TheBanyanTree: food mostly, but also a pagoda

[Karen Cooper]

Our butcher lady appears at our twice-a-week food market in town in a 
mobile butcher shop. It's trailer, and has glass cases for the 
product, and a cutting board and work surface for her. Kind of a neat 
set-up, really. Maybe there's refrigeration, maybe there's not. The 
meats we've gotten from her have been quite good. We haven't liked 
her pâté as much, so we buy that elsewhere. We ordered a duck from 
her to be delivered on Saturday. We bought some turkey cutlets for 
Thursday's dinner.

Our fruit and veg ladies are at both our local markets, too. They are 
starting to know us now, and the daughter, who might be almost my 
age, speaks a little English. We bought lettuce and peaches and 
raspberries and haricots verts and mushrooms and radishes from them.

We are deciding between the two fishmongers, both of whom also have 
trailer set ups like the butcher. The one guy has a poorer selection, 
but if he has what we are looking for then the range of choices 
doesn't matter. He cut off the heads and cleaned our mackerel last 
time, so we bought mussels from him this week. That was Wednesday's 
dinner. We iced them as soon as we got home, and kept them in the 
fridge until dinner. B. steamed them in a wine, onion, parsley 
concoction that we dipped our baguette into. It was quite nice, but 
many of the mussels had died and were discarded before he cooked 
them. I don't know if the other fishmonger has fresher stuff, but I 
imagine we'll see come Saturday.

To go with the duck we're getting, I made some onion confit 
yesterday. I thought it came out very good, though perhaps the onions 
need a smidge more cooking, as they are not entirely, down to the 
last cell of their being, perfectly soft. The flavour's nice. I used 
butter and oil to fry them, added some honey and some salt, added 
some orange juice, added some balsamic vinegar and some red wine. It 
wasn't all that different than French onion soup, in many ways. 
Especially the "peeling and slicing a dozen onions" step. We bought a 
large bag of onions on 26 July, remember. I bet we use 'em all before 
we go.

I also made crepes for the first time last night. I bought a tiny 
cookbook with crepes recipe ideas last week in the hyperChampion and 
finally decided to try it. To my surprise, I find I read French well 
enough to figure out recipes, especially if I have a dictionary to 
double check when I am guessing about something. I rested the batter 
just one hour instead of the requested two, so they were a tiny tiny 
bit tough. Easy to fix for next time. These became dessert crepes, 
filled with a banana I'd sauteed in a little butter and sugar, and 
sprinkled with these lyin' little vanilla bean seeds mixed with a 
little sugar that they sell for people to put in their créme brulèe. 
The brand was "Vahiné." Of course it's called that since what I think 
is the best vanilla comes from French Polynesia. And "vahine" is 
about the only word most of us have heard from any Pacific islands 
language. I'm sure I learned it watching "Gidget" back in the '60s. 
At any rate, I spooned the banana into a crepe, and added a bit of 
Nutella, which is one of the best things there is, and a classic for 
crepes. I never keep it in the house at home, but bought a small jar 
here, just 'cause I wanted to try making crepes for dessert.

Today we took a picnic to the Pagode de Chanteloup. There's a 
wonderful, impressive view from that tiny room at the top, worth 
climbing this creaky old tower from 1778, with wooden stairs and 
lichenous stone. It's beautiful. We'll be back there with some of our 
house guests, I am sure. The tower is in Amboise, but we skipped 
visiting the chateau there. We'll see it again with guests, I figure. 
B. did drive us past the hotel where we stayed when we visited 
Amboise in 2001. We of course stopped in and looked it over. That was 
a nice memory moment. Then we hit a wine cave on the way home, and 
acquired almost a case of some goods. More for our cave at home; 
we'll buy some to bring home later in the trip.

K. [we also found tourist info here and there with things our friends 
might like to do]