"Yeah, well, microdot" you might well ask, "what exactly do you do all day long when you are not lounging about on some luxuriously tastefully decorated internet site?"
I'd be forced to take a langorous sip of my exotic mixed drink, remove the paper parasol and nibble on the garishly crimson maraschino cherry while pensively gazing out into space and admit...
I'd have to admit that my life is actually quite medieval. We are scurrying about, filling the larder for the winter. I have a big modern German freezer which is just about filled to the bursting point and faced with a crisis. My old trusty 30 year old little Scottish freezer is kaput. It is the back up and has never failed until I plugged it in yesterday and it won't get cold. It worked 2 months ago when I defrosted the big one.
So, I went to a friend who resells appliances to see if she had a little freezer for sale and she told me that this is the wrong season in the Dordogne...Nobody is selling old freezers.
It's critical, I need more space to put containers of soup, tomato sauce, the bags of pesto and baba ganoush...
So Monday, I go to Brive la Gaillarde and buy a new little freezer at the Darty Store...la contrat de confiance! Actually, I found one quite like the one that died for under 200 Euros with agood warranty.
That is what I do these days, find stuff and put it in the freezer. I have a few fig trees and they are beginning to bear fruit...when they start, it is a few weeks nonstop on the average of 2 kilos a day. The figs draw hornets and I have to make hornet traps from old plastic water bottles...quite effective!We eat a lot of figs, but we make a lot of fig jam...gallons of it, with walnuts, plain or this seasons new variety...orange zest!
I have a few hazelnut trees, one old one and quite a few that I planted when I moved here which are all full of nuts. I collect them off of the roof of the garage and off the ground.
We have to get them before the birds and other assorted pests do...I have around 12 kilos.
They have to be shelled, roasted and skinned. Then they can be frozen.
I discovered that cherry tomatoes can be frozen whole in bags for later culinary use. The rest of the tomatoes including the multi kilo Russian giants become frozen sauce.
At the same time, it is now the beginning of serious mushroom season and I have to be wily and get up earlier than mushroom boy...this dude in a red car who shows up everyday and parks his car down our lane and disappears for a few hours methodically picking every mushroom in the forest.
Still, I've managed to find a few kilos of girolle in the last few days. I ran into Old Vergne this morning who wanted to know if I had found any Cepe yet...Not yet, Vergne.
It seems like a lot of work, but the satisfaction of having a kitchen full of roasted hazelnuts, making a mexican dinner with ingredients we grew ourselves, not spending money on vegetables and eating well makes it all worth it.
If I could only train my dog to find truffles...............
2 comments:
For me, that's living out a dream. We almost bought a house with a huge fig tree in front of it, but ended up with this place which is more like apartment living. We also looked at a number of places with olive trees.
No regrets, even though I envy your lifestyle.
What a fabulous description of seasonal living. For most of us in cities with crazy work lives this sounds inspiring. At our place we feel a little bit virtuous if we make the effort to throw the excess tomatoes (from supermarket) into the compost heap.
I left a comment on another of your posts today - on cheese - and the American way of putting cheese in body bags. Then laughed to read this one about freezing foods - in litte bags - for later consumption. Did you realise this is a deeply american thing to do - according to Rapaille.
A little ritual perhaps in preparation for the golden years. THere's a marvellous new Japanese film out - Departures - about the loving preparation of bodies for burial.It is comical and moving.
Think about that next time you put the cherry tomatoes into the freezer.
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