even more remarkable. The brave little car has done a total of 356,000 kilometers, that is nearly nine times the circumference of the earth at the equator!  Still it took us up and back with no fuss at a minimum cost in diesel. It is in fact the driver and passenger who need a little more cosseting than in earlier years, so we now break our outward trip in two with a stay overnight at a Formula One hotel near Orléans. Above is a pic of Kim enjoying relaxing after the drive. We decided to eat at a MacDonalds in the evening, which we often do if we are en route. I was pleased to note that the female clientele were as sleek and svelte as French girls usually are. We stopped two years ago at a MacDonalds in Montlucon where nearly all the girls were excessively plump, most peculiar! Ever since I have checked them out...
  Splitting the trip in two enabled us to arrive mid-afternoon and to enjoy the company of our friends without excessive yawning or longing glances at the stairs leading to our beds. They have a very large and to us most luxurious house on the outskirts of Lille. Mind you, most houses appear luxurious to us as we live in a rather old-fashioned way without benefit of central-heating etc, The house needs to be large, in fact as the couple have their  two sons and one daughter still living at home, and  Cécile`s mother lives in a separate annexe.
   Christmas at Lille demands a certain fortitude-- the meals are copious and long-lasting and only those with good digestive systems should brave the course! Both Cécile`s and Patrick`s families are large and Christmas  gives an excuse for not only one but two separate banquets with more than twenty guests seated at table, an excuse eagerly accepted by the French,of course!

   Tomorrow I will continue with an account of how we ate for England!!
 
   Bye for now.
 
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A Very Merry Christmas to all Ark followers!!

  I would like to send warmest Christmas greetings to everyone who has shared in the voyage of the Ark this year. It has been quite a trip, from timid beginnings and I seem to have amassed a huge heap of postings, some more memorable than others. The Ark and it`s crew and passengers are in good health now and are looking forward to the festive season (or at least the crew is, the passengers will have to take it as it comes).
   Talking of memorable, what is your earliest memory of a Christmas present? I would like to share mine with you.
  Bear in mind that I was born during the war - do I have to clarify which one now!-- in 1942. After the peace there followed a time of austerity in England when you could not just go out and buy what you wanted, even if you could afford to. My parents obviously had difficulties in obtaining toys and I received the extraordinary present I shall now describe, possibly home-made by my uncle.
   Imagine the flat-bottomed hull of a liner, shaped out of a solid log and painted green. About 18 inches long. In the centre of its deck an oblong hole had been cut at the bottom of which was attached an ordinary mouse trap. A dowell was inserted in the side of the boat at `sea-level` which, when pushed set off the mouse trap. On top of the set trap you placed a plywood deck and on top of this were placed wooden blocks representing the deck-houses with a mast and a red Cunard funnel on top.
  You must imagine then the jaunty liner sailing on its carpet sea. I could then retire to the other side of the room and roll marbles at the ship trying to strike the dowell. When I did the trap sprang, throwing all the deck-houses, mast and funnel in the air in a most satisfying way--the ship had been torpedoed!
   Thinking back, perhaps this was a bit non-U for wartime, just as well the war had finished. Perhaps my uncle `liberated` the present from the Germans or the Italians? In any case, I had hours of fun with it and its memory is even more durable  due to the painful whacks I received from setting the trap if mis-handled. Would not have passed health and safety tests nowadays!
     Still, it has left vivid memories over 60 years later, so it must rank as a highly successful gift, must it not?

    Happy Christmas to all!  Bye for now!

Jilly--Progress Report

I am very glad to report that Jilly seems to have made a complete recovery from her malaise, whatever was the cause. She has had no more symptoms since the Sunday over a week ago, and we are gradually reducing the tablets the Vet gave her. These should be definitively removed in another couple of days, when she can be pronounced fit and well. We are really pleased to have her back on top form again!

Bye for now!

A Dog`s Day.

