Last hike-Le Mollard

With dry and sunny conditions we took one more hike to the Vercors, the mountain chain I can see from our kitchen window and where much of our cheese comes from. We took a tram to the end of the line and from there started our hike up to about 1090 meters. It was an easy hike (not steep or rocky) and had many interesting things to see.

Several waterfalls at the start of our hike

We were pushed off the path by a herd of sheep making its way down the mountain. A shepherd was in the lead and a woman at the end with a couple of dogs to keep them on the right path. With snow predicted for this weekend, I think the farmers decided to finally bring the sheep down to where they could go indoors.

A traditional farmhouse in the Vercors. The left side is the "house" and the right side is for the animals. We were not sure if the right side was still used for this purpose.

For a different experience, this place was advertising "camping à la ferme"--camping on the farm in teepees and tents. Goats were grazing on the other side of the tents.

A final point of interest was a memorial to the French Resistance fighters of WWII. The Verscors was a center for the French Resistance until some 15,000 German troups came through the area and decimated the Resistance army, along with destroying farms and families.

We really didn't expect to see so much on our hike, but since the weather was nice and our initial destination of a farm up on the plateau came already at 11am, we decided to go further.

We are sad that this will be our last hike, but at the same time never thought we could hike this late into fall!

National Food Drive

Once a year, France has a national food drive. Volunteers hand out leaflets in all the grocery stores encouraging people to buy a little extra and give it to other volunteers at the end of the check-out line. It is a very efficient process since people can donate the food right in the grocery store

Saturday afternoon Otto and I with some other people from St. Marc's volunteered to hand out leaflets and pack food into crates. Like anywhere, some people don't want to take the leaflet, others ask what we are especially in need of (baby food, diapers, etc.). Some give generously, others not at all. One man commented that the government should be taking care of this, not volunteers. Another person who had paid for his groceries, had forgotten to buy extra for the food drive and so handed me 10 euros to buy something in the store. I bought a can of baby formula since I know that this is one thing many women ask for at the food pantry I volunteer at on Thursdays.

Last year 1,300 tonnes of food were collected in this area around Grenoble, the equivalent of 2.7 million meals!

Otto and Veronica (fellow St. Marc's member) handing out leaflets at the store entrance.

Christmas Market--Marché de Noël

This past weekend marked the beginning of the Christmas markets in Grenoble. Several squares around town are set up with wooden cabins that sell everything from Christmas trees to regional specialties to Christmas gifts (jewelry, wooden toys, winter accessories, etc.). The cabins are lit up with Christmas lights and Christmas music is piped in (much of it in English!). It is festive and fun to walk through.

This stand sells lights/candles.

Large honey spice cakes, often with orange flavoring are sold here (pain d'épices). They say that a large cake can take about 10 hours to bake. You are not obliged to buy the entire cake! The cake is cut into larger or smaller wedges and you pay according the weight of your wedge.

A Nougat stand--a traditional confectionery made of egg whites, sugar or honey and nuts.





The Christmas market is also a place to eat. An enormous pan of tartiflette is cooking. This is typical hearty mountain cuisine: cooked sliced potatoes mixed with bacon, onions and cheese.


And to drink. Here hot apple juice with mandarins is sold as well as vin chaud--a sweet and spicy hot red wine--an excellent drink to sip on when out in the cold.

Christmas trees are small--probably because they do have to fit in an elevator . . .

Walking back from the market, I notice a fellow transporting his tree back home on his son's scooter.

Beyond the Christmas markets, stores are decorated for Christmas; Christmas lights are strung across the streets and also in some of the trees. So yes, the holiday season is alive and well here too! We are still waiting for some snow though.

Cooking class # 8--Chutneys and duck in orange sauce

Today's class consisted of a lot of chopping in order to make the chutneys. The final product was both beautiful and very tasty.

All of them follow a basic pattern: chopped veggies, a vinegar (red wine, white balsamic, raspberry), a sweetener (honey, white sugar, brown sugar or a combination) and spices. The red onion chutney and the fruit (mango, pineapple and kiwi) chutney go well with foie gras (duck liver paste) or chicken and the mint/carrot/shallot/white and green pepper/ginger chutney goes very well with lamb or duck. Slowly cooking these combinations of ingredients over a low heat allows the vinegar to boil off, the chutney to thicken and the sugars to caramelize.

