8 gr8 days

A (not so) quiet week in Lake Wobegon…

On “A Prairie Home Companion,” Garrison Keiller begins his news stories of Lake Wobegon with: “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon…” Our week was just the opposite – filled with fun, friends and excitement.

We met Bruce and Judy at the TGV station in Avignon last Friday morning and then drove to Uzès, about 30 km west of Avignon. It is a beautiful little village with wonderful medieval alleys and architecture, an imposing cathedral with a fenestrelle tower

and the castle of the first duchy of France. The castle was built on the site of a Roman camp. (The pictures are from the Uzès website: www.uzes.fr.) We had lunch, walked around the village admiring the shops (closed during lunch time) and the architecture and then drove back to Vaison la Romaine.

Our neighbor Jane had made a lovely chicken stew so we had a wonderful dinner across the street at her house. Saturday, we went to the truffle market at Richerenches and Judy bought some truffles to take back to their friends in Paris. 

Richerenches

As we did with Margaret and Phil last year, we ate at the town hall. The menu was the same: truffle omelets, salad, cheese, dessert and coffee. There were bottles of local rose and red wine on the tables to go with the meal. The long tables seat 16, so we got to rub elbows and converse with the truffle mavens on either side. We drove back to Vaison and then followed Jane to Mirabelle aux Baronnies to see the house that her friend owns there. It is situated in the center of the village and includes five or six different levels. (I got confused after walking from one area to the next, then through a passage way, an OLD circular staircase…)

We were back in time to make dinner for the four of us plus Terry who had come to claim his sweet dog, Cesar. Cesar had been staying with us for a week while Terry was in the UK. It was Ellen's (and my) opportunity for a dog fix, since our own deerhounds are back home in Lansing with our wonderful dog/house sitters.

The lovely Cesar!

I made lasagna but with a few twists: Greek yogurt instead of ricotta, Scamorza instead of mozzarella, fresh pasta (as in rolled out in front of us), and with each layer of pasta, I added a layer of zucchini slices. Ellen and Judy made salad and Bruce and I had gone to the cheese store to get Roquefort and goat cheese (chevre). Terry brought dessert. (French language error: When the merchant showed me the rolled out pasta, I said it looked like twice as much as I would need. He understood me to say that I wanted twice as much and rolled out another sheet of pasta… I tried using the extra pasta dough as a crust for a pie, but it doesn’t work too well!)

Bruce has become a discriminating connoisseur of “pain au chocolat” for breakfast. He has honed his skills in the bakeries in Paris near where they live. We asked him to continue his research in Vaison la Romaine so that we would know to which bakery we should go whenever we wanted “pain au chocolat.” Between Saturday and Sunday, we stopped at five bakeries and, at each one, asked for one croissant and one “pain au chocolat.” Tastes vary, but there seemed to be general agreement that the “pain au chocolat” from Emile Bec was tops. (The croissant from the bakery on Cours Taulignan got the highest marks.) For lunch, we went to La Lyriste, our favorite restaurant in Vaison and run by our dear friends Ben and Marie Joulain. We had a lovely Sunday lunch with good friends. Later that afternoon, we took Bruce and Judy back to Avignon to catch their evening train to Paris.

Tuesday, Père Noel (Father Christmas) visited the crèche (it was not I this year as the kids know me too well). He talked with the kids and gave out candy. The kids ate way too much candy and as one can guess, they were still on sugar highs three hours later when their parents came to take them home.

On Wednesday, we left early in the morning to drive to Villefranche sur mer to visit the village and the language school where Ellen will spend February as she has enrolled in the “Institut de Français” (www.institutdefrancais.com/). The village is located between Nice and Monaco and is built on the cliffs rising out of the Mediterranean.

When I first looked at the map, I noticed a lot of hairpin turns – they are switch-backs – as one climbs or descends from the main road through town. The hills made us both think of Greensburg, PA – though the PA hills seem almost flat when compared to those in Villefranche sur mer. We are both excited about the school because of reports that we have heard from former students. Ellen will spend a month immersed in French. Once the program begins, the students are allowed to speak only French. The emphasis is on developing oral skills. I plan to visit Ellen on the weekends and of course we will speak only French.

