Sunday Stills – The Old Barn

I think I had a clear advantage in this weeks challenge – Provençe is full of old barns!

This one is a two minute walk from my house.  Maybe it’s not really a barn, but it’s an agricultural building of some sort!

The biggest challenge here was getting a shot which didn’t have a phone or electricity cable running through it.

See what I mean?

A little further down the road, we’ve got this :

but I have to confess that the stone building behind it with the gaping windows was calling to me.

I went all arty and B&W :

What do you think?

I came back and edited this post to include this beauty – I couldn’t leave it out!  We passed this in the Isère region when we were doing our trek across France last year.

The epitome of an Old Barn, don’t you think?

For more Old Barns, visit Sunday Stills and see what everyone else has captured.

Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime, Cafe du Commerce, Forcalquier

A lot of our local restaurants have taken holidays in the post-Christmas lull, including our first choice for today’s post.  Undaunted, we drove the 16km to Forcalquier in the never-ending search for lunch and settled ourselves in the sun in front of the Café du Commerce in the town’s main square.

The menu du jour, for a starter, main course and dessert, was a trim €14.00 and gave us two options for our main – it’s always good to have choices!  We both decided to go with the set menu and placed our orders with the waiter.  The starter was velouté du potiron (pumpkin soup), the LSH opted for the salmon for his main course and I went for the faux-filet de bouef – (faux-filet is the same cut as sirloin).

I have to confess here that I forgot to take a photo of the soup, but it looked pretty much like the soup we had at Nice Airport the day we left for our Christmas holidays – even the bowls were the same!

It tasted good, a little bit sweet, but that’s pumpkin for you.

The salmon came with pasta and vegetables.  I liked the way this was presented, the veggies were thinly sliced and lightly cooked and then tossed up with the pasta, with no heavy sauce or anything.  All very light and healthy and it definitely didn’t overpower the salmon.

The faux-filet was presented with chips and some salad.  Very plain, but very tasty.  I wasn’t asked how I wanted my steak cooked – fortunately “rare” is what I would have said, but I know that wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste.

There was a good range of desserts on offer.  The LSH ordered Isles Flottant – light, fluffy meringue sitting in a pool of custard with a caramel sauce poured over it.  The waiter apologised when he served it – it was in the wrong sort of bowl!  Quelle dommage!

Thankfully the bowl did not affect the taste!

I went for the old reliable Creme caramel…

…which was yum but not all of the sugar on top was caramelised

This was our first Thank Friday It’s Lunchtime lunch of 2013.  The sun shone, the food was simple, French and good, the town square was delightful – where else but France will you find a gorgeous old building like this housing the local Cinéma?

I finished lunch sipping coffee and getting arty with my photographs.

Yes, it’s good to be back.

Ratings :
Food – ✮✮✮
Service – ✮✮✮✮
Ambiance – ✮✮✮✮
Value – ✮✮✮✮

Misty Walk

There’s been thick fog in the valley for the past couple of mornings, making it cold and dark until close to midday.

This morning I took the dogs for their walk on the hill behind Reillanne (all the time watching out carefully for wolves, of course) in the hope that the hill-top would be above the fog.  It almost was…

and the mist swirled around while I walked along the ridge, giving tantalising glimpses of blue sky,

before closing in again.

It made some pretty effects through the leaves of the nearby bushes, which I was greedy enough to want to capture

but to be honest I failed to do it justice.

On the North face of the ridge, the mist had frozen on the pine needles and spider silk.

It was damp and chilly and there was no view to admire today, so we didn’t hang around.

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