Strong Cheese

The French are big in cheese and one of my absolute favourites is a relatively local cheese, Epoisses. This cheese was invented at the beginning of the 16th century by Cistercian monks at L'Abbaye de Citeaux. A good one (like the one in the photo) is runny and very, very smelly, it has quite a unique flavour, due to it being ripened in Marc de Bourgogne - the local fire water and it is truly delicious. Just a little bit of trivia - soldiers in the Naploeonic armies were strictly banned from carrying Epoisses in their bags due to the pungeant smell.

Epoisses is one of the two AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée) cheeses that Burgundy produces, the other being Mâconnais. More cheese trivia for you - there are over 1000 known varieties of cheese in France but only 56 have AOC status.

Our other local AOC – Mâconnais, is a soft goats’ cheese, although I must admit I can’t tell the difference between the ones that have Mâconnais AOC recognition and the ones other local farms make, both are very delicately flavoured delicious cheeses to be eaten the day after production, for a very soft cheese, or kept for a couple of days for a firmer and tastier version. However, you can put the fresh cheeses into in a cheese cage and then let them dry and go mouldy. Depending on the season and depending on the temperature, this mould can be created in less than a week or about a month or so. The longer you leave them the mouldier, dryer and tastier they get. In the photo are two fresh cheeses, one that has been dried for about a week and the more mouldy one has been dried for a couple of weeks. You can eat the dry ones, cut into little bits, to go with your aperitif or you can turn them into fromage fort - a very powerfully flavoured spreadable cheese.

Cees made me a cheese cage a couple of years ago and I use it to dry goat’s cheeses to eat. The photo shows two cheeses just starting their drying in Cees' cheese cage. I also dry left-over bits and pieces in it and then make fromage fort (strong cheese). As with any food worth eating round here, there are as many recipes for fromage fort as there are grandmothers. This is my recipe:

Use any left-over cheese you have, Cheddar, Gouda, Camembert, Brie, Emmental, goats cheese, in fact anything you have to hand, dry for about a week. Many recipes include a leek bouillon, but I found it fussy to make and it didn’t add any real taste.

500g left-over dried cheese
50ml dry white wine
1 – 2 cloves garlic
Salt & black pepper

Remove any rinds from the hard cheeses and grate, leave rinds on the soft cheeses and chop into smallish pieces. Put the cheese, wine, and garlic into a food processor and blend until smooth. Add salt and pepper.

Refrigerate, do not cover. After about 24hrs check for dryness. If the cheese mixture is dry, add a little bit of wine and leave for another day, keep checking and adding wine as necessary and the cheese will be ready to eat after about a week. Adding the wine in small quantities ensures that the final consistency is not too runny and that all the liquid is incorporated into the cheese. The ultimate consistency should be a bit dryer than cottage cheese.

This will give you a very strongly flavoured spread, ideal for aperitifs on crackers. A tip on the ultimate flavour - the longer you dry the cheese and the longer you give it the fridge maturation treatment, the stronger the flavour. I have one neighbour who makes hers with non-dried cheeses and she serves it as soon as it has been made, but her cheese is strictly for wimps !

Bon appétit.

La Tuilerie Website

First Ladies, Style and the Law.

Our new president François Hollande, was sworn in this morning and of course the incoming and outgoing first ladies turned up for the show as well. Looking at these two women, I was struck by how scruffy and rather dowdy Carla Bruni-Sarkosy looked (pictured right) compared to the new first lady, Valerie Trierweiler (pictured below). I think someone should have told Carla to at least iron her trousers and blouse before she went out this morning. But more than that, this horrible outfit also reminded me of an article I read in a Dutch newspaper about a week ago about how women should dress in France.

Apparently on 26 brumaire in the year VIII on the Republican calendar - or 17 November 1799, if you stick to recognisable dates - a law was passed to say that women must dress as women, in other words they should not wear trousers. It goes on to say that every woman who wants to dress as a man must report to the local préfecture and request permission. Whilst this law has been amended in 1892 and again in 1909 allowing women to wear trousers if they are on a horse or a bicycle, it has never been repealed.

So not only was Carla committing a fate style error but she was also, most probably, breaking the law.

Having said that, now that her hubby is unemployed, perhaps they had to go home by bike.

La Tuilerie Website

Interesting Instruments and Great Music.

I don’t know how the small towns round here manage to get hold of such quality musicians, but they do. The jazz festival at Trivy (a town of only 278 inhabitants, containing a beautiful church) was the very first Burgundian music festival we attended a concert at - way back in 2005. At the time, we were still working in The Netherlands and had come for a holiday to make our newly purchased house liveable.

We saw a poster announcing that Biréli Lagrène (a world-famous Manouche guitarist) was playing in this tiddly village, not too far from here and tickets could be bought from a chemist’s shop near Mâcon. So off we went to get the tickets. That was our first experience of the many music festivals this area has to offer each summer and that's why the jazz festival at Trivy has a special place in our hearts. Every year, when the new brochure comes out, we sift through the concerts to see what world-class musicians they have managed to bag. This year we saw the name of Richard Galliano and we knew we had to go.

