End of August 2008

Very special newsflash!!!!!

Annie and Dominic are now proud parents of Abigail Chloe, born today 29^th August at 10.15pm, weighing in at 7lb 6oz. Everyone is very well and excited and very very tired, it has been a long day.

That makes us grandparents to four darling children, three of which are girls, poor Owen is somewhat outnumbered.

Well no excuse to write the blog today with such exciting news. We have had visitors for the last three weeks non stop including my brother and sister and their partners. It is the first time for Gill and Phil has come to see us in France and we had a fantastic two weeks, albeit a very busy two weeks, which included a couple of days in Pyrenees and a day in Biarritz, many day markets, a number of evening fetes and of course a few Aussie barbeques to meet the locals and other members of the family who live in France,

At last the weather has changed and we are experiencing fantastic sunny days, luckily the pool has been erected and very serviceable. In fact, we have just had a dip. We are now having 9 days without visitors so all hell has let loose in the DIY department, Terry has almost finished repainting the lounge and giving it some damp proofing and I have been in garden, but as they say all work makes Jack a dull man, so we have already had a day out on my uncles boat on D' Lot which was wonderful and very restful. This week end will be full on with lunches and fetes, so we wont be too over worked.

We are throughly enjoying the good life aspect of France and are gathering the fruits of our labour, ie the vegetable patch, the tomatoes are ripening at quite a speed, plenty of zuchinnis and french beans and hopefully our figs will be ready before we leave in four weeks time.

Its our 35th wedding annerversery on Monday, where has that time gone?? I am not sure what we will be doing, Terry asked me what I wanted to mark the occasion, to be honest, I feel so privilaged with our life that there is nothing else I could ask for, we arevery happy with healthy children and grandchildren, a house in France what a life!!!!!

For those of you who have requested it, below is the recipe to my 'famous' tarte:

Tarte a la Rhubarbe et Citron

(I have found this recipe very simple and have used frozen berries instead of rhubarb but make sure you really strain them well or mixture too watery) Bon Appetite

Preheat the oven to 375 (190 C) Gas 5

For 8 people (I think really 6!!)

Cooking time 25 mins

1 tart tin 28 x 3cm (11 x 11 ¼ in)

Shortcrust pastry

For Rhubarb Filling

400g (14oz) rhubarb washed, peeled and chopped into 2cm(3/4 in) pieces

100g (4oz) sugar

200ml water

Lemon Cream Filling

2 egg yolks

50g (2 oz) caster sugar

70mls double cream (I use Creme Fraise)

Finely grated zest of a lemon

Preparing the pastry case

Allow the dough to come to room temp. Butter the sides of the tart tin and base.

Roll the prepared dough out to fit up the sides of the flan dish. Rest for 2 -3 mins Place into tart dish and refrigerate for a min of half an hr.

Blind bake the pastry case – 10mins

Prepare the rhubarb filling

In a saucepan, bring to the boil the sugar and water, then add the chopped rhubarb and simmer for 2 mins, strain into a colander and reserve.

Preparing the lemon cream filling

Beat the egg yolks and sugar in bowl for 10 mins on high speed, until the volume has tripled.

Mix in the cream and lemon zest.

Cooking the tart

Distribute the rhubarb over the bottom of the tart, then spread with the lemon cream filling.

Cook in oven at the same temp for 25 – 30mins

Serving

Remove the tart from the oven and sprinkle with extra caster sugar.

Cool down for 1 hour from serving.

August photos

Terry, Pete and Wyn, dancing to the band






Spain

August 2008

This must be a very frustrating blog this year, we have been so busy as I mentioned in our last blog and the situation remains the same. Since my last blog we have been to Spain for a week and had more visitors, I have got a brief 2 hr time slot before the next arrive, I need to mention that our last visitors departed yesterday, so we had the day planned to catch up on a few jobs. As soon as Wyn and Pete (from Winterslow) left we had some St Maure friends arrive unexpectedly for a chat, when they left, Terry went into the garage to pick up where he left off with his laundry room project and I started tiding the house (as you do). Twenty minutes later Terry walked in the kitchen with blood pouring down his cheek from his right eye, apparently a stainless steel wire had flicked from somewhere straight into his eye, there was a medium sized hole in the white of his eye, so we had our first experience of French casualty and were very impressed with the 5 mins wait and the treatment. As the injury was the sclera (white of the eye) he only need twice a day eye washes and antibiotic drops. Hopefully that's Terry's yearly incident over and done with.

