Don't be judgmental.

Put your judgment aside.

I took the kids to McDonald's here.

There is one fast food place here. One fast food place for miles around. It is McDonald's. I think it is a novelty here. My kids spotted it the minute we got here.

No Subway. No carryout pizza. No other fast food. No food to pick up as you drive around in your car. (I have never seen a French person eating in their car. The idea probably horrifies them.)

So back to the kids. I took them the first day we got our car. I had promised them dinner out and I promised them McDonalds. So I just combined the two.

I have to say, I didn't feel like I was in France for a moment.

We have gotten that out of the way. Now we can move on.

To continue reading you still need to keep an open mind.

I was at the grocery store and I wanted a quick and easy dinner. Just throw something on the table type dinner. I saw a fajita kit and I bought it. The kids love tacos and fajitas at home.

Guess what? Old El Paso makes a different fajita kit here than in the US!! Apparently Mexican food is different here.

In my French fajita kit were 3 things:

-8 flour tortillas

-sauce packet of thick red sauce to mix in with chicken

-packet of seasonings to flavor the creme fraiche (there is no sour cream here)

The box suggested that I buy chicken, lettuce, tomato and creme fraiche. Ummm, what about cheese. Cheddar cheese? Fajitas definately need cheese. So I started looking for cheese. I found the package of cheese pictured above. It was the only thing resembling cheddar that I could find. (And noooo I don't really know what I was doing looking for cheddar cheese in France. Goodness, I said no judgment!)

So I made the fajitas. You know what. They weren't bad. Everyone ate their dinner.

Except the cheese was terrible. Sort of like Kraft singles. Bleh. The kids wouldn't eat the cheese. So if the French think that is what American cheddar tasted like, well they won't have a very good impression. At all.

Fête de la Vendage

A nearby town was having a Fête de la Vendage on Sunday.

It means party of the wine harvest or feast of the vintage. Something like that. You get the idea.

At the same time they were having a vide grenier (literally means empty attic). Antiques mixed in with household crap, umm, I mean precious stuff.

These two events combined drew lots of people.

Of course, there was lunch. I had a grilled sausage on a baguette. You picked what you wanted to go on your baguette. Some of the kids got bacon on their baguette.

Here is a picture of lunch.

Below is a picture of the vide grenier. It went down several streets. It took us quite a while to walk through all of the streets.

They also brought out a wine press. They were pouring stuff into water bottles. Wine? Grape juice? We got a sample and it tasted very sweet. We bought a water bottle full for 2 Euros. We are pretty sure it is grape juice.

Below are some pictures of the wine press. I love the tractor that brought the wine press to the middle of town.

roasting chestnuts, eating walnuts and picking bay leaves

We have been gathering chestuts from the yard. This 200 year old yard amazes me.

We have 2 kind of chestnuts in our yard. Thanks to google, I learned that one kind is edible but the other kind is not.

Above are the horse chestnuts. They are not recommended for eating. They are used for medicinal purposes. They are all over our front yard. I just leave them. The kids have used them to throw at each other.

In the picture below Joey is holding the chestnuts for eating and roasting. These are in the back of our yard, near the abandoned chicken coop. (I think it is a chicken coop, maybe it is a pigeonnier). They are covered with a really prickly thing. We just pick up the chestnuts that have fallen out of the prickly thing. Yes, prickly thing is the technical term.

I saw chestnuts for sale at the market. Don't ever remember being at a market and thinking, "I don't need to buy that, I have lots of them in my backyard."

Below is another picture of chestnuts. In the middle are chestnuts we collected on a frisbee. (We just happened to find the frisbee in the yard. We don't have a chestnut collecting basket!) On the far right are some of the chestnuts I roasted.

So what have I done with the chestnuts? So far I have added them to stuffing for roasted chicken. If you have any other ideas, let me know! I have lots and lots of chestnuts.

I can't forget about the walnuts. I collected a bunch from the yard today. Lots of them are still on the ground inside the black casing. I left those alone. I just picked up the ones that had come loose from the black stuff. Black stuff is another technical term.

Tonight when I was cooking dinner I had a glass of red wine with some walnuts. Very nice.

For desssert we had walnuts with cheese purchased from the market today. The cheese was neufchâtel. Delicious.

We also have a bay leaf tree. It is quite large and healthy.

I think I want a bay leaf tree back in Michigan. I will have to look into it. Does anyone have one?

Below is a picture of Joey and Ellie in front of the bay leaf tree by the carriage house.

Here is a better picture. Seriously, look at all these bay leaves!

fabric sale

French fabric on sale? Where?

Let me back up. The owners of the house stopped by to change some light bulbs (yes, we are wimps) and do some pool maintenance. The wife dropped the husband off to do the work and she sped off to a fabric store that was having a sale. Ummm, where?? When she got back she told us exactly how to get there. Good thing - because it is a fabric store next to some factories. We never would have even known it was there.

So mom and I set out to find the fabric store. After a few roundabouts, we found it. It was true, quality French fabric on sale. Lots of fun shopping.

I have some fabric to carry home! I keep reminding Rod that at least it isn't fragile.

And no, I don't know where I am going use any of it yet. But I will put it to good use. I just love it.

Look at those scissors!

The first 3 rolls of fabric behind the scissors are mine, just waiting to be cut.

Sometimes unexpected things are more fun than you could have imagined.

Any idea what this is in the backyard?

Any ideas why this small pool was put in? It is too small for a swimming pool.

Our best guess was that it was used for a fountain. But then the steps didn't make sense.

Fortunately the owners solved the mystery for us. At the end of the 19th century, the owner at the time was an eye doctor. He loved eating eel so much that he put in an eel pond. The owners think the steps were put it so the eye doctor could walk down the steps with a net and catch a fresh eel for dinner.

The french even have a name for it: anguillere.

Eel pond.

no sports

My kids are not in any activities. It is too early. They are still learning the language. (Ok, that is my excuse)

Joey, my sports fanatic, get lots and lots of recess time at school. I think he plays soccer for hours each day at school.

We are never racing off to baseball practice, dance class or swim team. (I didn't even mention the all consuming hockey team.)

I can't believe how peaceful my life is.

La Foire aux Vins

Wine Fair!

Both of the big grocery stores in town have cleared out the school supplies to make room for the wine fair.

Both stores put out a circular detailing the wine. One is 80 pages, the other is 86 pages. Just about wine. The picture above is from the Leclerc catalog. Mind you this is a grocery store, not some fancy schmancy vineyard.

Next to each wine, they list the temperature you should serve the wine at, the years you should drink the wine, how many bottles they have of each wine and what foods are best to pair with each wine.

I had picked up several bottles of wine. I didn't really look at the catalog until after I got back from the store. One of the bottles I bought isn't good until 2015. That had not even occured to me when I was buying the wine. (I am pretty sure that I am embarassing my brother by saying all this!) I am going to have Rod take that bottle home the next time he visits. He is pretty good at packing wine. It will be fun to open the bottle in a few years.

They have 11 catagories of food to consider:

apertifs,

charcuterie (sausages)

foie gras (yes, this has its own category!)

fruits de mer (fruits of the sea)

poisson (fish)

viandes rouges (red meat)

grillades (grilled food)

viandes blanches (white meat)

gibiers (game)

fromages (cheese)

and desserts

Phew. A lot to consider. I had no idea.

And there is even more information. For some of the vineyards, they also highlight the location, climate, number of hectares and type of dirt.

On an unrelated note, look at how they post prices. They use a comma where we use a decimal point. 12,90 instead of 12.90. Yeah, that has confused Katie and Gabi in math.