The French, God Bless them, are very much creatures of habit.
One can be bombing along the motorway, black with traffic, when all of a sudden there are just a few cars, and those driven by mad dogs and Irishmen.
Fear not, world war three has not been announced ,it just means the hands of the clock have moved to 12 noon and the nation of France has gone to lunch.

In the same way the French spend most of July and all of August anticipating La Rentrée which is the moment when school children go back to school.
But it is much more than that.
It is the official ending of summer, the official begining of winter.

Go to the beach on the first of September and it will be deserted except by the odd D, GB, or NL- clearly mad dogs .

In the village, people will start wearing fleeces, the men will be back in long trousers and the ladies will be wearing their latest boots.
C’est la rentrée.

I think all this is starting to rub off on me.
Today is a little cloudy, temperatures have dropped to 26 or 27C and I am begining to wonder if there might be a touch of Autumn in the air.
This on a day which in Ireland would be greeted as a scorcher !

Anyway today our last official guests of August departed and only daughter Eileen and her boyfriend Phil remain.
On Sunday we all head off to Ireland where Síle and I are having a few days of family time (an exhausting few days with a tightly packed schedule) before coming back to Thezan.

Looks like I may have to wear long trousers and socks for the first time since April.
C’est la rentrée.

The temperatures of the Mediterranean are amazingly fluctuating and seem to follow a hidden agenda all of their own.
Every morning the Midi Libre gives the water temperatures of various beaches in our part of the Languedoc and surprisingly (as all are basically part of one long beach) the temperatures can vary by as much as four or five degrees C between beaches just 30 klms apart.

After a particularly hot spell in July some Irish guests went swimming in Serignan (where the Lifeguards hut displays the temp.) and it was a foot numbing 12 C. We had been in earlier in the month when it was a comfortable 19C and went to Serignan yesterday where it was a truly comfortable 22C.
Apparently very hot weather can cause the water to cool by causing currents from the cool deeps on to the surface- at least that is one unlikely explanation I have been told.
This seems to me to be hardly scientific.
Anyone got a better idea?

Chambres et table d’hôtes à l’ancien presbytère

Au 14 rue René-Lenthéric, à proximité de l’église St-Pierre-St-Paul, il y avait le presbytère. Une maison qui appartenait à la paroisse, à la suite d’un don provenant d’une famille thézanaise. Pendant de nombreuses années, ce logement a été occupé. De nombreux prêtres s’y sont succédé. Ce sont deux religieuses, Marie et Marie-Claire, aujourd’hui décédées qui ont été les dernières à y demeurer. Au fil du temps, ce bâtiment devenant une trop lourde charge au niveau de l’entretien, il a été mis en vente, il y a maintenant 4 ans, par l’Evêché avec l’accord du conseil paroissial.
C’est un couple charmant, accueillant et chaleureux, Martin & Sile Dwyer qui en ont fait l’acquisition. Lui, était chef de cuisine dans un grand restaurant au sud de l’Irlande, à Waterford et sa sympathique épouse était enseignante dans une école primaire. Ils sont tous les deux aujourd’hui à la retraite.
C’est après être venus une fois en vacances à Marseillan-plage qu’ils sont tombés sous le charme et la beauté de la région et plus particulièrement du département de l’Hérault. « C’est un des plus joli département parce qu’on a la mer et les montagnes à proximité ». Le soleil, la gastronomie régionale sans oublier les vins locaux de qualité ont pesé sur la balance. Tous ces ingrédients réunis ont été déclencheurs. « Nous avons décidé, rapidement, de rechercher une maison assez grande avec un petit jardin dans un village pour venir nous installer définitivement à la retraite, avec la ferme intention de créer chambres et table d’hôtes ».
Après de nombreux travaux réalisés par des entreprises thézanaises, leur projet a enfin vu le jour. Ils l’ont baptisé “Le presbytère”. Le rez-de-chaussée est agréablement agencé pour leur activité avec une très grande salle-à-manger cuisine qui donne sur une terrasse surplombant un jardin d’agrément. Au premier étage ce sont quatre chambres spacieuses, aux couleurs chatoyantes agencées avec goût, avec du mobilier ancien. Le deuxième étage est occupé par les propriétaires.
Leurs clients, essentiellement des étrangers : Irlandais, Anglais, Américains, Allemands, « mais aussi des Français. Le bouche à oreille fonctionne bien, mais c’est surtout avec le site internet que nous nous faisons connaître » : www.lepresbytere.net email : martin@lepresbytere.net Tél : 04 67 48 70 18.

