Poppies, simply poppies.

   As well as baguettes and berets, one of the iconic images of France is the wild poppy. The coquelicot.

Most years, they're magnificent but this year is an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular. It could be the unceasing sunshine we've had, who knows. Great swathes of scarlet by the roadside, vivid red patches in an otherwise green field, they still take my breath away. We stopped to take a shot of these on the road from Mirepoix to Manses. I've had fantasies about seeding my garden with them but evidently coquelicots only grow really well in newly ploughed soil.

Look How the Edible Flowers are Doing:

      Three weeks separates these two shots. I can recognize nasturtiums and a coriander plant (which you can't see) but anything else will be a surprise. That weedy little plant at four o'clock is a seedling I tried to transplant. It's looking pretty sick at this point so maybe I'll leave everything in the planter and let them all fight it out.

A Choice of Delicious Desserts...

  One of the plusses of eating lunch at Saveurs des Couverts is that it's a patisserie. So when it comes time for dessert, guess what you get to do. Here's what we picked:

 

Presentation is Everything.

   The other day, we had to make routine trips to the bank, the insurance agent and the optician. Lots of fun... What kept us sane was the prospect of lunch outdoors in Mirepoix. Don't you love reading menus? We wandered around the square seeing what was on the various menus du jour. A starter of duck rillettes and then a plat of beef with prunes, would have left us lying flat for days. Lunch looked lighter (or at least the start of it did) at  Saveurs de Couvert in the corner of the main square.
 

Can you make out the old houses in all the reflections? 

Anyway, this was the starter. When I saw tomato and mozzarella salad listed on the menu, I thought "same old" but this was much more imaginative than the usual discs-of-tomato-fresh-cheese-and-a sprinkle-of-torn-basil. Someone out back in the kitchen had peeled the tomato, halved and seeded it, then scooped out the inside and mixed it with little cubes of fresh cheese and a garlic-y basil vinaigrette. Those artistic smears are finely chopped tomato mixed with finely chopped almonds. But here's the inventive thing...

The tomato skin had been dried till it was crisp and used as decoration. Isn't that an idea worth stealing?

   

An Impressionist look at the local landscape.

Do you think Monet and Manet looked at the landscape with their lens on its "macro" setting? That's how I created this Impressionist painting effect. 

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     Earlier this week, our local walking group--the Lérandonneurs--met up outside the café, and stood there wondering if it was going to rain seriously or if the drizzle would just fade away. In the end, it did both. 

    First, we headed off on the road up past the chateau, then we made our way into the forest, pausing briefly so that a huge truck, laden with wood, could pass by. Huge truck = huge tyres = huge ruts = huge amounts of clay-ey mud from the rain which, by now, was falling down with enough vigour to make me wish I'd worn Peter's ancient Barbour instead of  a light fleece jacket. Trudge, trudge, slip, slide, walk up on the side of the bank and hang on to what you hope is a non-functioning electric fence.

    But rain stops and, soon the sun came out as on we trudged past fields of forgotten sunflowers, across the little bridge that crosses the river Touyre, and below the walls of the Château de Queille.

Dried sunflowers always remind me of shower-heads.

You'll find much better shots of the Château de Queille on its web site: http://www.queille.net/ 

    I don't think I've ever seen such a gorgeous abundance of wild flowers. Little wild orchids of various kinds, crisp white bachelors' buttons, yellow birdsfoot trefoil and buttercups, dark purple clover, blue speedwell, scarlet poppies, pretty pink wild roses and lots more that I don't know the names of. Anyone know what this little plant is called?

Anyone for a menage à trois with their coffee?

    Usually, when you order a coffee here (and ordering un café means an espresso) you can depend on a little treat arriving in your saucer. Sometimes it's a tiny biscuit, other times a chocolate-covered almond and often it's a simple square of plain, dark chocolate.

    Normally, I don't look twice at the wrapper (I'm that keen to get at the contents) but this one deserved a second glance--especially when I noticed there are three sets of legs under the table.

The lamb makes its final appearance

       This is not, repeat, not haute cuisine that I'm going to tell you about. Rather it's memories of a noodle dish I used to go crazy about in Vancouver. Dense with little nuggets of stir-fried lamb, fragrant with cumin, it was comfort food to tuck into on a rainy day.
       The sun has been shining most of the week but I was still curious to see if I could recreate the flavours. More to the point, I still had a hunk of cooked lamb sitting in the fridge. In case you've got the same, here's what you can do. Chop the lamb into little pieces and reheat it with its juices (I should have said earlier that having rich, flavourful cooking juices around makes all the difference). Add a teaspoon or more of toasted cumin seeds and red chili flakes to your taste. Then let the lamb burble away while you

 cook some linguine (or spaghetti). Drain it, mix with the lamb and top with lots of chopped green onion and fresh coriander. Delish. As I said, not haute cuisine but a good way of using up leftovers.