General Witterings -
Rosy's Christmas

The weather went, came and went.  TITS (the standard abbreviation for That Is To Say) the ice was melting on the 23rd, it froze very hard on 24th, but in the evening a warm wind blew up, and the ice was totally clear on the 25th.  I cycled off for the Christmas food shopping on the 24th.  I've re-grown a beard, and haven't experienced bearded living in the cold before.  The beard froze, and cracked and crackled as I smiled or spoke.  People are speaking about it being below -10°.

One shopping mistake.  I needed some salt.  Salt = sel, so I assumed gros sel was describing the large size of the packet.  Non!!!  It was something I've never seen before - granulated salt.  Anyway, it seems to work OK.

I'm afraid that the pure lemon duck plan was abandoned.

(Veggies should find something to occupy their minds with for the next few lines).

I oiled the bottom of a baking tray, and covered it with a layer of thinly sliced apples.

I got a duck - or at least a large breast of duck - and sliced it, putting more sliced apples between the slices.

Par-boiled some potatoes, carrots and kohlrabi, and put those in the baking tray.

Sliced a leek, and a bit of fennel and an onion and scattered them over the top together with 5 or 6 finely chopped cloves of garlic.

Juice of a lemon.  Dash of balsamic vinegar and a noggin of red wine.

The whole covered with foil, put into the top of the oven for 30 minutes, and lower down for 2 hours.  The result was a pretty peachy Christmas lunch.  Plus lunch the next day - which finished off all the duck, potatoes, kohlrabi and carrots.  Hence on the third day, I whacked all the bits and pieces into smaller bits and pieces, heated them up (there was plenty of juice) and thickened it with ground oatmeal.

In the evening, Rex and I had been invited out.  We are moored in a canal basin, next to a road (a 'back' road, that carries very little traffic).  On the other side of the road is a row of very substantial houses, built in the early 19th Century.  Some have a short flight of steps leading up to the front door, but Simone's (where we were going) has the door at pavement level.  The front door opens directly into the main room, a very good sized room, with an original wooden staircase leading upstairs, the upper rooms being supported on substantial, exposed beams.  The floor is red tiled, though the tiles in the front half of the room are substantially newer that those at the back - suggesting that the current house is built on the site of a previous building.  Several gorgeous oriental carpets were scattered on the floor.

Some paintings were on the wall, painted by Simone's late husband - oils, fairly basic (primitive?), of canal scenes and bridges around Briare, all easily recognisable.  And a display case with fishing flies that he had tied.

"Champagne?" asked Simone, an opening conversational gambit that generally heralds a good evening!!

Rex had brought Jess, who hadn't been for a walk, and was a bit bouncy.  He'd also brought a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, which had a night light holder and candle (tea-light for American readers), which we lit.  Jess had not seen a candle before, so she shoved her nose into it.  A yelp, and half her whiskers burnt!  THAT quieted her down.

We went to the back of the house - a large 'farmhouse' style kitchen.  (Beyond is the scullery, and beyond that is a tiny garden.  As is common in France, the house has a larger garden 2 or 3 minutes' walk down the road, though Simone does nothing with it).

Needless to say, the food was scrummy, and a bottle of red and a bottle of white were opened and ready.

A dozen snails.

Some turkey meat, rolled up to enclose some fungi, including a touch of truffle, and (I suspect) some of the inside bits that us English usually discard.  This was served with small pieces of boiled potatoes in a white, cheesy sauce.

Then some ice cream.

Then the cheese.  Yummy!!!!  A camembert, with a gingery looking crust.  It had been doctored, in some way, with calvados, and was at exactly the right maturity to eat.  Plus another Normandy cheese, a flat, round one, about 9 inches in diameter, with a black rind.  More.  MORE!!

Sadly, the liqueurs were produced.  Prune.  It is still possible, in France, to take your own home brew wine (or whatever) to an itinerant distiller, and have it turned into strong hooch.  I always have liked fancy lickers (oops!!  Sorry) liqueurs, and they have often been my downfall!!

I managed to keep myself together whilst Simone showed us her glasses.  She has three styles of glasses for fine brandy.  The first is the standard balloon.  The second was like a full bent pipe (like Sherlock Holmes smokes) made of glass.  The bowl has a flat base, so it can stand on the table, and is rounded, so you can hold it in your hand to warm the brandy.  The stem leads out from the base of the bowl, and you suck up the brandy through it.

The third was like the bottom two-thirds of a glass bubble, with two indentations in it.  In the palm of the hand, the indentations are placed such that they naturally coincide with the middle finger and thumb.

I keep looking for the small flute glass, and the straw coloured brandy, as described in 'Brideshead Revisited', but no such luck yet.

Anyway, after the prune I started to fall apart, so staggered back to Rosy, a drink of cold water and bed.  I started feeling roughly OKish around about 4pm on Boxing Day.

Toodle pip!!

Bill