Cote d'Azur

So I wrote the stuff below last week, soon after we arrived near Antibes. I'm working on the photos from the trip, trying (!) to sort them into actual categories, and WILL follow up and post...sorry about the delay. I spent so much time driving while we were there, would go to some tourist site every day, and we had dinner REALLY late every evening, and then had to get up far, FAR too early to get P to the meetings...Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I will post more junk than you ever want to look at very, VERY soon!...


So we're currently staying in a B&B or what have you in the mountains north of Cannes, while Phil is doing science at the French equivalent of Silicon Valley, called Sophia Antipolis, just north of Antibes. I haven't figured it out, but it seems to be a big forest occupied by a cross between an industrial park and a big sprawling French polytechnique, one of the French "grands ecoles", e.g., exclusive science and engineering research university. Unfortunately it's awkward driving him to and fro, so I've been spending a good four hours/day in the car.

Drove down on Sunday. I decided we had to stop when we went by Carcassonne; it's just too amazing for words...

The first day I spent in Antibes, mostly in the old town by the old port.

Very, very short post

So we got back from Antibes on Saturday late p.m., after driving virtually all day. A couple of hours later, Paul Ode and family arrived (also from Antibes) and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday). Haven't had time for anything much. Far, FAR too hot here, though; 42 C today (about 107). Still too hot although it's 11:30 p.m. stay tuned if you can't live without my blog posts!

Cheers, Lillie

Trip to Antibes and parts nearby

Last Sunday we drove from Couze to a B&B near Grasse; a mistake as it is seriously awkward to get from here to the wasp meeting Phil has been going to all week. I have spent most of the week driving around rather than either doing touristy things or any R&R. My own fault, though; I had no idea about the roads, and I'm the one who found and booked the place. On the way here (almost all motorway, wonderful but expensive what with all the tolls), we drove by Carcassonne, and stopped long enough for me to take a photo:

street in old Antibes

Antiibes Cathedral

one of Grimaldi palaces--Picasso lived here

another view of grimaldi palace

market place in Antibes

Napoleon was here

The first day of the conference I spent in Antibes, mostly in the old town, which is lovely and ancient and was crammed with Americans; a few Brits were scattered in the mix. The photos above may remain randomly placed, unless I can figure out how to do it better.I didn't actually like Antibes all that much. The rest of the peninsula was/is crowded with wall to wall huge apartment buildings that are too high, all evidently surrounded by gorgeous beach. Hot, bad traffic, too many cars and people. besides all the Americans. More on dinner later...cheers, Lillie

view across the bay

lunch today, e.g., buckwheat crepes

So I got this bee in my bonnet that I should pursue buckwheat crepes or galettes or whatever they call them, brought on, basically, by reading about socca, which is pretty much crepes indigenous to the Nice area made from chickpea flour. I've read about socca before, and tried it in Lexington and it was, shall we say, not a roaring success. But we've had buckwheat crepes long ago when we were up in Brittany. And I decided to make some, bought some buckwheat flour at the supermarket yesterday (it is called, are you ready for this? Sarrasin? sounds a LOT like Saracen to me, how about you? no clue where this comes from, just an observation). So what with one thing and another, we ended up having buckwheat crepes for lunch today.

So I filled them with the rest of the smoked salmon filets that were in in fridge, with some cooked, diced red onions, a bit of cucumber, chopped capers, lemon juice, creme fraiche...and topped with a bit more creme fraiche and the "caviar" left over from the night before, the "caviar" being black fish eggs of some sort...but hey, they are and were very good. The accompanying dish was chopped tomatoes and onions, seasoned, topped with curried mayonnaise. Not to mention the wine.

P. loves that tomato dish and has eaten, shall we say, rather a LOT of it. His take on the crepe dish was that it was/is (I guess "was", as it's gone...) a "10". So there....

We're off to Antibes and parts thereof on Sunday, for a week...should be lots of good food out there...stay tuned...

