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Citrus Days
The markets are brimming with citrus fruit at the moment, much of it from Spain. In France citrus fruits are known as les agrumes. The bright vibrant colours are a cheerful addition to wintry days, the smell and taste so refreshing and fragrant. There are so many varieties to choose from, each week another appears. Bitter or Seville oranges (oranges amères), blood oranges (oranges sanguines), bergamots (a type of orange, used in Earl Grey tea), lemons (citrons), grapefruit (pamplemousse), clementines and various others including this week mandarins and clemenvillas (a hybrid from crossing a mandarin with a tangelo, which is itself a cross between a tangerine and a pomelo –…
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Ice Sculptures
Bonjour à tous I hope you are all well and enjoying January? The weather here at the moment is so cold. Each night the thermometer dips to minus figures. We had one night, the first in ages when the temperature stayed at 0°C – a cause for celebration! We have had cold crisp sunny days, freezing fog days where everything is shrouded in a bone chilling cold, a light dusting of snow greeted us on Wednesday morning and hard frosts daily. We wake most mornings to a white landscape, each and every blade of grass and leaf frosted, glittering in the sunlight. Quite the most breath-taking sight, like magic fairy…
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Reflections
Hello Everyone Early last week we were basking in 18°C sunshine, by Wednesday it was 6°C at best during the day. We had snow last week, briefly, a light dusting like icing sugar sprinkled on a cake, not really enough to say it had snowed, but pretty nonetheless and a new experience for the 4 rescue cats. They lasted outside for a while chasing snowflakes, trying to work out what the cold white stuff was that was settling on their whiskers. Then one by one they came back inside, the pads on their paws swollen with cold, fur damp, and they snuggled down by the roaring woodburner in the kitchen.…
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A look back at 2021
Hello Everyone Happy New Year again. I hope you all had an enjoyable start to the year? We had a very quiet evening: supper, a movie and then toasted the New Year in with Chateau Bourguet’s ‘Bulles d’Alayrac’ (sparkling wine from our local vineyard), while watching fireworks at Chantilly (the armchair version for us). On Sunday we had our recently widowed neighbour for a belated New Year’s lunch, which I hope she enjoyed although she says the portions I serve are too large! I have decided to take a little time this year to reflect on the last year and work out my resolutions for 2022. Last year was quite…
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Happy New Year
Hello again Everyone I hope you are all enjoying the last day of 2021. As I, and many others, have said many times, what a year! There is no sign of the pandemic easing its vice-like grip on the world for now. At some point the vaccine needs to be made available to the whole world to try and stop new variants emerging. Perhaps 2022 will see that happen. For now a round-up of what December has had to offer us in our little world tucked away in a beautiful corner of the Tarn in South West France, including a beautiful full moon, known as the Cold Moon. Early December…
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C’est la vie!
Dear Friends I hope you are all well and had a good Christmas? I realise that it is a while since I have posted and the last couple of months have not been my best blog-wise. I hope you will stick with me as I get back on track. When I set out to write this blog about our life in France, I didn’t want it to be an ‘Instagram perfect’ view of life here. I thought my approach would be an honest view of starting life in a new country in a crumbling old place in ‘la France profonde’ (literally deep France, but means provincial France, sometimes loosely translated…
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December Days
Hello everyone I hope you are all well? It seems like ages since we last met up. Writing once a month about what is going on in our life in the Tarn feels very odd. I have missed regaling you with tales of our misadventures each week. November has been no exception! Time I started writing about some more things that might interest you – promises, promises I know. Where has the year gone? Here we are in December, the last month of 2021. Like everyone, what a year and now a new Covid variant to worry about. In France face masks have remained in place for many places and…
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Places to visit: Castelnau de Montmiral
This month’s place to visit is Castelnau de Montmiral, another bastide town, of which there are many in this area. We found this pretty hilltop village while we were staying at the house that we went on to buy. (Try before you buy – great idea as it gave us the chance to see if we liked it and the area! Seemingly we did – both). We are really spoilt in this area for places to visit and this one did not disappoint. Castelnau de Montmiral was built as a fortified village in 1222 by Raymond VII, count of Toulouse and overlooks the Vère valley and is surrounded by the…
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Cooking with the seasons: November
With the end of October the warm daytime weather came to an abrupt end and with it the need for more hearty dishes, soups to warm us on chilly days, piping hot stews and tagines to ward off the cold evenings. The produce on the market stalls is changing too. The choice of apple and pear varieties has increased as autumn harvests find their way to market, citrus fruits start to reappear, now from Spain rather than further afield and I spotted the first bergamots last weekend. Marmalade making time is not far off, which is lucky as we are almost out of last year’s supply. Nuts in all varieties…
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Chestnuts and Chrysanthemums
Bonjour to you all The beginning of November here in the Tarn has seen a dramatic end to the balmy warm days we have experienced through October. The sunny days with the thermometer hovering above 20°C have been replaced with an almost 10° drop overnight and regular downpours of rain. We can’t complain having had several lovely warm weeks, with enough sunshine to ripen the second batch of figs, but weirdly and perhaps worryingly it also encouraged my strawberries to flower for a third time! We have frost threatened towards the end of the week so I hope the plants will be OK. I have managed to plant quite a…
