But we’ve now found a new source, and that just may bring us together on the quail question.

On Tuesday afternoon, I had suggested that we drive up to Castelnaud (about 10 kilometres north of Daglan) to the boucherie that’s become our favourite place to buy meat. (Reasons? A clean and pleasant store; good selection of meats and prepared foods; a nice turnover, so you know things are fresh; and pleasant people.) We had no specific purchase in mind; we just wanted a few things for the next couple of lunches. Here’s what the Lacroix boucherie looks like:

The Lacroix boucherie in Castelnaud.

They were out of rabbit legs (one of our favourites), but they did have nice-looking pork chops, and we bought two of them for lunch today (Thursday). And the shop also had several quail, all tied up with butcher’s twine and covered with a nice-looking strip of bacon. The butcher told us that we didn’t need to open them up, as he’d already salted and peppered them inside their cavities. So with that, we bought two.

Almost as soon as we got in the car to return home, Jan expressed concern that having just one bird each would be too little for lunch. She mentioned this once or twice on the way home, maybe once or twice that evening, and maybe once or twice on Wednesday, when she was preparing to roast them. But what was done was done, and so she just pressed on. One bird each.

To accompany the quail, she defrosted a couple of slices of polenta that we’d made earlier and frozen; they just needed re-heating. For a vegetable, she sliced several Brussels sprouts finely, and sautéed them with lardons (small strips of bacon). As for the quail, she first browned them in a bit of duck fat, and then roasted them for 25 minutes in a hot oven (200 degrees Celsius, or almost 400 Fahrenheit) with the duck fat poured over them, so that they were nicely browned and cooked through, but not at all dry. I had mine with a few spoons of red currant jelly, which I think goes very well with mild meats like roast chicken. Or quail, come to think of it. And here’s my plate at lunch yesterday:

Clockwise from top: Polenta, Brussels sprouts, and quail with red current jelly.

There was still a bit of knife-work involved in eating the quail, but once on the plate they seemed much larger than the birds we used to buy in Toronto. So one quail each turned out to be just fine. And the taste was just fine too — which no doubt means that quail will be joining our list of favourites.

Here in the Greater Daglan Area, we are pretty good about dealing with stress. For one thing, we don’t have much of it.

For another, there are lots of positive aspects of life upon which we can focus. Anyway, failing all else, we can simply relax and let it roll off our backs. Let me give you a case in point, dealing with a real-life stress for me, and using our female cat Amélie as a model for proper relaxation techniques.

The stress  I’m dealing with is one of anticipation, and it faces me almost every morning. Typically, I have a small bowl of Greek yoghurt with some bran cereal for breakfast (one reason that I can consume such substantial lunches). And there, staring me in the face each morning, is this:

Soon! A new look!

Even if you don’t understand much French, you can probably figure out that the cereal maker is warning us that a new packaging design is coming soon. But when is “soon”? What will the new design look like? Will we be able to find the cereal on the supermarket shelves? Obviously, this is a stress of anticipation, with lots of unanswered questions. So, to see how to cope with this, we now turn to Amélie. Here she is, settled on the carpet in front of a cozy fire, beginning to de-stress:

She nestles into place, before the fire.

However, sitting up so properly can be quite tiring. So she obviously decides that it would make more sense to let loose, and allow her muscles to relax further. Like this:

She takes some of the stress off her muscles, by reclining a bit.

Having gone this far, Amélie wisely decides to go for a flat-out relaxation posture, removing any hint of stress. Like this:

She is now in full-relaxation mode.

Looks pretty comfortable. I might even try that posture myself this afternoon, and force myself to stop wondering how the new cereal box will look. But first, I think I’ll enjoy lunch. We’re having roast quail.

Since we were planning on having Boeuf a là Bourguignonne  for lunch today (Sunday), we thought that duck-fried potatoes would be a nice side dish. So my wife Jan walked over to Daglan’s 8 à Huit convenience store, and returned home proudly carrying a fairly large can (or tin, if you prefer) of duck fat, known around here as graisse de canard. Here it is:

Relax -- it's only 700 grams of duck fat. Not a kilo!

