Posted on by loveleyjoy

BEWARE BALCONIES

Aunty Audrey was very generous. For our wedding 40 years ago she bought us a set of blue flowery patterned folding canvas chairs, and a matching sun lounger. Over the years they were well used.

When we moved to France, we gained a small balcony. My husband is a sun-worshipper, he loves sitting on our 3 metre long, (just measured it, and its only 2 and a bit metres) and 1 metre wide small balcony.

Our house is not unique, every new build flat has a balcony. We like walking round the conglomeration on a Sunday afternoon looking at the progress of all the new builds. We are amazed and horrified by the balconies and their apparent lack of supporting structures.

A few years back, a construction firm was taken over by the son who had never trained as a builder. Balconies were put in that were not the required strengthened slabs but just slabs of concrete. Students had a party on one, it collapsed and several were killed. I am very wary of all these unsupported, flimsy looking balconies obligatory on every new block. Is ours safe?

It turned out that it was very dangerous!

Mr. Brodier was on our little balcony reading a book and soaking up the sun. The chairs were by then about 30 years old. Have I said that they also had arm rests? All of a sudden, the canvas under the back of his knees ripped from side to side, dropping his bottom onto the tiles and leaving him trapped inside the metal frame with his knees over the front bar and his feet nowhere near the floor.

Getting out of the metal bars would have been easy if it had not been for the double glazed patio windows on his right and the sturdy metal railings on his left. Normally, a trapped person could have been able to rock the frame until it fell sideways, enabling the prisoner to crawl free.

He was stuck, trapped, unable to move left or right. I wonder how many deaths there have been on balconies throughout the warmer world, where chairs have trapped their owners leaving them unable to escape?

Fortunately, very fortunately, I was at home and heard a little voice calling to me. ‘Help, help!’ or rather, ‘Joy, I’m on the balcony, where are you?’

When You are faced with those situations, where someone is obviously in need of help what do you do? I laughed! It’s contagious. But helping him to get out took all of my strength, as having to raise his entire body weight up and out of the frame of the chair, up to the height of the non existant seat until his feet touched the floor.

What a Super-hero I was. Recounting the story has had us both chuckling.

Posted on by loveleyjoy

VINE WEEVILS

It is everyone’s dream to retire to France, buy a little house in the country with enough land to grow fruit and vegetables. But what if you find your little ‘pied à terre’ is infested with the worst kind of pests imaginable?

It has happened to me. It was my niece that first said, “You’ve got vine-weevils”. She pointed out the leaves on a fuchsia that should have had smooth edges but had little indents eaten evenly along the sides.

Before you can defeat your enemy you have to know your enemy and what its tactics are. Some research on the Internet revealed that ‘otiorhynchus sulcatus’ are nocturnal creatures that live in leaf mould and lay eggs around the stems of the plant, which hatch into white grubs with orangey heads in the spring. The grubs feed off the roots, weakening the plant, and emerge a year later as adult vine-weevils.

I had just planted raspberry canes and discovered that vine-weevils are particularly partial to asters, cyclamens, geraniums, honeysuckle, roses, primroses…….   (the list continued) and raspberries! ‘Charançon’ is their French name, but another is

 “poinconneur des lilas” which translated is ‘hole-puncher of lilacs’- not very good news at all!

More research on the Internet was required!  I learned that it’s very difficult to see or catch an adult weevils as when they are disturbed, they fall to the ground and scurry away. OK, dirty tactics need cunning responses. I placed flowerpot bases all around the stems of the plants. When I got up in the night to go to the toilet (I’m that sort of age!) I would also wage war! 

When I woke up, I boiled the kettle, carried it out to the garden, gently filled up the flowerpot bases and then gave the raspberry bushes a shake. Hey presto, several of my enemies jumped off and fell into my dishes of very hot water and scalded themselves to death!! The moment was one of pure, triumphant bliss, regardless of the fact that my neighbours might see me and wonder what I was doing in the garden with a kettle, in my dressing gown at 3 o’clock in the morning! Les anglaises sont très étrange! 

