Roadtrip

....rooftop in Issigeac....

After spending way too many days lounging around the house, today we hopped in the car and took off with no other plan but exploration. We headed through Bergerac and made our first stop in the medieval village of Issigeac, at the southern edge of the Dordogne, where we wandered around in the cold, admiring the very old church that had moss and even small plants growing on its buttresses, visited a boulangerie (of course), peeked at the listings in the window of a real estate office...but found no adventure. 

 

So the children became restless. They protested. They claimed to be nearly dead of hunger. Julian fell down and scraped his knee a bit and limped dramatically, several times collapsing to the street in dire agonies. They sighed the age-old traveler's plaint of, "How much faaaarrrther?"

We drove to Castillonès, another old village high on a hill, but found no place open for lunch. Apparently New Year's parties start early here, as we saw people in each town, dressed up and carrying presents, scurrying down the sidewalk. At first I was thinking of a nice meal, in a dining room with a roaring fire. Then I was ready to settle for pizza. Finally I would have taken a sandwich and a container of yogurt...but everything was closed. Everything!

Eymet is a lovely town too, with the covered walk around a central square that characterizes a bastide village. Lovely but closed up tight at lunchtime on New Year's Eve. Finally we found a small brasserie on the road out of town with lights twinkling. The man behind the bar scowled at us, and scowled more deeply when we asked for pizza. "No pizza," he said gruffly. But we answered back in French, asking what he had for lunch, and once we were discussing the plat du jour, he was smiling warmly and running off to get a banquette ready.

We've had this experience many times: at first, when people realize we are not French (in other words, the instant they lay eyes on us), their faces are closed. Wary. Looking like they wish we would go away. But once we make an effort to speak French -- even if they've made a gesture in English, and even if our French is execrable -- and especially once the conversation is about food, their faces beam and the joking begins. 

One person has explained that he was worried that any Americans would be supporters of Bush, and he wanted nothing to do with that. It does seem to me that our being American, generally, is not exactly a positive thing, as it has seemed to be on previous trips. Maybe that has partly to do with being far from Normandy, where Americans were heroes. But mostly I think it is the shadow of Bush. 

We ended up with platters of croque monsieur and frites, and a plat of stuffed chicken leg with an immense heap of sautéed mushrooms and green beans. Très traditionelle, the propriétaire assured us. All delicious. Afterwards, a bûche made with ice cream, which apparently healed the nearly fatal wounds to Julian's leg and gave Nellie the strength to make it back to the car without having to crawl.

La fête

Our energies went into the Christmas Eve dinner -- le réveillon -- more than into buying presents this year. We had fresh oysters from the Oléron which Chris managed to open; he had seen a kids' show in French about oysters and knew the difference between the American and French methods of opening, but could not do it the French way (along the side) without crumbling the shell. I could not do it at all. So I stood by and squeezed on the lemon and ate.

The children were wonderfully horrified that we were eating living creatures right before their very eyes.

The Christmas turkey, raised on a nearby farm, was unlike any turkey we had ever seen -- sleek, slender, you could even say chic, compared to the Vegas showgirls from back home. Its head was tucked up under one wing. It was unmistakeably a bird. It took only a couple of hours to roast and was stunningly good. 

We had mashed potatoes with crème fraîche, broccoli amandine, and coquilles St. Jacques made by the butcher. Waiting in the garage where it was cool, a bûche de Noël with a snowman, two meringue mushrooms, a tree, and a disc of chocolate to fight over. 

 

My favorite presents of all were the little Astèrix figures we found for the kids' stockings -- Assurancetorix, the singer who can't sing, is tied up and gagged; the fishmonger is holding a fish behind his back ready for a fight; even a menhir with a red bow and "O + F" in a heart carved in the side. Astèrix is the best comic ever.  Today we've played "Clue" in French, worked on a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, flown Julian's remote-controlled plane all over the yard, and eaten lots of leftovers. 

Now it's time to start planning le réveillon for New Year's.

Joyeux Noël!

(a few pictures of our yard in winter...)