One of my tasks this morning (after I had finished peeling the skin off the caps of a bunch of button mushrooms, for the Boeuf a là Bourguignonne) was to cut several potatoes into small cubes. Then I brought a pot of salted water to a rolling boil, and dropped in the potato cubes for five minutes. After that, it was a simple matter of drying off the cubes on paper towels, and putting them into a hot pan of duck fat. Here we are, at an early stage of frying:

The little cubes of potato are nestled in the duck fat.

Now a real chef would probably use his or her fingers to turn the cubes, but I haven’t yet developed the necessary fireproof coating on my hands. So I used a knife and a tablespoon to gently turn the cubes as they cooked, trying to get them golden brown evenly. Generally, it went pretty well, as this photo shows:

The potatoes are getting a bit more colour.

As the cooking neared completion, however, the browning started to take place very quickly, and I must admit that some of the little cubes got darker than I wanted. We decided to do a taste test, so I pulled out one of the cubes and had Jan try it. “Terrific!” she said. So I rescued all of the cubes from their duck-fat swimming pool, drained them, and salted them. Then it was on to the plates, with the beef and some broccoli. Here we go:

Potatoes, at bottom. Broccoli, upper left. Beef, upper right.

Was it worth the effort? For sure. Next time, I think I’ll boil the potato cubes for one minute longer, and take them out of the duck fat one minute earlier. But the idea is right, and we’re certainly not suffering from a shortage of duck fat. So as our friend Rob would say: “Bring it on!”

Today was bright and sunny, with little wind, and there are hints of green on the limbs of some trees. For instance, consider this photo of a field outside the hamlet of Gaumier, taken by my wife Jan this morning:

A field of green, with Gaumier on the right of the picture.

Admittedly, the forecast is for rain tomorrow, so it’s not all sunshine and lollipops around here. However, Jan and I are prepared. As I write this, there’s a glass bowl in the fridge, full of chopped vegetables and big chunks of beef, marinating in a nice Burgundy wine. In other words, there is Boeuf à la Bourguignonne on the horizon for tomorrow’s lunch. Not to mention cubes of potato sautéed in duck fat, plus chocolate mousse for dessert. Who cares if it rains?

The basic good news is simply that the restaurant is open again after its traditional winter break; the really good news is that Chef Sylvain Guilbot has expanded the menu to include more choice, both in the tasting menu and in the “ideas of the moment” selections that he changes frequently. Here’s a taste of what we enjoyed, and why:

Chorizo is the bacon of sausages. Like bacon, Spain’s chorizo sausage improves the flavour of almost anything, especially if you enjoy a bit of spice. (For instance, I like to slice chorizo thinly, fry it lightly, and then pour beaten eggs over it, for scrambled eggs.) Today our soup was made with topinambours (Jerusalem artichokes) with slivers of chorizo at the bottom. (I will have to try slivering the chorizo for my scrambled eggs in future.)

A nicely decorated bowl of soup.

Duck shows up again. One of the two choices for plat principal in the “ideas of the moment” menu was a hamburger, Périgord-style. You guessed it — made with duck. So naturally, Jan and I chose that as our main course. The “hamburger” patty was made of ground duck meat, which was then topped with a thin slice of smoked duck breast (serving the traditional role of bacon) and a much thicker slice of seared foie gras (serving the traditional role of a nice fatty cheese). Finally came some sprigs of roquette (rocket, or arugula if you prefer). Our verdict was unanimous: this was absolutely delicious! Have a look:

You can see the slice of foie gras just peeking out.

