Unashamedly Fat ...

So here we are, as Autumn comes in and I'm another year closer to getting my OAP card and joining the masses of totterers and the feeble-minded shuffling witlessly about the aisles at Carrefour, looking for the adult incontinence pads.

Apart from that it's a wonderful season: crisp and bright in the moaning, when the dogs and I go out for our respective bowel motions, and then in the afternoon when the low sun lights up the old stonework and a few rays filter through the leaves, and the sky is vast and the colour of lapis lazuli, it is almost too beautiful for words. Luckily, we've got used to it, and are no longer surprised.

Whatever, I celebrated with a two-hour walk out on the plaine de l'Alaric - without the dogs, for once, as I wished to take the camera and have at least a sporting chance of getting a few photos - and then when I got back, as it's the foire au gras around these parts I found myself with a foie gras de canard which is even now bathing in milk until I season it and dose it with cognac before wrapping it in a tea-towel and poaching for an honest-to-god foie gras au torchon, also four duck legs which are macerating in gin, salt and allspice before reaching apotheosis as confit de canard.

But not tonight - it being Monday now - as chez Réné, our itinerant drinking session, had organised lunch at le Gallois, a little gîte/restaurant at Capendu, all of 4km from here. We turned up, all seventeen of us, around midday, and the last of us rolled out some time around 16h. It's a bit too soon to start on the obituary: announcements of the death of the good long French lunch are somewhat premature.

But as you can probably guess, I am not particularly hungry just at the moment, and the concept of confit de canard with potatoes fried in duck fat on the side is not as enticing as it would be under other circumstances, so I rather suspect it'll be an omelette tonight.

I am planning on cooking that duck liver au torchon, which in fact (according to the excellent Mssrs Ruhlman and Polcyn, of Charcuterie fame) means not really cooking at all, given that it just involves poaching the thing, wrapped tightly in a tea-towel (hence the name) in barely simmering water for all of 90 seconds. As he says, you're basically just softening the fat (and a hypertrophied duck liver is, mostly, fat) so you can make it into a nice shape: also, it'll have been salted and soaked in alcohol and most bacteria do not really thrive in fat (you are starting to see the common point here?) so that's fine. Just keep it in the fridge, and eat within a week.

Ten Twelve tiny toes ...

It will make a change from my usual terrine, cooked in a bain-marie - which is always a bit of a hiss-and-mit affair because the temperature regulation on my oven is neither precise, nor repetitive, nor does the scale actually go down to 140° which is what I really want: this is yet another incentive for me to go off and buy a new oven. Let's face it, the one I have has given ten years at least of good and faithful service, but I choose not to repeat what the guy said about the grill on it when he came around a year or so back to change a gas tap on one of the burners (from memory, "public menace" and "incendiary" were some of the words he uttered), and anyway I am a complete slut when it comes to cooking gear.

I have my eyes on a very nice replacement, same five gas burners including the ridiculous 4 KW one for the wok, and the same huge oven only electric rather than gas (which is actually better for patisserie and stuff like that): I have but to convince myself that I really want it.

That, and I shall have to get used to having something in my kitchen with the brand name SMEG. Which always sounds like one of those gross runny skin diseases to me.

That can wait. For a bit, anyway. Before that I have to go buy a couple of old-school dumb phones, of the kind with a cord that you just plug into a wall socket, in order that I may, in fact, just plug them into some of the phone jacks around here in The Shamblings™. This is because, in common with many, we have two phone numbers: good old POTS, and the VoIP number that comes with the Livebox that provides us with essential things like Internet and kitty porn. In principle one plugs one's Livebox into a phone jack and the phone into the Livebox, and whether someone calls on the POTS number or on the new-fangled VoIP number the phone will ring.

Sadly, this turns out not to be the case - at least, not reliably.

For the past week it was a wonderment to us that we had had no phone calls, and I tried ringing us, and lo! there was a great silence in the Force, for the phone did not ring. So I called the Orange support-drones (give them their due, they are actually available 24/24, 7/7 like it says on the tin) and I was led through the process of disabling the ring on POTS calls, saving that, then re-enabling it and saving that. Upon which, it all started working again.

"Admit it", I said to the anonymous "technician", "this is not optimal. True, I now know that the software in your frikkin Livebox is brain-dead and has hissy-fits, and I know what to do about it, but I ask you how I can know when it has had a hissy-fit, given that we do not know that we have missed a possibly life-or-death phone call?"

