Skies and other things at the beginning of 2015

Happy New Year!  2015 has already shown a mixture of weather here in St André.   Friday, 2 January saw beautiful weather and I actually brought a sunchair and stool out of storage onto the terrace and sat out reading in the wonderful sunshine for an hour. I almost went to sleep on the recliner as it was so warm without a breath of wind.  

Later that day I opened a letter from an old friend to find, very sadly, that his wife had died just after Christmas.   We used to sing in choirs together and I liked her very much. We'd had a long 'phone conversation at the beginning of December, and I'm so pleased that we did make contact then.  This is one of the downsides of getting older - I'm afraid that losing friends is now becoming a fact of life.  

The next day it was grey, damp and horrid.  Today it is frosty and was 0°C at 0900hrs and has only reached 2°C now it's 1130hrs.   Here are some frosty photos from the last few days.

I am burning quite a lot of logs but still have loads left, thank goodness, and the house is lovely and warm and toasty.

You can see how cold it has been this week from the frost on the fleeces of the sheep.

I've been using food from the freezer rather than buying in fresh food and have done lots of cooking this week, from puff pastry fish pie, to pastry pizza and quiche.

Also using squashes, onions, garlic, thyme and sage which I have grown, together with cream and pili pili to make soup.

My Landrover decided not to start one morning last week and a friend came round and after a trip to the supermarket to buy jump leads I was back on the road. However, as he opened the pincer to attach it to the battery terminal it just snapped so I had to hold it all together while we started the Discovery and the leads had to be returned to the shop later in the day.  

They say things go in threes, and the next thing to go wrong was that after showering I found water dripping through my kitchen ceiling.  I presume the waste is blocked but I can't get my worker to come round and look at it. Well that was the second thing and there was just one to go.  In the evening, I couldn't get the ice dispenser on the freezer to give me any cubes.  I opened the door of the freezer and got wet feet.  Two black bin bags of defrosted food later I set up the fast freeze option and kept my fingers crossed.  Everything was ok by the morning.  I can only assume that I hadn't quite closed it - not a good move.

The sunrises, and skies generally,have been lovely so far this year and I've spent quite a bit of time taking photographs out there.

I started back at Bowls on yesterday and it was a good morning of games.  Luckily it wasn't a frosty start.  My Landrover is parked in the road in front of my house and that is facing north.  There's obviously no sun reaching it and so if it's frosty it needs the windscreen sorting out if I'm going out early. The heater is not coming on for about fifteen minutes after I start driving, so it's just easier to stay at home on frosty mornings as I can't keep the screen clear if it's still freezing when I set off.

The Christmas tree and all decorations and cards are now down as yesterday was twelfth night.  Although I do like them, I really like it when they're all put away and I get my house back to normal, especially being able to walk around both side of the table.  When the tree is there I can't get by one side.   This is a photo from last year, as my tree lights weren't working this year.

One thing I love here in Brittany at this time of year is the wonderful selection of shellfish in the supermarkets.   Here is part of the display in SuperU with my favourite fish lady serving.  She no longer works behind the counter normally but is the best filleter in the shop.

Here's a jay who's been visiting the bird table a metre from my sitting room window.  I just love the blue on his wings.

Opposite my field, a neighbour has tethered one of his goats.  It's an entire male and really smells!  He's a handsome specimen though and very friendly in spite of the large horns.

Unfortunately, one of my two small chicks died this week.  There didn't seem to be anything wrong with her beforehand so I'm not sure why.  I didn't feel I could leave the remaining chick with all the adult birds so she's now installed in my kitchen area but spends the evening on my shoulders while I watch television or interact on my laptop.  My friend, June, took this snapshot from Skype this week when I was talking to her.   Not sure how this will work when she's grown and in the barn if she tries to fly up on my shoulders then!

Couldn't resist a few more skies:

Three things I like:

1.   Making it through to another year, happy and healthy.
2.   Being invited to a galette de rois evening with the whole hamlet at Annike and Alain's tomorrow.   Last year's at Christian and Paulette's was a lovely evening.
3.   Comforting, warming winter soups.

Christmas 2014 in St André

 

Christmas Day in St André was a quiet but lovely one.  The sky was blue and the sun shone – perfect weather for a post-prandial afternoon walk through the village and then I sat in the sunshine up on the field with the animals for a while.  

You can see the awful mud that we are having to contend with - the worst I've ever known it.  Thank goodness the far end of the field still has grass.

Three of the sheep standing very still in the sunshine.

The sunset was great as the following photographs show:

 

Christmas food started with the usual gammon or collar joint, cooked the day before and sliced on hot buttered toast with Coleman’s English mustard.  For lunch I had bought a frozen lobster

and having prepared it, after watching a youtube tutorial, I mixed butter with garlic, parsley and lemon juice and then spread it liberally on the prepared crustacean and placed it under a very hot grill.

It was pleasant enough but the quality of the flesh was not as good as a fresh one would have been.   In previous years, I have prepared fresh crab and really enjoyed it, so I shall do that again for my future Christmas starters.

As I was alone, I chose to eat my main course a few hours later and cooked duck breast with spiced red cabbage, roasted butternut squash and onions, petit pois, dauphinoise potatoes and a gravy with red currant jelly.  

It was delicious!   This is about the fourth year running I have cooked this plate for Christmas lunch and I see no reason why I would ever change this tradition.  One of the great things about it is that there is no long cooking of any meat.  With the red cabbage prepared and cooked the beforehand, the whole meal doesn’t take more than an hour to get to the table.  My electric slicer, bought secondhand for €20 a few years ago, efficiently slices the potato for the dauphinoise into beautifully thin, regular slices and I used my own home grown garlic for this dish too. 

