The first frosts came here in the South West. We started by lighting a fire in the wood stove but we soon succumbed to putting the central heating on, despite the exhorbitant price of gas.
Great trip around Gascony in the glorious autumn sunlight. Absolutely EPIC time in Condom (no pun intended) at the Hotel les Trois Lys . The tajine of confit de canard was especially memorable, as was the Mascarpone mousse with white armagnac. Such a pleasure to find adventurous cooks who dare to use spices and oriental cooking methods with traditional French ingredients. The full menu in English can be found by clicking here
Great hotel actually, although I didn’t sleep very well as there was a mosquito in the room, she kept biting me … although it might have been in a dream because I couldn’t see any bites in the morning and maybe she was just a very nice mosquito.
But this reminded me of Jacques, the owner of the café in Paris where I used to live. He had a country house somewhere in the middle of no-where and he refused to have a TV set. Instead he took a long extension lead down to the bottom of his garden where he would plug in an ultra-violet insect zapper, the ones that electrocute and even set fire to insects attracted to the light. He would sit with his neighbours having a drink after dark sitting around this contraption and watch the local insect wildlife being zapped, “much better than TV” he used to say, “it’s live”.