#94 Sundai School in Chezal Benoit

#94
Not just ANY Sunday either! Chezal – Benoit (Che-sahl – Ben-Wha) was having it’s annual Brocante (junk sale) and mental health summit. You see Chezal – Benoiy is the home of a Mental Hospital and the sellers occupy the town right up to it’s gate. Too, many of the patients are present adding their own color and grunts to the event. L came to the Ruin at 9 am and while she made the huge green salad for the party we were attending afterwards at A&R’s, Kelly and I scrambled to both wake up from the party the afternoon and early evening of Saturday (yes we do these things serially it seems) (where 5 of us drank 7 bottles of the finest below 2 Euros sparkling wine and wine). I made Spinach Canneloni and it was very, very good if I do say so myself. Followed some hours later by a Pasta Povera with garlic, capers. It always works, a very simple dish that I’ve described in my blog before. That was Saturday’s food scene, Sunday afternoons at our friends A&R’s was an Asian-styled food fest. A and R had preped vegies galore, carrots, radishes, green and red bell peppers, onions, lemons and had various bottled sauces and condiments. I was put in charge by the Master Chef herself who provided me with the valued kitchen support I needed to create an asian feast. It was great creative fun and there was more than enough food at the end for A&R to have leftovers for two meals at least! I came up with Oyster Sauce Beef, Musselman Curry, Vietnamese Lemon Pork, Red Pepper Chicken, Chop Suey (YES!), and a couple of other ad hoc dishes thrown in for good measure. All over rice, thai rice noodles. Much wine was drank, as usual. The French couple from up the road (Chicken Farm) chatted amiably with all of us, in French of course…but we seemed to rise to the occassion. I had a bit of trouble understanding which isn’t unusual as the speed at which the French speak is, at times, intimidating. They also brought along their own product…goat cheeses from their heard of Goats, it was, without doubt, the FINEST goat cheese I have EVER enjoyed! The Ash coverred round loaf was spectacularly good. Wonderful light texture and a lemony aftertaste that just faded to the next bite. Anyway, we all enjoyed ourselves emmensly in A&R’s sunroom under ever darkening skies and eventually the late afternoon pouring rains. Here’s the link to the YouTube movie of the Brocante we enjoyed in the morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT6Ztt_Iz1o
What a lovely day, rain or not. Great fun with great people, tons of chat and laughs galore, Life hardly could be better than this.

Alice and Rob

Blog Entry Monday April 28th, 2008
Rain this morning after a very warm yesterday afternoon that dissolved into a chill wind amidst our reveries with our good friends, Alice and Rob from Chezel Benoit. I did a Mexican lunch thing, quick but quite good if I do say so myself and I enlisted their chopping help with the onions and garlic and apple. Mexican Hash (Pecadillo), Spanish Rice, Beans in a Pot, corn tortillas. It was all good but the chill wind took the temp down quickly and frankly screwed it for me, I like food HOT and this was not. Rob really LIKED it and had seconds and thirds, Alice soon followed suit, so cold to me was fine for them.
We had gone out yesterday morning to see what we could see at two local brocantes (junk sales), great fun for the French and Brits who seem to adore these things but not so much for Kelly and I who have become pretty jaded after 6 years of attending these events with some regularity…piles of knick-knacks and rusted tools, old crap that nobody wants any longer. Every once in a while something terrific shows up but with the dollar at 1.6 to 1 or worse it would have to be a Mona Lisa to get our money. We did find a bargain with a man selling plants, 10 very healthy looking strawberry plants with flowers and tiny berries for 6.20E, so I bought 20 for our courtyard planting. That was it. It was warm enough I sought out the shade of a nearby seller selling crepes, iced drinks and at the moment eating their lunch.
Today? Well, stay home and work on the ruin a bit. Nail the strips in the old waiting room so that the cloth for the walls can be fastened, not many left to do then Kelly can start hanging the wall covering material. Have to go over to DIX (Deez…10 Rt St. Amand) to empty it of extraneous odds and ends in preparation for sale someday real-soon-now. As I finish that up there is a knock at the door, it’s our original English speaking friends Jack and Hortense who told us last week that they would be by to “have a look” soon. Today was the day. So we gave the grand tour including the barn for Jack. He is very familiar with the style of construction as he was a contractor in the UK for years. He is the funniest human being I know, he is very animated, all arms and gestures galore, constantly commenting on many subjects and an open door in every verbal way. He is VERY suspicious of almost everyone here, with many examples of paranoia-like thinking, The French, The Gypsies, The neighbors across the street, the local bar-master, The Cafe, US for all we know. We sat in the dining room and gabbed for hours about the house and their future abode in Spain which they have adopted as their next home…and we laughed our asses off! Like many Brits they like the heat of warmer climes so prefer Italy, Spain, Morocco and other locales to this particular one. So be it, something for everyone hereabouts, mostly anyway.
Music:
Listening to Bob Dylan in my iTunes Library takes me back to my Air Force days,
listening to him rap his way thru his tunes while I laid in my bunk at Beale AFB.
Seems a million years ago now, before anything of consequence to me, my mother dead a few years before and my father gone away to god-knows-where.
My grandmother and her husband Harold in the not-so-distant past and only down the road a few hundred miles, I listened on, dreaming of a future, jet noise in the background. Yes, at the time it took a wild ear to listen to ol’ Bob,
not the most melodic sound one let into one’s ears, he said things that we all felt but few spoke. I found him intellectually stimulating if not highly entertaining in the time. Now I listen and enjoy him very much, older, much older, and wiser too.
Then things happen out of the larger nowhere that encompasses all of us and our lives. Friends I have long lost came back. The first was SC, a letter arrived the day AFTER we returned from our stay in France, hello, Hi! How are you? It began, now several years later I review the miracle of his finding me after I had looked for him many times in the past. Gone, in a bus travelling across the US,
once in Seattle, a computer repair business then just g-o-n-e. Now back we share thoughts and memories often, reveries amidst the storm of Life. So very good for the soul, old friends renewed. Another happened too, a friend from longer ago yet, an old girlfriend T. She was gone while I was still in the USAF.
Afriend stole her away as I was courting her. Mad? No…just looked elsewhere.
Long, long gone she was, another letter came via email, she had read my blog!
Amazing! Over 40 years had passed since I saw her face! 40 years! Now we regularly exchange emails about our families and lives. I’m a happy man.

Lost In The Woods

Blog Entry 4/24/08 Thursday
One of my talking points has been abolished, at least for now…it was 81 degrees F here today. So much for the cold of Lignieres, the continuance of winter, the obnoxious clouds and rains, the river out of it’s banks. So much for it all…we had a breath of summer today and it was wonderful. We sat in the sun this afternoon and drank rum and coke and talked to our wandering cat Furry as she explored her territories. Her nemesis Long Tail was no where to be seen so Furry was free to examine her domain without challenge today, tomorrow may not be so good for her. Such is the life of our cats.
Later in the afternoon we made a grocery run to Issoudun and then promptly I made a right turn a bit early and we found ourselves wandering thru new territory headed towards Chezel Benoit and our friends house there. Lost in the woods, we saw the managed forest cut here and there; the individual trees lined up against the dirt road for miles and miles. Finally we exited the forest and headed off in the right direction for an evenings visit, a few laughs and a bit of using their computer for our latest fix of email and news.