"Ah", it mumbled back at me. "Sir has two options. You may do this every evening, just in case. Or, my personal preference, buy a really cheap phone and plug it into the phone jack. Like that, if your really cheap phone rings but not the others, you will know that your Livebox has deconned, and you may repeat what I have taught you."

I put it to him that this too, although admittedly a solution, was one which required me paying about ten baguettes-worth of my own money to fix a problem which was, in theory, their responsibility, and was also unaesthetic in the extreme; but I could tell he'd lost interest. So we exchanged civilities, hung up, and I resolved to do as he had suggested whilst waiting for Orange to stick out a patch: which'll probably bugger something else, but that would be par for the course.

Hell, with the brand-new Livebox they recently sent me (and which I foolishly installed, believing their blandishments when they said it was necessary to take full advantage of the refurbished network that will be coming our way Real Soon Now), I can't even change the interface language, nor can I pick my preferred DNS provider ... I suppose this is progress, of a sort. Should be inured to that sort of thing by now.

Anyway, like I said earlier it is now autumn and the dogs' walks are necessarily somewhat curtailed during the day, for that means it is hunting season. And around these parts lots of people go hunting. We prefer not to go up into the pinède, for there the hunter's vision - already blurred by heroic quantities of cheap plonk - will be even further obscured by the pine forests; and down amongst the vines where some go for rabbits it is no better. I suppose I should take some comfort from the fact that hunters usually kill other hunters rather than innocent passers-by (hunters tend to wear hi-vis vests along with their ridiculous little deer-stalker hats, which makes for a better target), but I would prefer not to become one of the exceptions to this general rule.

On the bright side, there are huge cèpes at the market, and bright yellow/orange girolles (or chanterelles, if you prefer) at a price which, on the "eye-watering" scale, is at least closer to "a kick in the kneecap" than "a knee in the balls". Also, huge and deformed pumpkins, but the less said about them the better.

Also, we've just arrived back from a weekend in Spain with José and Guillain. I don't think I've eaten - and drunk - so much in the space of 36 hours for quite some time. We left home at some ungodly hour on Saturday to get down to Empuriabrava in time for the market which was the ostensible reason for going, and had an apéro. Then we ambled up and down the market, headed back to the bar, and had another apéro. Then as it was getting on for 14:00 and thus lunch-time, we found a restaurant, had an apéro and a full lunch, with wine.

(Incidentally, the Spanish will have no truck with your wimpy Frog 13cl glass. The white wine you take as apéro comes in a copa, which holds rather more.) Then we went off to another village, where José won a couple of hundred at the casino, then had an apéro before going off to another village for yet another apéro: then up into the foothills above the coast for an apéro at the local bar des chasseurs. Back to the hotel they'd booked for the night, and an apéro before dinner, which we were forced to wash down with wine.

There was a disco for the over-fifties, so we hung around there for a bit and José insisted on a little digestif, which in my case turned out to be about 4 inches of whisky in a highball glass: as a reward for being so good we were then allowed to go to bed. And after a final apéro with breakfast this moaning (you ever tried chocolate-filled churros?) we stopped off briefly at La Jonquera to pick up a few essential and otherwise unobtainable supplies - such as dry sherry, dry Martini and queso manchego - before heading home to find that Rafaelo had neither burnt the house down nor been slobbered to death by the dogs in our absence. Which has to be good news, I guess.

And What Is More, It Radically Affects My Sense Of Smell ...

Health & Safety warning once again, just don't stick a ferret up your nose. The little buggers don't really appreciate it, and it won't do a great deal for you either.

So the other day I managed to get lost geographically-disadvantaged on my way to Bizes-Minervois for a little wine'n'food salon, Tastes En Minervois, and as is mandatory in such cases (due to there being an old charter, or something) when I pulled over and tried to get bloody Google Maps up on my phone to direct me it let me know that no maps were available. Bugger. Another 5km down the road and all was well, and I'd actually been orbiting the place for the past ten minutes: let that be a lesson to me, do not place too much faith in the signage around these parts.

I missed the food part, due to turning up around 14h, but according to Bob! I didn't actually miss a great deal: he is, of course, a chef of the old school but I have to admit that what I saw of the menus did not actually inspire me that much either. Whatever, I paid my 15 euros (which in theory entitled me to food that wasn't being prepared anymore because, like, too late), got a glass, wandered about and drank. I think I got my money's-worth, and I did come across some vignerons whose wine interested me, so I shall not complain.

