Dinner for Seven

Tonight at 7pm, dinner for 7, us included. Audrey arrived last week for her 12 day stay with us. She is amazingly helpful in all manner of things, quick runs to the store to get last minute loaves of bread and the all-important potatoes, vacuuming the guest room where she is staying, general straightening out of the mess that this house becomes after such an event as tonight. We have Will and Dawn, a Scottish couple who real really DO owe a dinner, it’s been two years! The last trip over the pond we didn’t accomplish the deed for some reason or the other and barely had any formal dinners for either ex-pats or our French friends. This time has been different and we have had 4 dinners so far but no French friends, tonight that all changes, the French are coming, the french are coming! I’m cooking a braised pork roast with apricot/onion coolis, carrots with orange and thyme, roast potatoes as the main course. The pork roast has been marinating in onion, salt, sugar and white white since 1 am last night. It will be braised in the marinade with the addition of apricot conserve, it’ll take about 2 hrs to get up to 150 degrees (my current target temp for French pork) then I’ll let it rest for about 20 minutes to allow the juices to redistribute. this won’t be much of a problem as the thing is braising anyway. Kelly is doing a compressa of fresh (our own!) tomatos, buffalo mozerella, and parma ham as a first. The wine will be a white, Poully Fume. Cheese course of french cheeses, a blue, a hard cheese and a goat and another white wine a Quincy (fabulous local white). A green salad with olive oil and basalmic vinegar followed by desert, Peach ice cream with sliced peaches. Liquorosas to follow from our amazing liquor cabinet (the talk of Lignieres we hear!)(Oh those Americans!)

Like a jungle in Paradise

Off to the ZOO at Doue La Fontaine south of the Loire River in the western Loire Valley. It’s a zoo buried in an old quarry, many levels, tunnels, creeks and waterfalls. Beautiful life-like enclosures for all manner of animals from all over the world. It is my favorite zoo. So we invited Ann and Raj to join us on my B-Day to wander there using thier Tom Tom GPS device to help us navigate our way thru the twisting turning little backroads that lead one there. The day was beautiful, cool and while overcast with a slight breeze to keep us fresh, it was wonderful. We ate lunch first on a level above the giraffes. Steak and frites for all of us of varying levels of doneness. We took copious pictures of the giraffes and zebra that inhabit that particular enclosure. Afterwards we began our trip through the zoo, bats in the bat cave, lions, tigers, monkeys, rhinos, storks, herons and all manner of other birds. Blue parrots, bears then about 2 pm we came across our favorites, the vultures. Favorites? Yes! They are fantastic! Their stride is eccentric, a little jump followed by a waddling hop repeated again and again. A dance. Then the food arrived, horse ribs…a couple of racks, oh my…they went wild. Screaming, jumping,
chasing one another and posing. Wow, what a sight they are. We watched them for better than an hour and a half. More to come on this one…after the break.

MY @@!#$$ Nikon Died

Shit! Yes, le camera ce mort…”lens error” when first turned on. I feel blind. I cannot see thru my camera anymore, like I lost the eye of the cyclopse and am now falling into the abyss. I first didn’t believe it, how could this high tech all metal wonder the Nikon Coolpix S10 be so very sick. The message “lens error” was indicated in the manual as needing the services of a Nikon approved service center. I changed the battery. I changed the SD memory card. I removed and reinserted the battery a thousand times. I froze the camera. I heated it up. Wirrrrr and then “lens error”. Shit. So now to replace it. I only want IT, I bought accessories, a lens cap, 2 spare batteries and several SD cards. Shit. So onto eBay to find how few people will or CAN ship to France from the US of A. Too difficult I guess. Too risky for a perpetually scared public. Oh well. I MUST have another. After reading about “lens error” I’ve discovered that many other cameras Nikon, Olympus, Canon etc. etc. there MUST be a thousand makes and more models than you can shake a stick at. I only WANT this one. Heck.
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Off to an auction this afternoon with Raj and Ann…should be great fun poking around and gawking at stuff.
H