Cooking down the fruit chutney. The dark spot in the pan is not a spider but some star anise.

I took home three jars and since I wasn't serving foie gras --a specialty at Christmas time--Otto and I sampled them with some cheese and crackers. This turned out to be a nice combination.

From left to right: mint chutney, fruit chutney, red onion chutney

Canard à l'orange (duck in orange sauce)--if you like duck, this is a classic French dish. Normally an entire duck is cooked for this dish. We simplified things by using portions of the breast. The meat is seared and then a sauce is made of red wine/white balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, fresh squeezed orange juice and orange zest. The sauce is reduced and then orange segments and the seared duck portions are added at the end.

Our kids are not too keen on duck, so this became a dish for the parents! It is typically served with rice or steamed potatoes.

Hike to Chamrousse-Nov. 22

Every week we wonder whether we can still do a hike. As long as there is no rain (or snow in the mountains) and the sun shines, we can head out. And so we did today, to Chamrousse, a ski station we can see on a clear day from the streets of Grenoble. We took a bus up to St. Martin d'Uriage, a town at 700 meters. From there we headed up.

\On the trail there was a shelter.

--a perfect place to picnic, but it was only 10:30am so we had a snack here

Lunch at the top with a view of Grenoble below

On our way down we stopped at the shelter for a water break and some warm sun on our faces since most of the trail was in the forest.

Back down at the bottom where we needed to catch the bus back to Grenoble, we had time to drop in at a café in St. Martin d'Uriage. It was a real treat because the café goes back to the 19th century.

The inside still had a 50's decor. We were the only clients.
The owner's kitchen was behind the bar and I didn't see a bathroom, so I asked. She said outside, second door on the right.

It was a turkish toilet, in mint condition!

Long weekend in Paris--Nov. 17-20

I took a quick weekend to Paris to visit friends--Brigitte, who I stayed with, and Christiane and Jean-Michel who had me over for dinner Saturday evening. Some highlights:

Brigitte lives in Montmartre, a neighborhood north of the center of Paris. She lives in a very lively, but also very touristy neighborhood, just up from the Moulin Rouge and down from Sacré Coeur.

Just up her street is the grocery store from the movie, The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain.

Across from her apartment, a plaque on the wall indicates where Van Gogh lived for a couple of years. Plastic sunflowers on the shutters of the windows indicate the exact apartment. Brigitte says that bus loads of Japanese tourists stop here to take pictures.

Visiting the newly renovated Orsay Museum (a former train station, transformed into a museum in 1986 and now a renovation 25 yrs. later)--4 hours of winding our way through the museum . . . .

. . . with a final rest in the restaurant/café at tea time.

Friday evening we went to see a play followed by a light dinner on a péniche-- a river boat on the Seine. The boat was docked but would begin to rock whenever the larger tourist boats went by. On the main level of the boat you could buy wine, oysters, foie gras, charcuterie, chocolates, and cookies directly from the producer--sort of like a market on a boat. The upper level served as restaurant where you could sample all that was sold below. We were fortunate to get the final two places on the boat. Brigitte loves oysters, something I still have to develop a taste for.

Saturday morning we went to the top level (7th floor) of Galeries Lafayette, a large department store, to get a view of Paris that almost rivals that of the Eiffel tour. The advantage to not being as high as the Eiffel is that you get a better idea of how the city is organized.

We had lunch in an 19th century house, now museum housing 18th century art and furniture, the personal collections of Mr. André and Mrs. Jacquemart who got married and consolidated their fortunes. Although I had been there more than 20 years ago I had completely forgotten the interior. The picture above shows the "back door" of the museum.

Brigitte and myself, trying to capture a view.

Just one picture here of one of the rooms, this one being the "music room".

Before leaving Paris, Brigitte took me on a quick tour of areas in her neighborhood where tourists never go-- for example, the back side of Sacré-Coeur.


The trip back to Grenoble is a fast 3-hour train trip. In no time I am back to mountains and the calm of a smaller city.

Hike to La Montagne des 4 Seigneurs--Nov. 16

The morning was frosty so this was the first time this fall that we wore pants on our hike. We decided to hike in the foothills of the Belledonne mountain range, an area we have not yet done this fall.