Cheers, Lillie

Nelly

So we have this friend named Nelly Luzinski, or maybe it's Luzinsky, who is from Belarus, a former member of the USSR, except that her family managed to get out about 1949 or 1950; she was born in 1950 in Australia. Owns a house in Belves over here up the road (couple of roads, actually) with a couple of friends. We met Nelly when we were sorta walking around here up the hill in Couze, and she was there visiting with some Australian friends who had a house up the road. She teaches in Sydney off and on, and spends her money traveling to France and other parts. Didn't manage to get together with her last year (although we saw her at a night market in Cadouin), but she was over yesterday for dinner.

It was a lot of fun, and I had decided to do my "specialty", e.g., veal scallops with some sort of cream sauce, this time bleu d'auvergne cheese along with shallots, broth, white wine, and a couple of other things. When I went to the butcher's to buy the veal, the stuff he cut off was amazingly WHITE; I've never seen veal in the US anywhere close to this pale, and I told him so. It's very young veal, you see. Not sure it'll come through, but here's a photo: I trust you can tell how very pale the stuff is. I pounded it, like always, but don't think I needed to. Even cooked, you could have cut the stuff (without pounding) with a spoon...and I had had this bright idea that I would do a starter/hors d'oeuvre/whatever that was those lovely anchovies from the market that are in garlic and oil, enclose them in puff pastry, bake it, and pretend I was brilliant...So I bought some of them, and bought a box with a packet of puff pastry (e.g., not the frozen Pepperidge Farm puff pastry we get in the US) in it. Spent ever so long trying to figure out (a) where I was going to roll it out and on what and (b) what I was going to use to roll it out. All set after I had a solution to (a) and (b), I opened the package, and here's what was in it: well, I can't get the stupid photo to come down here. HOWEVER, it was already rolled out, and rolled out thinly into a circle. So I just cut the stuff into pieces, put anchovies in the pieces, turned them into pockets, etc., baked the stuff, and called it a first course.

In the end, the meal sorta didn't hang together, but all the pieces individually were pretty good (this is mostly par for the course, actually, but that's another story). And also, Nelly had brought dessert, which was some sort of amazing cake that involved no flour, but ground hazelnuts, and oranges that were first boiled and then ground and used in the cake. It was really, REALLY good, and I have the recipe. Stay tuned.

two things

I THINK I changed the settings so you can post comments if you wish, unlike before. Also, I THINK I set this up so that I have to approve them before they show up on the blog for anybody. So the next person who tries to post a comment, PLEASE send me an email saying you did so; that way I can see if it worked...


Secondly (am I turning into a Brit? I was told today that I speak French with a British accent, whatever that is...should I start spelling things like "flavor" as "flavour"?), I went to Bergerac this morning. It seems to have gotten hot, so any errands need to happen in the a.m. to avoid heat stroke. I had two primary goals: figure out whether that framing place was still there; and get some more minutes (e.g., euros) set up on our mobile phone over here. Actually I wanted to get SOMEBODY ELSE to set up the minutes, so I wouldn't have to follow rapid French instructions over a phone. I was successful in this. I also went further down the street in that dreary town to the Wednesday a.m. market. The food stalls turned out to be basically wrapped around the church.

Okay, I give up; I can't move the photo of the market. To the left of the church is the "place", the typical tree-lined park in the middle of a town; this is where the rest of the market was. That market was huge; you've never seen SO MANY stalls of seriously cheap underwear, clothes, makeup, more clothes, more clothes. It seemed to be frequented virtually entirely by very large groups of Muslim women and children. (okay, okay, I bought a dress for 5 euros, has a zipper in it, wonder how long THAT will last) It went on forever, and once I started down it, I couldn't get out, at least not until I reached the end where the war memorial would usually be. However, in Bergerac, the war memorial (normally WWI, WWII, Algeria, possibly Indo-China) was solely the Resistance memorial above (I can't position it the way I want to, either). It's this big (VERY big) thing you see here, surrounded by several smaller monuments to Bergeracois deported to concentration camps, killed, and to the various Resistance groups active in the area...

I also bought a new pair of sandals (NOT at the market), and some cherries and some end-of-season asparagus that looked pretty good.

Now you've seen Bergerac.

CHeers, Lillie

Miscellany, Monday, Pentecost holiday

That washing machine has been running for two hours, and it's not done yet. Truly amazing. It also alternates between a gentle hum, total quiet, and banging around. And there's this stupid "safety" feature that some idiot dreamed up: when it's finally done, you have to turn it off (press the on/off button) and wait two minutes before it'll let you open the door. Clearly designed for something other than efficiency.

