Lockdown diaries day thirty-eight, Advent day six, snails

Advent day six

Day thirty-eight, Sunday 6^th December 2020

 

Advent day six

Christmas kind of arrived with a real jingle yesterday evening when we prepared the pizzas to the accompaniment of the first play of the Christmas music, and then enjoyed Love Actually (our favourite Christmas film) after dinner. My Sauvignon Blanc scored higher than the Chardonnay from Friday, and tonight I have a red Cabinet Syrah to look forward to, and it’s a Biere Brune for Adrian and boy does he deserve it. 

 

Cleaning the sewing machine

If yesterday was a productive list-ticking-off kind of a day, today was frustrating. Everything we tried to do, went wrong, didn’t work, needed fixing and ended up taking forever. The worst was the sewing machine. All I needed to do was hem two small squares of material to make curtains for inside a cupboard door. This would be the finishing touches to upcycling the old TV unit, that we bought when we moved in together in 1997 but is too small for the new TV. Adrian has lovingly sanded the pine, given it five coats of white paint, replaced the legs, fitted new handles and with the curtains it would be ready to go up on the landing to house my sewing machine and other sewing bits and pieces. You would have thought the sewing machine would be grateful for a new home, but seemingly not. The first problem was a bent needle which knocked the foot off every time I tried to move it. Adrian replaced the needle. Then it seemed there was another problem causing it to jam (somewhere) and break the thread. Adrian to the rescue once more. He cleared the insides of years of fluff, kept tinkering and trying and eventually, after fitting another needle, had it working fine. It would seem the machine prefers Brother needles to cheaper ones found in multi thread sets from budget supermarkets. Things could have been worse, I know. My poor mum needed a covid-19 test first thing this morning and is now under strict isolation until Wednesday, when she goes into hospital for a knee operation. 

 

My new sewing cupboard

The finished sewing cupboard is now in place and I’m delighted with it. Adrian’s done a great job giving it a new lease of life and it’s just the right size for the landing, which needed something in the way of furniture, but we didn’t want it looking cluttered. There really is no end to his talents, he even gave my lockdown locks another trim this afternoon.

 

If I’d have had more time today, I would have made the first batch of mince pies, but they will now have to wait until tomorrow. I am rather excited about dinner though as I’m planning to add a Christmas flavour twist to tonight’s risotto. Inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s parsnip risotto recipe, mine will have parsnips, Brussels sprouts, lardons, leeks, mushrooms, chestnuts and courgettes. 

 

France Trivia advent calendar, day six, snails

As things seemed to move as slow as a snail here today, I thought a few trivia facts about this French delicacy would be appropriate. 

 

Larousse informs me that snails have been on this earth far longer than man has and from cave finds, Frenchmen have been enjoying them since prehistoric times. The Romans were also partial to them and would cleanse them with milk before frying them. They were also the first to raise them in farms, to ensure they reached a decent size before eating them. Snails then fell out favour when the Christian church declared these rampant breeders to be impure, and it was only the poor who continued to eat them, until their gastronomic revival in the 19th century. In 1814, when celebrated chef Antonin Carême was invited to produce a dish to impress Tsar Alexandre 1^st, he chose snails cooked in butter, garlic and parsley, and the rest is history. Larousse also recommends that as it can be a tricky dish to eat, often rather messy and involves lots of buttery sauce you’ll want to mop up with bread, it is a dish best served with close friends and family with whom you are at ease. 

 

Our neighbours Pierrette and Dominique regularly collect snails from the hedgerows after the rain and have shared not only the final dish with us, but their preferred method of cooking too. First the snails must be purged in a cage with no food for two months. Pierrette can then begin the lengthy cooking process, simmering the snails in white wine with sautéed shallots, pork rillettes, an onion studded with cloves, and lots of garlic and herbs, for at least three hours, then allowing them to cool. The following day she repeats this process, and will eat them after cooking again, on day three. They may not be everyone’s idea of a tasty meal, but I can assure you Pierrette’s were delicious. 

Diary of Covid-19 confinement, day twenty-two

Covid-19 confinement day twenty-two, feeling reflective

Feeling reflective

We are now into week four of confinement and life outside of our little home bubble is still a very scary place. People are still falling ill in large numbers, hospitals are still struggling to cope and well-known names, including the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, are being hospitalised. I don’t read too many newspaper articles in full as the more I read, the more out of control it all feels. 

Despite all of this so many still do not seem to have grasped the concept of staying at home, or the importance of social distancing when they do leave home. I find this as hard to get my head around as I do the surging rapidity that the virus is spreading by.