Come to that, I see that I shall have to head back down towards Queribus again, and stop off at Maury where, if the bottle José brought around to chez Réné a week back is representative, they make a bloody good Corbières.

In other, unrelated, news, autumn is upon us and as usual the days are bright and warm - although a bit cool in the mornings and late at night, when the pack go for a walk. We've not yet considered pushing the go-tit on the wood-burner, even less placating and turning on the central-heating boiler, but these things will come. While we wait the vendange is more or less over around these parts, and as happens every year it is predicted to be the vintage of the century. We shall see.

I am all in favour of broad churches, and inclusivity, but it is difficult for my tired old neurons to keep up, sometimes. I was delighted, a while back, to find out what LGBTQIA acronymised (if that's actually a word) and thought that maybe I could die happy: now I discover that I will have to determine what LGBTQIA2S+ is before shuffling off this mortal coil in peace.

The Languedoc - not to be confused with Provence, which is actually quite a way north-east of us - is a pretty poor region (with the exception of Toulouse) with a fine old tradition of obstinate -  not to say "retarded" - peasantry. They are emphatically not in tune with Mother Gaea, and the first reaction on seeing some pristine landscape of great natural beauty is something along the lines of "Hey! I could stick some goats on that, and just over there I could dump all the effluent from the wine vats ..."

Which probably goes some way to explaining why it is that we get the odd abandoned car turning up on the outskirts of the village: it was more or less broken down, not worth repairing and certainly not worth paying the knacker's yard to come take it away, so why not put a minimal amount of petrol in, drive it off somewhere, park and leave?

In a few days the local yoof will have smashed the windows and pulled the tires off and a while later, when it's quite clear that no-one is going to come and reclaim it, a number of the aforesaid yoof will return with a jerrycan of petrol and a few matches and there will be a brief but intense display of pyrotechnics down by the départementale. Also, a strong smell of petrol and burning rubber.

Like that, I guess, the actual owner can eventually claim insurance - assuming, of course, that the car was actually insured, something which is not guaranteed - and the burnt-out wreck becomes Someone Else's Problem.

In our case, should this happen just outside the village it is efficiently taken care of by the département (they, and the SNCF, take a rather dim view of cars going up in flames just next to the rail lines) but if it is technically within the village that's another story.

Because of course poor Jérôme can't be everywhere, nor can l'équipe municipale (who are otherwise occupied anyway, I'm not sure with what exactly, mostly watering the municipal pot-plants I think, also if the mairie wins big on the loto they buy a van-load of hotmix and drive around flinging it approximatively on to some of the more obvious potholes), also it would cost money and apparently Moux has very little of that.

Like I said, it's a poor region. Hell, we can't even get fibre to the house ... you win some, you lose some, and you can't beat the lifestyle. The climate's not so bad either.

Today we headed off to Toulouse: taking Malyon off to gare Matabiau in the centre of town to catch the TGV back up to Paris before hopping on the red-eye flight to Bali tomorrow morning. When all's said and done, despite the reputation of southern-style people, les toulousains are not actually bad drivers. (As opposed to the lyonnais, les grenoblois, and the guys from Annecy.) Maybe it's because they all seem to own hugely expensive cars, and do not wish to have them dinged.

 

Be that as it may, we arrived with time to spare - more or less as planned - and went off to find a restaurant for lunch. Mal had her heart set on a good couscous, and the Great Gazoogle obligingly directed us to one such which was supposedly good, so off we trotted in its general direction.

 

Oddly enough the ad-slinger turned out to be right, it was excellent - and I say this as a man who is not, in fact, that fond of couscous or tajines - it's just that I spent an awful lot of time looking at my watch waiting for the meal to arrive, knowing that there was a train to be caught.

 

Our fault, should have said at the beginning. Forgot. What can I say? We scarfed, paid, apologized, and left. Whatever, you may safely go to Le Marrakech, 19 rue Castellane in Toulouse, but if you're in a rush do let them know. Also, according to "Grossed Out, of Mayfair", do not ask for a vegetarian tajine (if such a thing exists, which I rather doubt) because it will come with "disgusting bits of meat in it". So unfair, my meat was far from disgusting.

We shall go back - to Toulouse, that is - sometime soon: take the train (I'll soon be eligible for an OAP card), spend the night, and wander around. It's been a long while since I spent any time there, it's a city that deserves more attention.