A very Merry Christmas & a Happy 2012 to everyone!!

One thing we’ve noticed about Christmas in France, especially out here in “La France profonde” is the understated way in which it’s celebrated. Here, it’s all about family, good food and very modest gifts.

(They do tend to have a fondness for decorations though which seem to include an inflated Santa attached to a rope ladder hanging from every 2nd chimney in the area!)

Inflated Santas seem to climb up every other house!

Now, whereas I find the escape from over-commercialised panic buying a great relief- no hours of waiting in supermarket queues amidst seas of overflowing trolleys- the lack of pre-Christmas buzz does tend to leave me with the feeling that it’s not really happening.

So, feeling a bit flat, I was really pleased to be invited by Madame Faure from Jayac (Mamie to Emma & Alistair!) to help her make her Christmas gift to her family – a selection of home made duck confit and patés de foie gras.

The process started with a visit to the local farm to collect the duck. This was then jointed and all the fat trimmed off and cut up to cook the confit in later.The duck pieces were salted then left overnight.

The next day we collected cans from the local mayor who has a goose farm.We packed these with sausage meat and a generous portion of duck foie gras in the middle. Another trip back to the mayor to have the cans sealed and then these were simmered for two hours on an open fire in the stone barn.

2 hrs of cooking on an open fire

Meanwhile the duck, cooked in its own fat, was packed into glass jars to be cooked again on the open fire after the paté.

As the duck simmered, we had tea with home made cake and Mamie Faure related tales of Christmasses gone-by at Les Crouquets, where she was born!

I came home feeling very festive indeed with the true meaning of Christmas still ringing in my ears!

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and all the very best for 2012!

….is that they are a magnet for all sorts of enemies and we always have to be one step ahead of the predator.

The hens & their 70 year old hen house

Our first experience of  Mother Nature’s cruelty was when a buzzard flew down and made off with one of the hens. The only evidence was a few  scattered feathers & a hen house full of startled chickens which refused to come out for 3 days.

A makeshift scarecrow and a string of promotional freebie CDs stuck label to label were hastily put up as a temporary deterrent  and have stayed there ever since.

The second was when a fox/ mink /some other nocturnal thief turned up unannounced and sneaked off with our 2 guinea fowl. Now we weren’t exactly planning on them gracing our Christmas table but somehow I can’t help thinking that they would have been better off in our stomachs than his!

Dolce & Gabbana

Our replacement guinea fowl did indeed end up on our table when Amar decided that self-sufficiency was the way to go. I have to say at this point that I only agreed to this as they were fighting with Giorgio the cockerel and one of them had to go. I also should add that neither of us could bring ourselves to do the dirty deed – our neighbour farmer took them away, chuckling to himself at these sentimental townies & brought them back, all plucked and prepared along with a very nice bottle of Pouille Fuisse – not bad, eh?! We now have another 3 guinea fowl which get along nicely with Giorgio & I’m trying hard not to think about a home grown Christmas dinner….( okay, okay , I know we shouldn’t have given them names…)

Anyway, back to the fox…

Giorgio, the bantam cockerel

So we racked our brains to see how we could better protect the hens.

Obviously we’ve still got a lot to learn about country life, but some of the advice from the locals about how to deal with this situation would make your hair curl!

Talking of hair, one of the less offensive suggestions was to fill
stockings with human hair and hang them around the enclosure.

Hmmm, what with the makeshift scarecrow & the CDs for the buzzards
and now hairy tights for the fox …….

Strange as it looks though, we did visit the hairdresser in Salignac
& relieved her of some of her clippings! And we added a double wired fence all around.

So far, so good…