two words: fig gratin

another action-packed day here at rue PV: L and i went for what was supposed to be a 1-2 hour excursion to sanzay, to go look at an old castle ruin; we got slowed down saying hello to the donkey who lives by the river (ten minutes), by some urgent blackberry picking (half an hour; plans are afoot to try to make a blackberry tart, if i can use the internets to remind myself how to make creme patissiere), and then we dawdled at the castle for quite a while (another half an hour), and then we got spectacularly lost coming home (an hour...) so all told it was a four hour excursion. but the castle was cool: thirteenth century, with a moat full of slime and everything. we did some language instruction on the way home: i taught her my six words of french (which curiously all seem to be food related), and she taught me how to say "Hello, how are you? My name is ____ and I speak perfect Chinese" in Chinese. We did numbers up to 100 in french; she has been learning french from M's little girl, but has been hampered with the numbers thing because so far miniM only knows how to count up to six herself. it's very cute.

on the subject of L and language (she is a native chinese speaker, and her english is excellent but a little funny sometimes), she came out with a classic today at lunch time; she was sounding out the labels on some of the food stuff we had in the apartment, and she got to my box of 'polenta instantanea.' she read it out in a thoughtful voice and said, 'huh, instantanea, is that place in middle east or somewhere?" we also had a bizarre conversation when she was setting off to buy ingredients for this blackberry tart; i told her we would need (among other things) some cream, and she looked at me like i had three heads, and said, i don't know what cream is. (me: um, well, you know, cream... it's like white, comes in a carton...). do you mean like half and half? (well, it's the half of half and half that's not milk). i don't know what it looks like (you know, like the white stuff you can whip and put on desserts) like whipped cream? (yes, but not whipped, just cream, you know, cream). i'm so sorry, i never see cream before. funny that someone would know about half and half and whipped cream, and not just cream. i think i am thinking about this way too much.

in the afternoon i had a petit nap (delicieux), did some more painting (charles' curtains are proving deceptively tricky!), and then most of the crew went out for dinner at the restaurant overlooking the lake, which was great fun. (i had mussels mmmmm..... and a warm chevre salad mmmmm...... and ham in port wine sauce mmmmmm..... with a fig gratin for dessert mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....) lots of wine, lots of giggling (the canadians in particular were on a roll tonight), and i am now at home in bed with a bulging belly and eight and a half whole hours in which to sleep before i promised krystle i would be up to do pilates with her in the morning (true confessions: i have never done pilates, except for this one wicked exercise which F. taught me which is a hip adductor thing that just about made my legs fall off it was so hard). so i am actually quite looking forward to it.

bonne nuit to everyone out there in internetland!