Richard Galliano is an accordion player who manages to fit many styles into his repertoire and make them all his own. Our experience of the dreadful bands that play at parties around here, where one accordion player managed to play a waltz to a beat box tango rhythm and didn’t spot it until he had been going for about two minutes, has reduced my liking for the accordion, but just a few seconds of Richard Galliano restored my faith. He is a master, it is like he brings the instrument to life and gives it a personality of its own.

The concert started with “Tango pour Claude”, a well known tune that he wrote as homage to singer Claude Nougaro, which is a particular favourite of mine. That set the tone and we were away. During the concert, he also played an instrument called an accordina, which is a cross between an accordion and a harmonica. The concert went from strength to strength and in one piece he managed to form the sound of the sea as the accordion “breathed” - quite incredible.

The two hours, of spellbinding music, just zipped past and it was a sad moment when it was time to go home.

La Tuilerie Website

The Locked Door

The first blow to the economy of Cluny came when Napoleon ordered the destruction of the abbey.

A new and different Napoleon has attacked the town again, by locking this door.

When the state owned abbey was opened up to paying visitors in the 1970s, the exit was strategically positioned to deposit the tourists right in the middle of the main street.

As they walked back to their cars or buses, they would stop, have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine on a terrace or buy a souvenir in one of the many shops.

On May 2nd, all that changed - the door was locked, as government cuts bite.

The abbey wants to keep the tourists all to themselves, it wants them to buy their souvenirs in its own shop and have a cup of coffee from its own vending machines.

So today - election day - the shopkeepers and restaurant owners have fought back. They blockaded the entrance to the abbey, to give it a taste of its own medicine.

Will it have any effect? Will they unlock the door? I don't know, but as our new president's campaign said "Change - is now" and the shopkeepers of Cluny won't take this lying down.

That leaves us all with the remaining, much bigger question, will Hollande be the one to find the key to open the door to a better future for this country?

What do you miss?

This is a question that I have been asked by many people since I left the UK more than 20 years ago.

When I was in the Netherlands, Dutch colleagues and neighbours used to frequently ask what I missed. Was it general interest, something to say or their assumption that not everyone would love all things Dutch that made them ask? I don’t know, but my answer changed over the years. When I first arrived, I had a long list of things I couldn’t buy (or couldn’t find) in the Netherlands and 15 years later when I was about to leave the list had just three things on it, English sausages, marmite and hills. I never got used to Dutch sausages (far too much meat and taste), I could not buy marmite except in very expensive ex-pat shops and I always found the excessively flat and windswept landscape depressing.

Now of course I am in France and the question is still frequently asked. Interestingly I have never been asked by a French person, only by Dutch or English visitors to our campsite or in the gîtes or indeed by fellow ex-pats. I suppose the French could not imagine that there was anything in another country that could possibly be missed by anyone. However, I do still miss things, yes still those tasteless English sausages (no self respecting Frenchman would eat one) and marmite (which is so expensive you need to re-mortgage your house to buy it locally). But now I have added to my list, I have lots of Dutch things I miss, Indonesian spices, sambal (chilli paste), ketchap manis (sweet soya sauce) and the most divine food created by mankind: kroketten.

Kroketten are a deep fried meat snack resembling a potato croquette only twice as long and double the diameter, you eat them in soft white squishy bread rolls with lashings of mustard and each one contains more cholesterol than you should eat in a year. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. As soon as we get over the Dutch border for a short stay, we head for the nearest snack bar and we manage to sink out teeth into quite a few during the time we spend in the country.

After many, many, messy and unsuccessful attempts at making them, I have now managed to create a recipe that actually works and so we can have kroketten any time we like. My what-I-miss list now has one item less on it, just those tricky Indonesian specialities to go.

Last Friday we had to go to Mâcon and as we left a shopping mall car park we spotted a shop called Asia Shop, I did an emergency stop into a nearby parking space and we went in to look. They had been open less than a week and they had shelves full of sambal, Indian pastes, special dried fried onions that are a must for Indonesian chicken soup, not to mention spices galore and Indo Mie. Fridges full of beansprouts, tofu and other veg and freezers full of things like durian. We spent ages in the shop oohing and ahhing over the wonderful things they had on offer and left with a selection of goodies.

So my list is now getting even smaller, just down to sweet soy sauce, Marmite and of course we mustn't forget those tasteless English sausages.

Cooking

I love reading cookery books and recipes in general. I have a bookcase full of books and folders of clippings and I read them over and over again, getting ideas for food and spice combinations and different cooking techniques. I was reading one particular book this morning entitled “Aan Tafel” (“On the Table”) published by Croma, a brand of Dutch margarine. You see, I used to work for Unilever, a large multi-national company that makes food, detergents and personal hygiene products and every Christmas we received a hamper full of the company’s products, which always included a cookery book - using the company’s products of course.

This particular book is about Dutch cookery, it gives many tips about how to prepare traditional Dutch specialities like meat balls, spek lapjes (1 cm thick slices of streaky bacon), touwtjesvlees (literally translated as stringy meat, which is in fact, delicious tender slices of well brazed beef) and so the list goes on, good home cooking, nothing fancy, just tasty Dutch food, eaten by millions, every day.