The good news is that you can get detergent AND softener over here now in little squishy pellets, sort of like the dishwasher pellets we finally got in the US (several years after they were introduced and immediately cornered the market over here). The other good news is that you just throw these things into the washing machine tub along with the clothes, none of this messing with which compartment in the drawer you put what into (I ALWAYS had to look that up in the instruction manual).

Weather good. The two month drought broke (they complain about drought over here, and I'm tempted to explain what happens in Texas...). It's chilly at night and really pleasant during the day. Rained last night. Clear as a bell right now.

Gotta get organized for trip to Riviera on Sunday. Finally managed to organize a place to stay.

Also finally found the little red book with the "good" wine written down in it (e.g., the stuff that we're supposed to hang onto, since I can't ever remember these things). If I can control the urge to go anywhere today, I might actually get some of this paperwork under control, and (that'll be the day!) get somewhere on some of my book projects...stay tuned...

Cheers, Bonne Pentecote, as they say over here...

Lillie

The French Medical system, at least, what I know

So Marilyn Cernosek got sick the last day of the Jefferson trip, before they came to Couze. And she sorta stayed sick (they arrived on Wednesday, I think). Let's not be TOO specific, but by the time we decided to do something about it, she'd run out of Immodium. Or maybe it's Imodium.

And I don't know all that much about the French medical system, except that I do know that pharmacists have a lot more training at diagnosing and things than they do in the US, and prescribe things, with limitations. And I do know that EVERYBODY has to have medical coverage if they are permanent residents or citizens; the cost of insurance is withheld from paychecks, like social security and medicare in the US. It's not negotiable. I also know that the insurance is subsidized by the government if a person can't afford it (this determined, of course, by the same government). I really don't know what the complaints are about it, but it doesn't sound all that ghastly to me.

So on Friday morning, after being sick since late Monday or early Tuesday, we took Marilyn down to the pharmacy in Couze, at the bottom of the hill. Talked to this apparently very knowledgeable woman there who appeared to be (hey!) impressed by my ability to describe the situation in French. She told us that Marilyn needed to quit taking Imodium because it shuts everything down and can actually aggravate whatever is going on. She also said that she (Marilyn) needed to see a doctor.

Please bear in mind that we are outside both the French resident medical coverage system and Marilyn's American coverage...

So the pharmacist made a phone call (this was about 10:00 a.m. on Friday), came back and told us to take Marilyn to Dr. somebody in Couze at 11:30 a.m. (also on Friday), and that the office was down the road across the street from the Mairie (mayor, sort of), and that there was a sign on the door. So Marilyn, Tony and I went to the doctor at the appointed hour, waited a few minutes (they were expecting us) in a room with another person in it (we'd been greeted by what appeared to be a receptionist), and then were ushered into the doctor's office by the doctor himself, who was a guy probably in his early 40's, wearing a plaid shirt and trousers.

He asked questions, in French and English (Marilyn speaks no French, he speaks some English, so it was a hodge-podge, I was in there with her), decided she had a virus, rather than a bacterial infection, printed out a prescription with instructions, asked for (are you sitting down?!?) TWENTY-THREE EUROS (that's ALL) which were to be paid to him. We had to get the money from Tony, and the doctor put it in his wallet, made change, gave them a receipt for it. And we drove the two blocks up the road to get the prescription filled.

This is my only experience of primary medical care in France, but hey, I am impressed.

We've spent lots of time in Great Britain (two years full-time, plus other visits, on a couple of which we'd had to get medical care, and one bad emergency, when Martin was hit by a car), and our experience and my impression of the NHS is that primary care is EXCELLENT, emergency care is immediate, and specialists, surgeries that aren't emergencies, etc., are not so wonderful. Not so immediate, at least.

But isn't good primary care what is the most important for keeping people healthy? Treating problems before they become either emergencies or life-threatening?

