FROM SUMMER TO WINTER

It's SO COLD! Back to heating and lighting a fire in the evening. It's been raining constantly the last two days, impossible to walk the dog, she definitely doesn't like getting her feet wet. I can understand that, actually, if you are a dachshund, it's not only your feet that get wet, everything is so near the ground! Ellie has decided to become vegetarian... she pinched an apple out of my shopping basket a couple of days ago, and spent 36 hours nibbling it. Kept her quiet.

I have started collecting my baskets of organic vegetables from the farm. Good value: last week an enormous cauliflower, a bunch of radishes, a bunch of chives, a kilo of new potatoes and a large bunch of blettes (not sure what that is in English... chard? stuff with fairly stringy white stalks and enormous dark green leaves). For 8€. And in the time it took me to say hello to the lady in the office, Ellie had jumped into the back of the car and chewed half of the blette leaves. Needed the iron I suppose. Shame because actually I think the green bit is the only bit worth eating.

I usually pick up my basket on Fridays, but this week  Friday is part of the "pont de l'Ascension", a day the French take off between a religious holiday and the weekend following it). So I went Wednesday instead. This week's basket, a double dose for 15€, contained a kilo of new potates, a kilo of courgettes, a lettuce, a large bunch of spring onions, a bunch of radishes, a bunch of parsley, two bunches of new carrots, and a large bunch of new turnips. I've decided to make Friday a cooking day. I also go to the fishermen's cooperative shop at Loctudy which is very near the farm, and get a few pieces of fish for the week.

I bought some adorable little silicone cupcake molds a week ago. I use either savoury or sweet cake mixture to make little portion-sized cupcakes. This ensures that I don't cheat on the dimensions of a slice. I freeze them in small batches. This morning I made little sponge cakes with vanilla and kumquats. I just had one for dessert, delicious. It's difficult when one lives alone not to eat the same thing for days on end or to end up chucking half of it away. 

 

The sun has come out. I just took Ellie down the garden, and I noticed that my palm tree, which has grown a good foot in the three years I've been here (the trunk is now about 1m50) has got three enormous flower buds on it. I'm amazed. They look like pale green carpet slippers. Or large flat ears of corn. I'll take a photo tomorrow and another when they flower to show you. The apple tree is in flower, but the wind is getting the better of the blossom. And I had lily of the valley on the first of May (it's traditional to give lily of the valley in France on that day). I picked some more today together with a little red rosebud that had the courage to appear in this awful weather.