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Marmalade and Moodboards

Welcome back, or welcome to the blog if this is your first read.

How has everyone’s week been? We have had a marmalade filled week – more on that shortly. The weather has warmed up a bit outside but with it we have discovered a new characteristic of our French home. It is so cold inside that the windows steam up from the outside! Quite funny really. What with that and experiencing chilblains for the first time in my life – we are truly living the dream! I did, however, find our first hellebores and primulas have flowered – a lovely sign that Spring is on its way.

This week has been a mixture of more admin, as ever, along with work, dog walks, house planning, mood board creating and as I suspected last week, log stacking. The kittens continue to grow in size and confidence and ability to get everywhere. They are now jumping up onto every surface – quite alarming at times – particularly an incident with Raoul, the mantelpiece and the large mirror hanging over the mantelpiece. Raoul worked out he could jump from the dressing table onto the mantelpiece and having spotted a cat in the mirror (him) started trying to climb into the mirror – all a bit heart-stopping. We moved the dressing table to stop that fun, only for him to discover he is now big and strong enough to make the jump from the floor to the mantelpiece! No harm done to him or the mirror but a bit stressful. The girls are getting friendly with Bear who is slowly adjusting to his new pint-sized friends! He is desperate to play with them but they haven’t worked out how to do that yet – safely. There is still, and will always be, a massive size difference!

We are trying to set up our healthcare space online, having, as you know, finally got our numbers. Easy you would think, but no. Each step we take finds us back in contact with our local office to find out why we can’t move any further. At first I went to ‘Create your account’ which is where you would think you would need to go to set up an account – again no. You have to click on ‘sign in’ and have a provisional code to go any further. When I phoned our local office, a very helpful lady said of course she could send the provisional code by text, BUT NOT two codes, one for each of us, to our one French mobile. For some reason that is not possible and sending one of the codes to an English mobile ‘Impossible’; so mine came by text and Max’s is coming in the post. Armed with my new code I set up my account (hooray) and I then tried to upload bank information, a photo, anything, yet again no – my details are being looked at so I must phone the office AGAIN. The bureaucratic saga continues. One day….

Last week I mentioned that we had been reorganising a bit. This week we have been walking through the house relooking at plans and mood boards for colour schemes in each room. I took a little time out this week to join a webinar run by Sophie Robinson on ‘The Psychology of Colour’. I know about this from a marketing perspective (brand design for example) but less so in terms of interior design. Fascinating and inspiring – it was great to spend an hour immersed in something creative. I am very interested in interior design (possibly a missed career) and am enjoying having such a big project to work on. Sophie Robinson works from the basis that you should identify what feeling you want to create in each room and choose colours, textures, etc., from there. The colours and moods take inspiration from nature’s seasons. Perfect and sort of what we have been doing, but great to get a different perspective on it. We are putting together mood boards for each room and I am also trying to see if I can create them electronically using Canva (an online graphic design tool) – fun.

A sneak preview of the wallpaper for part of the séjour.

I have continued making marmalade in the evenings this week, having fallen under the spell of so many citrus fruits to choose from at the market. We now have a medley of 3 different types of marmalade: 5 fruit, bergamot and blood orange. I am ridiculously happy with all of them and basically want to eat toast and marmalade all day! As the fruit is so fresh and hasn’t travelled too far, the flavours are amazing, which is certainly evident in the finished products. The bergamot is quite different and not so sweet but a lovely marmalade and the blood orange – divine.

My friend Debbie, back in the UK, has been making marmalade alongside me using the same recipe, virtually of course, so we have been comparing notes and photos. She loves the recipe too and as my chief tester found it very easy to do. I will post the recipe early next week.

I am also a huge fan of the smell of citrus fruit, so the smells wafting through the house have been heaven and so therapeutic. We all need a little personal therapy at times, these days even more so. I am an advocate of looking after your mental health as well as physical health. Our well-being is very important, so we need to remember to take time for ourselves each day – sometimes just 5 minutes outside alone surrounded by nature helps. We all have something we enjoy doing that also makes us feel good and cooking is one of those things for me. A colourful array of jars filled with lovely preserves is hugely satisfying.

A satisfying sight!

I love cooking and trying out new recipes or adapting old favourites (as you may have gathered), so yesterday evening I made marmalade brownies to see what they would be like, after the successful mincemeat brownie experiment last week.  The result was delicious, although I think I could have added a little more marmalade. I will definitely have to continue moving and stacking logs if I keep eating brownies!

One of my neighbours has introduced me to white watermelon (la pastèque à confire or la Gigérine in French), which is not something I have come across before. It is a type of watermelon used for jam making, rather than eating raw. She grows them and gave us a jar of her jam, made with this watermelon, plus oranges and lemons – really tasty. It is a bit like a cross between marmalade and jam – we loved it. I have been entrusted with her last white watermelon and her grandmother’s recipe so I am going to try and make this preserve at the weekend (no pressure). I will report back. I also plan to try to grow them this year with some of the seeds.

Today we are off to the tip to see if there is any compost available for the next stage of the potager, plus we may need to use some to finish filling in around the septic tank – such glamourous jobs.

Enjoy the weekend and hopefully see you next week.

Thank you, as ever, for reading my blog – let me know what you think – it helps a novice blogger to know what might make it more interesting!

A bientôt

Ali xx

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