For the last week of our French class before the holidays, we had a combined Thursday/Friday class “apero” that included all of the students of the Vaison French classes. We shared wonderful foods and wine/champagne and good conversation (mostly in French but there were side conversations in Dutch, German, English…)

The holidays are upon us. The towns and villages are all decorated with holiday lights and people are wishing one another happy holidays. There will be parties and “aperos” and more good times with friends and neighbors. The opportunities to over-eat abound… (It’s time to clean some carrots to put in a bag to eat before starting the next food fest.)

May your holidays be filled with good friends, good times, good foods and the joy of sharing them.

Meilleurs vœux et bonne année !

Town square, Villefranche sur mer

Our good friends, Margaret and Phil, took us to the opening of the truffle market in Richerenches. The small village is the center of the truffle trade in Provence. I read that it is considered to be the most important truffle market in France.

When we got out of the car, it felt like we had stepped into a Marcel Pagnol movie set. (Marcel Pagnol was a French film maker from Marseille. He directed “the trilogy” of French films: Marius, Fanny and Caesar. Hollywood made Fanny from a compilation of the trilogy with Charles Boyer, Maurice Chevalier and Leslie Caron.) Even the street music – from two men who played concertina, violin, piccolo and tin whistle (not all at the same time) - was reminiscent of the music from Pagnol’s films.

The people at the truffle market seemed to be extras from a Pagnol film. Old, unshaven men with berets and work jackets that they have worn for farming, herding, car repairs, and hunting since the jackets were new – generations ago. Several men had the remains of a cigarette stuck to their lips so well attached that they were able to continue their animated conversations without losing the cigarette.

The day started with a procession of men and women wearing long black capes, Camargue-style (large brim) black felt hats and gold medallions hung from gold ribbons around their necks. One man carried his truffle-hunting dog with him during the procession. (The dog had its own gold sash.) They walked from the town square and then preceded around the town ending at a platform stage set up in front of the mayor’s office. The procession reminded me of church processions without the incense – unless cigarette smoke is a modern replacement for incense. All of the black-caped parade marchers with their black hats and gold sashes joined the leaders of the truffle market on stage who offered their best wishes to the truffle hunters (trufflers) and to the truffle merchants. (Ellen got some great pictures of the events and as soon as I can figure out how to get them off of her phone/camera, I will post them.)

After the well-wishing ended, the two young children in the procession cut the ribbon to open the market officially. Meanwhile, on the other side of the main street, men and a few women were already elbow-deep in the truffle trade. The trufflers brought their “black diamonds” in bags/boxes/sacks to the merchants to see what price they would get. The merchants had scales set up in the trunks of their cars or on the beds of their pick-up trucks. Most of the vehicles were well-worn old farm vehicles, but in the middle of the row was a brand new, shiny, sporty, black Mercedes. The man behind the steering wheel wore a suit and tie. His colleague, standing at the trunk, wore a black leather jacket (truffle merchants from Paris ?). The merchants looked over the contents, inspected a few, smelled them and then offered a price. The truffler could accept the price – at which point the contents were weighed – or reject the price and go to another merchant/car trunk/truck bed to see if s/he could do better. If the merchant and the truffler agreed on the price, the truffler would move from the back of the vehicle to the front where a second person, often sitting in the driver’s seat, would pay for the truffles. It was all very orderly but reminded me of descriptions of drug buys in the states.

“…seventy-five-year-old Pébeyre Sr. was on his way home from the Wednesday truffle market in Richerenches, in Provence, when his car was forced into a field by a big BMW. No sooner had he gotten back on the road when another car pulled in front, blocking his passage. Six thieves piled out and, while Pébeyre’s wife watched in horror, forced him out of the car. They made him open the trunk, then fled with 150 pounds of truffles worth thirty-eight thousand dollars.” (Sanders, M. From here you can’t see Paris: seasons of a French village and its restaurant. New York: Perennial, 2003, p. 204)

At around noon, Margaret, Phil, Ellen and I joined hundreds of others at the “salle de fêtes” (community hall) where the village was serving a truffle lunch in a church-basement-style room of long tables with very narrow aisles between the rows of tables. We had truffle omelets, bread, salad with goat cheese, ice cream and coffee. (Red table wine complemented the meal.) We enjoyed the foods but, even more, we enjoyed meeting the people to our left and right. There were three couples from les Baux (50 miles to the south) seated beside Ellen and Phil. The couples seated by Margaret and me were locals from Richerenches.

We got back to Vaison in time to go to the English-language film (London River) showing at the theater and then to enjoy “Bouillabaisse” that Margaret had made. We returned to our little apartment at the end of the evening, tired but happy to be part of this little corner of Provence.