Isn’t it cool? It’s specially designed with those movable plastic bits inside to conserve your Camembert and help it ripen properly by retaining its odour.

So, onto the cheese itself. This is one of the family of fromages à pâte molle et à croûte fleurie (soft cheeses with a floury crust). It’s less fatty than its pressed cheese cousins since it contains more water. It contains around 320 calories per 100g which is pretty good for cheese.

A typical 250g Camembert is made from two litres of milk, so lots of healthy calcium in every slice, and also a good dollop of phosphorus too. There are vitamins A and B2 as well.

Generally, the longer you keep Camembert, the better it gets provided you don’t go past the eat by date on the packet and don’t leave it to shrivel up in the back of your frigo like we sometimes do, only rediscovering it the next time a full-scale fridge clean out is called for due to there being a funny smell. Which is usually the Camembert! If you eat it affiné, ie about 3 weeks after it’s been made, it’s light and delicate. When it becomes à point about a fortnight later, it’s altogether a more determined cheese. But wash it down with a swig of good strong red wine and it’s extremely palatable.

You can eat it in many different ways. Straight out of the packet on baguette is always nice. But slices rolled in breadcrumbs and then deep fried are my favourites. I once had these with a redcurrant sauce as a starter many years ago, and I can still remember how lovely it was.

I’ve never done it, but apparently it’s delicious if you cook the camembert in a moderate oven in its wooden box (assuming you buy the posher varieties) until the wood is starting to blacken. You then take the crust off with a knife and dip bits of bread into the melty cheese underneath. Something to try but keep a fire extinguisher handy.

I’ve read that Camembert chocolates and camembert sorbet are highly acclaimed gastronomic delights but I can’t say they sound very appealing.

Onto the cheese’s history. Legend has it that it all began with Marie Harel, a farmer in the village of Pays d’Auge at the end of the 18th century. She kindly sheltered a refractory priest, Abbé Charles-Jean Bonvoust, when he was on the run from the guillotine-obsessed authorities during the Revolution. He was from Brie originally, and to show his gratitude to Marie, he gave her the recipe for his native cheese. She combined this with the cheese she traditionally made and voilà, Camembert was born. Except this isn’t true. Camembert already existed. There are references to it that date back to 16th century. Nice try Marie!

The railway helped Camembert become famous since it could now be easily transported to markets in Paris. Once Napoléon said he liked it and officially called it Camembert, its success was assured. The famous round wooden boxes for Camembert were invented in 1890 by Ridel. These allowed the cheese within to breathe and thus be transported further afield to conquer foreign markets.

Until 1910 Camembert actually had a bluish mould on it. This ended with the discovery of penicillium candidum which produced a more attractive white mould. And it’s said that the cheese became the unofficial symbol of France when it was included in the daily rations of soldiers in the Great War.

So, rather an interesting cheese all round.

So, I’m to give the links to:

my most beautiful post – hmm, I’m not sure I do beautiful posts, but I did one about Yves Rocher plant based beauty products here. I think that fits the bill.

my most popular post – without a doubt, this one! Anything with the word ‘naked’, ‘bare’ or ‘nude’ in the title has always done very well!!!

my most controversial post – off course learning French is better than sex!

my most helpful post – two possibilities here. Anyone cycling in France will need this quick look at cyclists’ rights helpful, but if you’re feeling hard done by since you’ve heard that French people don’t get fat, then this could help your self-confidence

a post whose success surprised me – again two to choose from: first up mine and Benjy’s whistle-stop tour of Strasbourg. Secondly, my examinatio of  pink toilet roll.

a post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved – my painstaking translation of a famous poem about the Creuse masons, but if you’re not into French historical poems you might prefer to see this neglected turkey related one:

the post I am most proud of – all of them! Seriously, I put a lot of time and love into each one because I choose to. I love to entertain and inform, and most of all I love blogging.

I have to nominate up to five bloggers to take this same challenge. So I choose:

Helen Hannimann

Vanessa Couchman

Jason Matthews

Pip

Alex Adena

If you enjoy my blog, then here’s advance notice that I’m currently compiling a soon-to-arrive ebook, The Best of Blog in France. I’ll be keeping you posted. I have to master inserting photos into files for converting into the various ebook formats first though …

It’s noticeable that in and around Bussière a lot of ‘A vendre’ signs have appeared on houses. According to the enquiry that was held before the eoliennes were given the go-ahead, the locals were all very supportive. So maybe it’s just a coincidence that suddenly half of them want to move?

