An Unexpected Party

Today we slept in until noon, then by evening we were awake enough to go shopping at the grocery store nearby for the week. So when 8 o'clock rolled around (after another hour nap.) we wandered into Micheline's kitchen and expected to make some pasta we bought and some veggies to stir fry.

The next thing we know, Micheline appears and she is getting some white asparagus out of the fridge and saying a lot of things we only half understood. Next a man comes through the door with a plate of fish and then a woman with some more food, and there is a lot of French everywhere everywhere. Micheline hands us some silverware and plates and we set up on the back patio next to the garden, still completely unsure of what's going on. (Are we supposed to help? Eat with them? Cook something too?)

These people live down the hall and are Micheline's daughter, Carole, and her husband. They had just made food so joined us for the evening.

Tessa and I decided to just go with the flow, and soon enough we had a very interesting meal in front of us:

Small cantaloupes which we all agreed were overripe.

A blended aubergine with garlic. It's like a paste, but the sponginess goes away since its blended (with a blender), and the garlic helps, but I found it slightly bitter still. 

Small organic radishes. Carole's way of eating them were to slice the end like an X, stick some butter in it, and dip it in sea salt. Really, it's way better than it sounds!

White asparagus (previously cooked soft) dipped in truffle vinaigrette. We got a whole lesson on what exactly white asparagus was, because neither of us had actually seen it before. Look it up, it's about four times as thick as green asparagus, and it's white because when it grows, they keep putting dirt on it so the sun never touches it. I think.

And some lettuce. With vinaigrette.

After everything was back inside, Carole's husband got a ladder and picked a bag full of cherries from the tree because the birds kept taking them. They were tasty but not too sweet.

Now it's about 10 o'clock, sun setting, and in probably an hour or two, the kitchen will be busy with activity again like last night. Who knows.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

------

A wall of chocolate!! We will have to get some. This is actually only one of three walls around the supermarket. And a whole other wall of biscuits as well.

View on the Eurostar: (out of order, this came first.)

This was in the street when we left the store with our groceries, and so I took a picture of it.