So there I was, reading this book and I spotted a tip I had never noticed before, about high and low heat. Having worked in the food industry, for more years than I care to remember, I am very interested in food preparation and it is obvious that the intensity of the cooking process, affects the way the end product comes out. Let’s take touwtjesvlees as an example, you have to cook these pieces of meat very high at first to create a deep colour, then you cook them very low for hours, to make them tender. So I was naturally interested what this little snippet would be about. I suspected that it would be about the benefits or effects of using different levels of heat in the cooking process. But no, it was much, much more than I could have even dreamed of and I want to share it with you:

“Whether you cook with a gas, electric or ceramic hob or on an induction plate, the concept of high, medium and low heat is actually the same. High means the highest temperature, low means really low and medium is in-between.”

Stunned by that wonderful pearl of wisdom, I put the book back on the shelf, where it will remain for evermore.

Saturday Night in New York

Our season is now in full swing and Saturday night we were full - both gîtes occupied. We don’t usually organise anything for Saturday evenings, as we are rather limited by the arrival times of our guests, but we had all our fingers and toes crossed yesterday that our guests would arrive before 5 o’clock, because we wanted to go to New York for the evening. Our guests arrived at 3 o’clock, so we managed to get to the New York Metropolitan Opera House in time to see the evening’s performance of La Traviata.

Our connection to New York was via a live HD video link from the Met itself, beamed into the panoramic cinema screen at Chalon-sur-Saône. While we waited for the performance to begin, the screen showed images of the inside of the opera house, looking towards the stage as if we were in one of the circles, watching the people in the stalls finding their seats. What a magnificent place the opera house it is. Then - lights down - action.

As the orchestra struck up the overture, Violetta appeared in a red cocktail dress and sloped across the stage and I thought oh no a modern version and my heart sank. A combination of why can’t we just listen to the overture without this distraction and why can’t they stick to the “proper” version was going through my head. Having said that, I was very quickly immersed in Willy Decker’s version and I was most impressed with what he had actually done with it all. He managed to capture the essence of the story in a modern(ish) setting, leaving the décor very simple and introducing some spooky elements. He upgraded the doctor to a star position by doubling him as a sort of Grim Reaper figure who hovered around whenever Violetta had a downturn and, in all but the last scene, there was a huge clock ticking away the last hours of her life. Although I did find it odd that he totally downgraded all other parts to almost nothing.

Natalie Dessay (Violetta) had a rather shaky start in Act 1 vocally, but she regrouped in Acts 2 and 3 in which she did a superb job and Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo and Dmitri Hvorostovsky as his father did a stunning job throughout. Although Violetta is supposed to be the star of the show, it was Alfredo all the way for me, he sang beautifully, he acted beautifully and I was totally convinced at all stages that he was Alfredo.

Then, after a wonderful evening in one of the world’s best opera houses, we just had to drive half an hour and we were home. This won’t be the last time we are going to New York for the evening.

Our gite Website

Easter Sunday

I vowed last year that I wouldn’t go to the Taizé Easter Sunday service. Not that it wasn’t a great service and to be honest the excitement when everyone chants out Easter greetings in their own language from around the church as the bells start to ring at the end of the service, is a most moving experience. What it was, was the crowds. Taizé is crowded throughout the summer starting from now, but it was so crowded last Easter, that, for the first time ever, I felt scared. The Red Cross had a heavy presence in the church, but by the time the service started, they could no longer move around, all the gangways were blocked, as well as the emergency exits and with everyone wafting candles, I just didn’t feel safe.

This year, we did go up to Taizé, but this time as tourists, to watch what goes on around and outside the church. Something you don’t see if you go to a service. We arrived “early” (9.30 for a 10.00 start) and the church was comfortably full when we walked in to look. As you can see from the photo above, there was little floor space, but it still felt safe. I moved from door to door to look inside, but when I got to the front of the church, I was

confronted by the door “guards”, who told me I couldn’t go in as it was full. They sent me and the others trying to get in, towards the back of the church, but by 09.40, all the doors had been closed and no one else could get in. This is the first time I have seen this, at last someone has come to their senses. It could have been the Red Cross who had laid down the law or some other health and safety body, but at last the church was not going to be dangerously overcrowded. But what do you do with the hundreds still outside?

The brothers had set up a large tent near the church - with icons and candles and screens, small benches and hymn sheets and candles, just like the church itself - for the overflow. Sadly the youngsters blocking the doors to the church, were not directing people to the tent until quite late on. It was left to people like me, to tell those wandering around looking lost, where to go. There were many young people who didn’t make their way to the tent, they probably felt they could squeeze in when the door guards went in to the service, but they were to be disappointed as the doors lock shut, only allowing people to exit not enter. There were also lots of locals who arrived too late to get in and they just turned around and went home, which was sad for them. There was probably only room for about 300 in the tent, which was not really enough for the number of people we saw walking around trying to get into the church, so maybe it was better that not everyone tried to get in.

By the time we left around the start of the service, the tent had filled up, but I do wonder what the atmosphere in there would be like, I also wondered how the Easter candle would enter the tent, but we didn’t stay to watch - maybe next year. The moral of the story is, if you want to get into the church and get anywhere near the front, nine thirty is already too late.

La Tuilerie Website

The World Is Full of Smelly Feet.

