Susan Buys a Truffle

I mentioned at the end of December that we were going to visit the Marché aux truffes de Marigny-Marmande. We stuck to our plan, so on the Sunday after Christmas we set out (later than we wanted to, admittedly) well wrapped up against the cold, determined to buy our first truffle.

The market is held in the Salle de Fêtes, with a couple of large tents attached to the front. The real business of the day, that is, wholesalers and chefs negotiating deals with the truffle harvesters for the best quality truffles, is done at some outrageously early hour of the day. By 9.00 am, when the general market opens, there will still be a selection of top grade truffles available, but by the time we arrived, at about 11.00 am, there was only déclassée (ungraded) truffles left. The ungraded truffles are too small or too worm holed to be given a quality rating. This year they were going for €850/kilo. Top grade truffles were €2000/kilo last year and déclassée €600. They are sold at the market already cleaned up, but if you think you might find your own truffles in the woods, 'amusing' truffle accessories in the form of brushes with truffle shaped handles are available. You can also book to go truffle hunting with at least one of the more enterprising château owners and his dog, or buy a sapling with roots impregnated with truffle spoor for your own garden.

The Marigny-Marmande truffles are black truffles Tuber melanosporum, or les truffes in French, which are found in France, Italy and Spain, growing in the earth in a symbiotic relationship with broadleaf deciduous trees, mainly oak. They are harvested from November to January.

I did the rounds of the truffle stalls, looking and smelling, but not talking to the vendors much because it was very crowded and busy by then. I decided that the Chedouzeau family truffles from Maillé were the best quality for the money, and moved in for the purchase.

That's our truffle on the scales

A 23g truffle, slightly smaller than a golf ball, cost me €17. It smelled nicely bosky, but not overwhelming – I put this down to the cold weather as much as anything. I had been told that a 20-30g truffle was enough for two people.

Once home, for a late lunch, I prepared scrambled eggs and shaved half our truffle on to the warm creamy eggs. Hmmm...smelled good, but the taste was not exactly orgasmic and Simon likened the texture to sliced almonds. Actually, the texture is curiously crunchy, but simultaneously, and more as you would expect, densely spongey just like mushrooms.

I put the other half of the truffle in a jar with some eggs. Eggshell is porous and absorbs flavours and aromas, so this is a traditional method of making your truffle go further. Several days later we ate the eggs, boiled, and mashed into fresh bread. Once again, nice aroma, but almost no flavour. By this time Simon had decided that truffles were a complete swindle, as he wasn't even getting the aroma. I should have guessed – I've bought ready prepared truffle eggs (and truffle oil, which is a similar principle) before and been underwhelmed – but it is important to do these things for oneself.

As a last ditch attempt with the second half of the truffle, I added it to a mushroom sauce with pasta. This time, the truffle revealed a nutty flavour. Perfectly pleasant, but frankly, ceps (cèpes in French, or as many people know them, porcini, in Italian) are better value and have a reliable earthy, meaty flavour that will knock your socks off. Is my problem that this is what I expected from the truffle? It's what the aroma leads you to believe the taste will be. Or is it that I simply wasn't using enough in one go (having made a two serving truffle stretch to four)? Should I have cooked them for longer (are they like vanilla and saffron, and need a bit of time as well as a gentle heat to give of their best)?

I like the idea of the ritual of going once a year and buying a truffle, and would happily do it again, after working on recipes that might enhance the eating experience and reading up on how to use truffles to best advantage. I had never prepared fresh truffles before, but had seen it done on the telly, and it looked easy. Certainly, producing the requisite wafer thin shavings was very easy and rather fun. In retrospect I think I would have been better doing a bit more research and getting les trucs ('the lowdown') from people who know their truffes, with regard to making sure the flavour develops well.

Susan

It's Cold!

Susan and I were congratulating ourselves the other day on the fact that we had left Preuilly before it became really cold. At the time the weather widget (that box on the right-hand side giving Preuilly's weather report) was showing -11°C with a real feel of -15°C. That discussion led to one about the fate of our wine cellar - there are about 20 bottles of not terribly expensive (mainly red) wine sitting in our kitchen. The worry is not so much how the cold will affect the flavour (our reading suggest they may get slightly sweeter), but if the bottles will survive being frozen. Wine apparently freezes at -10° C and we have no wish to return to a puddle of red wine throughout the house and a fridge full of stale beer and broken glass.