The site of eolienne 3

We have friends who will have an eolienne a couple of fields away from them. They’re quite happy with the situation on the whole, although a little apprehensive about how much noise the wind turbine will make.

Yesterday, Chris, Ruadhri and I went on our Sunday morning bike ride to have a look at the site for eolienne 3, which is the closest one to us (and our friends). Six days a week, the place is a hive of activity with a constant stream of lorries going to and fro. Yesterday it was deserted. There weren’t any signs saying it was privée and telling us not to go in, so we didn’t have to ignore them. We cycled along the track and had a nose around. A lot of land has been cleared and levelled, and a huge hole has been dug. And I mean huge. This eolienne clearly needs a very solid base.

I think you can see just how big this hole is

Wind turbines convert the kinetic energy in the wind into mechanical energy which is converted by a generator into electricity. It’s a renewable source which in these days of climate change is a good thing, so why are eoliennes so unpopular? A lot of people consider them an eyesore, even though they are rather graceful feats of engineering. There’s the question of noise, described as being like a boot in a tumble dryer and audible for up to a couple of kilometres, and also the unfortunate effect they have on bats and some birds. The drop in air pressure close to the wind turbines’ blades causes haemorrhaging in their lungs. The creatures essentially drown.

However, kids generally love eoliennes, thanks to the Teletubbies.

Here around Boussac, we’ll just have to wait and see what living with eoliennes is really like.

Eolienne extras

A vehement group against them can be found here.

Find out about getting your own  here.

Can you make any sense out of this puzzling map of zde’s in Limousin from 2007?

I bought the maker from my Blancheporte catalogue for €9.99. What you have to do is tear up paper into smallish pieces, damp them in a bucket or bowl and then fill the briquette mould with them.

There’s a separate metal squishing part that you put onto the mould above the paper. Then you push the handles down, and they’re designed to press against the squishing thing and push the water out.

We have to give Rors a hand with this as it takes a lot of force. These days we also sit a brieze block on top of the briquette maker for a while to expel even more water.

And voila, a briquette. I usually tie string around them as they can flake apart when they’re dry.

Now we leave them to dry and then store them in the woodshed until we need them. Each one takes roughly three newspapers so there’s a good, solid body of burnable fuel in there. They’re good at helping a fire to get going. It’s a very sensible way for us to recycle all our paper. The very shiny stuff doesn’t work well, so that goes to the local à papiers at Bussière St Georges.

Thursday 14^th July is Bastille Day in France. It’s one of the few public holidays that is pretty much 100% i.e. everything shuts. Here is some festive guillotine bunting I knitted. Grisly but cool I think!

Here’s the pattern if you’d like to make your own. I’m a bit late posting it for you to make some for this year, but you can always keep it stored safely for next year.

Bastille Bunting

I used DK wook (worsted) and 4 mm needles, but anything will do! Cast on 2 sts. Row 1: k, k. Row 2: p, p. Row 3: incr, k. Row 4: p. Continue increasing in this way i.e. on just the one side, until you have 21 sts. But around the 10 st mark, using red wool introduce a random, blood spatter pattern on the blade side (the diagonal one) over the next 10 rows or so. When you have your 21 sts, work 14 rows. Next row, eyelet  row – **slip 1, k3, psso** rpt to end. Next row: **p2, yfd, p1*** rpt to end. Knit two further rows then cast off. Even though I blocked my guillotines, they kept curling a bit so I made reversed shaped ones and sewed them together in pairs, right sides out with a neat overstitch seam.  Knit as many as you can bear and hang them up on a string for a real French festive touch on Bastille Day!

The big day is 9^th July. The eighth stage of the Tour goes from Aigurande to Super-Besse, via our village. The caravan is due in Nouzerines at 11.15 and the riders at 12.57. But celebrations will be underway from 9.30 with – you’ve guessed it, this being France – food and drink being on sale. Then at some point during the morning, Nouzerines will be declaring its independence. It will become a cité Royale. I’ll let you have more details when I found them out!

The Tour then hits Boussac, our local town. The caravan gets there at 11.35 and the riders at 13.14. In case you haven’t noticed, the riders are going faster than the caravan. It usually takes 15 minutes to drive to Boussac from here, Les Fragnes. The riders will only take 2 minutes longer. Awesome. Boussac is celebrating with a small market of local goods, an exhibition of old Tour jerseys and jazz music.