The name of a children’s hymn, with such delicious rhymes in it as “hold your nose and wash those toes” - all intended to engage children in the story and symbology of the Last Supper, where Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. Jesus' intention was to show that neither he, nor anyone else, is above such lowly tasks and so the Christian church, around the world, conducts feet washing services on Maundy Thursday to remember. Taizé is no different and as it was Maundy Thursday, I decided to go to their version of that service last night.

In preparation, I searched the Internet to see what a feet washing service was all about. In general a Bishop (or senior church official) washes the feet of twelve parishoners. I found useful tips on how to run a feet washing service: make sure you have the bowl of water and washing and drying cloths handy - makes sense; tell women not to wear stockings or tights - also logical, you don’t want a strip show. But then I came across one comment “For the people whose feet are being washed: Instruct them to come to the service with clean feet in clean footgear”. Excuse me? Are you saying to these people "the Bishop is going to wash your feet, but you can’t expect a man of his importance to be confronted by the reality of the task"? Well if the afore-mentioned bishop is not prepared to “hold his nose and wash those toes”, he shouldn’t engage in this sort of charade. But I digress.

Back to Taizé. I had expected Frère Alois (the main man) to be up at the altar and to see him wash the feet of 12 of the brothers. Well I was wrong. Firstly, Frère Alois may be the brother who assumes the tasks of co-ordination, of being the main focus to the outside world, but he is just one of them, the "primus inter pares" - a difficult concept for those of us who live in a hierarchical world. In any case, when it got to the feet washing part of the service, twelve brothers went up to collect their feet washing gear (Frère Alois among them) and they then split into four groups of three, one with a wash cloth, one with a bowl of water and one with a drying cloth and they then proceeded to wash the feet of the other brothers. Well, it wasn’t so much a washing, more a dab, dab, wipe, wipe. Maybe the brothers involved, either as washers or washees, felt a deep symbolism in the whole thing, but I hate to say it, it was rather lost on me. Maybe I was too concentrated on wanting to know if they had been told to wash their feet before-hand or not.

Having said that, going to a communion service on the evening that the Last Supper is celebrated, had a certain extra meaning that I hadn’t expected and certainly for those wanting to take part in the Easter services at Taizé, it is a much less overcrowded way to be involved than by going on Sunday.

Happy Easter everyone !

La Tuilerie Website

Party Time In Cormatin

After two weeks away, we waded though our mail and found a slip from Madame La Poste telling us to collect a letter from the post office. Visiting the Post Office in Cormatin is a traumatic experience. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to do this will back me up on this one. The person who runs the show is rude, offensive, speaks at 750 km per hour in a high squeaky voice, intimidates even the most weathered Post Office goer and the woman in grossly inefficient to boot. I have long given up using the Post Office in Cormatin and I go to either Saint Gengoux le National or Cluny instead. But of course, letters and parcels are left at the nearest Post Office and so needs must.

After breakfast on Friday, I plucked up the courage to go and what did I find when I got there? The Post Office was closed. On closer inspection it was in fact closed FOR EVER ! Oh joy, at last, the long promised Post Agency was to arrive to be manned (or womanned) by the super efficient and very, very nice Fréderique, who worked in the Town Hall when Virginie was ill. Yippee! The minor inconvenience of having to go to Saint Gengoux to get my letter or wait until Monday paled into insignificance in comparison to this news.

On Sunday there was big party in Cormatin. We were treated to the following meal:
Pastry puffs of chicken with a mustard à l’ancinene sauce, followed by coquilles Saint Jacques with shallot cream, apple sorbet covered in Calvados, veal steaks with walnut sauce along with bundles of bacon wrapped haricot-verts and duchess potatoes, we continued with a plate of three cheeses and a light cake with cassis flavoured mousse, topped off with coffee and liqueurs. The white wine was Clos de Montrachet from the Vignerons de Buxy and the red from Domaine de Thalie in Bray (just down the road) and dessert was served with crément de Bourgogne. Not to forget the delicious nibbles Bernard made for the aperitif which was white wine with red fruit juice.

OK so maybe I am fantasising that this meal was to celebrate the closure of the Post Office, it was in fact the Old People’s annual dinner to which Cees is invited, now that he is over a “certain age” and I can go too (as a paying guest) but it did seem to be a very happy coincidence.

Monday morning came and we just had to go to visit our new Post Agency. Even though they had spent all day Friday and Saturday making alterations to the inside of the building, we didn’t notice any difference when we went in. But the smile and welcome we received were really refreshing. On top of that, Fréderique did her utmost to help us and everyone else that we saw in there. Even though she couldn’t help everyone to their satisfaction (the main computer had locked out and she was waiting for a new code to get access) she did it all with charm and friendliness. What a breath of fresh air. This will certainly save me some petrol, because I will be doing all my transactions in Cormatin from now on.

La Tuilerie Website

The Circus Came to Town

Every year a travelling circus visits Cormatin. We see the posters go up a couple of days in advance, then the trucks roll into town and the tent goes up. It is a family affair, Mum, Dad, the kids and the grand kids and it is very small-time. Due to an overabundance of embarrassment at not having small children to take with us, we have never gone, but this year we steeled ourselves and decided to go anyway and see what they had to offer - we weren't disappointed.

