A meal fit for the French

We hosted, what turned out for us, to be quite an interesting dinner last night. Feeling guilty about being invited by various French friends to their houses over the last year or so, we decided to return invites to the most pressing three couples. In no particular order, the first couple was Gilles and Odile. We have two very good, Hachette rated, winemakers in the village and he is one of them. His Pouges wines, both red and white, are legendary around here and he also makes a vin de table which he sells at about 20 euros a bottle. Jean Francis and Marie Helene are a lovely couple and have invited us over the years to their annual summer picnic. He runs a very successful terrassement business and, last but not, least Alain and Christian. He is the local village artist. I can't say that we weren't nervous. Whilst we know and like them all, we had no idea whether they liked each other. Ours is a small village and goodness knows what enmities bubble beneath the surface but there was no hint of tension and everyone seemed to get on really well. One man admitted to being an anarchist, another a collector of the most mundane artifacts and the third said very little, but attempted the wine drinking record. He turned out to be fussiest drinker amongst us all. Naturally I served Gilles' wine, not wanting to offend him by serving his competitors and, as the night went on, I brought out some Baubiac from Quissac. This was also well received. It was a good night spoilt only by the fact that they all spoke French. Drinking and concentrating at the same time doesn't half tax the brain!
The French have a bad attitude towards English food (or food cooked by English people), earned no doubt by travelling through the UK as poor students in the 60's and 70's. Anyway, Jan put that right. A smoked fish and spinach starter, couscous with a lamb tagine (who said she can't cook English food?), salad, cheeses and two great puddings got them reassessing their opinions.

Le Mas de Roux

A friend from Liverpool emailed this morning in a bit of a panic. He is coming to France, for a wedding, with his family next August and he needs at least 7 bedrooms. Everywhere he had tried was full so he turned to me to sort it all out. Within 3 hours I had him fixed up with excellent accommodation at nearby Mas de Roux that suited his needs perfectly. Don't you wish you had a friend like me? (Err, no - Ed.)

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Because H&E like to eat and drink, and because we sort of like to as well (well blow me down - Ed.), we popped into Domaine de Baubiac at lunch time to pick up some of their delicious red. Nothing extraordinary about that, but when I asked him how much of his year 2000 (my favourite) he had left, he said not much. As an aside to myself I murmured that I'd better buy some more, when he helpfully suggested that he would put away as much as we needed. What a helluva offer. He mentioned a pallet which I think is about 600 bottles but I increased it to 2 because he hadn't counted on Jan! Our own private wine supply kept at the perfect temperature to buy whenever we want. Isn't that nice. Slurp.

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Because we had dinner with H&E on our own last night, and I couldn't stand another, (just kidding) Jan invited Bryan and Gill over for dinner as well tonight. It was a big one, and the Baubiac went down a treat.