The enemy had indeed been the, yet unseen, vine-weevil – black apple pip sized body, elongated and 3 pairs of legs. Triumph eventually dimmed to despair when I realized that my only method of defeating the marauders was to continue to get up in the early hours of the morning

But God is good and inspiration comes to those who pray! Suppose the vine weevils didn’t just jump off plants when disturbed, but are lazy by nature and fall off instead of climbing down?

My theory was proved right by the presence of several drowned vine-weevils in the dishes of water I had left under the plants. With the aid of lengths of guttering strategically placed I managed to drown quite a few. One day I found that one humble 3-foot length of guttering had caught 11 vine weevils overnight! This may not sound much but they can lay between 500-1600 eggs a piece.

My joy turned to further despair when I noticed that my neighbour’s huge privet hedge that ran down one side of my garden was infested with vine-weevils and also the lilac that belonged to the other neighbour! With horror I realized that although I could possibly win the war in my own garden, I couldn’t defeat the enemies of the entire neighbourhood.

I found a charming little story on the Internet that showed that even in the 1587 French villagers were having the same problems as me. The residents of Saint-Julien-de-Maurienne were having their vines ravaged by a horde of ‘amblevins’ as they are called in Savoyard dialect. The local judge ordered a court case against them. But to represent the weevils fairly an advocate was appointed on their behalf. The local people offered the vine-weevils a patch of pasture away from the vineyards where they could munch away to their hearts content. Their lawyer argued that the area was infertile and didn’t at all suit his clients. We don’t know the end of the story, but perhaps the villagers were trying out the new legal process of allowing a Devil’s advocate, a system that was established in the same year as the story took place.

When the Normans invaded England the first thing they did was to build motte and bailey castles. The bailey or palisade was probably to keep the English out, but I am sure that the water ditch was there to protect their small parcels of land from the possibility of invading vine-weevils. Even if my theory is not true, the next house I look for will have a moat!

Posted on by loveleyjoy

BUYING WORMS

Schoolbook French does not equip you for the situations that you actually meet when you live in France. For instance – buying worms!

I am a keen organic gardener. I compost all our waste but when our bins are full I have two wormeries. Vegetable peelings will turn to compost if digested by special red worms. I discovered that Pêche Mondial (World of Fishing) sells the right sort. They can be found in the refrigerator right at the back of the shop. It’s quite daunting going into this store as I am usually the only woman to be seen.

Shop assistants are always ever so helpful in France and always arrive at your side to offer aid. Hence the first encounter with the sales person there (always nice young men) led to the following exchange.

Me, “I am looking for some earth worms”. Him,” Would you like, small, medium or large?” Never before have I needed to consider the benefits of small or large worms! But on reflection, I said, ” Small, because they will grow”. Up to this point I had been an average customer, but now I was someone who did not use the worms for fishing but kept them for some reason! Why do I have to offer additional information?                                

Three weeks ago I went back to buy more worms because the cold winter had killed mine. I marched to the depths (au fond) of the shop, but the refrigerator was completely empty. “Haven’t you got any worms,” I had to ask an assistant? “No, next week,” was his reply. The next week I was back but they had had problems with the suppliers and it would be “une quinzaine“, the French for a fortnight. By now all the young men in the shop know me because in the winter they don’t have many customers so the lady with the worm problems is the sole focus of their attention.

This week I went back and, yes, they had worms and I quickly paid my 1,50 euros and took them home. I opened the pot and “quelle horreur” all my worms were dead! Perhaps live worms are not necessary for a fisherman but for me they are vital. Oh, no! Now, I have not only to buy worms, I have to take them back to the shop and ask for them to be exchanged! It can’t be done tomorrow, as they might think I killed them through neglect! It must be done immediately! What is French for “Excuse me, but the worms you sold me earlier today are all dead?” Your average French textbook does not deal with such emergencies.

 So back I hurry to the shop. Again there is no one else there and the three young men are all surprised to see me. ” Ils sont tous mort”, I say as I offer up the tub of worms, and then I have to hide my embarrassment by trying to make a joke. “C’est difficile de faire………….. and here I mime blowing air into a dead worm. Two young men remain blank but the third understands this crazy English woman.” Bouche à bouche” he mutters to his mates. Yes, I was miming artificial respiration! Why do I do it?

