by Mike K-H

As you can see, our garden isn't quite ready yet.

...just give us time at home, instead of trying to make a living everywhere else.

One free autumn harvest...

Behind me is an unkempt deciduous woodland with several chestnut trees. Strictly, Marrons Glacés (candied chestnuts) should be made from marrons, a cultivated variety of chestnut with one fat, round nut per seed case. We selected only the fattest wild châtaignes from each seed case and did our best to follow a recipe which left out the important bits, like how to get the furry inner skin off. Too late, a neighour told us that the best way was to freeze the chestnuts and then plunge them in boiling water. 

Making Marrons Glacés is a slow business. You need to repeat the daily cycle of simmering the nuts in the syrup, then lifting them out and letting them dry off - at least three times. Also, you need to be very gentle with the nuts. We weren't, so we ended up with a lumpy paste. We also forgot about it for several hours while it was simmering, so we got a lumpy paste set in toffee. Still very tasty, but we had to make our usual trip to the local Super U to buy commercial ones for Aunt K.'s Christmas present. Maybe next year....

...and another

The champignons in our wood were not great this year, so we drove 5km to see Shirley & Gordon, our nearest Brit neighbours. 

First, we had to greet Eccles & Dolly (otherwise known as Wally & Dustbin), two young English setters, and explain to them that we had not brought any bones. That triggered a loud braying from Ivan the Terrible, so we had to walk over and stroke his big, black muzzle. 

After a bit of cosy human chitchat, we deprived Shirley & Gordon of some of their bumper crop of coulemelles (a 'parasol' mushroom with a cap that is often a hand span across). The stalk is not edible, and there's no point in doing anything fancy with the caps - just put masses of salted butter and a little garlic in the biggest sauté pan you have, and cook gently until juicy. Two each is a pretty good meal, with pain or baguette to mop up, and a glass or two of local red wine.

Have fun. 

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