Mont D'or creamy cheese lunch.

Today is one of those grey drizzly days.What should we have for lunch.

During the week I'd seen that Mont d'Or cheese was on the cooler shelves.

It's only in the shops for a short while and was on special offer

so naturally  I put one in my basket.

It's not something we eat very often , but when we do, 

I love it, especially with a glass of nice red wine.

I always have to check, how long to bake it . 

This time I followed David Lebovitz.

ooooh ......  so delicious, especially with home baked bread.

I won't mind having a cold rainy day
 if we're going to have Mont d'Or for lunch.

If you've never tried this,  it's a must.
You can do this with Camembert, but it doesn't have the same taste.

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian

Market day

I haven't been to Piegut- Pluvier market for a long time.

It's rated as being the best market in our area and stall holders come

 from far and wide, it's always very busy especially during the summer season;
so we like to arrive early. It's about a 25 min. drive from where we live.

 Most times I go to the market with our visitors or a friend.

It's not very often Mr France comes with me, but as we were up early
 he came with me. Here he is with my straw market basket.

We started off buying lots of fruit.

The Apricots were almost as big as the peaches.

I needed to stock up on fresh garlic so searched out my favourite stall.

It's always much cheaper to buy them loose.
I only buy the platted strung garlic as gifts.

Next I wanted summer fresh vegetables.
I'll be making summer salads with the Haricot vert beans.

This is how I make a quick simple bean salad.
Top & tail the beans. bring a large pan of salted water to the boil
cook the beans just enough to still have a crunch, about 7 to 10 mins.
drain in a colander, then plunge them straight away into iced water,
this will keep them green.
Put the beans into a serving dish, and drizzle some good quality olive oil over them,
  add some thinly sliced spring onions, toss tog. season with ground black pepper.
If you make a large amount, they will keep for a few days stored
in a sealed plastic container, in the fridge.

I noticed a lot of the stalls I used to visit were not there anymore,

so I decided to look around to find a new source for good fresh veg.
I saw a queue, at a  stall I'd never seen before, this is always a good sign.

 It was all Bio vegetables, which is usually more expensive, but their prices 

were very competitive. I had a peep first and all their produce looked top quality 

so I tagged on at the end of the queue. I noticed most of the people had
crumpled brown paper bags in their hands, which I assumed were from
their last visit and they must be regular customers. 

So not only were the producers Eco friendly all their regular clients were too.
So I'll certainly be buying my vegetables from there again.

 I bought a kilo of plum tomatoes with the intention of slow roasting them,

but I made a tomato salad drizzled with olive oil & sprinkled 

with fresh basil with a crunchy baguette for lunch,
I wish I'd bought more. I'll have to buy more next week .

My last purchase were olives to have with our evening aperitif.

So many types so I left that purchase for Mr France to choose.

He chose Greek and Moroccan, black olives

 There were lots of wine stalls, we only looked this time.
maybe next week we'll try wine from another region.

 Vin Rosé seemed to be the most popular.

I was pleased with the fresh fruit & vegetables I bought.
 Here's my straw market basket full of all things fresh.

I hope you enjoyed joining me along with Mr France at our favourite market.

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian

Mr. France is making Bread .

Although it's me who does all  the day to day cooking and baking
When Mr France decides to cook, he always chooses  much more adventurous recipes than I do.
 Especially now he's showing his talents in baking.

He'd said he wanted to learn to cook/bake, so our daughter bought him a recipe book

'Cook with Jamie'

by 

Jamie Oliver.
which he always uses.

and  he never chooses what I call simple things to bake. like a sponge cake.

The 1st. cake he ever made was an American cheesecake, it was delicious,

This last week he made a heavenly Rich Chocolate Rum & Almond Cake.
recipe by Rachel Allen
thankfully it's a cake that keeps well, so we could limit our selves to small slices
and save the rest for afternoon tea and cake when visitors popped in.

We've seen several cooking programmes on TV where they used Kitchen Aid mixers,
with a hook attachment to make bread. Mr France liked the idea and said
 'I could make bread, if we had a mixer like that '
 Thinking this could just be a fad and knowing how expensive the machine was,
 I asked did he realise how much this mixer cost..?


Our friends were going back to England for a few months and asked if we'd like to borrow their bread machine to see if Mr France would actually enjoy making bread.
  He gave the machine a try during the winter months but was never satisfied with the finished result.

A few weeks later we had a publicity catalogue delivered in our post box
advertising a special offer on Kitchen Aid Mixers.This was too good an offer to let slip by.
We read the description and decided we would choose the red model, which had an even better reduction .
Evidently red mustn't have been a very popular colour in France.

So we got ourselves a real bargain.

and now he's making bread.

 .

This is the flour he uses, all the measurements and instructions are on the packet.
This mornings bread had a slightly different texture & I commented on it
He said 'he'd just tweaked the recipe a little to make it easier to handle'
I'm loving this New 'Mr France'.

So our nice red mixer has pride of place on the work top in our kitchen area..
and Mr France is using it regularly to make our bread.
We do pop to 'La Boulangerie' now & again for a crusty baguette.

I'm setting myself a challenge to do  more watercolour painting and sketches.

This is my impression

of  Mr France's freshly baked  Pain Multi Céréales.

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian