|
|
You may recall that back in July last year I was totally, but delightedly, gobsmacked when my 10 year old, long suffering Fiat Stilo with its part-time electronic dashboard passed its Contrôle Technique. I think I may know why.
Now, you know how those 5 minute jobs never turn out to be 5 minute jobs? Today Chris wanted to charge up the Fiat’s battery. He’s heading off on a pig-keeping course tomorrow and will be away overnight and wanted to make sure my slightly unreliable car would be reliable enough to do the running around for a couple of days.
 There used to be a handle there! We went out to do the deed.
“Pop the hood,” says Chris.
So I felt for where I thought the handle was, but it wasn’t. Clearly I was having a premature senior moment, as they say. I got down on my knees outside on the gravel and hunted round the appropriate area of the car for the dratted thing.
By now, Chris was there, rolling his eyes and no doubt thinking unflattering thoughts about women in general and wives in particular.
But he couldn’t find it either. Anywhere. We looked at each other blankly. This was plain weird.
Since all else had failed, it was time to read the instructions. I got out the car manual. A very vague picture showed where the handle was meant to be. We finally hunted down the spot – and it was exactly where I’d first groped for the handle. There was now just a hole.
 More trim removed - poor old car The last time the bonnet had been seen open was when I’d collected the Fiat from the auto-contrôle centre. My car gets light usage so I hadn’t needed to go under the hood to top anything up since then. Now, the handle was there when the car went in for its test since we’d used it the day before. I’m guessing it wasn’t there when it came out. We suspect Monsieur was a bit heavy handed with my ageing car and pulled it off. I occasionally knock or pull things off the cars but I always own up, and I didn’t do it in this case. After 25 years of marriage I know how to get round Chris so he doesn’t stay mad for long! So I didn’t do it and neither of my two shiftless eldest kids have yet learnt to drive (short pause while I tear my hair out) so it wasn’t them. And I don’t think animals were involved.
It had to be Monsieur so it was presumably guilt that made him pass my car! I just wish he’d told us he’d had the mishap. We’d have understood that it was an accident. It would have meant that we could have got it fixed in a relaxed fashion and not in the rain. Gallic sigh.
 Recharging at last Anyway, we were stuck. We needed to open the bonnet but it looked like an impossible task. So we resorted to the Internet. Thanks to ShadyDude and a few other similarly named folks on some dodgy car-breaking-into websites, we got hints on what to do and finally got the bonnet open by alternative means. It involved Chris having to peel away yet more of the plastic trim inside my car (there’s not all that much left any more) and using pliers to move the mechanism that Heavy Handed CT guy had broken the handle off. But we did it, the battery is charged and my beloved little Stilo is back on the road.
I do like that car – it’s small, sleek, slightly scuffed and shabby since it’s seen better days and only prone to the occasional breakdown. It’s me in car form!
At last the unsold Galettes des Rois that filled the shops at the beginning of January for Twelfth Night celebrations have reached their sell-by dates and are being flogged off cheap. Time for the Dagg family to swoop! We love these frangipane pies, and I always do a homemade one for the day itself. The shop ones, retailing at around the €8 mark are definitely pricey. OK, they come with a cardboard crown and a fève (literally bean and this is what was used originally, but now they are actually a ceramic charm) in them, but that’s still over the top.
 My fève collection Not any more. They’re just a couple of euros now and definitely a bargain. I can add to my fève collection, and do a spot of low-key favophilie.
Favophilie (sometimes fabophilie) is the activity of collecting the fèves from Galettes des Rois. Seasoned favophiles are after rare ones, or are trying to build up whole series of special edition ones. Either way, they’re probably slightly sad people.
The tradition of a single fève in festive cakes began in the 13th century in France. Cakes containing two fèves appeared later, one was black and one was white signifying ‘king’ and ‘queen’ respectively. But come the Revolution there could be no more religious based fun, so Twelfth Night became the sans culottes (without trousers) festival, and the Galette des Rois became the Galette d’égalité, still with fèves. Even that gateau was banned on and off for a while. But the tradition persevered.
 The current trend of porcelain fèves (with a brief eruption of plastic ones in the 1960s and 1970s) began in Germany in 1874. Porcelain swimmers were the first models. Twenty years later, fèves of all sorts were being produced. Different themes predominated at different times – santons (saints), doves, angels, professions and so on. These days cartoon and film characters tend to prevail, which is rather naff but clearly a good selling point. This year I’ve gained a Harry Potter bust and a truly awful mini-plaque of Titeuf, that strange cartoon guy with the yellow hair. My other less classy fèves include Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean momentoes.
I do have some nice ones including a sheep that Rors brought home from school on Tuesday. Clearly the caterer at his school is like me and buys in bargain food since the kids got a Galette des Rois for pudding out of the blue. Rors came up trumps when it was dished up and got the fève, so he also got the cardboard crown. He wore it for our 2.5 km walk home and I think he was disappointed that no-one else got to see him. We rarely come across anyone during our walks.
 There are some lovely fèves out there – this is one set I saw on a website. It’s a collection of the 13 desserts served on Christmas Eve in Provence. You can get animals (I found a set of pandas and koalas aka world’s dopiest animals!), flowers, trees, Disney, Hello Kitty, symbols, letters, books, playing cards – the list is endless these days. Look up fève on eBay and see what comes up. A lot are claimed to be rare or ancien - although probably take that with a pinch of salt! But there are some cute and clever ones to be had.
Actually, I think I’m beginning to see how you can get drawn into favophilie …
Yes, I know I keep saying I’m going to do Boursin next, but Rors came out with a joke the other day on seeing some Petit Suisses in the fridge. Here it is:
Comment fait-on les petits suisses ?
- Comme les petits français !