So, one guy takes my dead worms and goes to the back of the shop and comes back with a replacement pot, these are “en pleine forme” he says. So I exit with my “fighting fit” box of worms.

I hope all you French teachers out there will use my experiences to teach your pupils the REALLY useful phrases necessary to cope with French life, for instance, buying worms!

Posted on by loveleyjoy

D0N’T HELP THE NEIGHBOURS!

A cautionary tale.

When we had a lot of building work going on across the road, the demolition disturbed the sewers and the rats.

One day I was in my lounge and I saw a rat jump over my neighbour’s fence, pass along the foot of the wall at the bottom of my garden, entre my other neighbour’s garden and return with something round in its mouth. This happened several times.

Not something I wanted to see every day, so a search of the internet to find out about the habits of rats and how to get rid of them. Having learnt that they eat poo and that the local Mairie is happy to supply poisoned grain. A nice young man further down the street knocked at the door and said he had killed 5 rodents using a spring trap. The Mayor sent round the rat man who inspected my garden, and gave me some of the grain. I wrote all this up in a letter for the 20 neighbours in the road. The problem was solved and people knew not to leave dog poo in their gardens.

Forward a few years. We had major work on our drains that involved not only digging up all of the road but all of the foot-paths as well.

Ever since we had owned this house we had had water entering the garage during heavy rain, not under the garage door or back door but seeping though the wall we shared with the neighbour. We took the opportunity to speak to the boss of the site and he agreed that water could back up from the drainage pipe that lead from the house down-pipe and across our garden and was supposed to exit under the pavement. We learned some new vocabulary. The concrete hollow cube that our down pipe went into was called a ‘regard’ – not a very helpful word due it being easily confused in conversation with the verb ‘to look’.

We had tried to find a solution to this dampness in our garage several times. The French way is to contact your insurance company. They will tell you to get three quotes and your insurers will chose which one they will pay for. One expert wanted to fit extractor fans in both the front wall and back wall. Our lounge is situated above the garage. The colder the garage, the colder the floor of our lounge. I had spent a lot of time blocking up holes around doors, and we had insulated the garage ceiling so as to have a cosier house – causing cold air to enter from either end was not my idea of progress, and anyway that did not address the problem of where the water was coming from.

The second expert wanted to drill water absorbing rods into the wall. Again not an answer to where the water was coming from. Another expert wanted to re-plaster the wall without finding out about the source of the water. We were stuck as the quotes were for different solutions.

I wondered if other homes had the same problem and wrote a note to the 20 identical houses in the street to find out if our problem was replicated elsewhere. Our adjoining neighbour the other side also had the problem and was fed up with her garage being flooded and the damage it was causing to the internal wall. The neighbour who shared her garage wall was also affected.

We passed this information on to the workmen.

One evening it rained heavily. We returned home from being out for the evening . The footpath was still missing which meant that the ends of the pipes that traversed the gardens and exited though the garden walls were able to be seen. There was no water flowing out of our neighbours pipe. That begged the question, ‘Where was all the rain water that fell on her roof going if it was not exiting though that pipe? Our pipe was a mini torrent flowing into the void of rubble that was for the moment our pavement. The neighbour the other side of us had no water exiting though the wall, neither did her neighbour. I took a video of the flowing pipe and the 3 non-functioning ones. An awful lot of rainwater was not exiting away from our houses. In fact every drop that fell on the rooves of the neighbours.

Once again I wrote a note to say what I had observed.

A few days later our French friend across the road beckoned me over. ‘Joy, stop writing notes to the neighbours – they are getting fed up with you.’

‘Oh, don’t they want to find a solution to this problem by working together at it?’

‘No, it’s not how we do things in France. We contact our insurance company, who sends an expert and he finds a solution’.

‘But don’t neighbours work together and help each other,’

His reply was in the negative. He also added that his work had been in water services. He was in fact our neighbourhood expert. He knew that our neighbour was wasting her money when she paid to have a bigger soak away installed to stop water rolling down her sloping drive and into her hallway when there were heavy rains.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘O.K. No more notes to neighbours, then. No chance of working together and co-operating like we would in England?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s sad but true.’