The villages of Lavaufranche (11.44 and 13.23) and Soumans (11.50 and 13.28) are the next on the Tour route, and will be doing a lot of eating. A giant barbecue is lined up for Lavaufranche, and Soumans is planning a pig roast. I wonder if the riders mind cycling past all this food?

To get you in a cycling mood, here are some photos from old magazines and papers of Tours gone by.

Octave Lapize in the 1910 Tour

Strasbourg 1926 - the 108 riders collect their food

The 1928 Tour

The itinerary of the 1913 Tour

The 1951 itinerary

A rider in 1961 cooling down

Rors getting his white/yellow belt

Last Friday he finally got his longed-for promotion in judo from white belt to white and yellow belt. He’d been bitterly disappointed not to get that at the first grading of the year, but he hung in there and has  had his reward. He does still need to work at his forward rolls though, which I’ve mentioned before!

As well as his grading certificate, he got a special diplôme d’attitude au dojo. This is to reward kids for a good attitude towards their judo and encourage them to adopt a good moral code. This one recommends respect des lieux (knowing how to behave in the dojo), ponctualité (punctuality), entraide (helping the other students), politesse (politeness), hygiène (being clean and tidy),  convivialité (being courteous and co-operative), respect des personnes (respect for others) and perseverance (perseverance).

The livre pour l'été ceremony at St Marien school

And on Monday he received a book at school. For the second year running, the livre pour l’été scheme is underway. Every child in CM1 gets a book to read during the holidays. Last year it was a copy of La Fontaine’s fables, which Ruadhri knows inside out as his previous teacher was a tad obsessed by these poems! This year the children, around 800,000 of across France, are being given Neuf contes (Nine tales) by Charles Perrault, illustrated by d’Épinal. The latter is card-maker and woodcutter Jean-Charles Pellerin. As for Perrault, he was a famous writer born in 1628, so the language may be a little tricky. The Inspector who came to lead the ceremony at St Marien School mentioned something along those lines. Rors would probably have preferred a  Smurfs comic book, but it’s a very nice gesture by the government to encourage reading and to give the kids a bit of a boost. France is always prepared to invest in education, and I’m very proud of my adopted country for that.

You may have noticed I had Monday off blogging. I’ve been doing daily posts for three months now as part of the WordPress post-a-day 2011 challenge, and I’ve loved it. But it’s taken a lot of time, and I’ve decided to cut back to posting every other day for the time being so I can spend more time on my writing. In theory. The outdoor jobs are piling up around the farm, I have a new editing project, we have more meals packages to do for anglers next week, and not one but two of my sisters-in-law are arriving for a visit in just over a fortnight so I have rather a lot of tidying up to do around the house! And that’s on top of all the usual everyday stuff.

We’ve made a tiny start on the polytunnel. Long way to go yet!

Measuring up for the polytunnel

Julie

No baby llama still, but we do have a new baby guinea pig. The seven girls have been living in the gite flowerbed for several weeks now and having a high old time. They’ve done wonders with the weeds that were growing there. And one of them has had baby Julie! We’ve no idea who mum is yet. We’ll catch them all within the next few days and get them back into their cage. The cats are showing rather too much interest in Julie for our liking.

Now big drum roll … daughter Caiti has come joint second in a national French science competition. She got 98 out of 100. An amazing achievement for anyone, but especially for an Irish lass.

Nouzerines is getting ready for the Tour de France. There’s a new banner up now. In the background you can see the nearly-finished church tower and brand new shiny weather vane.

A blue, white and red bike has appeared by the wooden tour de France sign too.

So that’s the major updates accounted for. Please do check in on www.booksarecool.com where I’ve been putting up new posts and a book review.

PS For the nakedly obsessed reader, the next national naked event is World Naked Bike Day on 18 June. May have to think about that one …

Blog in France will continue on its daily posting basis, concentrating on life in France.

If all goes to plan, a craft and knitting site will appear, and I’m persuading Caiti, the Chef in Wellies, to get her cookery blog up underway. She’s such a good chef. There are quite a few teen cooks out there with excellent sites – she should join them.

We’ve had a crazy week of spring cleaning but the season’s first guests are safely settled into the gite and bivvied up around Alder Lake so let’s hope 2011 will be as busy and rewarding as last year was.

Back tomorrow with more French news.

Before - cringe!

But after half an hour or so of dedicated tidying, I overcame the muddle. I invested in a deeper plastic cutlery tray in eye-assaulting green which is not only functional but cheerful.

Much better!

