Family

Mum arrived on Friday to spend a few days at Pissou. It has been a lovely few days, starting on Friday lunchtime after I collected her from Carcassonne airport and we stopped off in Mirepoix on the way back to have lunch with Pat. I love the 12th century covered arcades of Mirepoix with their amazingly detailed wooden sculptures. You can't help but wonder who carved them all those centuries ago.We have been blessed with wonderfully warm, sunny weather over the weekend and I spent my Birthday afternoon on Saturday on the terrasse with mum preparing apples for scratting before passing them on to Andy for processing through the press to extract the juice for our first cider efforts.The result was 2 x 10 ltr containers filled with apple juice onto which we sprinkled cider yeast - they are now happily glugging away and I am eagerly anticipating my first swig of cider in a month or two's time!

Saturday evening we had a lovely meal out at the Auberge de la Grotte in Bedeilhac which is up and over the Col de Port. It was a later night than we had anticipated which resulted in a slow start on Sunday. The Fete du boeuf was taking place down in Massat, but due to general weariness we ended up spending the day pottering around Pissou, weeding, clearing and planting bulbs and wallflowers that mum had given me as a birthday present and which now hold the promise of colour and scent from early Spring onwards. Just what Pissou needs! It had been a productive day.

Yesterday, I took mum up to the Col d'Agnes via the Etang de Lers where I knew she would find flora that would be of interest. En route, she took a rather fetching photo of a cow!
The views from the Col d'Agnes towards the high mountains which border Spain never fail to impress visitors. I snatched a photo of mum in photographic action.All too soon, it was time to take her back to Carcassonne airport today for her flight home. Hopefully she will have absorbed some of the peace and tranquillity of the area and the batteries will be somewhat recharged!

On the way back from Carcassonne this afternoon, I stopped off at Pat and Kevin's and had a short (20km) VTT mountain bike ride with Pat near Varilhes which was a stretch of the legs and nothing too technical or steep. The weather appears to be deteriorating now that mum has left, but hopefully we can get in some more VTT, running or higher level walking action this week regardless.

More produce

We had a courier delivery from the UK today which included the 'pressoir' and masher for the cider-making process. At long last! We had a trial run this afternoon and pressed a bucketful of mixed apples to see what kind of juice yield we would get. The result was 2 litres of juice from 3.5kgs of apples. The hydrometer suggested that we should be able to produce a cider of max 7.5% alcohol ..... Hic! The juice is very brown but very very appley. This afternoon we have given the tree behind the house a good shake and collected another ~30 kgs of apples, so the production line will be in full swing over the next week or so.

After straining the elderberry, blackberry and apple pulp overnight, I made the hedgerow jelly this morning. Not only is it a fantastic colour but it has the most delicious flavour with the blackberries dominating. The rest of the elderberries are currently on a slow stew in the oven with some cider vinegar and will be transformed into Pontack sauce tomorrow. It is apparently "an unrivalled partner for winter stews, casseroled liver, slow-roasted belly pork, or anything wild and gamey". For those who may be interested, the recipe can be found in Richard Mabey's 'Food for Free' and also in the River Cottage Preserves Handbook. More apples are currently in the jelly bag and will be transformed into apple and chilli jelly tomorrow. This afternoon Andy has also made some hot brown sauce of which 2 jars have been put away and half a jar stored in the fridge. I think the store cupboard is almost full now, although I would love to produce some homemade tomato sauce which is sure to knock the socks of Heinz ketchup ;-)