It doesn’t quite translate exactly since it’s playing on words and relies on the way the French refer to other nationalities. Rors was slightly embarrassed when I asked him to repeat it and said it was a bit rude. It’s not really!
How do you make a little Swiss (implying the cheese but meaning a person)? The same way you make a little French (person)!
So, it’s Petit Suisse cheese this week. Petit Suisse is in the family of soft cheeses. It’s fromage frais i.e. an unripe, non-salted creamy cheese. It’s made from cow’s milk and a generous dollop of cream is added during the process so it’s very high fat, up to 40%. But it’s delicious!
I dare say you’re familiar with this little cylindrical, white cheese, usually sold in 60g size, although sometimes twice that, in a plastic pot and perplexingly wrapped in paper. This strange practice dates back to when they were individually wrapped in a piece of waxed paper to hold them in shape and sold in lots of six in a small wooden box. They don’t really need the paper any more now they’re sold in pots, but it’s a tradition that’s hung on. The bits of paper can be a pain since the cheese tends to stick to them, and in our house the cats fish them out of the bin any time they manage to invade the kitchen, chew them up then spit them out on the floor. Yuk.
 Petit Suisse aren’t Swiss – they originated in Normandy – but they were thought up by a Swiss person who worked at a dairy in Auvilliers. He suggested adding cream to the curd they used for cheese to make it richer, and so the whole thing began.But only because a chef’s assistant, Henri Gervais, took a shine to the product and begun to use it. He was the key to its success and built a business around it. The Gervais company sent their cheese to Paris by horse-drawn cart every day. Nowadays, Gervais Petit Suisses are still going strong and are distributed worldwide by slightly more efficient but less environmentally friendly means! Gervais is part of the Bel group.
French people tend to deluge Petit Suisses in sugar to eat them, but I like them as they are. They’re said to be nice with a touch of salt of pepper or a sprinkle of herbs over too. Petit Suisse mixed with mustard makes a tasty coating to meat while it’s cooking and stops it drying out.
It’s very easy to make and easiest of all is if you can get unpasteurised milk. This isn’t a problem in France where you find it in vending machines. You leave a bowl of the raw milk out of the fridge overnight and it should have curdled i.e. set, by morning. Then wrap it in muslin and let it drain for a while so all the whey drips out. Unwrap the cheese, stir in a few spoonfuls of cream and enjoy. If you can only get pasteurised milk, then you need to add some buttermilk or a spoonful of yogurt or other fermented milk product to get the curdling process started. Apart from that, the method is the same. I haven’t made any yet, but now I’ve found these recipes, I shall be. I’m very partial to Petit Suisse.
Finally a question: in which book do you find a character names Petisuix? Answers please!
 It’s the Chinese New Year today – Happy Year of the Dragon to everyone – so a very good time to talk about pandas, China’s most dramatic export.
France now has a pair of pandas at Beauval. We visited there last summer and at the time we commented on how OTT the Chinese section of the park seemed to be, with statues, pagodas, lanterns but very few animals. Little did we know Beauval was gearing up for pandas. Certainly there was no mention of them at the zoo. But then they don’t sell batteries so they’re fairly clueless. A bit of advance publicity sur place wouldn’t have come amiss.
Anyway, Huang Huang and Yuang Zi arrived on 15th January to great excitement. They were the first pandas to set paw in France for eleven years. They were transported by FedEx in a specially painted aeroplane, and then by road in specially painted vans with a police escort from the airport to Beauval. Yes, you read that right – police escort. Your guess is as good as mine as to why! Whether it was to keep the pandas in, or panda-nappers out, who knows. But it was successful and the pandas arrived safely and probably very puzzled at their new home. The public will be let loose on the pandas on 11th February. They need a few weeks to settle in.
 Huang Huang and Yuang Zi are here for 10 years at a cost of around €750,000. Beauval is remaining tightlipped about the exact sum. So expect a hike in the already fairly hefty entry charge. The money is apparently going towards protecting pandas in the wild in China. And heaven knows they need it since they are the world’s dopiest animals.
I saw Edward Heath’s pandas, Chia Chia and Ching Ching, at London Zoo in the 1970s. They just sat and ate bamboo, as you’d expect, and were generally the most boring animal in the zoo. I have been completely underwhelmed by pandas for a long time.
Whilst there is no doubt that they are very striking and harmless animals, let’s face it they’re hopeless. The female comes into heat for between 3 and 7 days once a year. So if either she or the male has a headache during that brief space of time, that’s it, the chance for making a baby panda has gone for another year. I saw a TV programme about pandas in an American zoo. The zookeepers were desperate for the pandas to breed and were monitoring Mrs Panda constantly for the telltale signs of her arousing herself from her usual semi-comatose, bamboo-munching state to being hormonal. The second they reckoned she was ready, they unleashed Mr Panda. He made a couple of extremely feeble attempts to mount her then gave up. Mrs P went all huffy and then the pair of them sat and sulked in opposite sides of the cage. (I hope this doesn’t remind you of anything!)
So the scientists swooped. They first knocked out Mr P and got busy with rubber gloves and syringes and extracted some semen, and then knocked out Mrs P and gave her AI. What a palaver. But it worked and a miniscule baby panda appeared 5 months later. It weighed 5 ounces. Baby pandas are 1/900th the size of their mama. I mean, come on. How pathetic is that! Human babies are around 1/15th to 1/20th of their mum’s size. Admittedly, delivering one of them hurts like blooming heck and traumatises you for life but it’s possible. Llama cria are roughly 1/8th to 1/10th of their mother’s weight, and you don’t hear them complaining. And what’s more, if a panda has more than one cub, she has a breakdown. She is incapable of looking after two at the same time, so just leaves one to die. Pandas are severely survivally challenged. They really need to get their act together.
|
|