However, a few days later there was a workman in our neighbour’s garden. He was replacing the old pipe that should be taking water from the downpipes, into the ‘regarde’ and across the garden.

We have not had any problem with damp in our garage ever since.

Posted on by loveleyjoy

CELEBRATING OUR 40TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

We are trying to downsize in preparation for our return to the UK. How to celebrate when we don’t want more stuff? A nice meal out? We certainly had that.

I have had an English Conversation group for several years. Maximum attendance is 3-4 people, as I don’t ask people to enrol for a term, they are free to go on holiday or be sick and they are not out of pocket.

Alain Number One, (we have an Alain Number Two) spent his pre-marriage years in the UK, working in hospital kitchens and learning English. He was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease which meant he had to give up driving. He has a very dynamic wife who takes moving houses, redecorating and creating gardens out of badly neglected parcels in her stride.

Alan has the most amazing imagination and once I challenged him to tell a story from some prompt cards and he spoke for an hour!

We visited him in hospital taking with us our pink picnic basket, plastic cups, a thermos, and slices of cake and couple of balloons for us to bat back and forth to give him some fun exercise while having to be bed bound. He hoped to be out by his 80th birthday and he was.

Today, we were invited to celebrate his birthday with him, 25 friends, neighbours and family.

The party started in their newly reclaimed and replanted garden that had had hedges so thick and tall that the neighbours couldn’t see the house. The obligatory glass of champagne accompanied little glasses of avocado and cream cheese, apericubes and lozenges of flavoured cheeses, smoked salmon rolled into tiny sausages, crisps, cashew nuts (my favourite) and refilled glasses of champagne.

The neighbour in the house behind them turned our to be very happy to help with the reclamation of the garden and all there is between them now is a waist height chain-link fence with a newly opened gap to allow physical communication between the families.

The neighbour was manning the barbecue that he had built. Coals were glowing and brochettes of chicken cubes, beef cubes were roasting. Plump duck breasts were on a higher level waiting for a space closer to the heat.

We were called to take our places at the tables as it was assumed that our stomachs were feeling empty! Not when there are cashew nuts and crisps looking so tempting.

The brochettes were served along with a cold pasta dish containing mini grilled tomatoes and chopped cucumber.

When eating French meals it is necessary to pace oneself. Even if the dish is the most delicious that you have ever tasted don’t, I repeat, don’t eat until you feel satisfied. We have learned this from experience. All will become clear.

When those dishes had been circulated a few times, the sliced duck breasts appeared, served along with tinned green beans to which the chef had added, fresh young celery leaves and a beetroot with apple salad. A pureed onion sauce was also passed around and I mustn’t forget the diced fried potatoes.

On the table were baskets of cut baguettes and red wine for those who wished for more alcohol. Conversations about the possibility of the police checking drivers limited some from second glasses, even though they knew that even one glass could lead to difficulties if stopped.

No meal in France is complete with out a cheese board. A blue-veined cheese, a goats cheese and a Brie are the starting points. Pace yourself – don’t forget those words.

It was a birthday and I wondered what the cake might be like. The day before we had been to afternoon tea with a couple from our church and a 12 inch disk of pink meringue, filled with fresh raspberries and cream was enjoyed by us all.

The friendly barbecuing neighbour was not only a keen gardener and outdoor cook, he also made cakes! He presented a ‘pièce montée’. Weddings, baptisms, births can be celebrated with one. First make an oven-full of choux pastry buns. Our man made 80 for this 80th birthday. Fill them with a ‘crème’ like a thick custard. Make caramel and mix in some chopped hazelnuts to make nougatine (caramel and nuts) and use that as the solid base. The little choux buns are dipped in the hot caramel and stuck together circle above circle until a tall cone takes shape. Our man proved his skill by taking hold of the whole creation and holding it horizontally, to prove it was well made!

More champagne was needed to accompany the distribution of the mini choux buns, and their copious caramel glue which was now very hard. I had fears for my recently crowned tooth and tried to eat and crunch with care.

