Cold, cold, cold …

Snow fell here yesterday – a rare occurrence, just light showers of snowflakes drifting down on the freezing north wind.

In the garden this morning we found a few little pockets of snow remaining amongst the straw we put around the broad beans to protect them. The broad bean plants look a bit sad. They were all doing so well, but they’ve been badly affected by the cold nights we’ve had. If these leaves don’t recover the plants will probably grow up again from the base… I hope.

Some cold garden images …

Fallen passiflora leaves frozen to the table and our neighbour’s almond tree silhouetted against the clouds. It’s hard to believe that within about a month this tree should be blossoming.

A warming soup

It’s hard to believe, too, that we often eat lunch in the garden, in sunshine, in January. Today we came home as soon as we could to this warming velouté of mushroom and squash (the recipe is on this French/Greek blog). It was delicious with Aveyronnais bread from our local boulangerie.

The work that needs doing in the garden – mostly clearing ground so that we can put goat manure on it – will have to wait until the weather gets warmer. It was still minus 2 C at 11.30 a.m. today – that’s much too cold to garden!

A cold market day

Market day - the busiest day in the village! The north wind felt very cold and one woman in the queue at the charcuterie stall told us that when the village Christmas tree was delivered this morning from the mountains it still had snow on its branches.

And today there was the added excitement of a huge Bulgarian lorry reversing out of the narrow street, between the stalls in the place and out onto the main road. The lorry had delivered the cobbles which will be laid in the streets in the Pioch, the oldest part of the village, which is being renovated. This caused much questioning among stallholders and customers (including me) about why stone had to be brought from Bulgaria when there are plenty of quarries nearby.

We bought fruit, fennel and Lactarus deliciosus mushrooms, known as saffron milk cap in English and lactaire delicieux in French.

Lactarus deliciosus

I’ve never eaten these before, but one of the advantages of shopping in the village shops or the market is that there is always someone nearby to give advice about how to cook something. So I asked, and had the simple reply that I should fry them in olive oil and add chopped parsley and garlic. So this is what we had for lunch, with pasta. The mushrooms tasted very good (although not as tasty as the cèpes we had in October) and had a nice almost crunchy texture and saffron colour.