Our destination was not the top of a peak but a fort which you can vaguely see (white spot in the trees). A mini history lesson here: in the 19th century, France thought it needed to protect itself from an Italian invasion. Four forts were built up in the mountains surrounding Grenoble. Previous hikes took us to the 3 other forts and this was the last one to visit. This fort was built on a mountain that was owned by 4 feudal lords in the Middle Ages. The funny thing is that there really isn't any fort anymore, nor was there ever an Italian invasion. During WWII the French Resistance fighters used it to stock munitions and then at the end of the war, they blew up the fort. Only a heavily graffiti-ed door and some stone walls remain. We had lunch on a grassy hill overlooking villages below.

On our way to the fort we walked through Romage, a very small village. The water spout above made us laugh. Usually this kind of thing provides drinking water, but this one had a sign that said that water was non-potable and . . .

. . . . do not 'rinse' your bikes in the basin! Yes, there is a mountain bike trail nearby.

Shuttered windows in the village

And an amazing garden, still in impeccable condition in the middle of November.

The good weather, warmest November on record according to last night's weather report, has certainly helped it. The garden had leaf lettuce, leeks, celery, swiss chard, carrots, artichokes (they are the plants wrapped in newspaper at the end of the garden), etc.

It is very nice to go through villages, an advantage to not hiking too high in the mountains.

Cooking class # 7--how to "lighten" a rich recipe

For the times when you want to make a "lighter" version (ie: a lot less cream!) of a French recipe, I made a blanquette de veau--"veal in white sauce".

The difference here is that the sauce is not white because 90% of the cream is replaced by pureeing the vegetables (onion, celery, carrots, mushrooms, fennel, and leeks) that have been cooking with the veal in water and some chicken stock. To the pureed vegetables, fromage blanc (a soft creamy cheese, like sour cream but low in calories and high in creamy flavor--0% fat) instead of cream is added, along with some of the vegetable and veal broth, tarragon, lemon juice, salt, pepper and some cayenne pepper. Carrots and mushrooms which have been cooked separately to retain their shape are added at the end along with the cooked veal. A very small amount of cream is mix in. The sauce is surprisingly flavorful and rich. Served over rice or pasta or potatoes, it is a very nice dish.

For dessert, I made "bavarois" --a Bavarian cream dessert. The cream has been replace with fromage blanc (0% fat) which is added to pureed fruit (raspberries, blueberries, currents), along with a bit of sugar. To make this seem somewhat like a mousse, Italian meringue (beaten egg whites to which a combination of cooked sugar and honey plus some gelatin) is folded into the fruit/fromage blanc mixture. Because of the gelatin, the cream holds its shaped. The cream is placed in a mold on top of a cookie base I had made earlier.

This is a very pretty and tasty dessert. The only difficult part was getting the caramel to mix with the egg whites. The temperature of the caramel has to be at about 120 degrees Celsius for it to mix well with the whites.

Cooking class # 6--Corsica

Saturday's theme was Corsican cuisine. Corsica is a French island, just off the southern coast. Since Corsica is close to Italy, Corsican cuisine resembles that of Italy. Corsica is also known for its sheep's milk cheeses, chestnuts and dried meats, particularly that of wild boar. Emily didn't think our kids would like the wild boar (although we have had this in a restaurant before), so she settled on a meatless pasta dish.

We made a first course (cream of pumpkin soup with pancetta and roasted chestnuts), main course (cheese and swiss chard cannelloni), and a dessert (chocolate chestnut cake).

Roasting chestnuts as a garnish for the cream of pumpkin soup.

Plated cream of pumpkin soup with pancetta and roasted chestnuts.
Anna was disappointed that we used a pumpkin for soup and not pumpkin pie!

Chocolate chestnut cake. I served it with vanilla ice cream. It was not a hit because I think it could have been sweeter. It was very easy to make--melted chocolate, butter, sugar and ground chestnuts. No baking required since it hardens in the fridge.

Making fresh pasta is very fun, but you do need to have time to do it! I made long sections of pasta, cut them into rectangles and then cooked each rectangle in boiling water for 1 minute. The pasta gets transferred to a towel where it then gets filled and rolled.

The filling is made from sauteed swiss chard, brucchio, the Corsican equivalent to Italian ricotta, salt, pepper, nutmeg and some chopped mint.



The cannelloni are placed on a thin layer of tomato sauce and then covered with another thin layer of tomato sauce. Cooked in the oven for 20 minutes and the dish is finished. If you like ricotta cheese, you would like this dish. The fresh pasta was delightfully tender!