More Odds and Sods, but mostly food...

What's been going on recently in your life?

Sandwich jambon-beurre

I might not be in Britain, but I can answer the Daily Mail's cri de coeur: "Is there no one left in the UK who can make a sandwich ? Or rather my youngest can. He went off on a school visit to Lac de Salagou with a Festive baguette-jambon-beurre, as requested. No tomato, no lettuce, no pickle. Just ham and tasty raw organic butter. The ham came from Hyper U. No one's perfect... The Festive baguette sarnie is one of the simple pleasures of living in France, and certainly better than an industrial triangle in a plastic box full of salt and fat that those poor Hungarians were being brought in to make.

Still on the subject of food, I actually bought a couple of paper recipe books recently rather than print off the net. One is the Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon and the other is YumUniverse: Infinite Possibilities for a Gluten-free, Plant-Powerful, Whole-Food Lifestyle by Heather Crosby. Not that I'm either gluten-intolerant or a vegetarian, but I like variety, and my DB would prefer to eat as little meat as possible. Both books are written by successful food bloggers whose recipes I've tried and enjoyed, with lovely appealing photos. Funnily enough, both women came to veganism after years of eating extremely badly resulting in increasingly poor health that popping pills did nothing to cure.

The YU book is a guide really on how to incorporate more plant-based food into the average diet. It has sections on the importance of soaking beans, grains and nuts to remove anti-nutrients, how to sprout, how to cook with new ingredients, how to make it all happen. It's quite a challenge to change habits and it's only by taking it in small steps that you avoid reverting to the old ways after a few months.

She gives recipes for homemade spice mixes (Ethiopian, Chinese, Taco, Chai etc.), different sauces and vinaigrettes (Kale and Walnut Pesto, Cashew Sauce, Sweet Potato Sauce, etc), sandwich ideas (Smoky Lentil and Dill, Crispy Eggplant, Sprouts & Tomato, etc.), snacks, and so on. This weekend I soaked some mung beans and amaranth to start sprouting them, and I've just put some pumpkin seeds in a jar of water as I add them to salads almost every day and didn't realise they should be soaked.

I also made a soup from Angela's OSG book: 'on the mend spiced red lentil-kale soup' which was surprisingly tasty. You can find the recipe here. It looks really simple, but the flavours blend together beautifully. I also made her black bean burgers which I forgot about in the oven so they came out rather well cooked, but crumbled perfectly over a kale salad that my DB was delighted to eat after driving back from his Zen retreat in Toulouse.

Talking of Zen, my yoga classes are going well, but I don't think I'm ready for one of the full-on weekends they organise. My DB is taking a couple of Zen courses in town and has been on two Zen weekends. One was too religious-based for his liking while the other concentrated more on meditation. I enjoy yoga for the physical element and the peace, but the group yogi is president of the southern France yoga association and she gave me a magazine to read to encourage me to join and go further into yoginess. It was a bit too much for my superficial taste...!

To help us in our pursuit of regular walks, I bought a couple of blue 1/100,000 IGN maps of the region - the ones that show GR routes and other paths. I love maps and spent some of the weekend poring over them. In searching for the link, I came across a site called VisoRando where you can create an itinerary based on these maps! Just what we need!

At the other end of the health spectrum, we spent part of the weekend the other week at Domaine Puech at the Weekend Cave en Fête where we ate charcuterie, cheese, and oysters, drank the Noémie red wine and were très merry. The producers of the cheese, charcuterie, oysters, champagne, and Alsatian wine were there all weekend and available for tastings. We ended up buying... cheese, charcuterie, wine and oysters. The oysters were 7€ the dozen, so I bought two (dozen). We had a feast on Sunday night!

On a sadder note, last week I had to take my cat to the vet after he developed an abscess in his mouth. He was kept in overnight to have it drained, and came home wearing a plastic Elizabethan-style collar to stop him scratching. He's not pleased at all. It comes off on Thursday, and not a day too soon as far as we're all concerned.