Cahors wine can be drinkable. Quite drinkable. I had wanted a bottle of red Sancerre with our meal. However, our hostess, Madame Guilbot, apologized and explained that the restaurant hasn’t yet received its full shipment of wines, because of our recent icy weather. Instead, she recommended a Cahors wine, quickly adding that it wasn’t at all typical of wines from that area south of us — namely, heavy, so dark they are almost black, and very tannic. Neither Jan nor I like them at all. But Madame certainly knows her wine, and we finally gave in and ordered a bottle. And you know what? It was quite good. (If you’re interested, just Google “Mas del Périé” and you’ll discover what this vintner can do with Malbec grapes, the dominant grape in the region.) Here’s a look at the bottle:

A lighter, fruitier Cahors wine, without all the tannins.

Where’s the chocolate? It wouldn’t be Valentine’s Day without dessert, and of course dessert pretty much has to include chocolate. So that’s what we ordered. Here’s mine — a “profiterole” that (unfortunately) looks a bit more like a chicken pot pie, with a ball of rich chocolate ice cream (and several caramelized hazelnuts) sitting inside the pastry,  which in turn was sitting in a large puddle of chocolate sauce.

A bit odd-looking, I thought, but full of chocolate flavour.

And then it was time for the short walk home. And who should we see in front of our house, wondering where we were? The truck driver who delivers our wine (we order it online). How’s that for timing? Just ducky, if you ask me.

Still, we do have to read lists of ingredients very carefully, because various versions of wheat proteins are worked into a huge variety of common processed foods. (Did you know that wheat is a major ingredient in most soy sauces? Seriously.)

Recently on a trip to the supermarket, we discovered some sauce mixes that are gluten-free, and thought we’d give them a try. Of course you can thicken sauces with corn starch, or by making a roux with gluten-free flour, but the mixes promised a bit more, including more flavouring. So we bought the packages for white sauces (which I tried successfully with my version of blanquette de veau) as well as for brown sauces (see the photo).

It's gluten-free, and it seems to work.

Late last week, we had bought some meat at the butcher’s shop we like in Castelnaud, about 10 kilometres north of Daglan, and planned to have the veal chops on Sunday (yesterday). My plan was to sear the chops, and then bake them for a fairly short time in the oven with a sauce chasseur, or hunter’s sauce. Here’s how it worked out:

First I melted some butter, and then sautéed a finely chopped shallot in the pan. Then I poured in a generous glug of Armagnac, and flamed it off. Once the fire died down (you’ll be pleased to learn that no damage was done to the house), I added some sliced white mushrooms, a cup or so of chicken stock, a splash of white wine, and a bit of tomato paste (which we always buy in a tube, and you should too). Once this was bubbling away nicely, I added a couple of tablespoons full of the Maizena sauce mix, stirred for a minute or two and — voila! — there was a pretty creditable sauce chasseur.

The chops looked lovely and brown after a short searing, and then I put them in the oven for 20 minutes with the sauce, and with the pan covered in aluminum foil. The result? The sauce was actually delicious, and the veal tasted very good — although it was a bit tough. We think the problem was over-cooking caused by the oven-baking; what I should have done was to simply sauté the chops in the pan.

In any case, the meal looked pretty good. Here’s Sunday lunch, including green beans and sliced potatoes that I had finished in a pan with lardons (small pieces of bacon), salt and pepper, paprika for colour, and a touch of piment d’Espelette (a mild French pepper) for a bit of heat.

It's the real deal -- a veal meal.

If you have a particularly sharp eye for nice touches, you will have seen the Laguiole knife at the right of the plate. (Laguiole knives are named for their original place of manufacture in the south of France, but are now made by any number of manufacturers. In any case, we love ours, and I now sharpen them after every use.) You might also have noticed that the knife is leaning on an unusual knife rest — something in silver that looks like a pig with a very long body — and you would be right.

We have a set of four of these babies, which were gifts from our good friends Kathy and Keith, who, like us, are charter members of the Wild Forest Pig Contrada. That’s the mildly famous tri-nation organization (Canada, the U.S., and France) that we founded (with help from several other friends) on a bike trip to Tuscany in the fall of 1997, and which flourishes today. Here’s a close-up of the handsome pig:

A handsome fellow, and quite useful too.

These knife rests are brought out only for special occasions, like Sunday lunches. Or any time we have a nice meal at home. Okay, to be honest, that’s fairly often.