The Importance of Being Earnest
Act 2 Scene 2 :

Cecily. I think your frankness does you great credit, Ernest. If you will allow me, I will copy your remarks into my diary. [Goes over to table and begins writing in diary.]

Algernon. Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I?

Cecily. Oh no. [Puts her hand over it.] You see, it is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.

Oscar Wilde, of course, with the difinitive reason d’etre of blogging.
(A hundred years, or more, before the first one)

Interested to find out if there was a precedent for making alcohol from Raspberry seeds I searched the net in vain.

It seems that I am on my own with this one.

What I found which is interesting is that I was certainly correct in not discarding them.

These seeds have apparently very high levels of ellagitannins.

Recent work (2001), published by Dr. Gary Stoner at Ohio State University, showed that components in the seeds and berry, but particularly ellagitannins, inhibited the initiation and promotion/progression stages of esophageal cancer. This is an extremely important finding, considering the potential benefits.

I wonder will I kill these wonders by steeping in Alcohol ?

Or, maybe, they will leach out from the seeds into the alcohol to make the healthiest Liqueur ever.

Writing about the Zwetchgencuchen and my time in Germany has brought back to mind two words which were spoken by one of the German Aunts on that same day as we were on the way to see the border in Eastern Germany.

As we drove along the road we suddenly passed through a section of road cut through limestone.
Tante said something in which I distinctly heard the words Cailc which is the Irish word for Chalk, but this was pronounced in a way totally comprehensible in the depths of the Kerry Gaeltacht.

My ears pricked, was I discovering a small pocket of Munster Irish in Eastern Germany?

Next moment a fluffy tail scurried away from the headlights.

True to form Tante said Coinin sin just as we would say in Muríoch;- “That’s a rabbit”

Of course there was no Irish connection, merely a good example of the common roots of both Irish and German.
The Cailc word was Kalk the German for Limestone, the Coinin sin was Kaninchin the German for a little rabbit.

Our good neighbours, Dany and Serge, arrived back from Normandy last week with a present for us of lots of frozen raspberries picked from their own garden.

What riches !

During the week I have made a Clafoutis of Raspberries, some excellent Raspberry sauce to go with a Marquise of Chocolate and today I decided the time had come to make some raspberry jam.

Not just any raspberry jam.

In the early seventies when Sile and I were just married we had worked for a while in a little Chateau (read Manor House ) in the Loire owned by the Count and Countess de Bernard, it was called the Chateau de Teildras.

There, on those welcome days when the chef was off, Madame la Countess would come into the kitchen to make her specialities.
One of them was her Raspberry Jam.
Madame’s refinement in this was that she used to sieve the fruit, thereby removing the discomfort of the half hour of picking out of seeds after each application.

To facilitate this sieving I have a trick I use myself.

I give the Raspberries a little whizz in the food processor to make it easier to push through the sieve.

Then I sieve the fruit through my finest sieve and weigh the resulting puree.
(NB you will not get rid of all the pips, some will creep through the net)
To this I add the juice of a lemon and 750g of Jam sugar to every kilo of puree obtained.

This I boil hard for about 5 minutes, but then because I have sieved off the pips which contain most of the pectin, I test for setting on a cold saucer in the old fashioned way. (if it wrinkles, when pushed with a finger, it will set.)
I find that even with the pectin sugar this jam can take an extra minute or two boiling.

The colours of this jam cooking are beautiful.
It goes from scarlet when a puree…..

To deep crimson as it boils.

The finished product.
In honour of Madame I call it (Confiture) Framboise Teildras.

Being at heart a frugal cook I can’t bear to discard the pips but have macerated them in alcohol.
In a years time I may have some delicious Raspberry Liqueur , or something undrinkable.

I will tell you then.

Eddy Lizard had gone into hiding in the bowels of the airconditioning system for the last couple of days.

We assumed he had done a scurry, as lizards do, I mean there isn’t much wild life in your common Migane.