We're having a tranquille Christmas Eve Eve; our shopping is done, and the only remaining errands are to pick up our bûche de Noël at the boulangerie and our turkey and oysters from the boucherie tomorrow. The kids ran off to the boulangerie this morning, as they do every Sunday morning (Julian has had a kind of  conversion in favor of the pastry called la réligieuse), with directions to order a bûche for tomorrow -- it's a chocolate cake rolled with whipped cream, dusted with cocoa, and decorated to look like a Christmas log, with candy mushrooms growing out of it and whatever else the baker comes up with. Now they're on the terrace on this mild afternoon, stringing popcorn for the birds, and probably talking about Pokemon.

 

We had our first oysters for lunch this morning, bought from a woman on a street corner in Périgueux. Just a squeeze of lemon, and slurped them down standing over the sink. Magnificent. As good as a trip to the beach, all briny with a taste like a wave breaking over your head. I followed them up with a plate of escargots -- not a dish from this region but no point in being rigid, n'est-ce pas? No one had the courage to join me. Maybe my description of their tasting like buttery garlicky erasers put them off. I love them.

 

Last night we drove into Périgueux for dinner because we'd seen a flyer announcing a Balade aux Flambeaux (a walk with torches), with singers and theater and medieval costumes. We wandered around the empty streets, on most of which no cars are allowed because this section of Périgueux was built in the Middle Ages -- the four of us could easily hold hands and touch opposite walls. The slender turrets on the corners of the some of the buildings were casting sharp shadows. Our footsteps clattered on the cobblestones. Aside from some of the wares for sale in a few of the shops, and a few strings of Christmas lights, there was nothing to remind us that we weren't in the 16th century. 

After dinner (not good or bad enough for a full report, alas!) we caught up to the procession -- around 200 people carrying torches, moving down a wide street and then pouring through a narrower one. It was 9:30 and Nellie was very tired, until she heard the cackling of a woman's voice over a loudspeaker and saw a man racing by in costume with a chest on his back. We followed the crowd into a small square and watched the scene for a while. Ah, life in the Middle Ages -- gluttony, poverty, lasciviousness, and derangement! The costumes were very good, the masks and makeup scary, and apparently the language of theater is the same around the world, although I don't happen to speak it. 

But the walk through those medieval streets behind the mob carrying torches was worth staying up for, even for delicate flowers like Nellie and me.

Lunch

We sing the praises of canned goods here. Several days a week, Chris and I meet in the kitchen for a big bowl of something out of a can. And for the first few minutes, there is no sound but the clink of spoons as we gobble away. Well, also little murmurings of wordless pleasure.

Yesterday we had our first can of Saucisses aux Lentilles. It comes in a large can with a brown, unglossy wrapper, from Eymet, a town not far south from us. The ingredients are: lentils, fresh vegetable broth, goose fat, tomatoes, salt, pepper, onions, thyme, bay, garlic, and pork sausage. No ingredients that began life in a lab, nothing you've never heard of that has forty-two syllables, no fake color, fake flavor, fake anything. It's nothing but food.

And OH MY is it good. How I weep for my vegetarian friends, for what goose fat does for lentils is sublime and irreplaceably, monumentally delicious. The sausages are all fine and well, but you could throw them to the dogs and eat only the lentils and be a happy, happy person.

An old favorite is canned cassoulet; we've made a minor hobby of trying the products of as many of the local farms as possible, and they're all fantastic. The ingredients are roughly white beans, Toulouse sausage, confit of duck or goose, garlic, tomatoes, and more goose fat. Part of the reason canned cassoulet is so good is that it isn't prettified -- there are bones and flabby pieces of skin to contend with, but of course that's part of why the flavor is so deeply satisfying.

Today we stopped in a very good boulangerie in Lembras, on our way to Bergerac to Christmas shop. Maybe fifteen different kinds of bread, including bread with figs and bread with various kinds of nuts. I picked out something that looked like a big mess studded with olives, called fougasse.

We raced through the shopping as quickly as possible, got the fougasse home and warmed it in the oven, and, well, how good was it? It's true that we did not run around the yard waving our arms in the air and shouting with glee, but we felt like it. Chris ate his standing up, moaning. I kept saying, "oh, this is good!" taking another bite, and saying "this is really good!" over and over. After Nellie tried a bite, she beamed. Julian, in true nine year old fashion, refused to have anything to do with it. 