Then we received and email from Jill and John and our self-congratulation turned to elements of doubt. Yes, we are pleased not to be trying to survive in that much cold, but look what we missed:

According to their email we have received between 13 and 15 cm of snow in Preuilly. This is not totally unknown, but it is the largest fall for a number of years - certainly since before we started visiting. We are now hoping that it is not too many years before Preuilly looks like a Winter Wonderland again - we hope it will be after we have installed heating, but before we get too infirm to really enjoy it!

These are the photos Jill and John took on Monday and sent to us. In a way we are jealous, but we ARE looking at them from the comfort of a centrally heated house.

Simon

Preuilly Refreshed

There is an awful lot of building and restoration work going on in Preuilly at the moment.

Walking down Grand Rue we were amazed to see that in the short time we had been away, the old Horlogerie-Bijouterie (which has been shut ever since we started coming to Preuilly and used to look like this);

has been transformed into a very sharp looking double fronted house.


Many of the other houses in town are likewise showing new double glazed windows (just in time, because as I write this the temperature is -11), restored facades and stone walls. This is making the town look quite spruce.

Not only houses are being worked on though - the Maison de Retraite is having an extension built, which necessitates them having a large crane towering over town.

We hope before long we can start contributing more to the air of well-being and industry the town is currently showing (fingers still crossed then!)

Simon

The Fake Town

Moving to a country where one doesn't speak the language throws up all sorts of issues. Some of these are important (like "how do you call an ambulance in an emergency") and some are just curiousities that one runs into every day.

One of the latter is "what does faubourg mean". There are many streets called "rue de du faubourg" something, usually leading into a rue of the same name. One example is the rue de du Faubourg St Nicolas in Preuilly sur Claise.

Wikipedia expalins it well:
Faubourg is an ancient French term approximating "suburb" (now generally termed banlieue). The earliest form is Forsbourg, derived from Latin foris, 'out of', and Vulgur Latin (originally Germanic) burgum, 'town' or 'fortress'. Traditionally, this name was given to an agglomeration forming around a throughway leading outwards from a city gate, and usually took the name of the same thoroughfare within the city.

So that is one mystery solved.

Simon

A Sustainable Resource Mismanaged?

This view no longer exists

In autumn 2007 we stayed in Roux and noticed that a big old oak tree on the edge of the woodland was down. It had blown down, bringing with it its semi-epiphytic population of ferns growing in the crucks of branches. The smell of the freshly sheared wood was amazing – very resiny and almost spicy. We were sorry to see such an old tree come to the end of its life, but thought that it was a natural process.

The smaller oaks, above, cut into logs, below

Later, at Christmas time, we found out that the farmer who owned the land had taken the opportunity to cut up this tree, and to chop down its half dozen companions, which were so foolish as to cause the woodland to jut out a bit into the wheat field. The neighbours were scathing when I asked why he had done this. 'For money!' they spat. The wood was cut into lengths and will be left to age for a few years, then sold as firewood. It will be worth quite a bit (at least €30 per cubic metre and probably more), and he will have gained a few more square metres that can be put to the plough.

A rather adventurous Lesser Stag Beetle on the oak logs

While the wood lay there this summer, the wood boring beetles had a lovely feast. In biodiversity terms there is only one thing more precious than a stack of aging oak, and that is an old standing oak, still alive, but with a few dead branches.

These beetles, Clerus mutillarius, were all over the cut timber

Stacked oak logs aging in the managed Fôret de Preuilly

Aged oak is considered one of the best firewoods in France, but it is becoming harder to source. The area of land under forest is growing in France, but there is increasing concern that it is not the slower growing high value woods like oak that are being planted. Too often oak is being harvested, but replaced with quick return low value soft woods – pine, fir and larch. It seems astonishingly shortsighted.