Too full to eat Christmas pudding, I opted for Bourbon vanilla icecream and homemade blackberry sauce made with the fruits I’d picked in the lane this year.

I followed this with Camembert which I eat with Petit Beurre biscuits – I like the salty and sweet combination.

My family in Cornwall were all spending Christmas Day together and Skyped me just before they had their prawn cocktail starter – so lovely to see them happy and enjoying themselves.

The tulip bulbs I planted in November are already popping their heads up through the wet earth in the terrace bed alongside the house.

At the end of the afternoon, which I'd spent with my two smallest chicks perching on my feet, I took them to their new home in the back barn.  I was happy this morning, Boxing Day, to see that they were fine and not being attacked by the bigger chickens.  Today is not a good weather day.  Purrdy, my oldest cat, has just come in soaking wet.  It is miserable out there now, luckily it was dry when I went up to do the animals first thing. 

The Christmas tree, a beautiful Nordmann fir, a present from friends is decorated but without lights. When the decoration bag was opened a strong smell of urine emerged.  I spread out a newspaper on the floor and tipped out the contents which included a mother mouse and her four babies.  The four sets of lights from the bottom of the bag, completely urine sodden, worked perfectly when plugged in but the stench was so bad that they were unusable.  The four new sets of lights, previously unused in another unaffected bag, wouldn’t work – not one of them wanted to light up.  So, unfortunately, I have no lights on my tree this year which is rather odd. 

This morning I Skyped with the New Zealanders who are going to house/pet sit for me in April 2015 when I go back to the UK for my usual dentist visit.  They seem really good people and I feel happy that they are going to take care of everything here for me.

Lunchtime today saw me cooking plaice goujons and prawns in homemade breadcrumbs with salad from the polytunnel – a nice light change from yesterday. Tomorrow I have been invited out to friends so can leave the cooking to someone else.

I am now relaxing in front of the woodburner with a half full tin of Quality Street – there are benefits to spending Christmas alone!

I hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas and that we all have a Happy and Healthy 2015.

Three things I like:

1.   Skype, for the opportunity it offers to keep in touch with and actually see friends and family.

2.   All the birds visiting the bird table just a metre from the sitting room window.

3.  My ducks and hens, who are laying so magnificently, even through these winter months, that I'm running out of ceramic egg trays. 

It seems ages since I caught up with my blog so I’m now going to put that right. 

Autumn established itself properly and I think most of the leaves that blew off the trees in St André landed in my garden and driveway.  My brilliantly helpful Workaway, Ed, worked his way through the list of tasks I had for him.  He cleared away many of the leaves and all the prunings that arrived on the ground while I sorted out the vines, honeysuckle, wisteria etc. 

He dug through the little bed below for bulbs and also dug through a large piece of flowerbed for me to put other plants.  A little late I know, for bulbs to go in during November, but I didn’t have the area to place them until Ed arrived. 

My usual worker is not feeling well so he was glad to have Ed to help him when they cut my long hedge – more trimmings to be picked up and disposed of.  I didn’t want all the hedge trimmings in my compost bins, they would have been full, but luckily we have an area in the village, hidden from sight, where we can all dump garden waste so several wheelbarrow loads and a trailer load were carted off and left there.  It looks much tidier now.
  

They also mended an eight metre length of fence which should have stopped Basil and Betsy, the goats, jumping through to the neighbouring pasture up on the field, but it hasn't.  It seems that if they want to be somewhere else then they will find a way.  I had to 'phone my neighbour earlier this afternoon as his small white goat is out in the road today, so it's not just mine who thinks that the grass is greener elsewhere. 

The hens are laying less than they were with the onset of shorter and colder days but there are more than enough eggs from them to sell each week and even the ducks are still laying. Their fields though are a slippery, muddy problem, particularly at the gateways and it is really hard to stay on my feet when I’m feeding and managing them.

I bought and then cooked some beautifully coloured crayfish for lunch at the weekend, but was very disappointed at the lack of edible meat within them.  

Without question, large prawns contain more meat even if they are not so visually appealing.

I bought three few Norfolk Grey layers and three nine week old chicks this week who are settling down in the barn with the other girls.  I have two three week old chicks, a Buff Orpington and a Norfolk Grey in the warmth of the kitchen.  Here are the little chicks yesterday on my laptop table.

On the right are some red berried twigs I cut from a shrub in a picnicking area I was driving past last week.  I thought they would look Christmassy on the windowsill. 

The weekend saw the arrival of the Christmas market in St Nicolas du Pélem.  The outside stallholders were so lucky with the beautiful sunshine and blue sky day which arrived on Sunday.

It was very well attended as community things always are in Brittany.  I met several friends there and it was a pleasant way to spend some time.

 

Here is a photo of my granddaughter, Mia, taken at the end of last month when she was sixteen months.  I love the old fashioned look she has about her.

Here she is two weeks later, looking quite different.

It was the Writers' Group Christmas Lunch last week.  We all met up, as we always do, at the Lanterne Rouge, a Chinese restaurant in Pontivy where we have a great lunch for €11 plus drinks.  It's always a good meal and the staff are very pleasant too.

Some of the sunsets recently have been quite beautiful and here is just one in the village. It's good to think that in three days time we will be past the Winter solstice and heading back to longer and lighter days again.

Three things I like:

1.   Christmas cards with letters in them containing a whole year's worth of news.
2.   Having baby chicks again they're just so lovely.
3.   Friends bringing me a really lovely Christmas tree.