Lazy Sunday Flapjacks

Flapjacks for cyclists

Lazy Sunday Flapjacks

When you wake up to yet another rainy day in May, a lazy Sunday seems the only option. My usual distraction for dull, damp days would be to bake a cake, but having already made a carrot cake this week, I decided on a batch of cycle-fuel flapjacks, that I can freeze. The recipe was inspired by the one from the Global Cycling Network, but I’ve tweaked it for our tastes and reduced the sugar a little, as the mashed banana makes it quite sweet. 

 

Ingredients for Flapjacks

150g coconut oil (I sometimes use half butter, half coconut oil)

75g Agave syrup (or golden syrup)

75g brown sugar

170g oats

75g walnuts (or mixed nuts)

75g mixed dried fruits (today I used dates, goji berries and apricots)

1 ripe banana mashed

 

Method

Melt the sugar, oil and syrup in a saucepan over a medium heat.

In a large mixing bowl add all dry ingredients, mix in the mashed banana and then coat everything in the oil/syrup and mix well.

 

Push it into a lined baking tin and cook at 170º for half an hour, or until golden brown on top.

 

Leave to cool, cut into squares and enjoy (ideally) on a bike ride.

 

Comfort food, meatballs

While the flapjacks were cooking, I focussed my efforts on tonight’s dinner and the sauce to go with my homemade meatballs. Meatballs are our go-to special meal, often served for birthdays and celebrations, but tonight we’ll have them just because they are warm and comforting and cheer us up. My little burst of kitchen activity kept me occupied and filled the house with warm, sugary aromas, but did mean that by early afternoon dinner was done and the weather still hadn’t improved enough to get out on the bikes. We braved the wind to walk the dog, but that just reinforced the belief that despite some sunny spells, today wasn’t a day to take the bikes out, so I might as well curl up with a good book and a flapjack. 

 

If this was a video it would be wild and windy!

May shouldn’t be a month when we need to resort to comfort food, but then the warm leggings and chunky knit jumper, that I thought had been packed into the drawer to be forgotten about for the coming months, have also been dug out once more. I really can’t wait for shorts and t-shirt weather, when all meals are enjoyed in the garden. The hazelnut tree in the courtyard, bowing and bouncing from side to side in the wild winds, was enough of a sign that eating outside wouldn’t be much fun today. A quick walk around the orchard also showed a disappointing sight; the damage of late frosts, cold winds and not enough sunshine this spring means there are very few cherries on our trees this year. I hope the plums, apples and pears have coped better.

 

https://www.gouvernement.fr/info-coronavirus

Covid-19 updates

This week will see many changes to life in France as the second of the four-stage plan to get back to normal comes into effect on 19^th May. The main points are that café, bar and restaurant terraces, that have been closed for over six months, will be reopening, as will museums, theatres and cinemas, and the overnight curfew will come into effect at 21h, rather than 19h. Let’s hope there is an improvement in the weather so we can at least enjoy a coffee and a spot of people-watching from a café terrace, or an evening bike ride as the sun begins to set.  

France has reached the magic twenty million mark for people who have received at least one vaccine and Adrian will soon be joining them. The opening of a four-day gap between courses for him, enabled me to book an appointment for his first vaccination this week, with the second one in the diary for later in June. As youngsters under fifty, Ed and I are only eligible to book a last-minute slot for the following twenty-four hours, and despite regular searching for the last four days, there has been nothing at all within 100km of us. Refreshing the page has become a bit of an obsession but I’ll keep checking until successful. 

May this week bring sunshine and freedom.

Covid-19 one year since confinement

Covid-19 confinement one year on

Wednesday 17^th March 2021, one year since confinement began.

 

Today at midday marked exactly one year since confinement in France began, initially for two weeks, extended to a total of fifty-five days for phase one, then another forty-six days later in the year, followed by ninety-four days (so far) of overnight curfew. Not that I’m counting. 

There should be so much to say about the anniversary of so many extraordinary events, and yet the words aren’t forthcoming. We have gone from a normal where we were free to travel, to cross borders, to mix and to socialise, to coping with the strict restrictions of confinement and curfews, and where wearing masks out in public and maintaining a distance from others, have now become the norm. 