The largest forest near Preuilly is the Fôret de Preuilly. Our friend J-P, who grew up in Preuilly and went on to become the Director of the Parc Floral de Paris, which is partly an arboretum, is rather critical of the management of our local forest, saying that they are falling for the lure of short term profits over long term sustainability. There are now large areas of softwoods throughout the forest and many very old oaks have been felled and sold, but to be fair, there are many areas of newly planted oak, and well managed oak forest being harvested for both lumber and fuel. A number of the veteran oaks have survived the cull, and are now a feature on a popular walk for visitors, along with ancient metal working and tile making sites, parasitic orchids and wild 'asparagus', fungi and invertebrates, all able to thrive in a stable and well managed ecological system.

The Fôret de Preuilly, where there are well managed areas for fuel wood

The most heavily forested areas in France are the Aquitaine and much of the Alps, but Centre (where we are) and the neighbouring regions of Borgogne and Limousin are also very wooded and produce around 1 million tonnes of fuel wood each per year. Poitou-Charentes and the Auvergne produce less. France consumes by far the most fuel wood of any country in the European Union (20% of the total EU consumption) although per capita, French consumption is sixth, far behind Finland, Sweden and Austria.

Susan

At the risk of appearing middle class...

Susan laughed when I first suggested taking the dishwasher to France for Christmas, but it saved an awful lot of standing around in the cold with one's hands in water.

And talking of cold - this is the window of the same room the dishwasher is in, with frozen condensation on the inside of the glass:



Simon

Noël à L'Abbaye

Christmas Eve is a big day in France. After "Le Reveillon" (the big Christmas meal, eaten with all the family on Christmas Eve) families go to church together.

I was out and about on Christmas eve taking photos of the decorations, and happened to be at the church as all the well fed and happy people were arriving for the service. I had my tripod with me (for once) so I stuck the camera on the tripod and recorded some bells. As you can see, I had previously set the tripod for taking a photo on a sloping street, but the sound isn't affected.

I also took some rather nice long exposure photos of the Abbaye:

I love how massive and old the abbaye is from this angle. You can't see the 19th century "improvements" (i.e the Burgundian tiled steeple), and even the earlier restoration work doesn't detract from the very simple decoration.

Later this year the Abbaye celebrates 1000 years since foundation. In 1909 there was a big event for its 900th, but we haven't seen any plans yet for this year. No doubt, though, that once plans are announced (and assuming we are in Preuilly when it happens) there will be more photos of this fine building.

Some of the windows, especially at the eastern end of the Abbaye, are a bit 19th century, and the painted stonework a little ornate, but even this can be quite attractive in the right light.

At this stage I was starting to get into taking three second exposures and I would have taken some photos of the other windows, but it was quite cool (about -3°C, or 26°F) and both sets of batteries for the camera ran out rather quickly even though I had the spare set keeping warm inside my jacket. I was starting to run low on power too...

Simon

Santa on a Rope

The French down our way don't really go in for decorating the exterior of their houses for Christmas. Which is one of the things we like them for.

The main decoration you do see is "Santa on a rope".





The ol' fella can be seen, grimly hanging on, in most towns in France.

Sometimes, until May.....

Simon

Our Third Christmas in Preuilly

We almost didn't go to France this year for Christmas.

Because my house still isn't sold, we haven't done any of the major works which allow us to economically heat the house or have a bath or shower. We didn't want to spend another year in a gite just down the road looking towards Preuilly and wishing we were established, and because of finances, Christmas in a hotel wasn't on our list of do-ables. I then, however, got an attack of the "we can survive in the cold, we will just wear more layers" and booked the Ferry before I could change my mind.

The Ferry at Calais

We went across the channel with P&O this year, the situation with SpeedFerries being what it is (i.e. finished). It was the first time we have travelled with P&O, but we have learnt our lesson, and will be going with Sea France or Norfolk Line in future. The ferry was very noisy, no slightly dark corners in which to grab 40 winks, and the chairs are appalling. 90 minutes of that immediately before you start trying to find fuel in Calais at 4.00am and the humour factor was not high. Add to that the fog which started near Rouen, and the fact I needed to stop for a sleep (in the car by the roadside - not warm) it was a slow and not completely comfortable trip.

We arrived in Preuilly at about midday, turned on our heaters, made the bed, and then headed to Yzeures for lunch and shopping. We lunched at a new Restaurant, la Cuisine du Marche, which is in a prefabricated tin barn next to Intermarche, and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and menu - and the price, which was 3 courses for 11€50. Well done those people!

