Saturday, 1 November 2008

November harvest / moisson de novembre

It's been so cold and wet this week that it's been hard to believe it is still autumn and not winter. We're still picking tomatoes - about 5 kilos this week - but it feels like time for winter vegetables now.

nov harvest leeks rainbow chard_1_1

rainbow chard and some earthy leeks

Il a fait froid cette semaine et on ne peut pas croire que c'est toujours l'automne. On continue de ramasser des tomates - 5 kilos cette semaine - mais ça semble comme le temps pour les légumes d'hiver.

leeks_1_1

I made soup with the leeks, an onion and a couple of potatoes. / J'ai fait de la soupe de poireaux en ajoutant un oignon et deux pommes de terre.

Cave Coopérative La Carignano

Gabian is a wine-making village with its own special terroir and a couple of years ago the cave coopérative celebrated its seventieth anniversary. Now it seems that La Carignano will close at the end of the year. There are several independent wine-makers in the village, but it will be sad not to have the cooperative. We went there this morning and bought some white wine - Gabians - in bottles and a bag-in-box - and some almond syrup for adding to white wine to make kir. This syrup can also be used in desserts so I made trifle.

almond apricot trifle 1_1_1

Almond and apricot trifles

In individual dishes I put some madeleines (or sponge fingers) and poured on a tablespoonful of almond syrup to each dish. I spread a spoonful of apricot jam over the madeleines and then topped each dish with mascarpone mixed with a tablespoonful of Armagnac (or you could use crème fraîche) and garnished them with toasted almonds.

almond apricot trifle 2_1_1

We don't eat desserts very often, but these will be a weekend treat when we have friends to supper this evening.

Olive harvest

olives roquessels_1_1

In all the olive groves, along roads, in gardens and on roundabouts in villages and towns, the olives are ripening now. The olives in this picture are on one of the trees at Roquessels which I photographed for my post in June when they were in flower. Soon the olive oil producers will take their harvest to the mills. It seems a good time to write about the olive tree and its importance to the countries around the Mediterranean. And it's obviously of interest to this blog. So over the next week or so I'm planning a series of posts about this vital tree and its history.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's always sad when independents of any kind go to the wall - for whatever the reason. At least you still have the others.
The freezing weather here has put paid to any chance of my olives ripening, as expected!

Anonymous said...

I am drooling. The leeks look divine. We made potato leek soup last week, and I'm hooked!

And the dessert.... oh, the dessert. YUM!

Anonymous said...

strange weather continue here, It's like summer today!!!