Being gluten-free here is a little bit of a challenge (and a bummer considering all the wooooonderful baked goods there are to be found.)  Through the years, I have basically let go of baking and replaced all of my cravings for sweets with dark chocolate.  However,  Géraud and his family and friends won’t hear of me skipping dessert.  Dinner at a friend’s house this Sunday included a wonderfully airy, gluten-free cake with chocolate chips, lemon zest and almond powder in place of flour (sorry I don’t have a picture of that one).  Géraud has been experimenting with brownies made with “farine de châtaignes” (chestnut flour) and he made the crêpes below with a mix of quinoa and rice flour.  Mmmm…

#1 Local pears from the Saturday morning market soon to become a pear-apple crisp.
#2 An upturned jar with green-lentil sprouts under way.
#3 Mushrooms we gathered during a walk (Géraud learned about hunting mushrooms from his grandfather.  It’s a big thing here.  When the season is right and it’s a day or two after a good rain you will find cars parked all along the little country roads left by folks of all ages searching for mushrooms.)

“Lait cru” written on the little signs mark the raw-milk cheeses.  The absolute majority of cheeses in France (of which there are hundreds and hundreds of different kinds) are unpasteurized.  Though I agree with eating “live” foods, I admit that when a super-duper moldy cheese appears on my plate I take a double-take.  These are moments when I remember that I am an American (though this doesn’t stop me from tasting!).

This picture is from New Year’s Eve at about 3:00 in the morning.  Our friend Pascal (a real high-energy kind of guy) is leading a group croissant making effort.  The table is outside under a tent so that when the croissant are ready, they can put them directly into the old-timey, wood-fired oven to the right.  The bottles of water are to be used as rolling-pins.  Since we were heading home at this point we didn’t get to try them, but we hear that they came out of the oven around 6:00 a.m. and tasted great!

Howdy there!  I think it’s time for a short intermission to continue to honor the crazy-good food here.  Festival #2 will be next time.

NOTE: If you receive these entries via email and you were unable to view the videos in the last post you can go to this link: http://afainbooks.com/blog/2010/05/15/boulegan-lostal/ to see it directly on my website.  The post is named “Boulegan l’Ostal.”

Now for some food!

]]> http://afainbooks.com/blog/2010/06/03/french-food-intermission/feed/ 0 http://afainbooks.com/blog/2010/02/23/food-glorious-food/ http://afainbooks.com/blog/2010/02/23/food-glorious-food/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:18:55 +0000 Annie Fain http://afainbooks.com/?p=1206