Chasteuil Day 13 (11/11)

Day 13, Saturday. This morning was a colorful sunrise! Later that morning, Tai, Pascal and I went into town to the farmer’s market to purchase vegies for the rest of our stay in Chasteuil. Tai and Pascal just had to have some oysters. They also picked up some bouquets, not flowers but large cooked prawns heads and all. We got back to the Gîte and had a wonderfully fresh lunch from all of our farmer’s market purchases. Today was a home day. Everybody went about their tasks. Soap making, product pictures taking, taking care of business affairs. For me, I broke out the chain saw and went through more of the junk wood pile to make firewood. While we are out cutting the wood, Christain came by with an old fallen tree branch from the forest We cut it up for her into small kindling size pieces.

For dinner, Pascal made an excellent fried duck breast in a cast iron pot and a vegetable dish called, caponata, a Sicilian ratatouille. I have learned a very important cooking lesson from Pascal. He cooks each part of a dish separately and then after everything has been cooked just right, he combines everything together long enough to blend them without overcooking any of it. It really works well and avoids a problem I frequently have of some things not cooked enough and other things cooked too much. Watching Pascal is a treat… always new things to learn about cooking. The duck was especially tasty! For dessert we had supermarket “pot of crème cafe” which was very good for store bought.