We parked near the Plan d'Eau (the fishing lake) and walked towards the circus tent. The first thing we saw was a small hump-backed cow (a miniature version of the ones you see in India) a very long horned cow, a lama, a goat and lots of chickens. My mind boggled what they were going to get the chickens to perform, or maybe they were just there to feed the other animals?

There were 36 chairs set out in the small Big Top for the audience, so the circus company obviously didn't have great expectations as to the crowds they would pull. We took our seats and waited. Some friends, who had come with their 4 year-old grandson, told us it was only for little people, which prompted a remark from Cees about my height, which I won't repeat. Indeed we were the only adults that turned up without very small children, the average age of which was about 3.

The show opened with a horse, who trotted round the ring in one direction, then the other, then the other, then the other etc etc, then it left. Next were little girls who did a little bit of tumbling. I must say that if they were my kids or grand kids I would have been very proud, but... The whole thing then started to really hot up, on came the ferrets, who wiggled in and out of some sticks and up and down a tube. The hula-hoops next - that girl really shouldn't wear a leotard it is not very flattering... On to the tightrope walking cat - oh yes this circus had it all ! The belly dancer (with as much belly as me to dance with) invited the local nurse to join her in the act, something she came to regret, when a boa constrictor was put round her neck. Then the finale, the goat who climbed to the top of a tower.

Absolutely brilliant, I haven't enjoyed so much in a long time.

La Tuilerie Website

Crime-Free Zone

One things we love about living here is the total lack of crime. We have been away on holiday and forgotten to lock our doors and indeed we have some friends who didn’t have any locks on their doors at all for the first five years they lived here, they only went out to buy some locks when they were going away for a month and thought it prudent not to leave the house open for that long ! We don’t have a policeman in town and we rarely see the boys in blue, except when they set up a speed trap by the chestnut tree. So imagine our surprise when we saw three policemen, two police cars, a security agent (identified by the word SÉCURITÉ in huge letters written on his back), a security agent’s car and lots and lots of people milling around late on Tuesday afternoon.

We were on our way to the library where Mlle B, the mayor’s secretary, manages the town’s motley collection of books. So we asked about the heavy police presence in town. Mlle B looked baffled, this is not an unusual reaction from her, we do seem to cause more than our fair share of confusion for her and the other town hall workers by asking weird questions. Fortunately the deputy mayor was there and he chipped in, quite disappointed that Mlle B did not know about the hottest gossip in town in the last two hundred years. Some one had tried to rob the new bank machine, the previous night.

The bank machine is Cormatin’s pride and joy, or should I say the mayor’s pride and joy, as he had been trying to get one installed in town for the last 10 years and finally succeeded just two years ago. We were all so proud of this achievement that a party and opening ceremony was held in its honour, with a representative from the French government in attendance, yes it was THAT big an event.

Anyway, the bank machine is installed in the wall of the town hall and the money is held in a locked room where the town jail used to be (maybe there was crime around here once upon a time). The town hall is in a relatively uninhabited part of town, except for Monsieur M, the recently retired Guard Champetre, who lives in a flat above the town hall itself. He was woken up at about 1 am by the sound of an angle grinder, he looked out of his window and saw some guys trying to break into the bank machine, he called the gendarmes, but the thieves escaped empty-handed (in a dark coloured car) before they arrived.

For whatever reason the bank were not been able to remove the money from the machine on Tuesday or Wednesday and only managed to send someone to empty the machine about mid-day Thursday. So what do you do if you have thousands of Euros in a damaged bank machine in the criminal capital of Burgundy? Yes that’s right, you put a plastic garden chair next to the machine and you hire someone to sit there day and night, with SÉCURITÉ written in big letters on his back, just in case the bad guys come back. If the security guard needs to go and have lunch or just to stretch his legs, what does he do? He leaves the chair and the thousands of Euros unattended and un-amazingly they are still there when he gets back. I love this town.

La Tuilerie Website

Roche de Solutré

Last Sunday was the first Sunday in the month and this is when lots of museums are free or have reduced entry fees. One museum in particular we have wanted to go to for ages is the Museum of Prehistory at the base of Roche de Solutré. The temptation of a free visit has kept us from going during the week and for whatever reason we have never managed a first Sunday in the month until this weekend.

The rock never ceases to impress me, as you stand at the base looking up. Since our last visit, they have built a nice new car park, even though it is a bit difficult to get in and out of and to be honest it is nowhere near big enough.

When we entered the museum, we were given a audio guide device, which you can have in any language. We really like these gadgets as they allow you to get in-depth information about the exhibits at your own pace. On this occasion, the English voice was a female non-native speaker who stumbled over a lot of words, and words like Palaeolithic and Neanderthal caused serious problems, which is not too clever when those are the sort of words used rather a lot in a museum of prehistory. Another very annoying thing, is that the everything in the museum is laid out right to left so 2,000,000 BC is on the right and 1,000 BC is on the left, it took me ages to match the commentary to the exhibits, it just shows how pre-programmed we all are at reading everything from left to right.

The museum continued outside, quite why I am not sure, as there was nothing in the commentary that had to be said outside. The dreadfully small steps (shorter than the length of my huge size 2 ½ shoes) that undulate up and down outside did not help our mood or enjoyment of the views, constantly having to watch our feet so that we didn’t fall over.