We began with the 18-kilometre drive to the spa where we have our aquafitness class on Saturday mornings, followed by a shopping trip to the Carrefour supermarket in Gourdon. No problem. I believe the technical term for the road conditions would be “track-bare” or “centre-bare,” if not even better.

Then this afternoon we took the same drive into neighbouring Cénac that we had taken on Monday morning, when we weren’t feeling very confident as the car made its way up the long and icy hill. Again, no problem. Virtually all the ice is melted away.

To give you a quick idea of what it’s like now, here are just a few photos from our trip this afternoon. First, the road out of Daglan:

Heading out of Daglan, towards Cénac.

A bit further along, we come to the turn-off for Bouzic  (as well as the panoramic tower, if you’re interested). But we bear left and follow the main road:

To the right, Bouzic; for Cénac, stay left.

Finally, we’re on the hill that lies between Daglan and Cénac. As you can see, the road is virtually all clear, with bits of ice and snow on the sides, and only occasional patches of ice where the road doesn’t get much sun:

Heading up the hill, it's smooth sailing.

We’ve got our fingers crossed that we’re now headed out of winter — or, at least out of the season of icy roads. One of our friends heard that we are due to get snow on Monday, but the (relatively) trusty Méteo France email we received this morning isn’t calling for snow in the immediate future, and in fact predicts a gentle warming trend. As I said, fingers crossed.

We were returning from an aquafitness session at our regular pool, and a bit anxious to get home quickly because we still had a fair amount of work to do to prepare lunch. Along the road between Bouzic and Pont Carrall, there is a huge amount of road construction taking place, with the road reduced to a single lane in some stretches, with alternating traffic lights. So the pace was already much slower than normal. And then, just before we reached Bouzic, we encountered this:

That's me on the right, trying to negotiate with the driver. Fat chance!

Now it’s not unusual to see a convoi exceptionnel in the Greater Daglan Area, including the transport of some incredibly huge agricultural equipment. But usually, there’s no problem. You slow down a bit, you might pull over a foot or two onto the shoulder of the road, and that’s it. Not this time.

The truck carrying two pre-fabricated housing units was stopped dead on a narrow country road. On one side, a ditch. On the other, a ditch and some nasty looking rock outcroppings. There was no way I could go around, not without the risk of scraping the side of my car. So I climbed out and walked over to the driver and his helper, who were removing a heavy piece of equipment off the back of the flatbed trailer.

When I asked if there was a problem (thinking that their truck had broken down), they said no — but then went into a great song and dance about how they were waiting for the proprietor of a nearby campground, and they couldn’t move. Not at all.

I suggested that if they just drove the truck forward by 50 metres or so, my car (and any others behind me) could easily go around them. No dice. The driver was insistent about staying put, and argued that if he moved forward for me, other cars might come behind me, and he’d have to move for them. (It didn’t make any sense, but he was pretty wound up by this point.) So we were stuck.

By this time, two more vehicles had pulled up behind me, and a couple more vehicles had arrived from the other direction. Everyone was stuck, and no one was looking too happy. Immediately right behind me was a delivery van, and when I told its driver that the truck would not budge, he went along to argue some more. Again, no success.

Instead, the driver of the van suggested that we just turn around, and drive back several kilometres to a turn-off that takes you into the village of Saint Martial de Nabirat, over some pretty narrow and twisting back roads. So that’s what we did. Once we reached Saint Martial,  we turned onto the D-46, which in turn led us to the D-60, which of course led us back into Daglan.

And so we arrived at home much later than we’d expected, reminded once again that in the countryside of southwest France, patience is indeed a virtue.

Our day began with the phone ringing at 8 a.m. (a bit early, don’t you think?). It turned out to be a truck driver from Souletis, the company in Sarlat that cuts and delivers our firewood. They had a delivery scheduled for us this coming Friday morning, but the driver wanted to know if we’d like the wood today. Sure we would!

