Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime – Café de France, Céreste

We have pledged to visit a different hostelry in the locale every Friday for the next year and bring to you, our passionately interested readers, our rating and assessment of each and every one.

Yes.  It’s a restaurant review.
We have two rules :
1. If there is a Plat du Jour (special of the day) one of us must order it
2. Rule one does not apply if the Plat du Jour is Andouillette.
(Andouillette is basically intestines wrapped up in a sausage skin.  I’ve never eaten it, but the LSH has resolutely tried it a couple of times, trying to figure out what the French see in it.  The last time, I sat in between the LSH and the ED as they both sampled andouillette in the Café du Cours in Reillanne.  The waiter had extolled its virtues, and convinced them that it was “very, very special.”  I might as well have been sitting in a cowhouse – that’s what it smelt like.  Both of them tried hard to like it, that day, and both agreed it was in a lovely sauce, but it still ..um.. tasted like it smelled.)
So, no, thank you France, you make great food, but we’re steering clear of the andouillette from now on.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
We are very familiar with Céreste, having spent three months of last winter there, and we are looking forward to re-visiting our favourite eateries there, all in the interest of research, you understand.  
The Café de France was the LSH’s favourite place to go for a cup of coffee to take a break from work.  It’s a modern but basic café, situated on the (busy) main street, with tables and chairs outside which catch the winter sun very well.  They’ve always served food of some sort, but at the moment, the chef/manager from another bar up the street is working there.  His own premises suffered damage in a fire just before we got here, and he seems to have come to some arrangement with the owners of this place.  Keen to support him when times are bad, we decided that the Café de France would be our next TGIL venue.
The sun was beaming down, it was a cosy 15C, so we (the LSH, Granny and I) settled ourselves at an outside table and indicated we were going to eat.  There was a Plat du Jour, of Salmon fillet with tagliatelle, but I fully expected to be offered something else as well.  However, something got lost in translation, because after setting our table, filling our water glasses and enquiring if we wanted anything to drink, three plates of Salmon Fillet with Tagliatelle in a lemon cream sauce were brought to the table.
Now I’m not great at eating fish, but it seemed churlish to send it back, so the three of us tucked in.

It was simple but tasty, the salmon was nicely cooked, with a good texture, the sauce was magnifique!  The baguette was warm and mopped up the leftover sauce very well indeed.  The only negative was that some of my pasta was not quite cooked.
We had a choice of desserts, Tarte Normande – an open apple pie – or Coulant au Chocolat, a chocolate pudding with a gooey, sticky inside.  Granny and I had the Tarte Normande and the LSH had the Coulant au Chocolate.  The tarte was good, served with a little Chantilly creme on the side and with a little caramel sauce.  The coulant was the winner though, the LSH said it was the best he’s had, and he’s tried it in a few places!
(photo from recipesallworld.blogspot.com)
We all had coffee to finish, served with those skinny Speculos biscuits that I love.
This lunch was typical of many cafés in France, simple food, well presented, and great value.  The cost for a main course and dessert was €12 per person, and the coffee was €1.50.

Star Rating (out of 5) :

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮ (prompt and efficient, despite being quite busy)
Food : ✮✮✮ (The food was good but not outstanding and I had to take off a star for the undercooked pasta)
Value : ✮✮✮✮✮ (I don’t know if we will find better value, but we’ll enjoy trying)
Ambiance : ✮✮✮✮ (very pleasant sitting in the sun, but I know the inside is not as nice)
Highly recommended if you’re traveling along the N100 between Apt and Forcalquier at lunchtime on a sunny day.  They also do a good panini.

Bootylicious!

I’ve had a “bootylicious” kind of week.

Marie-Christine gave me the name of a French website, sosabots.com, which sells a wide range of boots, including Renegades, so I ordered a new pair of size 2Ws, for Aero’s front feet.  They arrived within a few days, so it was time to, finally, throw out the “Holey Renegade” left hind boot which Flurry wore through on the Big Trek.   Not before I stripped it of its assets, mind you – I now have two spare cables, a spare heel captivator and a spare button thingy from the front, complete with two teeny screws, AND I’m keeping the very-worn-but-not-actually-holey right boot as a complete spare.