It has been one year since Adrian last ran an on-site training job. A year since his wings were clipped, throwing him into full-time village life for the first time, and a subdued, muted village life at that. No soirees at the bar or salle des fetes, no socialising and no meetings. Everything we had come to regard as normal for village life, put on hold. His job gave him stimulating face to face interaction with a different set of delegates each week, and I know from the way he casually slips processes, results, outcomes and accountability into day to day conversations, that he misses it. 

 

One year since he was last with his Mum, and fourteen months since I last saw my parents. 

 

One year since his last pub meal in the UK.

 

One year since the last airport run, not that I’m missing those at all.

 

One year since the three of us sat in silence as President Macron addressed the nation with talk of being at war with the virus.

 

One year, and the first ever entire year, that Adrian and I have spent together, with no nights apart, since we moved into our first house in 1997. Miraculously neither of us have yet found the need to feign illness and retreat to the spare bedroom for a few days.

 

Despite France being free of lockdown (except for a few hot spots currently in weekend lockdown) since mid-December, I don’t feel free and Covid-19 is still very much all around us. Hospitals in some areas are struggling and our local ones are expecting high dependency transfers from Paris and Lyon to help ease the situations there. 

 

A year ago, I had the safety net of confinement to protect me. I felt grounded and strangely in control, journaling my thoughts in daily blog posts. Now the risks and concerns are still present, but with a greater freedom of movement and I feel far less in control. Subdued and uncertain are probably what I feel the most this week.

 

Some days, I can feel the fatigue of the situation, a physical ache weighing me down. I’m curfew weary too; the longer, lighter evenings feel wasted when we have to be home by six o’clock. On days when the weather is kind, we have promised ourselves we’ll do an hour in the garden post-curfew, meaning we won’t feel as guilty being out on bikes in the afternoon, when we should be working in the garden.

  

I should be sowing seeds for the potager, something Ed and I tackled at the beginning of confinement a year ago but I can find little enthusiasm for it this year. I think the soil in the potager would benefit from a rest, as would we from the constant demands of watering and weeding. I know I’ll miss the produce if I don’t sow the seeds, but thankfully there are plans in the pipeline and new adventures to look forward to this year.

 

Looking back a year

January 2020, fun and laughter in the village bar

We often like to look back in our photo library to see what we were doing a year ago, two years ago etc, and comparing life and the weather to today. A look back to just last year and it is difficult to believe how different life was then. My diary shows village meetings where galette des rois would have been shared as we all wished each other a happy, healthy and prosperous new year. Ed was in Poitiers and Adrian was busy travelling back and forth between here and the UK, but still managed to be around for a riotous fortnight of socialising. 

 

On Friday 17^th we apero’d with friends in their garden, laughing and having fun as we tried out our new hula hoops, that we were convinced were the latest thing in exercise and fitness. Then we were off to the salle des fêtes for the annual council and village employee’s meal, a huge seafood spread, and our last council perk before the end of our six-year term of office. On Wednesday 22^nd there was a live music night at the village bar, followed two days later by our sing-along Grease movie night, which rolled seamlessly into the bar’s monthly vide frigo (empty the fridge buffet night) on Saturday 25^th. We then finished January off in style with our final Bollox to Brexit fish and chip soirée on 31^st.

 

Hugs and kisses were given and received in abandon. Glasses were raised, meals were shared with friends, laughter rang out and we usually ended up singing. No one owned a mask. Today, we are living under a curfew that means no leaving home after six o’clock in the evening. There are no apéros with friends, no shared meals and as the village bar closed its doors for good last autumn, no events to attend. Even the meetings I’d normally look forward to, have lost their enjoyment thanks to the barrier of the masks, the social distancing and the fear of contamination. There is a real feeling of having retreated from village life into my own little family bubble where I’m happy knowing we are all safe and together, but I also know the longer this goes on, the more difficult it will be to get back out there.

 

Tonight, at nine o’clock, for a number nerd like me, will be quite a significant time, being 21h on the 21^st day, of the first month, of the 21^st year, of the 21^st century. I’m not sure what message the universe will send, but it’s definitely been a wild and windy day today. We will certainly be taking a moment, raising our glasses to mark it, and hoping it brings positive vibes.