During the tidy-up, I found nearly 50 reusable wire ties, the sort that come with bread over here. I’d just been tossing them into the drawer. They now live in a small zip-up pencil case that was needing something to do. I also uncovered enough chopsticks to kit out a Chinese restaurant (and we don’t eat Chinese very often these days) and a good collection of fèves. What are fèves? They are little porcelain ornaments that you hide in the Gateau des Rois (marzipan cake) that you eat on Twelfth Night here in France. Here are mine.

Now, for meal planning. Things didn’t quite stay on target last week. But I see that Laura at www.orgjunkie.com recommends starting with just two or three days. So I’ll try that for this week. We’ve already had Monday tea, so here goes for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Now, Thursday is St Patrick’s Day and that’s our day so we’ll be celebrating!

Tuesday: Burgers in half baguettes with fried onions and lots of ketchup. Followed by banana custard.

Wednesday: Baked potatoes with ham and cheese filling, coleslaw and tomato salad. Walnut flapjacks. Here’s my recipe for those: 4 oz butter, 4 oz golden syrup, 7 oz rolled oats and 1 oz chopped walnuts. Melt the butter and golden syrup together. Then mix in the oats and walnuts. Press into a flan case and bake for 25 minutes on at 180 degrees C. I use the walnuts we collected last autumn and which I shelled and froze over winter. They’ve kept beautifully.

Thursday: Party time! Slices of barm brack for breakfast with some of my homemade hedgerow jam. For lunch, St Patrick’s Day soup.

Then for tea, we’ll treat ourselves to Irish Beef Goulash followed by Shamrock cupcakes. That should all be festive enough.

Happy eating this week, and especially on Thursday!

Road trip!

So we’re safely back from our road trip to Strasbourg. We – eldest son Benj and I – were away for 36 hours. We spent 15 of those in the car – it’s a long way to Strasbourg from the centre of France! It was tiring but a trip well worth making.

But distance isn’t really a problem. I enjoy driving, and luckily Benj and I share similar tastes in music so we were happy enough to listen to each other’s CDs on the way. We got through a lot. We also got through a lot of motorway service station sandwiches. I hadn’t realised my son had a chicken and mayo sandwich habit. And we saw interesting things en route – three chickens right on the hard shoulder of one autoroute, happily scratching away at the scabby grass as traffic thundered past at 130 kph only metres away! Also car factories, the watersheds between the Mediterranean and the North Sea and the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, ancient fortifications, the Vosges mountains, Germany, an army convoy, policemen on bikes with ferocious truncheons and a Figuereido transport lorry which we thought was one cool name. (Maybe we’d just had too many chicken mayo sandwiches by then.)

The goal of the trip was to visit the university. Benj wants to do a Langues Etrangères Appliquées course (applied languages), specialising in German and English. Strasbourg appealed to him because of its proximity to Germany, and because it has a very good reputation for languages. This was his third university visit. He’s already visited Limoges (with me) and Clermont Ferand (with Chris), both of them much nearer home! Strasbourg University is an old one, dating back to 1538, and it’s also France’s largest. In 1972 it was divided into three institutions, which between them have a student population of 42,000 – the Louis Pasteur University, Marc Bloch University and Robert Schuman University. The language school is part of Marc Bloch, named after the famous French historian.

Strasbourg is a huge city. Wikipedia tells me that it has a population of 273,000 which I frankly find hard to believe. I would have put it much, much higher. It’s the seventh largest commune in France. It’s beautiful too. The centre of it, on Grande Île, is a Unesco world heritage site, and you can see why. The towering, colossal Notre Dame cathedral is there. At 142 m it’s currently the tenth tallest church in the world. It was the tallest from 1647 to 1874, but has been pushed down the rankings since then! It’s in the Gothic style, a deep red colour and truly stunning. There’s a fascinating astronomical clock in it. It features a perpetual clock, a planetary dial and shows the positions of the sun and moon. At 12.30pm every day the twelve apostles have a procession around the top of it. We missed that show but caught one figure walking round at 1pm. Whoever it was went past the eerie, skeletal figure of Death.

We walked through many bustling squares and along narrow lanes. The whole city was clean and gleaming. Like the trams. We loved the trams. We parked at a park and ride in the morning, rather than attempt to drive into the city, and travelled into in style on a tram. We found the university easily, and as we were running early and had an unlimited day pass on the trams, got straight onto another one and went to see the European Parliament and the European Court of Human Justice. These were very impressive, modern buildings, in a tranquil part of the city. After the university visit, we were back on the tram, riding into the centre of Strasbourg to see all the beautiful buildings. We never had to wait more than 5 minutes for a tram, and each one was sleek, shiny and spotless.