A mini break, a mini harvest

Kev is away at the moment and Pat fancied some girly company so I did the right thing and yesterday headed over with my mountain bike to their 'new' house near Lavelenet. The weather was perfect for a VTT mountain bike ride. The area around their house has numerous well signposted VTT routes of various levels of difficulty and in Pat's words 'we are like kids in a sweetshop!'. I soon understood the reason for her excitement. We set off straight from the house. The route she had chosen took us along farm tracks and woodland singletrack, along disused railway lines and hardpack tracks, up hills (1.3kms at 11.5% was tough) and down technical descents and along riverside paths - I have never experienced such variety on a VTT ride before! We covered 50kms and rewarded ourselves with an icecream two thirds of the way around, although our attempts at finding somewhere that served beer proved fruitless (on Monday afternoons there is very little open in the area)! My bike was working well and so were my legs. It had been a cracking ride out and I/we are now hungry for more!After a fun evening rocking and rolling to Johnny Halliday and supping wine, we had a lazy start this morning and opted for a 10km walk rather than a run, following another of the well sign-posted VTT routes from the house, which at one point took us up a steep incline from which we had lovely views back down the valley towards one of the many villages along the way.We filled a bag with juicy blackberries and collected fallen walnuts which are now wonderfully ripe over there (still another week or two to wait for the walnuts up the chemin here at Pissou). We also saw some fantastic quince trees with enormous fruit and fig trees bearing plump, ripe figs which Pat couldn't help but pluck at opportune moments! Before I left this afternoon, I filled a big with the biggest, juiciest elderberries that I have ever seen. Some are now simmering away with the blackberries and some apples from the trees around Pissou, ready for straining and transforming into my version of hedgerow jelly tomorrow. I think the remaining 3 lbs of elderberries will be transformed into Pontack sauce at some point tomorrow. I think I will make an apple and walnut tart using more windfall apples and the walnuts - yum! I so love this time of year!

A bit of a shock

Well, it came as quite a surprise, I can tell you. 'Bring in a couple of those nice green capsicum to add to the curry', he says, so I did. 'Taste this', he says, so I did. Which would you say was a hot chilli pepper.... this...?Or this.....?No, it isn't the first picture, much to my amazement! Oh my lordy lord! Owy, owy, ow! That'll teach me not to label up my veg! My mouth and lips are still on fire!

VTT

A slow start today meant it was mid afternoon before we eventually got out on the mountain bikes. But the weather was clear and sunny, around 20 degrees, so we headed back down to the forest tracks on the Tarascon side of the Col de Port with the objective of having a good ride out but with the hope of bringing back some ceps or other edible fungi from the pine woodland around there. Unfortunately, today is Saturday and a fine Saturday to boot, so there were quite a number of people out and about, many carrying bags and baskets full of various fungi.... not the right day for us to be mushrooming! Still, we made it up to the end of the track at 1200m before a quick descent back down, which was fun. I thought I would share these couple of photos with you, which sum up this time of year. This autumn crocus is a beauty and is now flowering in abundance;

We found this small mushroom en route, which we have not yet identified, but I just like the photo;Bunny casserole 'normande' tonight using the windfall apples and the chanterelles that we collected yesterday, along with the pattypan squash and courgette from our own patch. Scrummy.

Jackpot!

About time too! I mean, honestly, how many times have we ventured into the woodland opposite the house and found nothing, zilch, nada? I have lost count. Then today, there they were - loads of them in fantastic little patches, bright, fresh, new, untainted by slugs or maggots! Not only were the chanterelles in fine supply, but also hedgehog mushrooms (pieds de mouton) and also some fantastically colourful amethyst deceivers. We came back with quite a haul. Now, what shall we cook this evening......! And here's another photo, simply because they are such beautiful, colourful shrooms

Apples and produce

Today, we finally managed to track down some plain ordinary glass jam pots at the garage shop in Seix (up until now, I have not been able to find them at any of the expected outlets such as the major hypermarkets, 'garden centres' or agricultural cooperatives in the area). So I had to celebrate! We have now collected what we guess to be around 60kgs of apples which are now lazing in the barn pending arrival of our cider making equipment, so I reckoned some of those apples could be spared to top up my already dwindling chutney supplies! The result this afternoon is 9lbs of apple chutney which will be just divine in a month's time. I also have a quantity of spiced apple, cider and orange jelly going through the jelly bag ready for the final jelly-making stage tomorrow. I will also be collecting some blackberries when the rain clears at the weekend and intend to make some bramble and apple jelly too. Yum yum!