Harvest begins and Summer leaves off
August 31, 2004
At Fred and Kristine's the tomato harvest is in full-swing. This is my adhoc collection of pear tomatoes, the beans are at my feet. They planted 19 other sorts of heirloom varieties but old-fashioned girl that I am, I just prefer the cherry tomatoes. This is evidenced by that fact that I don't appear to have any in my skirt. I have eaten every last one of them.
Earlier that day I had packed my yurt up for the winter and my upperbody ached from lifting yak felt. I was too tired to do any innovative cooking that night.
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Radiostilte
August 21, 2004
Gentle Readers,
Please excuse the radio silence of the Culiblog this summer. I am in the process of buying and installing a yurt and it is occupying my brain and time. The good news is that the YURT is coming Monday August 23, 2004 and will be residing in the Thackara-vanRiet cellar until the rains of November have past and Frederic and I can build a deck for it during the winter holiday.
Because this is a Culiblog I haven't been blogging the yurtischkeit but will begin to do so if I am enthusiastically persuaded. Yurtblog? Yurt and Garden?
Love,
Debra Solomon, the Yurtesse de la portes des Cevennes
Posted by debra at 10:58 AM | post to del.icio.us
Leafy Greens
August 16, 2004
Up here at the Chateau there is no shortage of appreciation for leafy greens. Tonight we eat our salad with rapt attention as Kristine sings the praises of yesterday's salad, plucked by a visiting chef. Claire and Valerie recount that their Grandmere not only goes mushroom hunting but salad green hunting in the mountains. They tell us that they have eaten salads of wild greens plucked from the environs with more than 20 species of leaf.
We sprinkle a very subtle vinaigrette onto Fred and Kristine's homegrown leaves, some bitter, some succulent, some meaty. I eat each besprinkled leaf with my fingers. It is ten o'clock at night and the skies have just opened up their guts. We eat the salad together in contented silence, the 5 us, as a precious dessert under an umbrella'd table in the rain.
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Peach Lessons
August 02, 2004
Janine Digout is going to give me peach lessons tomorrow. We ate these for dessert last Wednesday and I have to say I have never in my life eaten either a peach or a nectarine as delicious and perfumed as than the ones that she served us that night. And I used to live in California! And we had a peach tree growing in our gardens!
Still there is one thing that Occitania lacks (I can only think of one)... Meyer Lemons. If the Langue d'Oc would have this superior sort of lemon it would be in fact the most perfect place on earth.
Please read more... "Peach Lessons"
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le Fauconnier
August 01, 2004
Serge is a childhood friend of Fred (de Kristine) and is a professional falconner. He trains falcons to hunt birds for humans. It seems that falconning is as old as bird eating itself. Hunters would (and still do) 'beat the rushes' - make lots of noise in order to flush out the game birds. Seeing the quail and pheasant au plein air, the falcons would swoop in for a nibble. This inspired someone to teach the falcons to give up their prey for a bit of luvvins and the security of knowing that the grits will just keep on coming. Don't you think that Serge looks a bit like a falcon?
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