Fougasse is like a rough puff pastry, messily assembled, with little bits of ham mixed in, a lot of green olives, some gruyère. But not enough ham and gruyère and butter to be all greasy and heavy, oh no. Just enough to give it a wondrous flavor. The outside has crispy bits and soft bits, it's kind of chewy like pizza dough in places, kind of flaky in others. Fougasse is worth making the fifteen-minute drive to Lembras, any time of the day or night, singing all the way. 

(The photo is the Catholic church in Villamblard.)

Les Guignols

Last Sunday we dashed out to catch the final moments of Villamblard's marché de Noël, which was actually organized by the local British community. We were nearly the only people there thanks to the driving rain. A lonely Père Noël sat on the stage, waving at us, but neither child wanted anything to do with him, even though they suspected there might be candy involved.

I covet the handmade paniers people use for shopping -- the perfect present for the Luddite on your shopping list-- and they come in quite a lot of different shapes depending on what you plan to be carrying around, and contrasting colors of wicker if that has an appeal, but I was not in the mood for comparing and thinking about exactly which shape and color to get. So I bought fudge instead, from two smiling Englishwomen. This area of France is home to many transplanted Brits, which is nothing new; Aquitaine, the land of the Hundred Years' War, has been fought over endlessly and even held by the British for long stretches.

After the fudge I was mesmerized by a display of local honeys of different types and depths of color. I ended up getting miel de forêt, although I have no idea what "honey of the forest" might mean. It is very dark and very thick. "Merci," I said to the vendor, after handing over my euros. "C'est très...ombruese, ne'st-ce pas?" It's very shadowy. Well, he knew what I meant. 

Next, off to the neighboring village of Beleymas, much smaller than Villamblard, no commerce at all, and deeply peaceful (that's Beleymas above). Beleymas had sent out flyers announcing a fête with les guignols, which we didn't feel we could miss since we didn't exactly know what it was.

We stepped into the small salle culturelle to find  Père Noël getting smooches and passing out presents to all the children from Beleymas. Rosy-cheeked toddlers were hurling wrappings into the air, grandmothers were bending down to see the new toys, the sounds of several electronic keyboards beeping at once. We were greeted by a smiling white-haired woman that I had never seen before, who said, oh, you live in Villamblard, yes? 

Well, yes. It is unsettling to realize that we are not, as I like to pretend, going through our days under a cloak of invisibility. People we don't know know who we are and where we live. It's not that I mind. But it clashes with my sense of how things are. 

Eventually Les Guignols began, with three oldish men dressed in various homemade costumes clowning about. Early on, the classic -- one of the clowns squirted the oldest one, dressed in a top hat and very shiny waistcoat, in the face with water squirting out of a flower, and then doused the shrieking audience -- after that, Julian was entirely won over. I'm always laughing to myself when Julian gets interested in something and forgets to pretend he doesn't understand French.

Many of the skits involved setting off firecrackers under someone's nose or getting a person from the audience up on stage and making them put on costumes -- a young girl was chosen for a princess costume for a Shrek sequence that eventually led to Smashmouth's "Hey now, get your game on, go plaaaaay" booming from the loudspeakers. An old man with an elegant gray moustache was brought up on stage to chuckling that quickly turned to hilarity when he was dressed in a pleated miniskirt, a shirt with Charlotte aux fraises on it, a kitty peeping out of his handbag, and a large hat fashioned to look like a giant strawberry. A teenaged boy was dressed as a pirate, told to sit in a big boat flying the pirate flag -- and with another great burst of firecrackers, the side of the boat dropped down and he was shown to be sitting on a chair over a bucket. In the head, in other words. 

So to sum up: cross-dressing, public humiliation, American culture, potty humor, and firecrackers, all with a set and costumes that cost around $4. We adored every second of it. Not to mention the fudge.

 

 

Sicko!

Nellie has been sick. For the first three days, never mind the fever and the stuffed-up nose, she buzzed around with her usual hummingbird energy, making Christmas tree decorations and memorizing her poésie for school. She was improving and we expected her back at school, but then a decline -- which meant we had to take her to the doctor, to get a note for school.

