Category Archives: France

The Last Red Day cutting costs at suppertime

In a previous post I talked about Red Days here in France and how much they cost us. Extortionate amounts of money. Last night, we celebrated the last Red Day of the winter. Here’s what we cooked on the one gas ring of a Camping Gaz stove.

DSCN0134
mussels in cream sauce

Those mussels were big as a dog’s doodahs. Not that I’ve ever eaten a dog’s whatsits, but, you know, just to give you an idea of the size of the things. I cooked them in shallots and white wine, garlic, cream and finely chopped rosemary, thyme,oregano and basil. There was plenty of bread to mop up afterwards.

single gas ring
cutting costs

I sent out a call on my Facebook page for ideas for Red Day Recipes. I’m looking for one-pot, cheapskate dinners, cooked in a jiffy on a little ring like this:

A Place in the Sun?

DCF compatable JPEG Img
Red Nose or home-grown tomato?

Move over Stella. (McCartney) Here’s Celia’s design for a Red Nose.

Red Nose Day is coming up again. Here’s a picture of a perfect home-grown tomato. I know it’s home-grown because I grew it myself. I loved it and cared for all its siblings and they all tasted very nice, thank-you-very-much with basil and olive oil and a few crushed pine nuts, maybe a bit of Parmesan cheese. Ah, eating lunch outdoors.

It feels like a long time since it was warm enough to do that. It’s probably the coldest day of the year here today. We have proper, real, honest to goodness, on-your-face red noses.  It snowed in the hills yesterday. They don’t tell you that can happen on A Place in the Sun. They don’t tell you how much it’s going to cost you to heat your place in the sun through the winter months.

Holidaymakers haven’t a clue what happens here from November through till March. They arrive in June, July, August and September and are disappointed if they see a cloud.

Ah, well. It’s a perfect afternoon for watching the Six Nations Rugby.

TROBAIRITZ. Who were they?

Trobairitz
Trobairitz songs were called cansos

Trobairitz were troubadours. Female troubadours. They sang songs and poems about love, tradition and current affairs. Their songs were called cansos. Their language was Occitan – the language that gave its name to the region of southern France where they lived and worked.

Langue means language.

Langue d’Occitan became Languedoc

The region of Languedoc stretches across southern France from west to east.

This where the Trobairitz came from.  This is the area they covered when they travelled in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Not much is known about them. Very few of their songs remain.

Trobairitz Azalais de Porciragues
Azalais came from Portiragnes

Azalais de Porciragues lived in the twelfth century. Her home town is called Portiragnes now and is a popular beach resort in the summer.

Women like Azalais were strong and independent. It’s thought they must have had their own means to support their lifestyles.

This is where I live. The departments might have slightly different names now, but the rivers are all in the same place and the mountains funnel the winds as they always did.

land of the Trobairitz
land of the Trobairitz

Languedoc is a land of tradition and superstition. Its people love the Arts: it’s in their genes. This is where I’m writing about a twenty first century Trobairitz. She has stories to tell. About love, tradition and current affairs. Her name is Weed. Like the Trobairitz of old, she’s strong and independent. She has her own means to support her lifestyle. She travels the land of the troubadours in her truck. She tells her stories at an overnight truck stop.

 

Edit: Book One – Trobairitz – the Storyteller is available on Amazon from Friday 28th November 2014.

Blowing a hooley!

tramontaneWe’ve got the Tramontane today. It blows over the top of the snow-capped Pyrenees and circles around rattling shutters and stabbing you between the eyes – a perfect afternoon for staying indoors and watching the start of the Six Nations.
I won’t beat myself up if I don’t do any writing today. That’s how it goes. Sometimes I write two or three thousand words; sometimes I struggle to get down five hundred.

Ae Fond Kiss at the Burns’ night with guitar accompaniment

He was an excellent guitarist. When he sang to his own accompaniment, the room hushed and listened. But, we couldn’t work together. He didn’t know what I was doing with my voice and I didn’t know what he was doing with his chords.