It was cold this year, and sometimes foggy-
but it was warmer than last year

The rest of the holday was very pleasant, too. Although the kitchen was Siberian in climate, we managed to keep the bedroom/lounge lovely and toasty warm, and our original "little room" (not what you might think) was heated to be used as a dining room/wash room. We did get to the truffle market (and made an interesting discovery); fellow local bloggers Sweetpea and Captain Sensible dropped in on their way to a birthday party; Ken and Walt visited for lunch, and we took lots of photos. (We average about 100 photos a day. Digital cameras have a lot to answer for.)

Us in residence, Christmas 2008

On the way home we stopped for lunch at a Chinese restaurant at Chambray-lès-Tours, and had dinner at a brasserie attached to an EnormAuchan before we joined the ferry and the rat race back to London. Norfolk Line are advertising £19 one way fares to Dunkirk (the brochure was in our letterbox when we got home) so that will hopefully be our only experience of P&O.

Simon & Susan

Christmas Dinner in Preuilly

This year we had what has probably been our best Christmas Dinner in France. Being in our own house helped, of course, but it was a particularly tasty but low pressure affair.

Oysters are a must-have Christmas time starter in France,and we bought 3 dozen Arcachon-raised Grade 2 (oysters are graded by size, with 0 being the largest, and up to about Grade 5 being the smallest) for about €15.

While Susan opened the oysters, Simon prepped the guineafowl and veg for roasting in our mini oven.

The cheese course was just a couple of mouthfuls of Epoisse, a very soft Vacherin/Mont D'or style cheese we bought on the recommendation of Ken over on Living the Life in St-Aignan. At nearly €6 for a small round, this is also just a Christmas-time treat, but we can certainly endorse Ken's recommendation. We had also bought a ewe's milk cheese which turned out to be uninspiring as part of the cheese course, but excellent on toast for breakfast.

Dessert was a piece of pear tart for Susan and an apple tartlet for Simon.

Then coffee, Christmas cake and hazelnut chocolate while we settled down to watch Astérix et les Jeux Olympiques (not quite as good as Astérix and Operation Cleopatra, but Asterix has got better looking).

Susan and Simon

You may have noticed this post is a little tardy. This is because we have limited access to the internet in Preuilly.

The Bright Lights of Preuilly

I wrote this in Christmas eve, but the mediatheque only reopened on the 31 December, so it's just been waiting...

We're safely in Preuilly afer a drive I wouldn't want to do too often. It took 8 hours from Calais to Preuilly, mainly because of fog and tiredness, which meant that for us the holiday season started quite slowly.

I went for a walk on Christmas Eve to take some photos of the Christmas decorations, something I failed completely to do do the past two years. Things have been taken more seriously this year - an effect, we imagine of the new regime. Not only do there seem to be more decorations across the streets, but the Place des Halles has lights in the trees.


The Christmas Tree at la Poste. This is a new departure for Preuilly.

The lights along Grande Rue. There appears to be more lights here as well, but maybe we just weren't looking properly last time.

I also crossed the Claise for a photo looking back across the river at the abbaye (more on which at a later date).



Simon

It's New Year's Day

... and as you may be feeling crapulent, it is possibly time to talk about "vomitorium".*

Aldous Huxley (he of "Brave New World") had it both right and wrong:
The Romans did have vomitoriums. His assertion that they were used for vomiting is, however, completely an invention all of his own making. He mentions it in his 1923 novel "Antic Hay" and the story took off from there.

A vomitorium is a passageway - usually in a theatre or amphitheatre - from whence people spew forth. Sometimes they are used as an entrance to the arena, but they are also used as an exit from the theatre. Wikipedia has a good illustration

When we went to the Roman site at Sanxay I was pathetically excited to be able to stand in a vomitorium. I even took a photo.

You can see the corrresponding vomitorium on the other side of the arena as well.

In this photo you can see the vomitorium (on the left) just where the terracing begins. I'm not sure what the rebuilt doorway on the right is all about



Simon

*true wordlovers will notice I managed to squeeze in two words people could possibly misconstrue. I do smug, occasionally. S

Highlights of 2008

Simon:

For me, many of the highlights of 2008 occured in July. Tour de France day, Bastille Day and moving the bath all occurred in a 10 day period, and I imagine that at least two of these events will remain with me as long as I have memories.