So there...

cheers, lillie

Marilyn and Tony's visit

Marilyn Cernosek is my good friend from Rice University, where we lived next door to each other in the dorm for three years. She and Tony followed their Thomas Jefferson-in-France alumni trip (sponsored by Rice) with several days in Couze. It would have been more fun if Marilyn hadn't gotten sick on the trip, but it was still great fun, and the experience with the French medical system is a a different blog post...We managed to cover some territory.

Aside from the obvious (eating and drinking), we went to the Lalinde

market, and we went to Monpazier, a really good bastide town down the road. The bastide

towns were built in the fourteenth century as planned villages that were also, fortresses, with walls (generally

in a square), gates that could be closed in case of attack, huge churches where people could take shelter (som

e of them, like the one in Beaumont, incredibly ugly and depressing). Lalinde was a bastide town, but all the evidence that left is a piece of a gate and the covered market.

Monpazier, however, is almost perfectly preserved. And it's got a great covered market, of cour

se, across a huge place.

Perhaps I'd better quit uploading pictures before I crash this...more about the visit later...

Whatever

At least, it looks like it will probably rain in Paris, KY. What with the heat wave, and the unusually wet spring that kept farmers from planting things when they usually do, and what happened last year (unusually wet spring, delayed planting, followed by seriously hot, dry weather, followed by seriously bad harvest), it has appeared recently that we were facing the same rotten situation this year. I do get worried when it's as hot in central Kentucky in June as it is in Goliad. Sorry about harping on that.

Problems at the market today. Need to post a couple of photos before I upload this..or upload a couple of photos before I post this, whatever...so it is sorta chaos in the Thursday Lalinde market, and we didn't manage to buy any oysters last Sunday in Issigeac (sob...). I decided to get oysters in Lalinde (different folks, not as good, etc., etc.); bought a dozen oysters, which should actually be at least 13 (!), and the yobs who were selling the stupid things were having trouble with my change (e.g., a dozen cost 6,40 euros and I gave them a 10 euro note,

they couldn't cope, I gave them 40 centimes and they gave me back two 2 euro coins...) Somehow, I got home, unloaded the stuff and, guess what! NO OYSTERS! Folks, they were DINNER TONIGHT...I did manage to buy some more walnut oil from my favorite walnut oil lady, the (dare I say it?) crone sitting at the table in the photo on the left there. She raises the walnuts, shells them makes the oil, jam, etc., raises the chickens and sells the eggs (80 centimes for 3 eggs, maybe it was 90, that's almost a euro). The guy with the hat and beard standing by her table is always wandering around Lalinde, ALWAYS at her table on market days.

Given that there sort of isn't any other food in the fridge, I had to go back shopping this afternoon, which means going down that ****** hill, acquiring something for dinner (Phil wants curry, not that big an ordeal, once I'm in a supermarket, although try finding some chutney in Lalinde, and I am NOT driving to Bergerac just for chutney), coming back and climbing back up that ****** hill. Had I know my knees were going to do this, I would have thought several more times about buying the cottage...but I do love the new kitchen...and maybe the chicken curry will actually be decent...

as a post-script, the chicken curry was tolerable, but not exactly a "10", shall we say. It was okay, though, considering...

Cheers, Lillie

state of things in Couze

Went to make an appointment to get my hair cut down in Couze this morning--same lady who has cut it before, name is Joelle, but I think she's only cut it twice...so she asked me my name, after we settled on a time and day. I told her and started spelling it (Crowley is not exactly a common name in France, is it...) and she suddenly knew how to spell it. I commented...she said ah, yes, you're the American who lives up at the top of the hill... This is of course true, so we had a bit of a discussion about everybody in a small town like Couze knows who EVERYBODY is as well as WHAT EVERYBODY DOES, what with Couze having 600 or 800 inhabitants...you'd think I was back in Goliad.

This afternoon when I checked, it was HOTTER in Lexington than in Goliad (in the unlikely event you don't know where this is, it's in SOUTH TEXAS, and Lexington is in KENTUCKY). This after a spring in Kentucky that was unbelievably wet and cold, set records all over the place, even broke the ones from last year. And now it threatens to be hot and a drought this summer like it was last year (in Kentucky, that is).