See, if we’d had a chance to prepare, things might have worked out better. So, after the first verse I asked to carry on ‘a cappella’ as they say in the music world. The term comes from Italian and means in the style of chapel singing without instrumental accompaniment.

We had a word afterwards and he told me I’d done the right thing.

So, this brings me to the subject of my previous post. You have to have the confidence to sing in your own voice, to write in your own voice. Some people will like it; some people won’t.

13th Red Day

Our electricity tariff in France is what we inherited when we bought the house. It’s called Tempo. You need a university degree to understand how it works. There are Red Days, White Days and Blue Days and within each price band there’s a cheaper night rate that kicks in at ten pm. A forecast box on the wall in our utility room tells us what to expect for the morrow. From November onwards, it’s a house rule to check the forecast.DSCN0087

White Days equate to standard charges. Blue Days are cheap rate all day long. They come in summer when you don’t want any heating and it’s too damned hot to cook anyway. Red Days, though. Oh, Red Days. There are twenty-two of them spread through the winter months. Red Days are when you switch off all the lights. Red Days are when you hope somebody invites you out to dinner. On Red Days, we bring in the camping gas stove and set it up on the hob. We don’t use the electric kettle or the dishwasher or the washing machine and tumble dryer, or the vacuum or the iron. We don’t have on the computer and the television. We eat stir-frys and anything else that cooks quickly in one pan. Red Days’ electricity costs ten times the cheap rate.

The upside of all this is

a)    Red Days are a good excuse not to do any housework.

b)   On summer Blue Days you can afford to put on the air-conditioning

c)    By law, our supplier can’t give us a Red Day on Sundays or Bank Holidays.

d)   It’s rather nice sitting by the log fire in a room lit by candles

The downside of all this is

a)    I spend all day Sunday washing, drying and ironing

b)   I’ve taken to wearing winceyette pyjamas and taking a hot water bottle to bed

c)    You can’t read by candlelight

d)   Dinners can be a bit boring

With this last in mind, an idea for a book comes to mind. Red Day Dinners. Now, how would I pitch that?

First of all, I’d have to ask friends to donate recipes. I’m no great shakes in the kitchen. My greatest culinary strength is the one handed down by my mother: never waste anything. Throw it all in a pan and fry it up. The results can be surprisingly tasty, even if they are an odd colour. If the colour turns out too obnoxious, you crack in a couple of eggs.

See, there’ll probably be an expert out there who knows how to use a steamer on the one gas ring of a camping stove to cook a whole three course meal. I think I might manage two: warmed up leftovers in the bottom and a steamed slab of chocolate cake in the top. Voilà. And there we have it. Celia’s Simple Red Day Supper. Perhaps I should rethink the title of that book!

But, I’ve neglected to mention what’s happening outside on Red Days. It’s cold. It’s very cold. It’s a dry kind of cold that feels like daggers in your eyes. The wind slices through your clothes as if it’s trying to rip them from your back. Huge cedars and sky-piercing cypresses rock and sway  and the distant mountains have done some overnight magic. The peaks are covered in snow. In the crystal light of a Red Day, they seem closer than ever, majestic against that winter blue sky, rock faces glowing pink at sunset.

Birds gather each morning on the top of a neighbour’s television aerial. They sit in tight rows and speculate on the day before they fly off to eat. At four thirty every afternoon, there they are, back on the aerial again before dusk summons them to roost.

Only 9 more Red Days to go.

 

Two Days of snow! A south of France winter.

Next year's Merlot under a blanket of snow
Next year’s Merlot under a blanket of snow

 

We don’t often get snow here. This week we had plenty. It doesn’t last, though. As soon as the sky clears, the sun comes out and melts it all.

In the distance, the Montagnes Noir overlook the village, another source of inspiration for me. One in particular features in my story The End of the World PartyView towards the church

View towards the church