When I bought my sofa a few years ago, I didn't expect it to be so badly made that the back would be falling apart after a bit of rough treatment from the boys... I paid about fifteen hundred euro for it so it wasn't exactly cheapo crap. This weekend my youngest and I turned it on its front (where you put your legs) and I cut the material underneath to reveal... bad quality wood held together with STAPLES! Honestly, it looked like an amateur had thrown it together on his first day at a furniture-making class. My son got out the No-Nails glue and, while I held the sofa up, he gunned the glue into place. While he was working away, we had this conversation:
Me: "Oh it's so nice to be doing this with you. It's really cool that you volunteered to help and didn't have to be press-ganged."
Him: "It's only because I didn't have anything better to do..."
Me: "Hey, don't spoil it...!"
That put me in my place! We left the sofa upright with the packet of cat litter, a dictionary and four books weighing it down over twenty-four hours. Today, we put it back in place, and lo, the sofa-back is no longer wobbly! Result!

So that's what's been going on in my life. Living on the edge as ever...

Birthday Vendange

I have never felt so knackered on my birthday! Instead of going on a bike ride to Spain, to stay in a nice hotel and eat out, I responded to the SOS from Christophe of Domaine Puech to help with this year's vendange.

We've had some truly atrocious weather this last week. Torrential rain pounded down, dumping several months' worth of rain over one day, so the ground was squelchy and soggy. The grapes had to be picked quickly before they started rotting in the still warm weather. I rushed out to buy some wellies as I'd thrown out all my old shoes recently and, call me vain and superficial, but I didn't fancy wrapping my shoes up to my knees in a bin bag and string.

Domaine Puech grenache vines

Dinky vineyard tractor and trailer which had to be filled with grapes

I joined the pickers several of whom were from our electoral team, for lunch after an hour's zumba (not sure that was such a brilliant idea as it turned out...). Everyone was gathered for an apero and then sat at one of those classic long tables under a huge tree to eat cold roast chicken, Mme Puech senior's excellent chicken liver pâté, and salad, with the Domaine's own olive oil and vinegar. It was simple and tasty. The talk was about the Scottish referendum vote, with general satisfaction expressed about the result.

After cheese and dessert, we drove to the vineyards. The vines were heavy with multiple bunches of grapes.

Grenache grapes

We joined a number of other pickers who were there to be paid. The rest of us were volunteers.

Grape pickers

I had taken my gardening gloves and a bottle of water which proved to be an excellent idea as it was very warm and I sweated buckets. I had sweat dripping off my brow and onto the grapes. If there's a salty taste to this year's wine, look no further for the culprit! We worked the rows two people at a time, one on each side. I was paired with another volunteer who very kindly carried my bucket full of grapes to empty it into the tractor and thus gave me a short break.

Christophe Puech's photo of me busy picking

As you can see, it's back-breaking work. I spent a lot of time squatting to save my back, but of course I was forever having to move along the row so had to keep standing up. The next day, I rediscovered the muscles at the front of my thighs... with a vengeance.

At the end of three hours I looked like this:

Note air of exhaustion

Everyone knocked off at 5pm and I was invited to join the team back at the Domaine for some refreshments. I followed two tractor trailer loads.

Tractor full of 1 1/2 hours worth of picked grapes

Another trailer full of grapes, picked by the sweat of our brows

The grapes were emptied into this big container and pushed through the screw that separates grapes from stalks.

Grapes being screwed :)

On the other side of the wall, a machine separates out grape juice from stalks and pips, and this is collected in containers. I'm not sure what it's used for - compost I would think. I forgot to ask. If anyone knows, please comment below.

Stalks and pips being dumped into containers

Meanwhile, the juice is pumped into a huge vat. There was a lot of juice, and this vat was getting pretty full.

Vat full of fresh grape juice

Before heading home to a refreshing shower, Christophe called us volunteers into the cave and gave us each a case of six bottles of wine. This was a lovely surprise as I hadn't expected as much - a bottle perhaps - and I chose to have their red wine to herald in the autumn.

It was definitely a memorable way to spend my 51st birthday!