Back in France

I am now back at home after a spell in the UK.
When I got back my lovely husband had baked celebration madeleines. They were yummy!

While I have been away Doug has been trying to get the doggly used to her jacket that I bought because I am worried she will be cold left in the car while we ski as well as generally after walks in the winter when she gets wet. Maybe I am worried about nothing and just pampering her. But her fur is very short and at least I didn't get it in pink or with sparkly bits or something.

We decided that with the slaughter of the pigs we were going to declare phase 2 of Project Barranède complete, so since I got back we have been taking a bit of a rest... kind of... we have been doing lots of stuff but more stuff we fancy doing or needs doing now rather than aiming at a goal. We are planning on going to Chamonix next week to pick up our ski stuff and other stuff from the flat there. We need to find a reasonably priced van to hire.
We have engaged an architect as we found ourselves unable to finalise what the layout of the house should be without help. He can start in January so we won't do any work on the house until after that.
I have felt inspired to do a lot of cooking and have made curry (and naan bread), a practise batch of mince pies, some practise Christmas gingerbread shapes, a chicken and mushroom pie and started making some cheese (getting the culture ready).

We have been for a couple of walks at Payolle (in the mountains with a lake and activities like mountain boarding and in the winter skiing) which is where we picked the sloes in September. We took a look at the bushes just to see what was going on and they still had sloes. Sloes are very bitter, but they are much less bitter now than we have ever tasted them. In the UK they never get left until properly ripe because so many people pick them for sloe gin. We have picked some more to make sloe jelly - when we have made it before it comes out making you teeth a bit furry, this is because of the tannin in the unripe fruit I think, despite that the jelly has always been very tasty. Hopefully this lot will come out even better.

Ripe sloes

Picnic

Playing in the lake

Snow in the mountains

We have also done useful tasks such as sweeping up leaves (imagine how many we have - we are only trying to clear the driveway), chipping some of the massive pile resulting from the hedge massacre, putting gravel on the drive (again imagine how much gravel is needed for 600m of drive) and cleaning the chickens.