About fifteen years ago when we were travelling back from a holiday in the south of France we saw the signs that there was a Foire de Brocante in Chaumont-sur-Loire, on the river bank just below the castle.

There Síle was taken by a green leaf shaped dish (top right hand in the picture below) and so began her initiation into the world of collecting .
Over the years she has got together a small collection of these plates, pots ,and dishes which pretend to be green leaves, vegetables or fruit.

Now I will have to go down a wee meander.

This January, as is my wont I bought abouy 10 kilos of Seville Oranges to make my years supply of Orange marmalade.
There is really nothing to beat it for eary morning zing on the tongue.
I made the first five kilos worth,(froze the second five kilos to make later [they are here with me in France]) with prerserving sugar, as is my wont, but because I was making it in Ireland and all my large preserving pans were in France I made a mess of it and didn’t get it to a rolling enough boil to achieve setting point in the little pot I was cooking it in.
Undaunted I decided to bring the unset preserve out to France and there, with the help of a couple of bottles of liquid pectin (bought in Ireland) I persuaded it to set.
For the last couple of weeks we have been gorging on this delicious marmalade each breakfast.

Back to today.

One of the joys of French shopping is that it is always possible to sneak in a little second hand browsing into all the boring stuff.
Today was no exception.
In between trying to discover the best method of hanging our curtains we took a little sneaky peek into the Trocante which is in the middle of the largest shopping centre in Beziers.
There we both fell for this little orange pot.

It is definitely a match for the Green Pottery but also it must be the most perfect Marmalade Pot.