Dieting

It seems the French do get Fat after all. It also seems as though they are getting fatter and obesity is becoming a big problem.  Every other French person seems to be on the Pierre Dukan diet. This Doctor Dukan is the god of diets with thousands of followers including some of my friends. If you look on Google you will soon see how popular he is.

As I seem to have tried every diet known to mankind I have been reading his book and am now going to try  to lose those four extra kilos which always follow me around. It is a mixture of various ideas, starting with an attaque for the first week or so when only protein is allowed along with oat bran and yogurt for breakfast. This is followed by the addition of green vegetables to the protein for a number of weeks and then the re-introduction of pulses and fruit and even bread. People swear it is successful and easy to follow although there are critics who maintain it is not healthy or sustainable. One has to go on the attaque,  the word for getting started with a bang, and the holy grail of a perfect weight, is only a few weeks or months away depending on your starting weight.  After reaching the goal weight, one is obliged to keep up the two spoonfulls of oatbran for breakfast forever and return to a protein only day each  Thursday. This is to ensure  you do not relapse. In French if you fall of the wagon so to speak it is a craque. 

So I am about to attaque and hopefully not craque!!!! Should I include a before and after photo of me??? Maybe a photo of my cat Matilda and some croissants is a better idea.

Mushrooms

I am in Brittany with Sabine. It is the hunting season in France and yesterday we went hunting, not for killing, but for gathering mushrooms. Not any old mushroom but the highly prized cepe properly named Boletus Edulis or somtimes the Bordeaux Cepe. But first a picnic at Lake Guerladan which is near the  forest of Quenecan owned by their friend Stephane. It was a perfect sunny autum day. I made some pumpkin soup which we carried in a big heavy pressure cooker to keep it warm which we drank from mugs. This was followed by boiled eggs, ham and other goodies.

We drove along a private road through the forest and started looking for mushrooms. There were plenty of poison or undesirable ones but the cepe was very elusive. The forest was exquisitely beaufiful, with tall trees with moss covered trunks and dappled sunlight falling on the damp soft ground. I have never seen such leaf mold and it was inches deep. It was also the exact same shade of brown as the cep. Sabine found one and I found two, tiny but very rewarding. We also found girolles and pieds mouton two other edible types and a beautiful mauve coloured one. Gilles found the most enormous cep so it was quite a good hunt. We ate the cepes for dinner and they were delicious.

our one big cepe

Mushrooming is something every French person seems to do. Many of them are poisonous and every year there are some deaths reported. Every Pharmacy has someone who can identify them for you if you have any doubts about your pickings.