The other day we popped down to Durban Corbieres; the next village down the road, to pop into the small supermarket and pick up some salad items, and what greeted us at the end of the fruit and veg section???
A little section of British food products.
This may not be that remarkable in other parts of France, but we are very rural here and in the middle of nowhere, with a tiny population.
We do get a good few British tourists, but not enough that I would ever have imagined the supermarket having a small British food section.
We all know ‘food is for fools’ and ‘beer brings cheer’, so I grabbed 3 cans (tins) of Strongbow cider, which is about the only thing I miss about England, and can’t buy in Narbonne.
Truth be told, the one thing that is British and we do buy on a regular basis, is HP brown sauce.
After rushing through the check-out, I drove home to Villeneuve les Corbieres with gusto so that I could put the cans of Strongbow into the fridge to cool.
That evening I was one happy camper. I got out my ‘Great British Beer Festival’ pint glass and filled it to the top with ice cold cider. What a way to enjoy a hot summers evening than with pint glass in hand, and cold golden cider slipping down your throat.
It feels like living in a Goldfish bowl at the moment. Not a day goes past without some tourists pausing outside our house for a look. I don’t mind apart when when I’m relaxing on the terrace. The terrace is shielded in part by plants, so I have to listen to the tourists prattle on, without them knowing that I’m there. Today a group of about 10 people stopped outside our house for a gander, and a couple of the younger ones even decided to have a nose in our car windows, saying ‘Blah Blah Blah’ Sport ‘Blah Blah Blah’ Sport. This did not make for a relaxing breakfast cigarette that’s for sure.
Lightly coat the peeled garlic cloves with olive oil and in a pan in a preheated 350 degree oven, roast them until they are just lightly colored.
In a large soup pot with 1 tablespoon of butter, saut» the diced vegetables and 1/2 of the quartered mushrooms for 5 to 10 minutes. Add the veal stock and 2 cups of the whipping cream and bring the soup to a boil, then reduce to simmer.
In a food processor using the steel blade, puree the cooled roasted garlic and the remainder of the mushroom to make a puree or duxelle of mushrooms
Spoon the duxelle into the simmering soup and cook for 1 hour. Add the cooked rice and the remaining cream and continue simmering for 30 minutes more.
Check the soup for seasoning and add as necessary salt, pepper, and cayanne pepper or pepper sauce to give the soup a little spark.
Some light fingered toerag has half inched (stolen) 28kg of Semtex from depot just outside of Lyon. The thief also stole some detonators, to make it go with a bang. The fact that such a large amount of a very powerful explosive can just walk out of the door is shocking. You can bet the police and security services have the knickers in a twist at the moment. The Semtex was stored in an old fort in Corbas and used to blow up any munitions found, that the Germans left behind when they ended there 1939-45 Euro vacation. Security is ’so tight’ at the fort the Semtex could have been stolen up to a week ago. I wonder how long it will be before the Semtex appears on Ebay !!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday I posted photos of the riders and a video, so today it is the turn of the publicity wagons, of which there was more then a few! Now al I need to do is add them to my village website http://www.villeneuve-les-corbieres.com/
After much editing, the video is here. Lots of foreplay before seconds of the riders flying through Villeneuve les Corbieres. It was amazing how fast it was. The race passed in a blink of an eye.
We got the freebies, we got the photo’s, we even got some video, and all a mere few metres from our home.
We spent a couple of hours sitting in the sun, drinking beer, just to see about 15 seconds of the Tour de France riders as they whizzed past.
Would I do it again? Oh yes. It was good fun. We now have a bag of tat. What do you do with half a dozen key rings and hats?
German investigators are expected in the French village of Maillé on Tuesday in the hope that they can help shed light on a WWII massacre in which German forces killed 124 villagers. There is no statute of limitation on war crime in Germany.
This year I had planned to visit a number of locations here in France and give them the ‘Randallised’ treatment (Photos, videos and info), to create websites for them. It will teach me right for making plans. The weather this year’s been so hit and miss. Hot days followed by dull overcast days. It seems we have not really had a summer to speak of. When you wake up in the morning you never know what the day is going to be like, so I’ve put off , heading out to explore and capture new sights.
All’s not been bad, it’s given me some free time to create a stand alone website for our French travels and also one for Montpellier. Being environmentally aware, I’ve recycled the contents from The World in Focus. Fingers crossed we will see a nice long sunny spell, so I can get out and about with camera in hand.
A group of French protesters “deboulonneurs”, who are feed up with advertising billboards,and now go around defacing them. Being good citizens, they phone the police in advance, so that they can be arrested.
The “deboulonneurs” are up in arms because of the increasing number up billboards springing up around France. The argue that they invasive in ways that adverts in other media are not, i.e you can block adverts on websites, turn the T.V. over etc.
I wish them luck, the road side is cluttered enough and with a forest of adverts, it is often hard to see and read road signs.
At an air base near Paris, the Cambrésis squad is on round-the-clock duty. Their mission is to defend the French capital’s air space and its surrounding region.