Back inside and I had given up on the irritating woman doing the commentary and I went to play in the kids’ section, which was actually fun and interesting.

Overall, I am glad it was free, but to me the whole thing was a missed opportunity, far too much boring detail on what is actually a very interesting subject. Our mood dampened by the cool and cloudy weather and the uninspiring museum, we put off the walk to the top of the rock and went back to the car.

As we walked along, we were greeted by a paraglider who was swooping over the rock. We had more fun watching him zipping back and forth, catching the thermals, than in the whole of the museum. We went to retrieve our car, as he landed nearby. Having seen signs to a different car park, we decided to have a look at it. This second car park is much bigger and nicer and has a stunning panorama over the area and it is only 200 metres further away from the rock. It made me laugh that all these visitors preferred to park on the side of the road, half in ditches, or in the cramped car park, rather than walk the extra few metres, when the whole reason they had come here was to walk to the top of the rock !

The paraglider had actually landed in this second car park and as I took a photo of the magnificent view of Roche de Solutré and Roche de Vergisson, he was packing up his kit in the foreground.

Next time we come, we will choose a sunny day, we will avoid the museum and we will climb the rock.

La Tuilerie Website

Pruning Roses

I love pruning roses, I don’t know why, as they are tricky, prickly little devils, but I enjoy it anyway. Hybrid tea roses are the ones I am most familiar with as this is what we had in our garden in Ickenham, when I was a kid. Now I have quite a selection of different types, scattered all over the garden and I have never been too sure what to do with some of them, particularly the climbing and rambling roses.

The beautiful, red, persistent flowering, climber by the entrance to the toilet block (in the photo) has been a worry to me as it only seems to flower at the top, but over the years I have slowly got it to flower lower down, by guessing at what I should do. So imagine my excitement when there was a FREE rose pruning course at the rose garden in Cluny last weekend.

The poster said that there were two courses, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, bring your own secateurs. It was obviously a way to get all the roses pruned in as short a time as possible. A case of “We tell you how to do it for free, then you prune our roses.” Not a bad idea I thought.

I arrived with my secateurs on the dot (I know I should have learned by now that all things start late in this country, but I am chronically “on time” - I just can’t help it) and then the few of us that were there, hung around getting cold, until the bulk of the people turned up. A rose grower and breeder had come up from near Marseille to do the pruning session and he had other ideas about using amateur, slave labour to prune the precious roses he had supplied to the rose garden. He did all the pruning himself, talking as he went, explaining what he was doing and giving loads of tips along the way.

It was a cold morning and many people drifted away, perhaps bored by the lack of action, but I was transfixed. I told him about my climbing rose and what I had been doing to get it to flower lower down and to my great surprise and pride he told me I was doing exactly the right thing ! I was also thrilled to find out that all my rose pruning techniques (mostly based on gut feel rather than anything else) were the text-book French way of doing things, so now I can confidently prune our clients’ roses without feeling that I might be doing it wrong.

Even though I do look rather cold in the photo, I really enjoyed those couple of hours. Thank you Mr Rose Man.

Film and TV Awards

With the Césars yesterday and the Oscars tomorrow, film and TV awards are very much in the news, as are we I might add. We are getting very used to being followed by TV cameras after my recent blog and so it was no surprise, when I was collecting tickets at Mâcon station, that the TV cameras were there to register the moment. After I had discovered that I had brought the wrong reference number and retreated in embarrassment from the ticket office, the cameras decided to move on to the platform and film people getting off the train.

As I was being filmed on the platform, watching people getting off a train, a rather handsome, slightly tanned gentleman said “Bonjour” to me and I replied with “Bonjour”. All of this was caught on film, for posterity.

Last night we watched the news and there we were again, not quite shown on the TV. However, Monsieur Jean-Pierre Bel (the chap who was filmed with me on the platform and who just happens to be the president of the Senate) was shown drinking wine in a local wine cooperative, walking round Cluny and then laying a wreath on Madame Mitterrand’s grave. The cameraman must have followed the wrong car because he missed us having lunch in the Chinese in Mâcon and our meeting of the Guitares en Cormatinois last night.

Sadly Monsieur Bel’s real 5 minutes of fame - talking to me on the platform of Mâcon Loché TGV station - was left on the cutting-room floor.

I am putting myself forward for the next film and TV awards, as the most almost on TV person of 2012.

La Tuilerie Website

Friday Night Reflections in Taizé

With the French half term holidays upon us, Taizé has sprung into life again. The last time so many people have been on the hill, was the half-term holiday in November. In these two half-terms they have special short weeks for the younger school children attending, to give them their first taste of what Taizé has to offer.

It has taken me back in my thoughts, to the very first service I attended at Taizé, way back in 2006. One of the campers wanted to go to a service, but didn’t dare go alone (her husband wasn’t interested) and I also wanted to go, just to see what it was, but also didn’t dare. So the two of us went one Friday evening. I had no idea what was going to happen and of course I didn’t know at the time the significance of this service, it was all so new and strange.

