Tuesday

The menu du jour...
Solange and Pauline....
Our hungry group.

Tuesday morning we roused ourselves to go to the grocery store and lay in some supplies. Then we went over to the main house and happened upon a short cooking lesson as Pauline and Jeanne made an almond macaroon tart shell for the evening’s dessert. Interesting to watch as they measured the ingredients by weight instead of volume. Then we whisked Pauline away for lunch at our favorite restaurant in Jard sur Mer, a small tourist town with a lovely little harbor. There we all enjoyed the formule (formula lunch of fixed courses) of mussels and frites, while it rained cats and dogs outside. It was strange to see all the shops opened for the afternoon hours – we have never visited during the tourist season, and have only seen the shops closed up for the winter.

Our real objective was to take Pauline to the small city of La Roche sur Yon to help us buy a French telephone. She was beyond helpful. Normally we can manage ourselves, but with so many complications of the telephone, the prepaid plan, recharging details and so on, we could not have done it without her. Her objective was raspberries or strawberries for the evening’s dessert – we got a walking tour of downtown La Roche as we searched out what appeared to be the only berries in town.

Before dinner, which started at the civilized hour of 8:30, son Paul and his girlfriend Alana arrived from Biarritz. They had been expected earlier but had missed their train, apparently a family trait. Alana is American, but works in Madrid as a graphic artist. She speaks some Spanish and is also quickly learning French. Tom remarked later that except for the two aides, everyone at the table spoke some to fluent English, and the conversation could have been in English. As it happened, the primary language was French, with some Spanish, and the occasional English exchange thrown in. In addition, there were 11 people, so usually at least 4 conversations going on at all times. I had to work to keep up, but had the luxury of choosing which exchange I could follow the best.

The dinner itself was extraordinary. Solange treated us all to an enormous platter – actually three platters – of shellfish, which we ate with bread and butter. There were prawns, langoustine, very tiny grey shrimp, lots of oysters – two kinds, and bulots, a type of green sea snail. There were all delicious, although I have to admit that the bulots are not much to my taste, and the oysters were a bit wasted on me – I know they were excellent, tasting like the sea, but after the other sweet shellfish, they were quite salty. Having had my favorite moules frites for lunch, the dinner was the cherry on the cake. Jeanne had four choices of cheese for the cheese course – muenster which I like very much, a chevre in ashes which I don’t so much, a cantal which was very good, but the sancere was the best – a dry cheese like parmesan, but not as strong with a bit of a floral, honey-like flavor I could not quite identify.

Speaking of which, dessert consisted of a tart of chocolate cream between two layers of meringue from a bakery, and the raspberries on top of the shell of almond meringue that Pauline and Jeanne had made earlier. For 11 people one expected that even the two together would not have gone around, but in the French style of tiny portions, there were leftovers of the chocolate. Matthew, Pauline’s cousin (a famous singer in Europe) was prevailed upon to finish the raspberry tart.