Breakfast at the market.

    Unless it's winter, when porridge comes into the picture, we eat the same breakfast every morning: yogurt, granola and fruit--sweet, drippy peaches and nectarines at the moment. But, on market days, we  pick up croissants or whatever, go to a café, and have a second breakfast around 11 a.m. Here's last Friday's.

 One straw hat, one café crème, and a Nutella croissant. chocolate, hazelnuts, powdered sugar...Just think about it...

    Ditto, but with a pain aux raisins instead.

Another post-walk lunch at the café

   Walking however many clicks it was gives you a serious case of the growlies. We descended on the village café intent on ravaging and pillaging. Marek the owner was there, waiting with jugs of mulled wine. Shirley, his wife, was invisible until the end of lunch when she emerged from the kitchen. Over 30 of us sat down at one long table. 

    First up were bowls of mushroom soup passed from hand to hand. Next came lamb braised for five hours, with roasted vegetables, brussels sprouts, mint sauce, gravy--and lots of all of it. Pichets of rouge and rosé were emptied replenished. A chocolate roulade was dessert, then came mince-pies, coffee and digestifs. And games of cats' cradle with the ribbons that decorated the table.

    We left late in the afternoon, came home, napped and emerged for a very light supper around eight before collapsing into bed not long after. A day of huge, enormous fun.

A Serious Walk.

For a variety of reasons--being in  another country had been one of them--we had yet to join the Léran Walkers' group on their monthly rambles around the countryside. But no excuses for missing the walk last Wednesday. For one thing, we were here. For another, there was a lunch at the café afterwards.

We all met up at the café, then drove to the nearby village of Ste. Colombe sur L'Hers where we met up near the church. I didn't do a head-count but there was over a dozen of us including Kate newly arrived off a flight from Vancouver. 

The first section was a deceptively gently climb up a long slope that took us into a forest. We emerged at the edge of a field planted with dark green kale growing in the densest heaviest mud I've ever encountered. The map at the top of this post shows the hardest part of the walk which took us along the side of the field and down a steep slope to a farm and the village of Rivel. That white stuff blowing across the shot of the farm is indeed snow. We also encountered small spiteful pellets of hail and, later, sunshine. 

Pink-cheeked, tired and glowing with achievement, we arrived back at the café for a lengthy lunch. If you can't read the menu on the table, we were welcomed with mulled wine, the perfect thing to cup frozen hands around. Next came bowls of sweet potato soup. The plat principal was roasted free-range chicken with sage-and-onion stuffing, broccoli, cauliflower mash, sautéed Brussels sprouts and roasted carrots. Marek and Shirley own the café. Dessert was Shirley's stupendously good lemon tarte with crème fraîche. After that, it was a simple case of coffee, mince pies, home and naps. 

Market Day in Mirepoix

August is a cruel month if you want to go to the Monday market in Mirepoix. Last year, the local newspaper reported that the French shop from 8 to 10 a.m., after that it's the turn of the English. True enough, except that this month you have to add in tourists from all over Europe. The earlier you get there, the leaner the crowd. Another reason to be up before cock crow (our local roosters are chronologically challenged anyway, usually performing around 4 p.m.) is that, no surprise, the best produce goes first.

So today we were on the road by 8:30 a.m., and in the market before 9 a.m. The drive is only 10 minutes but, rather than join the slow crawl through the streets, we usually park in the SuperU lot on the outskirts of town. 

A baby could sleep on that huge bread to the left. It's sold by weight (the bread not the baby) and is meant to last a week, in other words from one market to the next.

The man in the photo at the top of this post grinds knives, scissors, axes and any other blunt object you put in his way. We've taken our big Sabatier knife to him a number of times and it's been returned to us with a guillotine-sharp edge. 

Once you've done your shopping, it's time for a grand crème and a pain aux raisins. Café Castignolles (in the other photo) is one of several cafés under the arcades around the central square. All have their devotees. We go promiscuously from one to the other depending on where the free tables are.