We travelled up on the Friday and stayed at a Formule 1 hotel in the southern suburbs of Strasbourg, at Illkirch Graffenstaden. It was a low cost, no frills hotel, convenient to get to, and just perfect for our purposes. We strolled through the town, which was spacious and attractive, in the evening and found an Irish pub! (We moved to France from Ireland.) We drove back on Saturday, getting home about 9.30pm.

All in all, it was an interesting, enjoyable trip. I’d been wanting to visit Strasbourg for ages. I’d still like to go and visit the Christmas market there – it must be quite stunning in such a beautiful city. We’ll have to wait and see if Benj ends up there for his studies …

Benj texting in Strasbourg as opposed to texting at home!

But distance isn’t really a problem. I enjoy driving, and luckily Benj and I share similar tastes in music so we were happy enough to listen to each other’s CDs on the way. We got through a lot. We also got through a lot of motorway service station sandwiches. I hadn’t realised my son had a chicken and mayo sandwich habit. And we saw interesting things en route – three chickens right on the hard shoulder of one autoroute, happily scratching away at the scabby grass as traffic thundered past at 130 kph only metres away! Also car factories, the watersheds between the Mediterranean and the North Sea and the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, ancient fortifications, the Vosges mountains, Germany, an army convoy, policemen on bikes with ferocious truncheons and a Figuereido transport lorry which we thought was one cool name. (Maybe we’d just had too many chicken mayo sandwiches by then.)

The goal of the trip was to visit the university. Benj wants to do a Langues Etrangères Appliquées course (applied languages), specialising in German and English. Strasbourg appealed to him because of its proximity to Germany, and because it has a very good reputation for languages. This was his third university visit. He’s already visited Limoges (with me) and Clermont Ferand (with Chris), both of them much nearer home! Strasbourg University is an old one, dating back to 1538, and it’s also France’s largest. In 1972 it was divided into three institutions, which between them have a student population of 42,000 – the Louis Pasteur University, Marc Bloch University and Robert Schuman University. The language school is part of Marc Bloch, named after the famous French historian.

The library at Strasbourg University - built in 1962 so as old as me!

Strasbourg is a huge city. Wikipedia tells me that it has a population of 273,000 which I frankly find hard to believe. I would have put it much, much higher. It’s the seventh largest commune in France. It’s beautiful too. The centre of it, on Grande Île, is a Unesco world heritage site, and you can see why. The towering, colossal Notre Dame cathedral is there. At 142 m it’s currently the tenth tallest church in the world. It was the tallest from 1647 to 1874, but has been pushed down the rankings since then! It’s in the Gothic style, a deep red colour and truly stunning. There’s a fascinating astronomical clock in it. It features a perpetual clock, a planetary dial and shows the positions of the sun and moon. At 12.30pm every day the twelve apostles have a procession around the top of it. We missed that show but caught one figure walking round at 1pm. Whoever it was went past the eerie, skeletal figure of Death.

Notre Dame cathedral, Strasbourg

The astronomical clock

We walked through many bustling squares and along narrow lanes. The whole city was clean and gleaming. Like the trams. We loved the trams. We parked at a park and ride in the morning, rather than attempt to drive into the city, and travelled into in style on a tram. We found the university easily, and as we were running early and had an unlimited day pass on the trams, got straight onto another one and went to see the European Parliament and the European Court of Human Justice. These were very impressive, modern buildings, in a tranquil part of the city.

The European Parliament

The European Court of Human Rights

After the university visit, we were back on the tram, riding into the centre of Strasbourg to see all the beautiful buildings. We never had to wait more than 5 minutes for a tram, and each one was sleek, shiny and spotless.

A tram on a bridge

We travelled up on the Friday and stayed at a Formule 1 hotel in the southern suburbs of Strasbourg, at Illkirch Graffenstaden. It was a low cost, no frills hotel, convenient to get to, and just perfect for our purposes. We strolled through the town, which was spacious and attractive, in the evening and found an Irish pub! (We moved to France from Ireland.) We drove back on Saturday, getting home about 9.30pm.

All in all, it was an interesting, enjoyable trip. I’d been wanting to visit Strasbourg for ages. I’d still like to go and visit the Christmas market there – it must be quite stunning in such a beautiful city. We’ll have to wait and see if Benj ends up there for his studies …