We had arrived at 11.30 and were the first to leave at nearly 6pm when guests started reminiscing about things that had happened among them during the past 80 years.

So, to celebrate our 40th anniversary we had been treated to a multi-course meal thanks to Alan and family.

Posted on by loveleyjoy

MY BOOKS

Book Number 1

Having travelled up and down the A26 autoroute so many times during the past 20 years, the brown tourist panels have caused much interest.

Leaving Calais a sign says ‘1520 CAMP DE DRAP D’OR’. What did this mean? Over many journeys all of the 53 signs between Calais and Troyes were noted down and researched. Several times we set off to explore the places of interest mentioned like the ‘EGLISES FORTIFIEES DE LA THIERACHE’ for ourselves. I thought that a small book would be interesting for travellers on the motorway, and so set to writing one that became available on Amazon as ‘The Brown Signs – What do they mean? A26 Calais-Troyes Autoroute des Anglais’.

Unfortunately, the tourist board of the Aisne decided that the signs needed updating and added some new ones! My book became out of date and I haven’t had the heart to tackle the updating necessary.

Book Number 2

When we moved to France, I knew very little about my grandfather’s brother who had died in the first world war. But here we were, not far from all those famous battle grounds, Flanders, Vimy Ridge, Mons, the Battle of the Marne, the Chemin des Dames etc. My brother has always been keen on family history and so I had a good starting point. In fact all 4 of my great-grandfather’s sons joined the armed forces. Three survived but George Tinsley Loveley was killed on the Somme. That was not his only field of battle because he started in Gallipoli from where he was invalided out. Research into his history formed the basis of the next book-‘George Tinsley Loveley – He fought at Gallipoli and died on the Somme’.

Book Number 3

Trying to master the French language has not been easy, but moments arrive when you find that the word that you have been searching for is the same word in English. One day I was talking to a well educated friend of ours and wanted to use the word ‘impromptu’. I wasn’t sure if it was French or not but I gave it a go. I got complimented on the level of French I was speaking these days!

That led to the writing of a third book ‘What’s French for Baguette? – Learn Over 350 French words without even trying’. All the words are used in English and French with some slight variations. The title came from our daughter’s best friend who was visiting us. The two went to the boulangerie to buy bread for lunch. As she was entering, she turned to my daughter and asked ‘What’s French for baguette?’

All of these are available on Amazon.

Posted on by loveleyjoy

IKEA has an extra mug today!

Many years ago when IKEA first opened in Reims I naturally assumed that the ethos of IKEA worldwide would be the ethos of this newly opened store in France. Free coffee to IKEA Family members, generous offers and free gifts. So it was that I, being full of hope, made my husband drive across town early one weekend as below:-

‘The newly opened IKEA promised prizes to the first customers of the day. Persuading my husband to leave our bed early on a Saturday morning was the hardest part. My daughter assured me that IKEA was incredibly generous and gave out vouchers of varying amounts at the door and someone she knew had got £70 worth! Arriving just before opening time, I was second in the queue, behind a man. In fact, I was last in the queue too, as there were only the two of us. The doors opened and the manager gave us both a mug and indicated we should go upstairs to the coffee bar.

That was it! We could have a coffee in the mug that was the prize! No tokens, no vouchers – did they know that in English ‘a mug’ has another meaning?’

Actually, I became quite fond of that mug. For a while it was my preferred coffee cup. But a random unmatched mug is no use when we have guests, a random unmatched mug doesn’t add any beauty to a full tray of matching mugs. We have 8 matching mugs that we use nearly every morning, 2 blue, 2 yellow, 2 red and 2 orange. They are sturdy and keep the coffee nice and warm until the last dregs. The one lonely IKEA mug has been lurking at the back of the cupboard.

Today, I took it back!

For the last 2 years we have been downsizing with the aim of returning to the UK. At every opportunity, goods are being donated to charity shops in the UK, given away to friends or found new homes. Several cupboards are now completely empty.

