Saturday, June 26, 2010

Summer In The City/Summer In The Country

Summer in the city? Well, Brive-la-Gaillarde is just about the biggest city I ever get to these days. I was in Brive most of yeterday and this was little glimpse of the urban youth problem of Brive... Brive is wonderful little city in the Correze, well, it is the biggest city in the Correze and we do a lot of our shopping there and our friend, Sophie, a sculptress was having an opening of a show of her work.
If you are wondering what I am doing these days, I get up around 7:30 am and start dealing with nature before it gets really hot. I raise a lot of Red Fruit....strawberries, cherries, some cassis, though that's not really red. My fantasy for many years was to have as many raspberries as I could eat...When you see them in the markets, they are like little gems, sold in little barquets for ust won't take that. I have been working for quite a few years to realize my fantasy. I have four different varieties of raspberries growing in two 18 meter rows. They are different shapes and this year, I have a remontant variety I got from my nephews neighbor in New Jersey...it just set flowers.
But the raspberries have just started to produce in earnest this week. So, I start picking around 8 am...and now I am getting around 2 to 3 kilos a day. We freeze them and eat all we can. The amount in the photo is about 1/3 of my daily harvest, but in the next few days, it will increase, then begin to taper off.
Raspberries in home made yoghurt is a staple, raspberries with Petite Suisse, Fromage Blanc...mmmmmm!!!!
We make raspberry ice cream, my wife invents raspberry desserts...raspberry tiramisu, raspberry bavaroise with a chocolate gateau as a base and of course, raspberry confiture(now imagine raspberry/cassis confiture) White chocoalte mousse with raspberry coulis...This is intense research and development of dessert concepts that will only make our world a much more raspberry friendly environment for every one! raspberries will unite and save our planet if we only grow them eat them and share our recipes!
No matter how much we try, we cannot eat all the raspberries we grow each day...so I have to freeze them...as of today there are 12 kilos in the freezer.
I just invested in a generator in case of a power outage...it happens here more than you want to think about...
Please I hope you will try to understand if I try to share my raspberry passion with you here on thebrainpolice.

1 comment:

mud_rake said...

Ah yes, those narrow European towns with the road just next to the buildings! How I long to be walking along them on a bright summer's day! You are fortunate, my friend, to have such unique opportunities to experience the modern and medieval within a few kilometers of each other.

Et le bol de framboises- magnifique! En effet, vous êtes agriculteur urbain. Il faut encore mentionner un chef-excellent dessert.

...Ce nuage de poussière sur la route lointaine arriver deux visiteurs américains sur la moto.