It's been rather a drought in Couze (SW France, overlooking the Dordogne) this spring. They hadn't had rain for two months until about two or three days ago. The trees and all that seem to be basically okay, but the hay, grass, etc. has taken a beating. P thinks that the actual grass in our garden ("yard", such as it is, to you Americans) may have actually died because of the drought. Despite the recent rain,, it sorta shows no signs of coming back.

Ought to be good (at least temporarily) for the wine industry over here, if it's hot, that is. Not good for me; there's basically no AC anywhere, and the AC in that car we leased is sorta seriously lousy, by American standards, at least. So there...

On other fronts, instead of yet another magazine or book about food at the newsagent when I bought today's IHT, I went exploring and ended up with some yarn to make yet another hat for Sarah's offspring, this ball of yarn sort of pink-ish/rose-ish/ivory/taupe, which Phil says looks "girl-ish". I said it doesn't look prissy girl-ish. We have yet to see if it actually turns into a usable hat. Knitting needles over here are INCREDIBLY long, and the sizes are in mm rather American numbers, and I'm working from American patterns...who knows what will happen?!? and they call yarn "laine" which means "wool", which is what they call the stuff in Britain. So I am at least learning stuff.

Photos and more stuff later...

Cheers, Lillie

The French and religion

So since the French Revolution and the beheading of Marie Antoinette, et al., there has been "OFFICIAL" "separation of church and state" in France. This means that the state does not recognize things like marriages performed by a priest or minister, among other things. You MUST have a civil wedding down at the Mairie's office (roughly translates of course as "Mayor"); every village has one of these, traditionally on side side of a building in the middle of town, the other side of which is the primary school.

Traditionally people would get married in the Mairie with just family and attendants present, and then walk down to the church, where the priest and other guests would be waiting for them on the church porch; then they would have a church wedding. Now they either go in cars, do the civil ceremony the day before (c.f. Prince Albert of Monaco, I'll get to him in a minute), or omit the church ceremony entirely.

Virtually NOBODY EVER goes to church except for the occasional baptism, marriage or funeral.

So, could somebody please explain why virtually ALL the national holidays are religious? Since we have been here this year, there has been Ascension Day (last Thursday), and there will be Pentecost (next Monday); not sure yet whether the Feast of Corpus CHristi is a holiday, but it happens shortly after Pentecost, and it is certainly a holiday in some parts of seriously non-Christian Europe.

And a local aperitif is made from green walnut leaves, dry red wine and vodka or plain spirits (lots of walnuts, walnut oil, walnut cake, etc. around here), which MUST be picked on the Feast of St. John, which happens to be June 24.

Marilyn and Tony spent a day in Monaco on their trip; Prince Albert's approaching wedding (July 1, I think) is the big event there. Lord knows, they need some good news in Monaco: Prince Rainier and Princess Grace both dead; the complicated love lives, marriages, etc. of Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie; the pecadillos of Prince Albert, what with illegitimate children and such...Although she is 20 years younger than he (he's 53), and she's evidently been "in training" to become Princess of Monaco, what with having to be fluent in a zillion languages, learn all this royal protocol and stuff, she is very pretty and blond and we all hope she produces a son and (legitimate) heir so there won't be any unhappiness about the principality either reverting to France or about having a (gasp!) female succeed Albert...

The civil ceremony is to be in the Mairie or equivalent, of course. The religious ceremony won't be in Monaco's cathedral because it is too tiny. It will be in that giant place in the middle of the palace (I think) with something like 10,000 people watching. Should be a jolly good show...

Cheers, Lillie

this and that, and useful info

Although I can't exactly read this (for some reason, the type is seriously small, but I'm rather a good typist, so perhaps YOU can read it!), there are a couple of issues to address...

Evidently there's a problem with commenting on my posts, at least, Gretchen can't seem to post comments, and she has always been my most reliable commentary type person.

Given this situation, if (IF) you would like to comment on anything I post, you might consider sending me an email if you can't get any comment to post, either (hey, I LOVE knowing who, IF ANYBODY, is actually reading my blogs).

Having said that, I haven't posted anything for awhile; about the time we sorta got settled here, and got the kitchen mostly put together, Marilyn and Tony Cernosek arrived, and I've sorta been busy since...

stay tuned....

best, lillie