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.

Gaillac Wine

Gaillac vineyards

Wine tasting on a forty one degree day may not be ideal, but we brave intrepid gang of four did just that yesterday.

My French Prof Christophe told me he discovered a new wine recently. It is on the wine list of a newly opened restaurant; Cafe Joubert at Fraysac. I had offered to take two English women staying in Labarthe-Bleys this week to a winery so Domaine de Brin was a natural choice. Christophe just happened to want to go there as well so he was our chauffer.

Damien Bonnet is referred to as "le jeune homme" and he does indeed look just that. But he is  26, a qualified oenologist with his studies followed up by experience in various wineries. The 2008 vintage is his first on his own without his father and they are worth talking about.

We first looked over the winery, discussed his philosophy to vineyard management, the efficacy of cement tanks, new and used French oak, yeasts, fining and all those other interesting things which certainly make my approach to wines more personal.

Braucol

But the moment of truth is in the tasting. I did not tast the rose but all agreed it was very fruity and neither "jammy and sickly" nor too acidic. I was most interested in tasting the white, Peirres Blanches, which is a blend of two local grape varieties,  Mauzac and Loin de l'Oeil. Unfortunately he did not have enough left for a tasting but I was able to buy a few bottles and one of them is in the fridge, but not, I am sure, for long.

The reds were of most interest to me. The first was Vendemia, which is the word for vintage in Occitan, the old language of the south. A pleasant wine but not what I was looking for. The second Anthocyanes was another matter. It has seen some oak but it was not overpowering and even at this early stage in life is well balanced with a lovely nose and lots of fruit. It is a blend of the two Gaillac AOC red varieties, Duras, and Braucol. The Duras is said to provide the spice and the Braucol the berry fruit flavours. This is a wine I expect to improve be suitable for cellaring. I doubt it will last long in my cellar though.

The last but not least red was the Brin de Temps. This wine is much fuller, again with well integrated oak and fruit; a lovely smooth well balanced full bodied wine as the experts say. The nose led me to expect just what I found on the palate, always a good sign for me. I guess this is the real find of the day for long term storage. It is a blend of Duras, Braucol and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Anyway it was a delightful morning despite the heat and I look forward to drinking them in more favourable conditions. Tonight at dinner with some friends in fact.

Bed and Breakfast

The first guests in my new Bed and Breakfast  suite last week were very happy with their accommodation and I am looking forward to receiving many more guests. I can provide accommodation on a nightly or longer basis.   My breakfasts are just great with shining silver and linen napkins, fresh juice, and the best butter croissants all for the mini price of 55 Euros including breakfast. The internet can be accessed in the house or garden. I have also just advertised my house for a long term rental for this European winter and a month or so next summer on a site called Long Lets in France.

Village Green Labarthe-Bleys

My home, La Grange, is a pretty restored stone barn in the tiny hamlet of Labarthe-Bleys in the Tarn. Located near the medieval town of Cordes sur Ciel within the Golden Triangle of Albi and Gaillac it is perfect for exploring the ancient bastide towns in the area, discovering the history of the region and wine tasting at the local vineyards. The locals are very friendly.

Wedding

Garden surroundings

 

Garden setting

 

Bride and father of the bride

Last Saturday and Sunday I went to my first wedding in France. My neighbours son married a gorgeous girl called Isabelle. If a picture is worth a thousand words why write. Here are some pictures of the wedding and the garden where the celebrations took place.

Bride and Groom

Cocktail Hour

 

 

Karen, Peter , Me

George and Me

Happy Couple

Sunflowers

It was Saturday night, 9.45. I was watching Detective Lewis solve a crime on TV when the phone rang. It seemed as though the TV had been transported to my living room when M said “ it’s dark now we can go and steal some sunflowers. Are you up for it?”   “Are you serious, I replied”   “Sure am she said. Do you want to come?”. “ Sure do, said I”.

Armed with torch and secateurs I whizzed up to her place and we were off, but where to? There are fields of gorgeous sunflowers everywhere. We decided the closest was best. She was for going into the thicket so we would not leave evidence of our burglary but I was all for a swift roadside raid.

I ventured into the field with trepidation wondering out loud about snakes and M responded; “there are no snakes here, this is not Australia”. Choosing sunflowers by torchlight is not as easy as one might think and I was mindful that we were taking someone’s livelihood as these are a cash crop beautiful though they are.  As the huge leaves I snipped off the stems fell to the ground I laughed as I asked “do you think these might have DNA on them. M replied “that’s why I’ve got gloves on, but when the police arrive at your house in the morning waving leaves”!!!!!!!!!! Seeing the lights of a car across the valley I remarked that I hoped they would not come our way. M said “is it the sunflower police”?

The last time I ventured into bloom burgulary was twenty or more years ago with my dear friend PK. We cut long stems of the wonderful January flowering Hedychium, or ginger lily in a park in Vaucluse in Sydney. He, being a gardening genius knew where the best ones grew. Each summer when I go back to Sydney I look for them for sale by the stem in the fruit stalls in Kings Cross.  Two or three will perfume the whole house.  But for now though in summer in the Tarn it is sun and sunflowers.

Apero

Apero

In the tenth century at the Abbey St. Michel in Gaillac some monks planted the first vineyards of what is now the Gaillac Wine Appellation. Last night I went wih my English neighbours Anita and Ray to an apero at this ancient Abbey.

Come for an apero! The French shorten the word aperatif to apero when they ask you round for a drink in the evening. This habit of shortening many words or worse turning lots of phrases into acronyms means a foreigner like me has to almost learn a third language in order to get along linguistically.
Every second Friday night during July and August there is an apero in the garden behind the Abbey. For the princely sum of five euros you can buy a plate with olives, cheese, salami and chips along with a ticket for two glasses of wine. Then you find a table and chair and bask in the wonderful evening light on the banks of the Tarn River and listen to the band play and watch the French dance. They dance at every opportunity. No matter what the music, it is the same dance and I swear every one of them can dance at birth. A different band plays each week. Last night it was Salsa.  It could be New Orleans Jazz or Country and Western. About two hundred people can fit into the grounds and it is always crowded with young and old.  There seems to be no age bar at social gatherings here, unlike Australia and also I'm told the UK where neither oldies nor children are truly welcome.
While the young and not so young danced or gossiped, the children played happily in the tiny vineyard "garden" planted in the grounds. Anita commented that in England they could well be classed as "out of control" .  French children are extremely well behaved and as they are taken everywhere with their parents from birth they are very well adjusted socially.

It was a great evening and watching the dancers and the happy faces of the crowd reminded how much my small enterprise Vin de Tarn  has to offer for visitors to this area. My groups become more like family rather than simply clients or tourists during a lively busy week here in lovely Labarthe-Bleys. They get to experience a real Taste of the Tarn on evenings like this.