To Market, To Market, To Buy a Fat Pig

Actually, it was a fat sausage from l’Ardeche, and it was purchased at the Bedoin market this morning, along with a lot of other things, but it reminds of another pork near-catastrophe I failed to report on at the aperitif portion of the Fete Votive evening, when the whole rack of hams (hundreds of pounds of them) plunged into the ashes and all the petanque players ran to help rescue them, but of course they (the hams, not the petanque players), and the rack they were on, were bloody hot, so not a lot happened for a moment or two. The whole crowd was mesmerized – it was like that scene of the moviegoers in Cinema Paradiso. Glenn desperately wanted to video the event, but thought it would be unseemly. So you have only my verbal account.

Back to today, which has been uneventful to this point (5:50 pm). We got back from the market around 11:30 or so and immediately began preparing lunch, which was a very photogenic and delicious spread. We had a soft Banon cheese from the flanks of Mt. Ventoux, wrapped in chestnut leaves (art directed for the blog by Rosanna) and another gold-medal semi-firm cheese the name and provenance of which the cheese purchasers (Rosanna and Glenn) could not remember. We had another beautiful green salad of oak leaf lettuce, a tomato and basil salad with a new local olive oil, a green bean-beet-chevre salad, sourdough bread, black and green olive tapenade, black and green olives, and the sausage mentioned above, which had a very meaty taste.

Much dozing passing itself off as reading followed. I am on to the biography of Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee. I have just got the ancestors out of the way and Edith herself safely through her teens so I am hoping that the fun is about to begin. Peter has almost finished the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Glenn is plugging along on the John Irving, and Rosanna is tearing through the New Yorkers I brought. Peter and I are now at the Bar du Cours, Glenn is pedaling in the neighbourhood, and Rosanna is making eggplant parmigiana. No doubt its portrait will be taken. As Peter and I were driving here, we noticed that the pottery shop in Beaumont du Ventoux was open and we stopped to look around. A few purchases were made. I was gifted a purchase I had intended to make. I believe it was for the quality of my efforts to carry on a conversation with the artisans (husband and wife), which included a discussion of the Olympic Games (and pointing out Vancouver on a map of the world), of the weather in Toronto (similar map assistance) etc. etc.

Tomorrow Glenn (and possibly Peter) will be making an attempt at Mt. Ventoux we think. It may depend on the wind, which has been gusty today, although the weather is now fine (it was overcast earlier) and not so gusty.