We now go to IKEA quite regularly, especially in winter as a walk around the 2 floors gives us 3,200 steps. We are even encouraging friends to meet us there. It could take off as a friendly social gathering. So, today I took back that mug that I had won as a prize more than 15 years ago. The mugs are still of the same design. So no-one will notice that there is one extra mug in the cafeteria, except if you look at the bottom it has a indelibly inked smily face and says ‘JOY’!

Posted on by loveleyjoy

I’M BACK (2)

I thought I was back! I had my new computer, so what could go wrong. Cataracts! Having been diagnosed as having cataracts, I was booked in to have the first operation -right eye- in early September and the left eye a week after.

In the UK friends and family have reported that they get a booking for a walk-in clinic, sit in a chair and a cataract is treated within the hour with very little fuss and you are sent home.

In France, it is firstly a visit to the central Anesthesiology Department used by all the hospitals. ‘Fill in a form’ it says at the entrance. ‘You must complete the full Health Questionnaire’. The machine will only print a form that asks you 3 personal data questions. You feel something is wrong because you were told by the medical website ‘You must complete the full Health Questionnaire’, but there was nowhere to down load it how ever hard you looked.

Anyway, the anesthetist who sees you has paper copies of the mystery form. You pay for the services of these health professionals two weeks before the operation.

Forward 2 weeks, get up early to have a shower as instructed, enter a completely different hospital that specialises in day cases. Shown to a side ward and given all the gear, disposable paper shoes, pants, gown, trousers, mob-cap, and even a paper dressing gown. Lock your valuables in a coded cupboard along with the clothes you arrived in.

Walk to the operating block and hop up onto a trolley where the anesthetist gives you and injection to relax you. The first time I knew what was going on, the second time I knew nothing until I came round after the procedure.

Here is where my excuses for not writing start! From this point on, your old glasses are no use to you, For the next couple of months the eyes are adjusting to their new normal. It didn’t help that the second operation had to be postponed due to a short hospitalisation, so my second eye was not operated on until a month later. With the Christmas holidays as well,I have only recently got new glasses to suit my new eyes. Using my mobile phone was possible with some old reading glasses, but working on the computer was very, very awkward as it had to be propped up on cushions on my lap in order to be as close as possible for my wonky eyes to see it.

That’s it – all my excuses!















Posted on by loveleyjoy

BANANA BREAD

Just to illustrate what I was saying in my previous blog, that I can give you the recipe for the things I bake, but the result will not be the same.

Today, I used another of my favourite recipe books, ‘The Loaves and Fishes Cookbook’. It is written by Anna Pump, originally from Germany, who ran a restaurant on Long Island, USA.

When she moved to the USA, she found that everyone had a favourite recipe for Banana Bread, a cake that she had never heard of. Soon she developed her own list of ingredients and method.

2 eggs – yes I used that number, but I make sure ours are organic and free range.

1/2 cup safflower oil – don’t have any of that so used coconut oil and some organic rape seed oil.

1 cup of sugar – there is no white sugar in our house after reading, ‘Pure, White and Deadly’ the 1972 book by John Yudkin. I used golden granulated cane sugar and a spoonful of molasses. Sugar from sugar beet can be made to appear brown, by coating the crystals with molasses. Recently a limited range of ‘Sucre Roux’ appeared in our local German discount supermarket. I had not much brown cane sugar left and no trips to the UK planned. I was getting desperate. When I opened this sugar (produced in Belgium) it stank! It looks like golden sand that any beach would be proud of, but it smells disgusting. I looked on the internet and found that this was normal! I asked a Belgian pilgrim who was staying with us if it was OK . He tried to reassure me it was. I have tasted it, and I will never use it in any dish. The smell is like earth plus a chemical spill. Growing sugar beet sprayed with many chemicals and then trying to make the white product golden seems to have failed terribly.

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. I got out a bottle of vanilla pods infused in vodka but decided that would add too much liquid so didn’t put in any vanilla.

3 ripe bananas – yes, I had those. That was the purpose of making the cake – to use up 3 of the 5 ripe bananas we had.

1 1/4 cups of unbleached white flour. I made a mixture of toasted soya flour, some freshly ground whole almonds (with skins) and coconut that I also blitzed in the coffee grinder.

