Snow!

10 cm was forecast and 10 cm arrived! This is a bit rare as there normally seems to be less than forecast. It was slightly heavy but a very pleasant refresher for the area. One of the few chances so far this year to venture off piste a bit

Cold!

After weeks of lovely sunny skiing it has suddenly got a lot colder. Very beautiful clouds and sky, but rather hard pistes. They do seem to have been doing an extra good job of pisteing this year though.

Skiing with Jan and Al

Doug doing a little jump

Walk round the virgin

This has to be our most walked walk. It is a nice loop, not far from the house, and has great views over the mountains - and our house.

There is a lot of damage from the December storms. They are getting on with cleaning up a lot of it, but it is pretty dramatic still.

View over Bagnères-de-Bigorre, our apartment is in there somewhere

Dog posing

 Doug posing

Yummy apple pie snack afterwards. Homemade but with bought puff pastry. Must try making puff pastry one day...

Feels like Spring

Feels like Spring, but Winter is forecast to return any moment...

Bit of culture

Some opera arias and quite a bit of Offenbach. Interesting but made us realise how spoilt we were for classical music living in London. Fortunately we took full advantage while we had it.

Coppa

Coppa is cured nape of neck.

Salted at 50g per kg with curing salt same as the ham

10g sugar per kg

Cured for 40 days in plastic bag in fridge with the salt
I put this one in a beef bung because some recipes ask for that and I happened to have one that needed using. Convenient way to hang it - from the string.

Hang for 4 weeks (or until loses 30% of weight)

What to do during dry January?

We are trying to brew once a week during (dry) January to get stocks up a little bit. This is bottling a Dark Mild and we made a Wheat beer using a new interesting yeast (meant to give hints of banana and cloves), we'll see