The laundry room has certainly become a slow project, at the beginning of the trip he really got on and achieved alot, but it has slowed down now and would you believe we are waiting for a French plumber, this is due to the acetylene (I think) that needs to be used, so hopefully in the next week we should be almost up and running.

We bought a large plastic demountable swimming pool last week in anticipation of some very hot weather (which I think happened while we was in Spain) anyway this pool is huge at 15 ft across in the old money, it took forever to fill up, the pool included a filter, pump and steps into it, so a substantial piece of equipment. I did have a swim in it a couple of days ago and could actually do 6 strokes of breast stroke. The reason I am writing this in the blog is that we have been very pleased with this acquisition alas .... we went out last night to some friends for dinner and when we got back the pool had emptied itself and is now flat on the grass, we think the heavy rain shower last evening filled the cover with water and the pressure of the water pushed the side of the pool that is lowest due to the uneven ground. So Terry's boys are coming today he will get them organised to move the pool to flatter part of the garden and start again and after all this effort we will pray for alot of sunshine. The boys are my brother and brother in law.

Talking of weather, not good this week, showers and sun (good grass growing weather, lucky me) but apparently improving.

The photos include one of boozy night last Saturday at Nerac, the four of us went to the community festival which was brilliant, everyone eats on large trestle tables in the village square, we sat next to some very interesting Dutch people (with yet another invitation to meet for drinks) anyway whilst we were eating various villages had bands playing some very upbeat music. The night was alot of fun, dancing and drinking, it started off that you bought a bottle of wine from the local restaurant (a rip off at 8 euros a bottle) then Terry and Pete helped themselves to wine from local producers stall, which was OK as we have got to know them quite well and seem to be always there buying 5 litre containers of wine. I suppose that was OK but later we went to listen to another band at the end of the evening and people had left half bottles of wine on the tables, Pete was the spotter and Terry was the lifter!! Anyway Wyn and I had to drag them to the car as they were staggering so badly and for a 20 minute drive, it probably took about 1 hr and half to get home as we had to stop at least 6 times for Terry to relieve himself of all the booze!!!!

As I mentioned last night we had dinner with some friends in their village house, in fact it is a couple from Washington USA and they do similar to us spending as much time as possible in France and they also invited a couple who are here for 4 months from Perth, it was an interesting night and of course knew mutual people (maybe because she is a midwife). This village house is in Nerac just above the river for those of you who know the area and we were amazed how noisy it was compared to our little bit of paradise. We heard cars, motor bikes, church bells, church bells, church bells and general noises what a comparison, I know what we prefer.

Our French has improved I think most of time and in fact Terry who hasn't had much in the way of lessons seems to have suddenly got the lingo, except funnily enough he has just got back from taking our bottle recycling to the village should I say daily trip ha ha ha, anyway he said he had bumped into the mayor of our village who was asking how much longer we had here (30^th Sept we leave cry cry) and all was very impressed at the French conversation until the mayor said good bye and Terry with a big smile said Bonjour (hello) he then realised what a twit he was so just kept shouting au revoir (goodbye) out of the car window just a little bit embarrassed.

I feel less guilty now I have got more or less up to date except to say we had a great time in Spain, very relaxing beach holiday, in fact we were on the nudist beach everyday, which made it slow to read a book with all the distractions after the first day it improved and we able to sleep and read quite easily, this is Helene and I as the boys were off fishing most of the time. We had fantastic food, lots of fresh fish and paella.

The photos include our vegetable patch, we are now eating our own organic courgettes, lettuce, tomatos, French beans and radishes.

Abiento