Journées

This morning I stepped outside to make my way up the stairs and into the kitchen for breakfast and as I stood there I took a deep breath, “summer?”

Indeed, it smells like summer. You know how when you go camping and you pop your head out of the tent and it all smells crisp and quiet except for the birdsong? Yeah that’s what I experienced this morning… on March 1st.

So without going into mass amounts of detail on the last week here’s a little of the run down.

I’d been rather exhausted and for a while I just wasn’t figuring it out but then little by little I realized it was wheat. Even sugar would be easier… So I’m going wheat free for a while in about the worst place ever to be doing so. It’s been a rather trying process and we all know how much I love food and how much I love making bread so it’s a challenge to say the least. Oh yeah and finding wheat free flours? Not in regular grocery stores… I’m on the hunt this weekend for the natural grocers!

With all the company here last week we celebrated a birthday and Linette made Wild Boar for lunch and I ate it. Oh yeah, and I liked it. It was well marinated in red wine and the sauce was phenomenal but I still can’t get over having the chance to eat it and actually doing it. It helped that it was described to me in such a way that it pulled at my culinary heart strings, “Oh and they eat all the wild herbs on the French hills so they just taste of this GREAT French countryside…” All they had to say was herbs. Admittedly I’d always been a little curious about them but it was more for their truffle hunting abilities.

Because some of the guests stayed the weekend they planned to go to the Saturday market in Arles so Sarah (another Canadian visitor) and I rode into town and wandered through the food, pottery and olive wood goodies. It was so nice to see the town so vibrant. After lunch she headed one direction, the other guests had a car and I walked along the Rhone which was so calm and inviting a rather perfect Saturday afternoon.

Also in the whirlwind we saw Jenna head away to Paris for the last portion of her year in France. Sad to see her go but we all figure we’ll make a point to going and seeing her there. There’s talk about Euro Disney but who knows, that might not happen. Since she left we all rearranged furniture and I took a new bed and now Johanna has moved from Victoria. Small world, another islander…