We spent a lovely weekend with Will’s brother Dave and his girlfriend Rosie. They arrived on Friday morning and we collected them at Limoges airport. It’s about 1h 15m drive from our place if you take the windy backroads, so it’s not a bad drive. From there we drove to Brantôme, where the market was just finishing, so we strolled through it on the way to lunch. We ate at our regular place which was tasty as usual. Will and I were a bit upset when a new waitress took our order but thankfully, the cute waiter showed up shortly after so we got to stare at him though the rest of lunch. Lunch was compliments of Nan (Will and Dave’s) who sent some money along with Dave for that purpose – thanks Nan! Afterwards, we saw a bit more of the town before heading back to our place. We then did one of our local walks to show Dave and Rosie the area, which meant it was cocktail hour by the time we got back.
The weather has finally turned cold here the past few days; it was 11°C on Friday, 7°C on Sat and a high of 2°C yesterday with lows below zero at night. The upside is that it’s been blue skies and sunny, so at least we’ve been spared rain for a bit. We’ve been lighting fires at night to fend off the chill, which we did on Friday when we got back. We had dinner here and stayed up late chatting and playing cards. On Saturday, we mustered by midday and headed to Thiviers for lunch. It’s a smallish town on the other side of Brantôme; not as picturesque but still pretty. It is the Foie Gras capital of the Périgord Vert region and they have a market on Saturday mornings which is known for its truffles. The market was wrapping up by the time we arrived, so we had a brief stroll in the cold before deciding on a place for lunch. Actually, the choice was made rather easily since we only found one place that was open! Thankfully, they served great food but then again, it’s nearly impossible to get a bad meal anywhere here. Rosie ordered a brie baguette which contained nearly a full wheel of brie and nothing else, and Will was overjoyed to find a chicken dish on the menu. We stopped off at St Jean De Côle on the way home. It’s been named one of the 100 prettiest villages in France and it certainly lives up to the moniker. We then headed back to our place and lit the fire and started preparation for dinner.
We were joined by Sharon and James on Saturday night for dinner. I had been searching for butternut squash for the past few weeks and finally found a supermarket which had some. There are a number of vegetables that they consider “exotic” and that’s one of them. Anyway, I used it to make a curried squash soup which came out nicely. We had a slight blender malfunction during the preparation so ended up with some on the counter/floor but thankfully, most of it made it back into the pot. For dinner, we had confit de canard, a local specialty which comes in a tin packed with duck fat so it’s probably not the healthiest main but it sure tastes good. To accompany it, we had home-fried potatoes with peppers and mushrooms and Sharon made cauliflower cheese which was very tasty. Once our appetites returned, we broke out the cheese board and eventually demolished the lot.
James just moved here from the UK, arriving on Thursday, so this was our first time meeting him. He has worked in the music industry for a number of years and he showed off his musical talents by playing DJ for most of the evening. We had to get up early to get Dave and Rosie back to the airport, so we wrapped up the evening around 2am. We dropped them off on Sunday morning around 10am and made our way home where we lit the fire and then didn’t move for the rest of the day. So it was a brief but very enjoyable visit.