And so today is Síle’s birthday , the number is a significant one (she was born in the fifties-just) but she looks years younger, unlike her spouse (her pupils in Scoil Lorcáin used to say when they saw me waiting for her “Teechur your Daddy’s outside !)

Anyway, in co-operation with at least two of her daughters I managed to present her with this picture as her (principal) present this morning.
It is a photograph which she took herself in St. Beauziel in the Lot et Garonne about 20 something years ago.

It is taken just after a long summer lunch , the remains are still on the table , and is of her parents and her sister Una and beau frere Martin and my self.
It works extremely well and has a real painterly feel so I got it blown up and mounted on canvas for the occasion – Well I say I got it- truth is at my request daughters Deirdre and Caitríona organised it for me.

Tomorrow is the first of May , the festival of Le Muguet the Lily of the Valley here in France.
It is also Síle’s birthday, a significant one this year.

Colin told Ferdia

Ferdia told Paul

Martin told Finola (She was quite shocked)

And then Maeve told Colin.

Tiernan ? He just kept eating his dinner.

(photos by Isabel)

Old friend Isabel is here for her birthday.

Being Isabel she has arranged her cards and presents on a table on the terrace.

A Birthday Shrine.

I have come fairly late to this whole business of The Royal Wedding, I blame this to living in France.
You see out here for the winter they restrict the number of English papers you can buy AND they insure that you don’t buy these too often by delivering them at least one day late.
The attractions of spending the bones of four Euro on an out of date Daily Mail are very few so, as a consequence , The Royal Wedding has hit me fair and square between the eyes at what is probably the last possible moment.

Yesterday the Telegraph (the heaviest – in kilos – available paper on a Saturday and therefore my choice) was full of pictures of William and Kate, at least I assume it was, I am having a difficulty here.

This girl Kate Middleton , is to me the most spectacularly nondescript girl I have ever seen.
Seen leaning on William’s arm I can make a fairly shrewd guess that it is she, but, on her own, shopping or whatever and she could be any pretty twenty something, dark haired girls.

In fact they could roll out any of thousands of pretty brown haired thin English roses, put a veil over them , send them off down Westminster Abbey and I defy poor William to tell the difference.
It was when this thought struck me that the truth behind Royal Wedding Theory
dawned on me .

Now we all know that the marriage of Charles and Diana was (to put it mildly) a bit of a disaster for The Royal Family.
They are, we know immensely wealthy and powerful and resourceful.
I think myself that they have laid on a clever plan to make sure that the sins of the father do not come and rest squarely on William’s head.

Do not for one moment imagine that this meeting between the happy couple was an accident- I mean apparently they were put into the same house together in St. Andrews.

Katherine Middleton was carefully selected for this job, she may well have been selected and trained from birth- as also have at least another three or four perfect clones.

It is , of course , for this reason that she has incredibly nondescript features.
This small harem of look-alikes is what William is marrying next week.

It is after all the perfect solution.

No one woman could be expected to fulfil the incredibly punishing schedule demanded of a British would-be Queen, instead members of the harem will take it in turns.
This also offers a simple and controlled solution to the age old problem of the males of the British Royal family having (again, to put it mildly , see Henry VIII ) a certainly difficulty keeping their fly buttons done up.

When William gets home to his palace he can , in the age old system of the East , just make a selection from his seraglio.

Furthermore should the stresses of the job prove too much for any of the team (or should their eye stray to some rugby player ) they can quietly be retired to a convent in Transylvania (or a small hotel in Lisdoonvarna) and no-one will be any the wiser.

Having cracked this I am filled with admiration for the Royal Family and now deeply regret that I won’t be able to be there to cheer on Herself when she hits Ireland in the Autumn.

The Absinthe Drinker by Ihly

Prohibition is over, the government of France has lifted the ban on Absinthe.

Directly across from our terrace is a pleasant , quite large village house with green shutters.
The strange thing about this house is that I have never, except for one brief glimpse, seen any of the occupants.
When we stayed here first , about four or so years ago, and had friends to stay we tended to rather follow the Irish habit , once there was drink taken , of singing a couple of bars.
During one of these nights the pale green shutters were quite vehemently closed.

The point was made , we now have house rules about singing after hours but for the occupants of the house with the green shutters all of our new resolutions have been in vain.
Never, except on one brief occasion , have those shutters been opened wide since then.