Adrian contemplating the task at hand

Another highlight was being able to spend so much time in our house. With a few exceptions I was in Preuilly from April to October this year, which allowed me plenty of time for thinking and then doing stuff. All that thinking time and practice obviously paid off, because I am getting better at doing the doing. Getting the car registered and completely legal was pretty good too.

Walking around Preuilly with flaming torches
Bastille Day 2008

But as usual, the people we met and the visitors we had during the year were the real highlights. Most of them we met through this blog - and those we didn't meet through the blog had certainly heard of it. To those who invited us for drinks and/or meals (or even transported me to the optometrists when I broke my glasses) and made us feel so welcome in France, a million thanks.


Susan:

For me the highlights were having my parents over to visit as well as our first real guests. We met lots of new people: Roger Lezeau (and a mention in les Cahiers de la Poterne); more fellow Loire Valley bloggers Ken and Walt, and their friend CHM; my entomology online forum buddies Pierre, and Edith and her wonderfully hospitable Gascon husband Christian.

I was thrilled that we were contacted by Mike and Cally Vaile and that we were able to help rehome their watercolours of Preuilly by mid-19th century artist John Louis Petit.

A Konik Polski mare

I fell in love with the little herd of Konik Polskis (Polish Ponies) at la Réserve naturelle de la Chérine, who took a strong interest in my project there surveying the species of diptera (flies) on the reserve. They were not always helpful though, as my bag of equipment held a fascination for them, and one did eventually manage to chew a hole in it while I wasn't looking.

An Early Spider Orchid (taken by my mum)

Another ongoing highlight throughout the summer was the many orchid species we saw and I look forward to repeating the experience next year.

What were your favourite posts from the blog in 2008? We'd love to know what you particularly enjoyed.

Lapwings

At this time of year in the Southern Touraine (Touraine cote sud in French) any reasonably open field that still has some greenery in it will also have a number of lapwing feeding during the day.

The lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) is a member of the plover family (it says here) and it feeds on worms and insects. They are difficult birds to get a photo of (or at least they are around our area) because they fly away if you get too close, and we only ever seem to see them on dull grey days. This means the photos are taken at long distance in poor light - not perfect for clean, sharp photos.

This photo was taken on the edge of
the Foret de Preuilly

This year it is an ambition to take a good photo of a Lapwing. It was also an ambition last year - when I took the above photo.

Simon

Dragonflies in the Southern Touraine and Berry 2008

2008 wasn't a fantastic year for dragonfly watching. I don't think numbers were particularly down, but there was a dearth of the fairly still warm weather that gets them up in the air and visible. Nevertheless, we still managed a few more species to add to the personal checklist for the area, and here is a selection of what we saw:

Common Bluetail

The females of this very common damselfly come in several attractive soft colour combinations. I wrote about them in last year's account of our dragonflies and damselflies, with two more photos.

Banded Demoiselle

Another lovely I wrote about last year. Although this species is apparently common in the Southern Touraine and Berry, the truth is that populations on a local level can be easily eradicated by pollution, overly interventionist management of watercourses eg canalisation, cutting streams off from their exits into bigger streams, over-exploitation by irrigation causing a drop in water levels or flow, drainage schemes to create more land for crops, even inappropriate mowing regimens undertaken at the wrong time of year or too close to banks and shorelines, or allowing too dense a growth of trees to spring up too close to the water's edge.

Azure Bluet

One of the commonest damselflies in Europe, I wrote about this pretty little species here.

Western Clubtail

This female Western Clubtail Gomphus pulchellus was not very co-operative about getting her portrait done. This is as close as we could get. The species is called le Gomphe joli in French, and is endemic to (ie occuring only in) south-western Europe, France being its stronghold. They like very slow or still water, such as the gravel pit that this one was photographed near. There are half a dozen lookalike species, three of which occur locally, but all rarer than this species. The flight season is rather short, May to July.