I last ventured out of the village on day eleven. It was calm, uncrowded, some people wore masks and gloves, many didn’t. I think it would be different if I went out now. The French official line on wearing masks has shifted in the last few days, from there being little point in wearing one, to them being an effective barrier, and if the wearing of them is adopted by many people, a good way of reducing the spread of the virus. Medical masks are now impossible to get hold of, but our Mairie has encouraged those of us who sew, to make homemade ones to be given to the more vulnerable in the village. Once my accounts and admin duties are completed this week, I shall be making some more, especially as I unearthed a lot of spare fabric during a tidy up. If you would like to give it a try, here is the pattern I used and some simple instructions.

Mask template

Mask instructions

Coping

My current coping mechanism seems to involve the need to be as organised and in control at home as possible. In fact, this need has given me more drive and motivation than usual. Every task I achieve from clearing out the freezers, to ensuring there is always a homemade cake in the tin, to getting around to sorting areas of house and garden that have festered for too long, all help to improve my mood. This increased activity is balanced by yoga and home cooked meals, which keeps me feeling calm, grounded and sleeping well at night. We are all different. For Adrian, hard exercise is what he needs and for Ed it is his music.

Change of focus

In some bizarre way I think I needed this massive change of focus. Something big and beyond my control, forcing a rethink and taking the attention away from the doom and gloom of Brexit. This is bigger than Brexit and has the magnitude to create more harm and damage to our lives, but this time we are all in it together. There are no smug voters who won, nor any ‘remoaners’ who lost. This is an invisible war. We can’t see the enemy approach we can only try to protect ourselves and those around us to the best of our ability and do whatever is necessary to cope. If we are targeted, we just have to hope that we can recover.

Stay indoors, stay safe.

Lockdown library

My reading selection for today is Miss Moonshine’s Emporium of Happy Endings. These books are pure magic, two collections of short stories from different authors, set in different era’s but all featuring the enigmatic Miss Moonshine and all scoring a 100% hit rate on feel-good happy endings. Just what we all need in the world right now.

Diary of Covid-19 confinement, day fourteen

Sporting our new face masks

Snow

Two weeks in and we awoke to snow. Can things get any worse? Having made a mad dash into the garden to move the more tender pots back into the barn, where they were safely sheltering until last week’s mild weather prompted a flurry of activity from us, we went straight back to bed. Warm and cozy under the covers we watched as the large flakes charged past the window, dancing left to right and up and down, in the strong wind - snow is not our thing. Thankfully, nothing settled, and normality was resumed to our lives, although I have gone back to wearing my warmer winter socks and we’ve put the heating back on. We also seemed to have developed a habit for a third morning coffee, talk about living confinement life on the edge.

My first mask

Online learning

Today was another day for indoor fun and games. Adrian has been working hard on his online French lessons and has taken part in a half hour cycling workout. I’ve completed the first day’s tasks for the Arvon 5-Day Short Story Challenge, and have learned that finding short phrases from instruction manuals like “grip the handle and place thumb on.. or do not iron clothes whilst wearing them” can be used for writing prompts. 

I’ve also been playing with my sewing machine and achieved a sewing first; following my first ever YouTube instruction video. Thanks to writer friend Laurette Long for posting the link on Facebook and giving me the idea. We are now the proud owners of custom made, double lined, face masks. I’m not planning on leaving the house anytime soon, but I’m hoping Adrian will take a selfie in his when he hits Lidl tomorrow.

Netflix

We are not normally that TV focused, but we have enjoyed a few family film nights and thanks to a new Netflix subscription, the choices available should be much improved as I’m guessing Ed won’t be too keen to keep watching Mamma Mia and Mamma Mia Here We Go Again. However, the search facility on Netflix isn’t doing much for Adrian’s blood pressure as time and again all it seems to suggest to him is a film about football. The sooner Netflix learns we are not a football family, and shows him the cycling films, the better.

If you would like the pattern I used to give making a face mask a go, here it is, along with the instructions I followed here. Print this image to A4 size.

Au revoir 2016, a challenging year

As the last few hours of 2016 draw to a close I can’t help but look back on what has been a year of challenges and wonder what 2017 has in store for us.

 

Morning coffee in La Sarthe

Back in April I was excited (and apprehensive) about challenging myself with a weeks cycling in La Sarthe. 480km in six days was more than I had ever done but I loved it! There is something quite special about waking up in one location, setting off for a day on the bikes and ending up in a different hotel that night, having carried everything you need with you (or having Adrian carry it, if I am to be accurate). We are already planning more long distance cycling challenges in France for 2017 and I can’t wait to take you along with us.