It started the day before.  Although feeling non too festive, Kim and I went to an annual dinner of our handicrafts group. It was very pleasant, but very French, in that we spent some four hours at table and left, stuffed to the gills at after midnight. At that we were the first away, for all I know, the others are still eating! We fell into bed at one in the morning.
  During the night I kept hearing odd movements downstairs, and at four o`clock Jilly started to whine. Normally when she does this she needs to go out, it doesn`t happen often but it is better not to ignore it! I went downstairs and took the dogs into the cour but Jilly just walked round and round so I put them back in the entrée where they sleep. I noticed a damp patch near the door but thought nothing of it.
  When I came down at eight, I found Jilly lying near the door. She seemed unable to rise for a moment and had been dribbling, hence the damp patch. Then she got up and seemed normal but it soon developed that she was far from well, wobbling and falling over. I called Kim, and she soon asserted that the dog was having fits. She would suddenly convulse and lose her balance. Yet she ate her breakfast with her usual appetite.
  We decided to call the Vets, even though it was Sunday(it always is when there is a health crisis!) and Pierre, the Vet de Garde said he`d meet us at the clinic in Chef in half an hour, which meant a rapid dressing and 20 minutes drive. Jilly`s condition was the same, and when Pierre examined her, he felt she either had had a minor brain bleed or was developing epilepsy. He gave her some Phenobarbitone tablets to calm the brain, and we have a follow-up appointment on Wednesday.
  We took Jilly home, but the fits continued and worsened, so we rang Pierre again and he said to give her four more tablets, a total of seven, sufficient to knock out a horse. After a time she gradually improved, but she had given us a rare fright, we really thought she was dying.
   By mid afternoon she was more or less back to normal and went on he walk, on the lead, of course, without any more fits, and since seems to be her old self. She is still taking the tablets, until her vet visit tonight when we shall see what the Vet advises.
   She looks so normal that it is difficult for me to agree that she has suffered a stroke.  My theory, which the vet and Kim do not believe, is that she ate something the day before when she ran off during her walk as she sometimes does. When she returned her breath smelled funny as if she had eaten something rotten. Or perhaps some toadstools?  The only problem with my theory is the long delay till the symptoms appeared. Well, we shall see, the important thing is that she has now recovered. Long may it continue!!

   Bye for now.

The dreaded plague!

  Sorry to report that the personnel of the Ark are assailed by a horrid cold and are far from feeling on top line. If you have noted a lack of posts lately, I must plead incapacity. We went to a handicrafts reunion with friends last Wednesday and were given a little souvenir we could well have done without!
   Kim went down with it almost immediately and as she tends to be chesty, it affected her badly. I was congratulating myself on my greater fortitude or resistance, avoiding it for several days, but spoke too soon and developed a  sore throat etc a couple of days ago.
  The extent to which the lurgy has sapped the confidence and optimism of Kim can be judged by a little incident this morning, which I hope she will not be upset in my sharing. I was sleeping soundly towards morning, when I felt a hand on my forehead and found an anxious face peering at me from a few inches away. Kim explained that she could not hear me breathing and was checking that I was OK. It`s lucky I am a quick waker up, as I suspect the next thing I would have felt would have been a violent bang on the sternum and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! You never know with these ex-nurses!
   We are both gradually recovering,I hope, with the aid of Humex, and I hope to be able to give better news next issue.

      Bye for now, going to blow my nose!

Stoke it up!

One of the nicer aspects of Winter is that the stove is lit. You can see on the right our wood-burning stove in all its glory. It is an old Franco-Belge with a cast-iron top cooking plate and is shown in the act of cooking a tasty dish and heating two great kettles of water. What you cannot see is that it is also keeping the kitchen warm, typically at 23degC and spreading its heat throughout the house. The smoke and waste heat rises up the stove-pipe which  you see in the photo, and then goes up the stone chimney which acts as a storage radiator.
  It`s also easy to manage, once you have got used to stoking a wood-burner. The firebox, located under a hinged plate under the frying pan takes large logs up to 30cm long. Once the fire has been lit in the Autumn we usually keep it going till the Spring. Most of the original controls have disappeared or jammed and I regulate it by the size and number of logs inserted! Last thing at night I put on the largest log it can hold which smolders until morning. When I come down, to a warm kitchen, I give the embers a good poke to clear the ash a little (not too much, a wood fire needs an ash bed) ,open the ash door at the bottom to increase the draught, and add small logs or sticks if it`s a little low. Once it is going merrily, I add larger logs and close the draught.Once a week or so, I take out the ash tray underneath and dispose of the ash, it goes well on the garden. Once a day I carry in a good armful of logs. Really,it`s as simple as that!
  However, it does have its moments, if you don`t know what you are doing. If re-lighting it from cold, it has been known to send up a column of choking smoke through the log door instead of up the chimney and it is very difficult to stop it, short of emptying a pan of water on the fire and starting again! I have learned to pre-warm the chimney with a hot-air paint-stripper...Kim used to be terrified of it and it reserved its worst behaviour for her!
  The nice thing about the cast-iron cooking surface is that it offers graduated heat. A pan or kettle  boils quickly on the left, just above the fire, and can be progressively moved right for gentler temperatures or simmering. There is room for LOTS of pans on the plate.
  The final advantage is that wood is cheaper than oil or gas and is a green fuel, beloved of conservationists. And I just like the feeling of not using irreplaceable fuels.
  I will admit it does cause dust and wood has to be bought, stocked and sawed. Everything has its downside but taken by and large, I`m glad we use wood.
    Bye for now, going to stir a tasty stew simmering on the stove!