"In the little farmhouses of my village you generally open the front door and find yourself in the main living room. At Marie-Claude’s, that’s the kitchen, the warmest room in the house, heated by a huge coal oven. Coming in from the crisp night air in which bright stars sparkled in a velvety dark sky and the ground twinkled as frost was already forming – it was sweltering. Marie-Claude had the answer to that – a chilled cocktail made with Calvados. If you’ve never had it before, beware, it’s an apple brandy from Normandy, the region that neighbours mine and it can knock your socks off, and I can tell you we were all pretty much sockless after a couple of hours."
This online newsletter arrives every Saturday and and is always such fun to read. We have Calvados around in the winter as a special little warm up treat. It really is to savour and never thought anyone would mix it with anything. However, one year we bought a bottle of Calvados for $10 at Trader Joes's that was pretty harsh so certainly mixing it with something would have been a good idea. This year the $20 Calvados was very good...probably even better than the one we have at home waiting for us that we paid over $60 for. They only seem to import the good stuff at home.
I googled "Calvados cocktails" and brought up lots of recipes with ingredients we don't ever have around but one was with ginger beer. We do have a bottle of ginger beer in the fridge so perhaps I'lll keep it around in case we want to make a cocktail one day. I bought it at World Market so it's a high quality one.
One of the tours mentioned in this newsletter is The Ultimate tour of the best of Provence. I was curious to take a look at the itinerary. Yep, hits all the great spots and we've been to them all. I like the touch of some of it being in a Deux Chevaux.
Cassis, mon amour.
https://www.thegoodlifefrance.com/the-ultimate-tour-of-the-best-of-provence/
