salut du dordogne
hello again, LJ!
words are still not coming easily to me: i'm stupidly tired in the evenings, or more accurately most of the day, which i suspect is due to my imbibing less caffeine than i'm used to, & more alcohol. (the latter, i feel i should emphasize, is wine rather than anything stronger, & doesn't flow with quite this frequency except in france en vacances.) but i am sucking it up & typing through to clarity-or so i flatter myself, at least!-because i'll have to do that for real come september, & i could use the practice.
i took the boy's hoodie spelunking today, down in this crazy grotte ornée: an enormous underground system of caves, with cave paintings & "cave pearls" which are grains of sand coated with... i was going to say "calcium rather than whatever actual pearls are coated with," but then i looked it up & apparently actual pearls are coated with calcium carbonate? so, you know, whatever other calcium compound is kicking around in subterranean water.
the cave paintings needed a bit of handwaving here & there, tbh, as this was not lascaux but rather some other site whose name i can't quite remember, & there was apparently not a consensus as to whether one particular painting was of women or bison? FAIL CAVEARTIST IS FAIL. but more excitingly, there were some super-cool paintings of horses, dappled like appaloosas, & surrounded by handprints-the painters had apparently filled their mouths with pigment, put their hands against the cave wall, & spat/blown around them so that the prints appeared in negative.
in further foodie news, we had dinner & then supper today, as opposed to lunch & then dinner, so our midday meal was pretty intense: salad with foie gras & things, cassoulet & nut cake. the best bit, though, was hands-down the apéritif: a local specialty called fénélon, which is basically a very aromatic red wine, with some add't'l crème de cassis & eau de noix. (for whatever reason, they are very big on nuts around here-well, nuts & duck-so practically everything you eat has one or the other. in addition to the menu above, which supports my assertion, we also had candied walnuts with our apéritif, a mise en bouche of melon soup laced with yet more eau de noix, & chocolate-covered walnuts dusted with cocoa powder to accompany our café!)
i am meant to be getting up in not-quite-five hours, since we're talking about making the reasonably long drive to toulouse tomorrow: admittedly i can sleep in the car, as i'm not driving, but nonetheless it's probably time to close this out. but before i go, imma ask you guys something, because it came up today & i'm curious: what was your family's car trip music when you were kids? like, in my family we listened to a lot of beatles over the summers, driving around cape cod-i can probably sing along with any song they ever wrote, & what's more, do it with relish, because it's not just the lyrics but the liking that's ingrained in me. so if not '70s folk & classic rock, what was your poison?
and on that note-hee!-to sleep. <3
words are still not coming easily to me: i'm stupidly tired in the evenings, or more accurately most of the day, which i suspect is due to my imbibing less caffeine than i'm used to, & more alcohol. (the latter, i feel i should emphasize, is wine rather than anything stronger, & doesn't flow with quite this frequency except in france en vacances.) but i am sucking it up & typing through to clarity-or so i flatter myself, at least!-because i'll have to do that for real come september, & i could use the practice.
i took the boy's hoodie spelunking today, down in this crazy grotte ornée: an enormous underground system of caves, with cave paintings & "cave pearls" which are grains of sand coated with... i was going to say "calcium rather than whatever actual pearls are coated with," but then i looked it up & apparently actual pearls are coated with calcium carbonate? so, you know, whatever other calcium compound is kicking around in subterranean water.
the cave paintings needed a bit of handwaving here & there, tbh, as this was not lascaux but rather some other site whose name i can't quite remember, & there was apparently not a consensus as to whether one particular painting was of women or bison? FAIL CAVEARTIST IS FAIL. but more excitingly, there were some super-cool paintings of horses, dappled like appaloosas, & surrounded by handprints-the painters had apparently filled their mouths with pigment, put their hands against the cave wall, & spat/blown around them so that the prints appeared in negative.
in further foodie news, we had dinner & then supper today, as opposed to lunch & then dinner, so our midday meal was pretty intense: salad with foie gras & things, cassoulet & nut cake. the best bit, though, was hands-down the apéritif: a local specialty called fénélon, which is basically a very aromatic red wine, with some add't'l crème de cassis & eau de noix. (for whatever reason, they are very big on nuts around here-well, nuts & duck-so practically everything you eat has one or the other. in addition to the menu above, which supports my assertion, we also had candied walnuts with our apéritif, a mise en bouche of melon soup laced with yet more eau de noix, & chocolate-covered walnuts dusted with cocoa powder to accompany our café!)
i am meant to be getting up in not-quite-five hours, since we're talking about making the reasonably long drive to toulouse tomorrow: admittedly i can sleep in the car, as i'm not driving, but nonetheless it's probably time to close this out. but before i go, imma ask you guys something, because it came up today & i'm curious: what was your family's car trip music when you were kids? like, in my family we listened to a lot of beatles over the summers, driving around cape cod-i can probably sing along with any song they ever wrote, & what's more, do it with relish, because it's not just the lyrics but the liking that's ingrained in me. so if not '70s folk & classic rock, what was your poison?
and on that note-hee!-to sleep. <3