1 teaspoon of baking powder. After having a student stay with us for a month who was gluten intolerant, I started making my own mix of baking powder. I had read that some manufacturers use wheat flour to bulk out baking powder which should have only 2 ingredients -twice as much Cream of Tartar as Bicarbonate of Soda.

1/2 cup of walnuts, coarsely chopped. As I had already put in some ground almonds, and didn’t have any walnuts I added about 6 chopped delicious, plump Medjool, Israeli, dates. Our local Aldi had them in its special offer section and I bought about 6 packets as I knew they would not be there for long.

Cook for 60 minutes at 350°F or 180°C or until a toothpick comes out clean. Who has toothpicks in their kitchen? Inserting a toothpick into a cake in the middle of a hot oven seems to invite telltale burns on the forearms that novice cooks all seem to bear. Use a fork or blade of a pointed knife for health and safety sake!

The result? An unctuous, moist, flavoursome slice that kept calling to me during each entry to my kitchen, ‘just another spoonful’. The moist result made me wonder if I had put in 1 1/4 cups of flour. Finding 3 different ingredients and grinding 2 of them, plus my other substitutions means that an 8 step recipe became a 12 step recipe where an item could be missed or miscalculated. Oh, well, my husband and I have both had portions and enjoyed it.

Oh, and I almost forgot that I added a sprinkling of turmeric (curcuma in French) because it’s supposed to help heal ………… whatever I read it helped heal and as it was yellow, it wouldn’t be out of place in a Banana Tea Bread.

Posted on by loveleyjoy

VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE

I have been downsizing my collection of recipe books. I had over 100. Some have gone to a school here in Reims that has a catering department. One I kept, was the Cranks recipe book. A ‘crank’ is a crazy person, or as the Oxford English Dictionary says, ‘a person who has strange ideas or unusual ideas and beliefs’. There used to be a Cranks restaurant in Norwich, which I had visited several times. Vegetarian meals were served there, way before vegetarians were considered normal. Flours used were usually wholemeal and ingredients were unusual like lentils, soya and buckwheat.

Years later, I had symptoms of gluten intolerance and cut out all wheat products. Looking back it was an easier journey than it could have been thanks to recipe books like ‘Cranks’ that introduced alternatives to the plain white, non-organic flour on which, the UK Flour Millers estimates, a third of our food products are based.

I had heard about buckwheat from the Cranks book but it was in Brittany that we were astonished by fields of a bright red cereal. We stopped to investigate and identified it as buckwheat that is ground to make sarrasin flour in France and turned into delicious savoury pancakes or galettes. Interestingly, buckwheat is a relative of rhubarb – so they say!

Another cereal that we drool over is maize-meal or polenta. We make the most delicious chips from polenta stirred into an organic chicken stock. It needs lots of stirring and gets thicker and thicker, before the final ingredient of grated parmesan cheese is added. The gloop is spread out in a large tray to cool and dry, then cut into chips to be fried. We had an Italian pilgrim stay with us who said our polenta was the best he had ever tasted – praise indeed!

Oats! Where would we be without porridge, muesli and granola. Cranks had a recipe for granola that was baked in the oven until crisp. I have often made it. Samuel Johnson in his dictionary defined oats as, “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”. We wouldn’t be without flapjacks, and cheesy savoury ones are also made in our house – great for eating on motorway journeys.

I’ve just seen that millet was another grain used in several recipes. It is the grain that is fed to budgerigars – a sprig is often hung in their cage. After trying it once, I don’t think I will return to those recipes- it was bland and tasteless.

I often bake cakes and biscuits for Afternoon Tea when we have pilgrims arriving to stay overnight while walking to Rome or Spain. When people taste my baking they often ask for the recipe. I have to tell them that I can give them the recipe, but what they make will not taste like the item that have just eaten. My box of flours rarely has white plain flour in it. At the moment it has toasted soya, rice flour, potato flour and sarrasin.

If the recipe says sugar, I might add raw cane, muscovado or date syrup with a bit of molasses for a depth of flavour. And of course all brown sugars have chromium in them – the mineral that is necessary for the digestion of sugar – but that is another story.