So what is Friday evening about? The service is a normal Taizé evening service, with a little extra at the end. After the service is over, the iconic cross is laid flat on the floor in the brothers’ “garden”, the brothers gather around the cross to pray, then exit as usual. At that moment, gaps are made in the hedge surrounding this area and anyone who wants to, can go up and pray at the cross, next to the cross or laying their head on the cross. For my first Taizé service, I had dressed in a smart skirt, well I was going to church wasn’t I? I hadn’t realised that church wear in Taizé is rather casual and I regretted my decision when this point of the service arrived. Basically you queue up on your knees and effectively crawl towards the cross. I must say it was rather painful on the rough carpet, so for anyone planning to do it, my advice is to wear trousers.

But where does this idea come from? Apparently on Good Friday in Russia, it is a common practice to hold a prayer vigil in front of a cross. At Taizé when there were Russian youngsters present, the brothers noticed that on every Friday night these Russians would gather and pray around the iconic cross. On questioning them, the young people invited the brothers to join them, saying that they were praying for their friends in prison. The practice of praying around the cross was officially adopted into the end of the Friday night service in the mid to late 70s. The cross was originally vertical and people used to walk to the cross. The young people started crawling to the cross in the early 90s, why I am not sure and why the cross is now horizontal is also a mystery, but it certainly makes the whole thing a unique experience.

So with the introduction of Prayers Around the Cross, a Good Friday had been introduced into every week. What was more logical then, than to introduce an Easter into every week? Hence the birth of the Saturday night candle service. Both of these services are special in their own way and I can well imagine that they give a very special and reflective ending to a week in Taizé.

La Tuilerie Website

We were on TV….

…and it is all to do with the snow.

OK I’ll explain. As I have written numerous boring times, we are creatures of habit. We do our shopping on a Tuesday. We go to Cluny late Tuesday morning, we do our shopping in the supermarket and then we do various other tasks (Post Office, bank etc) in Cluny high street and then we have lunch at the Petite Auberge. Well this week, with the onset of the thaw, it started to snow and it snowed a lot on Tuesday, no trip to Cluny - we are not braving our track and the road into and out of Chazelle in the snow - so we had to go shopping on Wednesday instead - the plot thickens.

On Wednesday the Petite Auberge is closed, we could have chosen the Bosfore kebab shop but we didn’t, we went to Café du Centre (Chez Sisi) instead - don’t worry I will get to the point in a minute. We sat down, ordered our lunch and one of the owners came in with two men and they started talking - I know it is getting a bit too exciting isn’t it? Then a woman came in with a camera, a big TV camera with France 3 written on the side and she started filming. So there I was eating my quiche Lorraine and chips and being filmed !

Last night we watched the local news and yes there we were, well there you could imagine we were, after all that filming and interviewing, there was a 2 second clip of the outside of the Café du Centre and we were inside at the time.

Now, isn’t that a brilliant claim to fame?

La Tuilerie Website

Freezing Churches and Big Lunches

After Fifi’s proclamation last week that spring is nigh, the temperatures have plummeted and we are freezing cold here. Night time lows of –14 and daytime highs of –5.

Last weekend was the local celebration of Saint Vincent, the patron saint of winegrowers. The parade was due to kick off at 10.00, but by 09.30 our thermometer was still at –14 and even though the wind had calmed down from the day before, it was not a temperature we wanted to be out in for too long. We decided to wait a while. At 10.15 we thought we would set off for the church, where the parade was due to end and a mass was to be held, rather than following the whole procession. I went prepared - two tee-shirts, one fleece, pyjama trousers under my normal trousers, two pairs of socks and a ski jacket. After 10 minutes outside the church, I wimped out and went in, ostensibly to save us a pew (very thoughtful of me) but Cees, being made of sterner stuff, waited outside the church to take photos as the whole concoction arrived.

The service was as strange as I remember last year’s, not like a CofE service where you are given full instructions about what is supposed to be going on. Round here you are just given a few hints on a piece of paper, as to what might possibly happen, no prayer book, no hymnal and I have now decided (after being to a few masses) that basically you have to be psychic to fill in the gaps. It was not helped by the fact that the priest didn’t bother to follow the order of service we had been given anyway. The singing bits were very short, fortunately, as they were all in a very uncomfortable key for me and to be honest they lacked a followable tune. Give me a gusty version of anything in the English Hymnal or a simple gentle Taizé song any day. The “pièce de résistance” in the service, is the opening and closing where the hunting horns play a loud, long and very rousing tune, to welcome us into and guide us out of, the church. Knowing that this would happen, I positioned us well away from them so that we could enjoy them this year, without damaging our hearing !

After the church had truly frozen our bones, we skipped the glass of wine in the village hall and went home to warm up and change out of our excessive amount of clothing, ready for lunch. We arrived on time for lunch. I know, I can’t help it, I am incurably “on time” and I really can’t cope with arriving late, even after all these years here. Lunch was due to be served at 13.30 and so we arrived at 13.00 to make sure we would get a place next to our friends and as you can guess, there was no one there. There were so few cars in the car park, we genuinely thought we had the wrong venue and started to panic a bit. But no, the hall was decked out for about 200 diners, just no diners in sight yet. By about 14.00 most had arrived and our aperitif was served at 14.30.