 

We just showed up at the door of the village doctor with Nellie, since we have no phone book. We were ushered in by the nurse, who brightened once we explained which house we live in -- we are part of the village and not some vacationing strangers nobody knows. The doctor's office, or cabinet, is part of his house, so the examining room is a lovely old room with plenty to look at while you worry whether you have enough medical vocabulary to manage: a fireplace, two immense carved armoires, one with a stuffed pheasant on top, an ancient parquet floor, a silver bowl with wax fruit, and my favorite -- a small cast iron Godin stove.

That appointment went well. But this morning, Nellie dropped -- her words -- into "the deepest depths of my misery". And no one would disagree, since she added a severe ear ache and throwing up to the fever and headache she already had. Back to the doctor we went.

How many seven year olds have thrown up on the main street of Villamblard? This one has. Several times.

Today we saw a woman, who checked Nellie for meningitis and appendicitis and who knows what else, and gave us a long list of médicaments including a liquid antibiotic you put right into the affected ear, and, uh, suppositories. She felt so bad we gave her every last one of the medicines, and she's much better, thanks.

The real reason for this blog post? I was trying to explain that her ear must really hurt because Nellie is usually quite tolerant of pain, but she had been crying and crying over that ear. "Elle pleut," I said. "She rains." Pleut, pleure -- so close, yet so far.

 

Vin

At the Villamblard market last week (which was under the big brown roof almost in the center of the photo, since it was raining) I stopped at a table where two of the mothers from Julian's school were selling organic wine. They asked if I wanted a taste, took out a tiny little wine glass, and poured me some of the red. Before language school I'd have likely said, "The wine, she good", but oh, those days are past. I was proudly able to say "It's good!" But after that, I had nothing. I finished off my wine and smiled stupidly.

"It is hard, to work organic?" I said, wincing over the lost adverb. 

She smiled -- she has a very warm, very French sort of face -- and let loose a torrent of explanation accompanied with much gesticulation. The serious drawback to improving in French is that people understandably assume you will be able to understand what they say. Finally she took a breath, and asked, "Est-ce clair?" (Is it clear?)

 

"Non," I said, and we both laughed. The other woman -- whom we call Glamourpuss, because she is -- gave it a try, speaking more slowly, and I could more or less follow what she was saying, although again I had nothing to add. A chic young man with lovely hair came up then, and chattered away with the two women. He took the tiny glass of wine and swirled it. He sniffed it. He swirled it again, asking many questions about where it was made, what grapes were in it, how old it was. Eventually he took a little sip, and went on with the questions.

 

At that moment I decided something had to be done about my ignorance of wine. Even to myself I say, "The wine, she good" and have nothing more to add. So I got the DK book French Wine which is nicely filling the vacuum of facts and understanding, and I'm nearly ready to move on to copious tasting. 

 

Did you know that corks were first in use in 1650? That certain sweet wines are made when the grapes acquire a kind of fungus called noble rot? That most French wine labels give the place where the wine was made, not the grapes it was made with, or even, at least in large letters, the name of the chateau that made it? That the laws concerning wine-making in France are so strict that a winemaker cannot plant any vines he wants to but must choose from an approved list -- and that may mean, for example, that he has to make red and is not allowed to make white. 

Gardening, science, history, pleasure, and art -- if I were twenty years old I'd want to start a vineyard. Now, in December, you can see a few people out in raincoats doing the pruning, which must be done by hand. Walking up and down the long rows, all alone, secateurs in hand, snip, snip, snip, under the gray wet sky. A perfect job. 

 

I bought three bottles from the two women, partly in an effort to be friendly. Just as we were about to leave, it started to rain rather hard. 

 

"Oh, il pleut!" I said, in that way not-fluent people have of pointing out the obvious.

 

"Oh, mon Dieu!" the woman said. "Avez-vous un ashtray?"

What a delicious pleasure to have the shoe on the other foot! We laughed without restraint after telling her "umbrella" was the word she was looking for. But I think she may have done it on purpose -- like I said, she has a very kind-hearted face.