Diner en Ville

Last night's Marche de Producteurs was better attended than last week's. The weather was splendid and easy to spend a long evening eating out with friends. The program featured traditional music and dances from the Pays Foyen. We were looking at the dinner selections when some French friends spied us and came up to invite us to join them. So we ended up having an excellent meal and improving our French.

Best Ribs in the Universe

At least that is according to the Weber website where we got the recipe. We have not found short ribs in the grocery stores in France although if you go to a butcher I am sure they will cut them for you. But in Brussels we found pork ribs that we bought to smoke. RXC prepared the meat with a spice rub, used plum wood in the smoker, and we finished with a sauce with a bit of heat. They were delicious. Instead of coleslaw we had celeri remoulade plus a ratatouille. Great meal. And at the exact time we were having our ribs we were communing with Karen and Pete who should have been at Park Avenue.

Evening Concert

Once a year le chateau Rabouchet which is about 10 minutes from us, opens its park for a concert. Last year France was celebrating its shared heritage with Canada and a group from Nova Scotia performed the musical traditions of Acadia. This year a woodwind trio composed of a French oboist, a Swiss bass saxophone, and a Russian clarinetist played a wide range of music from opera to contemporary. The program is arranged and supported by our Department, the Gironde. After the concert, the chateau offered wine and hors d'orvres. This event, like the marche du producteurs was not as well attended as last year. I am beginning to think that perhaps there are fewer tourists in the region this year due to the economy.

The Summer Activities

There are so may markets, music recitals, sporting events, and fairs organized throughout the region during the summer that you could exhaust yourself trying to sample them. Last year our favorite was the marche du producteurs which occurs on Thursday evenings in Ste. Foy through the end of August. The town sets up tables and chairs in a square along the Dordogne River. Then small producers come in with their carts and sell/prepare regional specialities. Local foods are showcased so that you can make a dinner of duck, eel, a locally grown assiette de crudites, bread, wine, cheese, and desserts buy visiting the different vendors and buying a sample. Some vendors be here only once but some be here for the whole month. Different bands perform each week and play late into the night. This week the evening was perfect, cooling down after a heat wave we had been experiencing. The marche was not too well attended, but I suspect that as the weeks pass more people will discover it and attend.

Petillant Sort!

We drove up to the boat yesterday afternoon because we had arranged for Petillant to be hauled first thing this morning. We wanted to be there to see the effects of 2 years in brackish and salt water and a crossing on the hull. There was quite a bit of slime but surprisingly little hard growth although we were getting a good crop on mussels on the bow! The bottom was in good condition and still quite blue and lots of paint to spare after the power wash. The boat will be painted and new zincs put on and go back in the water on Thursday. RXC found a problem with the GPS which spread to the autopilot which now needs to be fixed before we do much sailing. Time to upgrade the electronics maybe?

The Week in Belguim

Last Monday, we drove to Brussels to spend the week with friends. What should have been a 9 hour drive became 11 hours when we got to the border and met the Belgian dairy farmers who blocked the auto route to protest milk prices. We stayed at a great hotel in the St. Catherine neighborhood where there were interesting restaurants and shops. There were day trips to Brugge and Ghent, tours of chocolate shops and a factory, eating the best fries in Brussels at maison Antoine, and having good food which of course means mussels. The drive home was even worse than the drive north as most of the Dutch and Belgians were leaving their courtries for the sun and beaches of France. We had to get off the auto route twice and finally took a small road through lots of towns for the last 3 hours home. All in all it was a good. More photos will be at http://www.flickr.com/photos/petillant

All Is Well With Petillant

We took a quick trip to the boat yesterday. We had not been there in 5 months. We did no winterizing so there was a nagging worry that something may have gone wrong as the winter was colder than usual. But RXC started up the systems and everything worked right away: no leaks, no cracks. We also made arrangements to haul the boat and get the bottom painted and the zincs changed. That will happen a week from Tuesday and we plan to be there when she comes out of the water.