But no.

I got into the car this afternoon and there he was, sunbathing on the dashboard.

He got a greater fright than I and lost his sense of orientation, missed the airconditioner and ended up hiding in a paper bag in the storage compartment in the door.
That way he did us both a favour.
It was a simple act then to shake this out on the flowerbed across the street from where, without a backward glance, he scurried up the wall to freedom.

(Just pausing for long enough as he went to permit me to get this parting shot)

When I was 17 I had a friend called Jorg Clifford who was from Germany( in fact I bumped into him in Cork last Spring and he looked just the same- he didn’t recognise me ’till I told him my name) .
His mother, as I remember, had come to Ireland as a war widow from Germany
and had married again to an Irish man over here.
Jorg, although 100% German had been reared entirely in Ireland and was in school with me in Cork.
Around that time when we were finished school and waiting to go to college Jorg’s mother decided to take a long holiday in Germany and to reintroduce Jorg to his German side.
Jorg decided that a month alone with his mother would be too much so asked me to come along as well.
So I ended up in the extremely privileged position of doing an extensive tour of Germany in the course of which I was welcomed into houses belonging to relations and friends of Jorg and his mother.
I have a particular memory of travelling to Duderstadt which was a small town just near the Eastern border and being brought under cover of darkness to the border where the East German guards were perched high in sentry boxes, armed with rifles and sweeping no-mans land with searchlights.
It is perhaps of the deep impression made by that sight that I remember being brought back to his aunts’ house afterwards and being fed a most delicious tart which was called Zwetschgencuchen.
It is a tribute to my nerdishness that I can remember the name, it was so unusual to me that I must have spent days muttering it to commit it to my memory.

Fast forward some 44 years and yesterday Síle and I were at a Vide Grenier in Bedarieux.
There one stall holder had a basket of small purple/ green plums with a sign on them offering a taste for nothing and a kilo for €1.50.
They were delicious, both tart and sweet and I thought they would make terrific jam for breakfasts.
I asked M. what sort of plums they were, “Quetsch” he told me, “they are commoner in Alsace than here.”

I little bell rang in my mind and I remembered the Zwetschgencuchen in Duderstadt.
Surely a Quetsch must be the French for a German Zwetch
And so I discovered it was.

Furthermore I discovered in at least one web site a recipe for the tart fed me all those years ago by the German Aunties.

I will give you a cursory impression of the recipe I put together.

It will take me a bit to get the measurements correct but here is my first attempt and it looks good.

I made some Pate Sucree, in the Magimix with 200g flour mixed with 100g of butter and a tablespoon of caster sugar then bound with one whole egg.

Having let this rest I used it to line a tart tin and then almost halved the plums
and laid them upright from the edge to the centre of the tart as I remembered it many years ago.

At this stage it looked a little like a lotus flower.
Then I sprinkled this with caster sugar.

Then I mixed together about four large tablespoons of Creme Fraiche with two whole eggs and another tablespoon of sugar and poured this over the plums.

I baked it for about 35 minutes at 175 C.
It which time the custard was just set.
I havn’t tasted it yet, it is for tonights guests.
My hopes are high- and high hopes are a great appetiser.

About 25 years ago when Síle and I were living in Kilmacleague, and had no rubbish collection, so we used to make frequent trips to the dump in our Renault Four.
As a result, we found one day that we had a mouse in the car.

This turned out to be extremely embarrassing, particularly when one gave someone a lift (which one does in the country).
One day a strong and sturdy local farmers son screamed like a banshee just because the mouse ran over his feet as we drove through John’s Park.

We did eventually get rid of him by setting a mouse trap in the car.

Things are different in France.

This morning, having a day off, Síle and I were going towards the Cirque de Navacelles when a lizard, a reasonably large one about three inches long, came out of the air-vents for a sunning on the dashboard and, only when poked with a stick, then disappeared into the bowels of the heating system.

We stopped the car and set the airconditioning on to coldest.

He did not re-appear.

So we just drove on, I confess that my driving was a little erratic as I continually expected Eddy (we have decided to call him Eddy Lizard) to drop down on my knee any second and scurry up the leg of my shorts.

Now I have never come across Lizard Traps so what do we do?

All suggestions will be extremely welcome in the comment box please.