Boulangerie Mornings

Nothing beats the morning walk to our favorite boulangerie for a pain de chocalat and baguette.  Woody thinks its his light saber!  I am clutching the pain de chocalat - can't pry them out of my fingers!!!  This is in Roanne, our home port.

Unindicted Co-conspirators

Standing in line in stores is part of our daily routine here in Roanne.  One of the stores that we frequent, Lidl, sells food and all sorts of other items (power saws are on shelves next to avocados which are next to rain jackets, etc.).  Everything is discounted and each trip reveals something new for sale.  It's a great store but for the check-out line.  We theorize that the store is able to discount because it usually has only one employee  at the check-out line thus saving all kinds of employee costs.  Needless to say, when the store is full of customers, the check-out line gets pretty long, although it does provide opportunity for people watching.  Which leads to today's conspiracy.

Ahead of us in line today was a young girl of about 8 years old with her rather harried looking mother.  Dressed in bobby socks and wearing thick black-rimmed glasses, the little girl was insisting that she be allowed to purchase a little packet of colorful stationary (which she probably found next to the duct tape and the cherries).  Mama refused and put the packet aside.  The little girl obviously did not agree with the decision and put the packet back with the groceries, whereupon mother placed it again off to the side.  But his little girl had a plan.  At Lidl as in most French grocery stores, you must bring and pack your own plastic bag (the single checker could not possibly do it all), so the little girl carefully watched as Mama packed her bag and quickly placed the treasured packet back with the groceries, this time packed in between the bananas and the oranges to better conceal it.  She watched intently as the cashier rang it up and then while intently watching Mama, quickly snatched up her treasure and put it into her own bag.  Then playing the dutiful daughter she carefully packed her bag with other grocery items.  While Mama paid the checker the little girl turned to us and with the slightest of smiles and . . . winked!  Our difficulty at that moment was to not burst out laughing, but we held our own, now being part of the conspiracy.  Mama and the little girl walked away from the store and we detected the slightest bit of a spring to the little girl's steps.  She had gotten her treasure and had enlisted two adults in the process.  How could the day be any better.

Captain Randy

Fete du Nautisme

This weekend is the annual nautical festival here, and for weeks now, we've been watching the local water jousting team practice.  Yep, its jousting from boats, with really heavy poles - the pole is held vertical until nearing the opponent, when it is lowered to horizontal position and held in place as the boats steer toward each other.  We've been timing the jousters in that horizontal pole position, most can only hold it there for 7 to 10 seconds.  It is a sport here in France, and we are of course rooting for our local Roanne Joust club.  The events were supposed to start this morning, and after nearly weeks of perfect weather, its raining les chats et les cheins (cats and dogs).  So we don't know if we'll see any events today.

We've taken a few photos of the practice sessions from the back deck, and will have a great view tomorrow when the weather clears (we hope) and the teams can compete.  In the meantime, the port association will have a tent tomorrow afternoon with videos of the barging life, and free food for  visitors to the port.  We've been asked to prepare something unique to our home country and region.  Of course, coming from the desert southwest, we thought first of guacamole and chips, but have settled on doing a southwestern 7 layer dip.  So the challenge began yesterday - how to find those foods here in France.
The supermarkets have a selection of "Old El Paso" taco, fajita and burrito kits, but no refried beans, no canned diced chilies, no cheddar or jack cheese, or sour cream.  But we went to our wonderful Grand Frais market, and found a shipment of green chili peppers had just arrived - country of origin - Morocco.   The cheese counter had a nice orange cheese on the tasting table, and it tasted a lot like cheddar to us.  For sour cream, we picked up what the French call "creme fraische."  I found a recipe to make refried beans from kidney beans, so we picked up a couple of cans, but then found a beautiful bag of dried beans, haricots coco roses, which look quite like pintos.  So, back to the boat to do a test recipe.
We roasted the chilies on the BBQ, and the port smelled like Santa Fe, Tucson and even Denver in the fall, when you can find Hatch chilies being roasted in big tumbling chili roasters.  The Moroccan chilies were a little hotter than Hatch chilies, but tasted great.  I soaked the coco roses overnight, cooked them this morning, and they look and taste like pintos.  I jazzed them up with some spices and refried them, so layer one is done.  Layer two is the shredded Minolette Jeune cheese, followed by diced Moroccan chilies, a layer of diced avocado, next a layer of diced tomato, a layer of diced green onions, creme fraische, and finally the dish is topped with sliced black olives.  We found some bags of good  lightly salted corn tortilla chips and tested the dip.  Its really, really tasty!!  So back to the store for more ingredients.  I may make a couple of plates with roasted red peppers as this part of France is not known for hot spicy foods (and we can save more of the Moroccan chilies for ourselves)!

Still waiting to get under way

Le Crozet

Le Crozet

Chateau de la Roche, in the Loire River

Lunch in Lyon

Lyon

Champagne on the poop deck

We are delayed for a few reasons to be disclosed later, but we had a delightful visit from long time Colorado friends and sailing buddies, Woody and Marion Norman, who celebrated their 11th anniversary with us.  We were able to tour around Roanne with them, visiting the weekly market in Marsigny, and we squeezed in a trip to our favorite big city, Lyon.  On Friday, we visited 4 medieval villages, and the Chateau de la Roche, which sits in the Loire River.

Market day, Marcigny

Market day in Marcigny