Carte de Sejour

It took a lot of paperwork, but we have got our Carte de Sejour!!!!!!!
Doug's has a tiny setback that is says 'Copenhagen - Pays Bas'. I am pretty sure that Copenhagen is not in Holland! They were embarrassed and said they would replace... given how long it took to get this card we are not holding our breath for speedy resolution.
Depending how BREXIT progresses we are most likely to have to apply for another card, but it looks like having the permanent card should be an easy exchange for whatever is needed next.

Stenciling and on and on

We are doing lots of the furniture in the Bangneres apartment ourselves to save some money. To pull it together with a consistent look we are stencilling several bits of it in the same style.

There are stools and a chest of drawers from Ikea as well as a chest of drawers we had already and the beds that Doug made (to my design!). All a bit of work, but looks really good!

Shepherds Pie Recipe

The dish size I use is 23cm x 30cm

900g minced lamb

2 smallish onions

About 10 medium potatoes

2 carrots (optional)

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 tin tomato

Thyme

Desert spoon cornflour

Béchamel sauce (about 600ml). Buy or make it.

Grated emmental cheese

Fry onions until they are soft but not brown, add the lamb and fry on a medium heat until the mix dries out and starts to brown. You can add some sliced carrot at this point if you want. Add a couple of chopped tomatoes and a tin of tomatos and cook slowly for maybe an hour. 

At the end of the cooking add fresh thyme as you see fit and just mix it in along with some salt and pepper

Add about a desert spoon of cornflour mixed in a little water to stiffen the mix. 

Let it cool, then spread it on the bottom of the dish.

Boil the potatoes in big chunks till they are not quite done and then cut in to slices and lay the slices of potato over the top of the dish. They cover the dish twice over so there is a good layer. Add bit of salt on too of the potatoes. It is ok to have some potato left over if you boiled too many. Have them fried for breakfast sometime!

Add two squeezy packets of béchamel sauce on top - in intermarche they are in the chiller section above the milk by the creme anglaise. 

Add a load of grated emmental and put in a 180°C oven for about 1 hr 30. Adjust the temperature as it cooks so it bubbles gently and the cheese ends up a nice tasty brown colour.

Eurgh! Fox!

Though many people think the fox is cute I can't join them as she has ripped our chickens to pieces more than once. The wild life camera caught this one on the drive. Much to close for comfort!

Ducklings

Olga hatched 3 ducklings, sadly one dies almost straight away. Not sure why more of the eggs didn't hatch, she seemed to sit quite intermittently for a while then laid a few more eggs and I presume those were the ones that hatched as the others started and then got cold when she stopped sitting. 

I'm not strangling them honest!

Raspberry jam

First time we have had enough raspberries for jam. 3 whole jars on top of the many many we ate.

Toasted sangwich maker

Loving the newish toasted sangwich maker. This is a turkish lamb toasted sandwich with mint and lamb. Home grown salad on the side (which is quite rare as we rarely manage to to grow a whole salad all at once...

Harvest and food food food

We didn't plant potatoes or camomile, they just self seed. We also have a few baby courgettes, some sugar snap peas and broccoli as well as lots of raspberries.

Old rock

Beef ribs slow roasted with thyme, tomato (not homegrown) and potato.

Cute cow pic

Sheering the sheep

It comes round every year, the sheep need shearing. Always tricky to judge the right time, it needs to be before the evil fly strike flies come out and lay their eggs on the sheep, but after it is warm enough at night.
We are getting a little faster each year and the sheep have fewer chunks out of them.

The pink stuff is an insecticide to stop fly strike. Having a short fleece helps against that as well as they can scratch the fly eggs off more easily.

Painting lots of furniture

We have some wood furniture we don't use, plus some from Ikea to furnish the Bagnères apartment. It all needed painting so getting started on that...

Poppy is a great help

We have been cycling in to town with her running alongside so she is quite tired on arrival.

Looking at the view to pass the time

Pizza evening

Finally got the hang of the Roccbox enough to have people round for pizza.

 Starter of garlic bread and lamb chop cooked in the Roccbox - with creme fraise and mint

Toppings

Can't throw the dough yet! So rolling pin it is

Chocolate pudding with raspberries and strawberries (not cooked in the Roccbox)

Nathalie doing well

No! She is not a riding cow, just pretending...

 Butternut took a couple of weeks to accept her feeding without driving her off. It was a relief when she did as we had plans to go to Scotland and that couldn't happen with a little cow needing feeding everyday. It is nice how the frequent contact makes her so friendly, I expect as she lives with the cows more she will get a bit less so. We shall see.

Seville Orange Pickle

Like lime pickle for eating with curry, but with seville orange instead of lime. I left it rather longer than maybe I should have, but I put it in the fridge after a few weeks and it is great.

Beer, dog, flower

Celebrating the nice weather with a beer. The sweetpeas have flowered and the dog is enjoying the sun too.

Enough raspberries for jam. Hurrah!

First time ever that we have had enough raspberries and strawberries to make jam.
Only a couple of jars of each, but still, exciting!.

Camomile

I didn't plant them, but they self seed from year to year and did really well this year. The main issue was the boredom of picking and drying enough to see us through. I suspect I didn't do quite enough.

Yummy meal out

Lovely meal at the Auberge Le Buoic for a friends birthday.

Vertical gardening

Although we have quite a lot of space for plants I decided to try growing more of them up things this year in the hope it would make it easier to weed round them and also keep things like squashes a bit more away from the mice that want to eat them.

There are squash planted at the top of this frame in those little grey things - which are cement blocks which will hopefully make strimming round them easier.

This is peas - obviously they always need to grow up things but before I have grown them on A frames, the idea of these vertical ones is that they will be easier to weed between.

Runner beans on the teepee and mange tout on the vertical frames as above

On the left there are tomatoes in spirals as well as cucumber and a melon. I grow a melon every year but we have never had fruit (yet!)

I will update on how this goes...