It was interesting the see the marina post economic crises. There were many. many empty slips. Just about all the slips in the marina are sold, many to investors who were renting them out. I think a lot of people who were renting the slips have taken their boats out of the water and are storing them on land so the slips are now empty.

He is So Bad

The new skylight window installed in the roof is at least 7 feet up. I opened it today as we were moving things into the loft and it was getting warm up there. While eating lunch, I noticed I had not seen Dante in awhile. Two hours later I still had not seen Dante. I knew he was in the house and all of the windows were closed, so while suspicious I though he may have found a new hideyhole. Well Mr. Dante managed to jump up and out the skylight and got himself on to the roof. He must have been there for several hours. When RXC went to the barn he heard a piteous cry, but where was it coming from? Looking up, he saw Dante usually full of himself, quite cowed by his current circumstances sitting on the lower roof to the porch. Isabelle was the first to give him comfort when he got down.

Celebrate I'm Legal

After 21 1/2 months I finally received my Carte de Sejour yesterday. A tortureous process in which my application to become a resident in France was lost, they separated me from RXC (actually they made him single), trips to the prefecture in Bordeaux, trips to the local Mairie, a medical exam again in Bordeaux, and 300 euros later I am entitiled to stay in France until Feb. 5, 2010 when it needs to be renewed. Ah France.

The Garden

Despite the fact that there has been little rain this summer, our garden is very productive. It is amazing that such a small amout of space (compared to what we worked in WV) produces about 3x the food. RXC harvested the shallots the other day and once again the yield was much more than we have managed in the past. We did get several truck loads of cow manure at the start of the season, so perhaps that made the difference. Our tomatoes are very close to being ready and there are masses of fruit on the plants. I think we disappoint the vendors at the market that we regularly bought from last year because we need very little from them.

Ready to Move In

The team that sanded the floors upstairs and then polyurethaned them worked on Saturday and Sunday. Shocking to our French neighbors. But the loft is finished and ready to move things into as soon as we are sure the coatings are fully dried. They applied 3 coats to give the floors a lovely sheen and lots of protection. They recommended that we wait 2 days before taking furniture upstairs. That means tomorrow we can begin to bring bookcases and my quilt table up. Yesterday we filled the new bookcases in the hallway and were pleasently surprised to find we had enough room to hold all the books we could locate. I am sure there are more books in the dining room or living room among the many boxes that are piled up everywhere.

Repas sur le Pont

The bastide town of Ste. Foy has 2 bridges across the Dordogne river and both lead to the larger town of Port Ste. Foy et Ponchapt. Once a year the towns organize a bring your own repas, meet at the town line, and eat sur le pont together. It is an evening to go somewhere with your family and friends, see your neighbors, chat, share food, wine, and of course there is animation (literally translated as liveliness). On our evening out there was a country/celtic/line dancing club who performed.

We organized ourselves so that each couple brought a course but we ended up sharing food with our neighbors at the table which expanded our menu. There was an aperitif and we ate poached Scottish salmon, melon, pesto pasta salad, tomatoes and mozarella, fruit salad, chocolate gateau, and coffee. A fun experience.

We Can All Relax Now

While I am sure over the next few days there will be some clean-up work to do with the publisher, THE BOOK IS DONE! All files and images were sent off by COB yesterday. We went out with friends last night and cracked open a bottle of champagne.

Of course there is the small matter of Book 2, but I'm not going there right now. Besides most of my part is written.

Ma Route a Velo

A pattern has developed in which there is a ladies group cycle somewhere near Bergerac one day a week and then a cycle to town for a morning coffee with one of the cyclers who lives close enough that Ste. Foy is a good mid-way meeting place. Because it is so hot these days, we are meeting at the cafe earlier in the morning so we can get home by noon. The countryside is beautiful between the house and town and here are a few of the views along my route.