 

Under the EU flag in Tournon-sur-Rhone

In June the UK EU referendum result was quite difficult to come to terms with for us. We are a UK family living and working in France thanks to EU rules and regulations. From TVA/VAT rules that help Adrian run his business, to exchange rate fluctuations that affect our income, to French rules allowing EU citizens to be elected onto local councils that affect my life in the village; as Brexit evolves I foresee quite a few challenges to our way of life in 2017 and beyond. I just hope we can continue to live the life we have chosen.

 

Cycling my 100km-in-a-day

This summer saw us celebrate our 12^th anniversary of living here and the weather was perfect. With sunshine and high temperatures day after day it would have been an ideal summer for cycling, cycling and more cycling, if the challenge of a small operation hadn’t kept me off the bike for a month or so. Thankfully I made up for it by completing my 100km in a day challenge in September, just hours before the weather broke and the driest summer we have known came to a stormy end. As I sit here today on a cold and foggy December afternoon, I can’t wait for another hot, dry summer, and as the days are getting longer, it can’t be far off now.

 

Saying goodbye to David

In November, we hit our most challenging time. We received The Call. When you live far away from family you know that one day the phone will ring, the news will be bad and you will have to make a difficult journey. Adrian’s Dad David suffered a massive stroke on Friday 18th November and although Adrian made it to his bedside, he died on 21^st November. He was fit, active and healthy and this has left us all in a state of shock and wondering 'why him?' and 'why now?'. We have been back to the UK three times since he died and him not being there feels very strange and wrong. It has, however, made us appreciate each other and realise that there is no such thing as too many hugs for your loved ones and you can’t say ‘I love you’ too many times.

In Blaye, modelling my homemade skirt

On a more positive note, this year I challenged myself to learn to sew and use a sewing machine. With a few friends in the village we have created a weekly sewing and knitting group that is full of fun, laughter, coffee and cake, as well as great ideas. With their help and encouragement I’ve made bags, bunting and a skirt, as well as having a great time every Friday morning. There is nothing like community spirit to make you feel at home and put a smile on your face.

I’m looking forward to saying goodbye to 2016 and as always, I want to be more organised with my time next year. Read more books, write more book reviews (and be more prompt about doing so), write more regular blog posts and see more of France (on my bike, if possible). I hope 2017 proves to be a year of health and happiness for us all. Thank you for reading, commenting and coming back.

Happy New Year!

This post has been linked to Dreaming of France. See here for more posts.

My homemade sac a tarte

My first sac à tarte with peach and almond tarte

I did it! With the help, guidance and patience of my friends, I am no longer a sewing machine virgin and I’ve not only made my own sac à tarte (twice) but a matching tote bag too.

Cutting the fabric

After my strange shopping expedition to la friperie, I mentioned that my Mum’s old sewing machine had been sitting abandoned in our dining room for years and that I was looking forward to learning how to use it. However, although we managed to get it working, it proved to be too heavy for me to carry down the road to my friend’s cosy stone cottage where four of us meet once a week to stitch (and bitch – in French and English). The next problem with Mum’s machine was adjusting the tension and I got more than a little frustrated with thread snapping and stitch slipping issues. My friend kindly let me use her machine and explained in simple French how to use it. I took my time, enjoyed myself and although not quite perfect, after two mornings of work, chatter and coffee I had a beautiful sac à tarte.

My first sewing session

The timing was perfect as once finished I had all afternoon to bake a peach and almond tarte, which I carefully placed in my sac and proudly carried to the Mairie for an early evening meeting. Our little sewing group and sac à tarte project had generated quite a bit of excitement in the village (not a lot goes on around here in winter), so it was with much pride and even a little curtsey that I presented my tarte in it’s sac to much oohing, aahing and congratulations. A few days later, I took my sac to the boulangerie where I proudly showed Bernadette before safely placing my bag of croissants, Ed’s black forest gateau and my purse inside, laying my baguette across the top and walking home without risking dropping anything. Usually I would stagger home with bags balanced on boxes and a baguette under my arm. I was delighted with it and made a special point of taking it to show my neighbour Pierrette later on that day. She is in her late 70’s and was a seamstress before she retired and although I knew it wasn’t perfect, I thought she’d like to see my first effort, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what happened next. She congratulated me, opened her fridge, removed a fruit tarte she’d ordered from the boulangerie and said we should test it out. No sooner had she placed the tarte in and exclaimed how clever the design was, she turned around, exited the house and placed the sac à tarte in her car, all ready to take to lunch with friends. It seems she’d misunderstood my ‘look what I’ve made and would like to show you’ for ‘look what I’ve made for you’. Although loosing my first creation hurt a little, I do know she will get lots of use from it and she is so kind and generous to us, I really don’t mind her having it. Thankfully I bought enough material from la friperie to make more than one and as I’m now also the proud owner of my very own sewing machine there is no stopping me now.

Matching sac à tarte and tote bag

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