I did ask what was in the aperitif verrines (little glass cups), but the waitress didn’t know however, she assured me there was no fish. One had tuna in and the other was crab, fortunately my next-door neighbour has good taste buds and she stopped me eating either of them. The starter was pâté en croute de chevreuil, not bad, a bit too much croute (pastry crust) and not enough pâté de chevreuil (venison pâté) for me, but tasty enough. The next course was a ramekin of frogs legs with mussels in cream. A strange combination to say the least and very tricky to eat, if the messy attempts of my fellow diners was anything to go by. I had a sort of chickeny thing which defies description. After that, the meal really picked up, it was time for the Trou Bourgingnon. This is sorbet ice with the local firewater (Marc) poured over it, to drill a hole (trou) in your stomach to make room for the main course - very nice indeed.

The main course was veal in a Gaston Gérard sauce and potatoes “macaire”, both of which I had never heard of before. It turns out that Gaston Gérard is an ex-mayor of Dijon and like another famous mayor of that town (Kir) he has a recipe named after him. What else would the sauce be but Aligoté (local white wine), mustard and cream and it was truly delicious. The potatoes also turned out to be quite exquisite, but I have failed to find a recipe that vaguely resembles what we were given, which is a great pity. The potatoes we received were like potatoes dauphinoise with pieces of chestnut crumbled between the layers - truly divine. All of this was followed by cheese and then panna cotta as dessert and, as you would expect, every course had it own matching wine.

We finally finished our lunch with coffee at 19.00 and rolled home, not noticing the cold so much any more.

La Tuilerie Website

Spring is on its way

Yesterday was Candlemas, French pancake day or more commonly known in the English speaking world as Groundhog Day. I didn’t realise that Groundhog Day was taken from Germany to the United States and the original tale was that if a hedgehog can see its shadow on February 2nd then there are 6 more weeks of winter to go. According to the English weather lore:

If Candlemas Day is clear and bright, winter will have another bite.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, winter is gone and will not come again

Yesterday was cloudy, so hooray !

It is a bit difficult to believe that spring is on its way when it was –10 degrees last night and it is not predicted to go above zero until mid next week, but you either believe or you don't.

Sadly we are rather lacking in the hedgehog department (they are all still hibernating) and in the groundhog department (we don't have any), so we have to trust our cat and she could definitely not see her shadow on the 2nd so I believe her. Roll on spring !

La Tuilerie Website

Bingo and Bugnes

This weekend was the annual bingo weekend in Cormatin. The Saturday is the day we play all the “external” cards (a BIG thank you to everyone who contributed by buying cards from us) and Sunday is the day of the real bingo, when more than a hundred people, who travel from near and far, come to play for some very nice prizes. It is a big event financially for our little club and one we needed to be a success as our finances are getting quite precarious.

We have had an unusually warm January this year with no snow and precious little frost (only 7 days as opposed to the usual 25), so imagine our thoughts when we awoke on Sunday morning to see it was snowing. Are the weather gods out to destroy our club ? How many people were going to turn up for the bingo if it was snowing ? The prizes cost about 1,700 Euros, the ladies had spent all Saturday afternoon making 1,000 bugnes (small deep fried doughy things, a speciality of Lyon), so you can just imagine how much money we stood to lose. Memories of the October organised walk ran through my mind. Just to remind you of that dreadful event: the day of the walk was the only rainy day in October and instead of 300 people coming as usual, only 23 turned up, which meant we made a huge loss.

Anyway, we took all the prizes over to the bingo hall in the morning as planned and crossed our fingers as the sky went very dark. Fortunately, in the end, the bingo addicts did turn up, not as many as last year, probably only about 90, but we made a healthy profit over the whole weekend.

Interestingly one of the big success stories was the bugnes that we had made. They sold like hot cakes and by the second pause we had run out. All thousand of them went and people kept coming back for more. They actually contributed 50 of the 750 Euros profit we made during the weekend, not bad for a lump of dough !

Michèle our Bugnes Baroness from Lyon has kindly given me the recipe for me to share with you all. Try them covered in lots of icing sugar, the more the better.

For roughly 300 bugnes.
1 kg flour
8 eggs
150g melted butter
120g castor sugar
4 ½ sachets of baking powder (approx 45 grams)
3 sachets of vanilla sugar (20 – 25 grams)
2 pinches of salt
small glass of rum
milk

Mix all ingredients except the milk together, then add milk, whilst kneading, until the whole mix makes a firm, but flexible homogenous ball. Leave the mix overnight at room temperature, in a bowl covered with a tea towel. You will then have a sticky and difficult to handle blobby mix.

Flour a kitchen surface generously and break off about a quarter of the mix and roll it in the flour until you can handle the mix enough to roll it out. Roll it out until it is about 2 – 3 mm thick. Then using a pastry cutter, cut the pastry into diamonds about 8cm long by about 2 cm wide and roll the cutter down the middle of the diamond to cut a hole in the middle.

Deep fry in hot oil until they are golden brown. If they don’t puff up pretty quickly the oil is too cool and if they go brown quickly the oil is too hot.

Let them drain on kitchen paper and serve covered in icing sugar. They can be kept until the next day after frying if required, but if you do that, make sure they are not stacked too densely otherwise they will go a bit soggy.

Now doesn't that punnet look rather yummy? Enjoy !

La Tuilerie Website