Now to have your shutters closed at all times is not that unusual in France.
The French have long taken the view that the outside atmosphere brings with it cold in winter and heat in summer and so they will never open their shutters (which after all act as a very effective form of double glazing) more than a few inches for ventilation- as also do the occupants of the house in question-proving that they haven’t all departed this life or passed on to a better world since our arrival.

I did tell you that there was one occasion when I was allowed a brief peek at an occupant.
This was while the Kiwi was with us.
New the Kiwi is a tall, long haired and extremely personable young man from– you guessed it- New Zealand.
He was sitting on the railings of the terrace one morning eating his breakfast when I suddenly saw him smile and wave in the direction of the mystery house.
Glancing around quickly I was just in time to spot a smiling pretty dark haired girl duck behind the shutters and close them after her.
I accosted the Kiwi for trying to seduce the young ladies of the town but he explained simply that she had waved first and he was just replying.

So does she live there in seclusion waiting for a passing knight to sweep her off her feet or is it just a particular set she has against the Irish- or was she just visiting the Miss Havisham who lives there in the dark ?
Intriguing isn’t it ?

As I was sorting through my cookbooks lately I picked up , again, a book which I bought many years ago on a whim which has in fact turned out to be one of the most thumbed and sauced books in my entire collection.

Canteen Cuisine was published in 1995 by Ebury and the credited authors are Marco Pierre White and the actor Michael Caine.
This is same Mr. White who recently sold his soul to Knorr and advertises on the tele with a posse of adoring ladies d’un certain age.
The hero I feel , of this book is the uncredited editor and indeed the test kitchen in Ebury.
The book has quite a lot of sound traditional recipes which are precisely worded , measured and timed ; the confit of duck and the bread and butter pudding are just the best I have tried and always work for me.
But the star of the show and the reason why this book has maintained it’s prominent position in my kitchen for the last 15 years is the final section of the book, about 40 pages long, which is called sauces and accompaniments.

This section contains all the traditional cookery sauces and quite a lot of modern ones.
Its Beurre Blanc , and Hollandaise variations are impeccible and I constantly use a version of his Brioche, but it is for its sweet sauces that I keep returning to it.
On one page it has Caramel Sauce, Sweet Sabayon, Créme Patissiére and Créme Anglais.
This page is now spattered with food and freely annotated where I have made various variations to the sauces, probably the only messier page in my cookbook collection is the one which opens on ragù alla bolognese in Elizabeth David’s Italian Cooking.

So compliments to the chef , but why do I feel that the entire back section which I find so valuable was never written by Mr. M.P. White in the nineties when he was busy gaining Michelin Stars for his restaurants ?

Anyway the main thing is for all of you perspiring chefs the book I have discovered is still available in Amazon and various other sources.
Give yourselves a present of a copy.

When you

Need to re-fill the gas in the car’s air-conditioning,
Discard socks for 8 months,
Start getting stung by mosquitos,*
Abandon the long trousers,
Start watering the garden,
Have breakfast on the terrace,
Start seeing the foreign registrations on the cars,
*Sleep with the window open,
The Poppies start,
Natives can (occasionally) be seen in shirtsleeves,
The signs for Asparagus abound,
It only takes the bread 30 minutes to rise,
The Chervil on the terrace overflows its pot,
The wild purple Irises start to die,
The daily English papers arrive on the day- rather than the day after,
You buy a new sun hat,
you know (at last)
that Summer has arrived in the Languedoc.

Since I have been in France I have developed a compulsion for making jams, and liqueurs- and even some chutneys.
Unfortunately as I had no appropriate cupboard to hold them all they have been skulking about in various places.
When Mr. Nunn was about recently he however fixed all that by making me a tailor made set of shelves, very elegant shelves it must be said , to house all my various preserves together.
So now, together at last , are :

White Peach and Cinnamon Liqueur
Apricot and Bitter Almond Liqueur
Sloe Gin
Bigarade Liqueur
Pate de Kaki
Gelee de Coing
Courgette Chutney
Confiture de Coing
Confiture de Quetsch
Black Olives in Brine
Liqueur des Pepins de Framboises
Gelee des Grenades et des Raisins
Blackberry and Apple Jam (from Mary Pawle)
Confiture de Figue
Confiture de Cerise
Confiture de Abricot et Fraise
and tons of
Confiture de Bigarade.

There are others I know but thats enough to get started.