In fact, Jan had phoned a couple of days ago to see if our delivery could be made earlier than Friday, because the weather was continuing very cold and we were running out of wood fast. The woman at Souletis had just laughed — no, they were far too busy.

But as the driver explained when he arrived at our place just before 10 a.m., the icy conditions in the Greater Daglan Area have meant that the trucks simply cannot make certain of the scheduled deliveries, because they can’t get up some of the hills. So the company is delivering to customers they are able to reach.

Now that Jan and I have some experience with our splitter, we’ve established a routine for handling all the firewood. Jan starts picking up the wood that’s been dumped on the road in front of our house, while I sit on a little stool just inside our garage door, ready to operate the splitter. She gives me the larger logs that need to be split, and I feed in the logs and then pile up the split pieces. Meanwhile, Jan starts stacking up the smaller pieces in our garage.

The result is quite a mess of bark and splintered wood (mostly oak) around the splitter, as you’ll see in the photo below:

Our splitter, with the resulting mess on our garage floor.

But the good news is that once we’re done, an entire truck-load of firewood has been properly split and stacked, just waiting to be carried upstairs as needed to our fireplace. This morning we began our firewood assembly line just before 10 a.m., and finished at noon. Here’s the result, in our garage:

A nice couple of stacks of firewood -- all split and ready to go.

And with that, it was time to head into the house, warm up our frozen feet, enjoy a kir, and get set for a great lunch — Jan’s homemade lasagna. Delicious as always. Or maybe even better than usual, since we were both pretty hungry.

As reported in “From Siberia, with love,” we had a decent bit of snow on Sunday, but nothing dramatic by Canadian standards. However, we have had some drama that started yesterday (Monday), as we headed to nearby Cénac in my front-wheel drive Volkswagen for a bit of shopping. Whereas the Subaru cleverly delivers power only to the wheels with traction, and thus cuts through snow beautifully, the VW uncleverly spins and skids.

We managed the climb out of our little valley without much incident, though I could tell that our grip on the road was tenuous. Eventually, we reached the main road that heads into Cénac over a very, very long hill. Again, we managed the climb (and the long descent) without much incident, but without feeling very comfortable either.

So after our shopping was done, my wife Jan suggested that we take the “flat” way home — crossing the Dordogne River, driving through La Roque-Gageac, crossing back over the Dordogne, and driving through Castelnaud and then St. Cybranet.  So we arrived home safely, although we had one heart-pumping incident as we entered Daglan a bit quickly, braked a bit too suddenly (to avoid another car, heading straight for us), and activated the car’s ABS system.

The problem really isn’t that we have a lot of snow — we don’t. The problem is that because there are no snow plows, and no salters, the snow gets packed down by cars and then gets icier and icier. Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I drove to the déchetterie to unload some garbage and recycling, and found it was almost impossible to leave again, simply because of a very gentle incline in the road. Finally I succeeded by backing up, getting up some speed on the flat road, and then spinning my wheels crazily as the car climbed up and over.

So the long and short of it is that we are more or less stuck. This morning, we cancelled our aquafitness program (the spa is about 18 kilometres away, with quite a few gentle hills along the way). I’m hoping that the brilliant sunshine will melt more of the ice on the roads, over the next day or two. Unfortunately, it remains quite cold, so I’m not sure how much actual melting will take place.

Meanwhile, it’s not all bleak. For instance, we’ve seen some beautiful landscapes, as in this photo of the Dordogne River that Jan took yesterday as we drove out of La Roque-Gageac:

The Dordogne River as seen from La Roque-Gageac.

And late yesterday afternoon, at the suggestion of her friend Julie, Jan tried out a bit of tobogganing on our street, which has a bit of a gentle slope on the way down to our house. Since we don’t actually have a toboggan, she used a metal tray, and did manage a couple of decent slides. Here she is in action:

Not quite the Winter Olympics, but a bit of fun.

On the plus side, we now have enough firewood in the garage — courtesy of our neighbour Vincent — to last us until we receive a major delivery of logs on Friday morning. At least, that’s when the wood is supposed to arrive.