Small Spreadwing

Lestes virens vestalis is the third of a possible five species of Spreadwing that we can see in the Southern Touraine and Berry. This one, le Leste verdoyant in French, is the smallest and plainest. It was photographed in a hurry on an extremely windy day in September in the Bois de Las (a part of the Réserve naturelle de la Chérine, not accessible to the public) where I was surveying for Diptera (flies). Like most Spreadwings, it is very much a species of wet grasslands, and so is common in the Brenne. I wrote about its bigger, more showy cousins, the Migrant Spreadwing and the Western Willow Spreadwing last year.

Ruddy Darter

This young lady got accidently swept up from the long grass where she was resting into my net when I was surveying for Diptera (flies) at la Rondières, an area (no public access) managed by la Réserve naturelle de la Chérine in la Brenne. She would have been sitting completely still, hanging on to a grass stalk below the seedhead and completely invisible to me, so well does her colouration camouflage her presence. She is a teneral (juvenile, not fully coloured) female Ruddy Darter Sympetrum sanguineum, and although she sat for quite a while on the net, eventually flew off none the worse for the experience. I thought originally that she was a Common Darter, because she does have very fine yellow stripes on her legs, but Eric Mâle-Malherbe, the local expert, assures me she is a Ruddy Darter. It takes a lot of experience to identify these yellow darters – there are several very similar species and they all fly together. This species is very common from June to October anywhere there is still water with lush marshy vegetation all through France and much of England. In French, the name is le sympétrum rouge sang. The reason for all this emphasis on redness is that the males are a quite bright orangey red. They are strong migrants, and some of the French population ends up in Britain every year.

Moustached Darter

This is a young male, and again I had to ask Eric his opinion. This time he agreed with my identification of it as a Moustached Darter Sympetrum vulgatum, although it is nigh on impossible to be absolutely certain of these yellowy teneral darters from photos. This species is known as le sympétrum vulgaire in French, and is another one that is easy to mistake for a Common Darter. It is a localised species, to be seen around standing water and the surrounding grassland in the Brenne from June to October. The moustache in question can be seen better in this picture, as well as the secondary genitalia which told me which sex and species this was. He will get redder with time.

Hawker larval skins

Dragonfly larval skins are called exuviae. The species that emerged can be identified from these remains as each have exuviae with unique characters, just as the larvae (or nymphs) and the adults do. Unfortunately I couldn't identify these, as not enough detail is visible in the photo. Eric says he thinks they are some Aeshna sp (called Mosaic Hawkers in English, or les Aeschnes in French), some of the largest of the European dragonflies. My mother took this photo in the Brenne.

Broad Scarlet

This battered old lady posed for us on the edge of a field near a gravel pit just outside of Yzeures sur Creuse. I struggled to identify her, because she has grown so dark with age, but as soon as Eric said she looked like a Crocothemis erythraea I realised he was exactly right. The combination of the patch of yellow on the base of the lower wings, the white stripe between the wings and legs that are not black could only add up to a Broad Scarlet (la libellule écarlate in French), and according to one of my references, their favoured habitat is gravel pits. The females, who start out a sort of mustard yellow, not the scarlet of their male counterparts, often darken to this rather odd charcoal colour. We would have liked to get closer to this one for better photographs, but although she obliging sat in the sun on this stick, making short flights and returning again and again, there was a deep roadside ditch and an impressive band of stinging nettles between her and us, so this is the best photo we could manage. The Broad Scarlet is really an African species that is common around the mediterranean and for the last 30 years has been heading north, like so many dragonfly species. It is common in the southern Touraine and Berry from May to September.

Blue Emperor

This female Blue Emperor Anax imperator, the largest dragonfly species in the Southern Touraine and Berry, was photographed in a wheatfield near Preuilly at 9pm one evening in late May. Simon and I had gone for a post-dinner walk and encountered her 'hawking' up and down the track through the wheat. Eventually she caught a Flesh Fly Sarcophaga sp and settled down to eat it. We were so close to her we could hear her crunching as she munched. L'Anax empereur, as they are known in French, is common in most of France and southern England and Wales. It is easily identified by its large size, apple green thorax and downcurving abdomen in flight. They are most often seen patrolling up and down a linear territory like a track, hedgerow or ditch, and will come up to you to inspect you when you first enter their territory. After they have seen you once, they will ignore you on subsequent passes through their territory – indicating that they have a visual memory.

Susan