Goodbye, Holey Renegade!

The day after I dumped it, I took Flurry for a hack.  He’s been a little tender in his feet recently, so I put on his front boots.  We were nearly back at the farm, climbing up a rocky ascent, when he stumbled.  “That’s a boot gone” I thought, and I looked down.  Sure enough, the front left was missing, but fortunately I spotted it on the ground, a short distance behind us.  I hopped down to pick it up and glanced at the front right – what the heck?  The boot seemed to have twisted around completely, so that the heel captivator was sitting on the front of his pastern.

On closer inspection, though, he had lost the entire sole of the boot – the cables had not actually snapped, but had been pulled apart.  Well, crap, where did I lose that, I thought – we had covered about 5km and I didn’t fancy walking all the way around, looking for half a boot.  When I thought for a moment, I figured it must have come off fairly recently – we’d had a very short stretch on a road a short while back, and I definitely would have noticed if it was missing at that point.

Much to Flurry’s disgust, I set off back down the rocky slope to search.  I could practically hear him saying “But… but… I can see the stables from here… why have we turned around?”

Good decision, though – there was the half-boot, right down at the bottom of the slope, where we had crossed a dry watercourse.

After tying the bits of boot onto the saddle in a makeshift sort of way (note to self, fasten an old flash noseband onto the D-rings for future boot-hanging) I remounted and we made our way back up the slope again.

He felt fine without his boots, I suspect I needn’t have bothered putting them on at all.

I spent some time that evening re-assembling the broken boot.  Getting the mud off was the biggest problem and took ages.   Once it was clean and dry, I had it fixed in no time, thanks to Renegade’s very useful “how to” pages.

The incident made me a little doubtful about his Renegades, for the first time.  I have no idea why the boots came off and the cables were pulled.  We covered much rougher, rockier ground on the Big Trek with no issues and I’m wondering have his feet changed so that the boots no longer fit as well as they used to.  I decided it might be time to start experimenting with his Cavallo Sport boots, which I bought as emergency spares back in April – up to now, the only use they’ve had has been as a poultice boot for Aero!

The next day, I put them on him and took him for a short walk.

They’re not as easy to put on and take off as the Renegades… or maybe I just need to get used to them.  The velcro closures are easier to use then the Renegade straps, though.

After the very short walk, his heels looked shiny – I think they would be rubbed if we went for any sort of distance.  The amount of feather (and associated mud) on Flurry’s fetlocks is probably not helping, and may need to come off if we want to give these boots a fair trial.  Although we bought Cavallo “socks” which are supposed to protect the heels, I suspect the boots won’t fit over the socks, but I will try them next time.

I might be selling a nice new pair of Cavallos soon…

For the moment, though, I will try him barefoot and hope he feels good enough to go bootless.

Sunday Stills

This week’s challenge for Sunday Stills was “Let’s Take a Closer Look.”  Macro time!  My initial reaction was to borrow one of the LSH’s big fancy cameras, but then I decided to see just what I could do with my Nikon Coolpix P300.

I had a very tolerant subject.

He was a little shy at first, but then the eyes came out for a look around

 he decided it was safe, and off he went

like a greyhound from a trap.

Sort of.

I think this leaf was a map, he seemed to be reading it for a while.

I tried one with the camera’s built-in flash.  I probably blinded the poor chap, but apart from the blown out highlights on the shell, it seemed to sharpen things up a bit.  I think if I could have angled the flash differently it would have worked better, but, even so, it really did pick up the colours.

I tried a few “face-on” shots, but was caught with depth of field on the antennae.

I’m pretty sure that this is the variety of snail that gets eaten as Escargot, but hopefully that fate will not befall my model.

He was released back into our garden, after one final shot beside the iPhone for scale.

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