We are wondering if we can entice our French cat to eat...so far he has turned up his nose at chicken, cheese, smoked salmon, pate, tuna...cat treats I bought specially. He always comes quickly with great anticipation but turns his nose up and looks quite disdainfully at us. Obviously we just don't get it. Perhaps a smelly old fish head would do the trick. He spends a lot of time in our yard looking for birds and also drinking from the pool in a very precarious looking manner but I guess he knows best.
It's really warming up now and we lunched outside both days of the weekend and also lay out on our loungers by the pool. On Sat we went to Le Lavandou and had a wonderful meal of 'rougets' marinated like a ceviche (never had raw rouget before...great taste) then 'rascasse meuniere' with tartiflette and ratatouille. Both fish are local from the Med...rascasse is the very famous fish in bouillbaise here. Had a very nice Muscadet then finished with some red with a cheese plate.
Sunday we went to the Sea Urchin festival but obviously people have it all sussed out and come early with their wine and other picnic things. Tremendous number of people and loads of tables (all full when we arrived)and even with 3500 doz sea urchins they were beginning to run out and long lineups. It was really fun to see but we decamped to a beach restaurant and had moules/frites. We'll be taking Susan and Alan to Cassis next week and we'll get our sea urchin fix there. We're really looking forward to their visit! I have asked them to bring some good cheddar and tea...even with all the wonderful cheese here I miss my cheddar.
Trying all sorts of different olives, tapanades, and dry saucage they have on offer at the market. Today for lunch we'll have it outside by the pool and have a special fish soup from Carquieranne with rouille on toasts.
We had Francoise and Jean Pascale for (the people who own our villa) for a drink Sunday and they have invited us to their place in the country with a hobby vinyard next Sat. We're really looking forward to seeing their place and the area.
Finished my fifth painting...of Carquiranne market...I was quite pleased with it and managed to get in all my favourite things.
Cell phone battery went weird yesterday so that was some incredible hassle but fixed now for the moment...the height of frustration trying to deal with technical things in French.
Getting some great buys on wine at the Carrefour in the Grand Var (huge shoppping centre)
