Frants and Fraves (5)
A Date with the Notaires
We have a date! A date that we will actually sign the contract that will bind us to the purchase of Château d’Avensac… Thursday, June 3rd at 11am.
With the contract signed (the Compromis) the Notaires are going to do their best to close the sale and hand us the keys in six weeks at the soonest. With any luck we will be in in the middle of July. Of course this ideal situation could rapidly turn into a longer period all depending on the bureaucracy and the current owners and their willingness to hand over the torch. There are a lot of steps to hurdle between then and now, and Phillip is currently writing a blog entry that outlines the purchase process which is not for the faint of heart, and I hope to publish it in the next few days.
Now onto one of my favorite subjects to chat about in France! No, not plumbing… ok, my second favorite (FRAVE) subject to talk about in France… Food! As we were shopping in one of our favorite markets I was again presented with the dairy isle, and thought of Thomas Pope, many of you know Thomas and will understand when I say I cannot help but think of him when looking at the massive presentation of… Crème fraîche! An upgraded version of sour cream. Crème fraîche in France is like peanut butter in the states, five million varieties! Thick, medium, thin, fluid, high fat, medium fat, low fat, no fat, commercial, organic, plain, flavored, and then the specialty crème fraîches that come from specific regions in France and must be certified to use the local title. I purchased one of these highly prized varieties, Créme de Bresse, and upon opening it I found an incredibly thick, whipped butter like cream that has an amazing flavor, and simply stirring a few tablespoons full into a pan I had just deglazed with a bit of home made chicken stock I had a sauce that disguised itself as something I had worked on for hours. Suffice it to say I am now in love with crème fraîche and am slowly discovering it’s multitude of uses.
On the other hand dear readers… I am having baking fail after baking fail. My new mixer has even had it with me as I try again and again to understand how to bake in a foreign land. I have tried simple bakes from pineapple upside-down cake to biscuits. The pineapple upside-down cake failed to caramelize properly and stuck to the pan (no brown sugar to be found anywhere), and the biscuits did not rise the way they should have and tasted like chewing on aluminum foil. Cheesecake… FAIL, baked slowly and carefully in a Bain-marie… grainy! I suspect the substitution for cream cheese has a lower fat content than the classic Philadelphia style cream cheese, and it was not able to set smoothly. But I keep trying! Phillip’s birthday is on June 5th and I am bound and determined to have something that resembles a birthday cake by then! One advantage to failed baking is… you don’t eat them! So the pants keep getting looser.
Finally today I am sharing a new thing I have discovered about a great number of French men, especially middle aged French men. It would appear that the noses on their faces are strictly for decoration. Or perhaps a genetic growth to support their big horn-rimmed eye glasses. Their noses certainly cannot be for breathing through! In the age of a pandemic where it is a requirement to wear a mask when in public, which I proudly do to let others know that I care about their well-being, a great number of French people apparently think that a virus can enter the human body only through their mouths. It would appear that breathing a virus in through (or out through) your nose is perfectly safe and acceptable, and will cause no harm to either yourself or the others around you. Of course there is the other side of this coin, a vast majority of these middle aged, suave and debonair Frenchmen are actually wandering around the streets and shops of France looking like Groucho Marx wearing a chin bra… I can’t help but laugh! At least the humor of it all is a way to move forward without becoming a hermit, or making public scenes!
A parting shot for today… A vintage photograph of the Château. We do not know the age of this photograph, but I will say that it could have been yesterday! nothing has changed.