It looks like Spring and warm weather have finally arrived. The last several days have been glorious – warm and sunny afternoons but still a little chilly at night. I think I can put my coat away! With the sun, the flowers are coming out. There are red poppies growing from rocks, mimosas (bushes with bright yellow, pompom-like flowers - not at all like the mimosa trees we have in Texas)
are in bloom and fill the air with fragrance, iris are about to bloom all over the yard, and the apricot and fig trees are coming out. Grape vines are sprouting at our house and in the vineyards all around Cotignac. It’s wonderful to see life emerging.
We’ve been enjoying the markets and are trying to pace ourselves with all the fresh produce that’s available. Mike has made some wonderful dishes. He’s enjoying trying new recipes from the Provence cookbook that we found in the house. So far he’s made a carrot dish with black olives. It was great partly because the carrots are so fresh they still have dirt on them. They even sliced differently. We had a roast chicken with fresh herbs stuffed under the skin – very yummy. And, the chicken came with the head and feet still attached! But the best thing yet is a fish dish he prepared early in the week. The fish is left whole (but cleaned) and placed on a bed of coarse sea salt. The fish is then completely covered with more sea salt so that you can’t see any of the fish in the pan. It looks like a huge pile of salt. It’s baked for a half hour and the salt forms a sort of crust. When it’s done, you crack open the crust, dust off the fish, peel back the skin and – viola! – the best fish ever….and I do mean ever! Needless to say, we are eating very well and this doesn’t include the fabulous cheeses, yogurts, fruit, honey and wines. …just one more food story. We were in Toulon yesterday and my lunch came with dessert. I choose a soft Corsican cheese that is pressed into a basket, sliced and served drizzled with local honey. A splash of raspberry coulis and it was masterful. I almost licked the plate!
We’ve had mini excursions including several lovely walks around Cotignac. One took us by an old chapel – Chapelle St. Martin. Another went to a monastery on the hill above us. We went to the perfume factories in Grasse and learned how perfume is made. It was very interesting and I bought some perfume – made possible courtesy of a gift from my staff before I left. Grasse turned out to be a charming town and we enjoyed our visit. Yesterday we traveled to Toulon to learn about the World War II invasion. Toulon is a mixture of new and old buildings because – as we learned – so much of the old city was blown up during the war.
There is a war memorial on the very top of a mountain in Toulon. The trick was to get to it. There was a VERY narrow and winding road all the way to the top. The road hugged the side of the mountain with one side a rock ledge and the other side a shear drop to the sea. As we got closer to the top the road seemed to disappear into the sky. It was very unnerving. Mike did a great job navigating it. We agreed that it was, hands down, the worst road we’ve ever been on and we’ve driven tiny lanes in Ireland and mountain roads on the edge of the Alps in France. Nothing compares to this one. The good news is that, first, we made it safely and, second, the view from the top was spectacular. The war memorial was also very informative and gave us a much better appreciation for the impact of the war on the south of France.
For those of you following the tire saga, it’s still not over. We went to Nice and left the car to have the new tire installed. The tire, as you may recall, was shipped from Germany just for us. When we returned to the dealership to pick up the car we were informed that the wrong tire had been sent. It seems that the front and rear tires are different and they had shipped a front tire when we needed the rear one. [heavy sigh] So, the correct tire has now been delivered and Mike goes on Friday to try – one more time – to get the tire issue resolved. Keep your fingers crossed. And I won’t even start on the story of UPS delivery (or not) of our rail tickets for Spain.
And on our final note for this blog, we learned how to correctly pronounce the name of our town. It seems that we’ve been saying it wrong all this time. We thought it was Co-tig-nac. But noooo. It’s Co-ti-gnac. The “gnac” sound is like cognac. Glad we learned this early on in our stay!
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