"No compassion, please"

Pascal said this when he was showing us how to take a fish off the hook (we were fishing). The boys asked if we should feed the rest of the worms on the hook to the fish. It struck me as very funny.

. . .

This past week has not been very exciting...it was one of those where it's so peaceful that you just kind of float around doing things, not thinking too hard about them.

On Monday, Bernard and I made pâté. Turns out what I thought was pâté last weekend was actually filling for des tomates farcies (which means, surprise, "stuffed tomatoes"). Now, I have to admit: I have not loved most of the pâtés I've tried, but they are very, very French, so I keep giving them a chance. When I asked Bernard if he had a good pâté recipe, I was passing along the enthusiasm my mom shared in an email.....so he and I made pâté.

As far as I can tell, the general recipe for pâté is this:
1 part lean meat (we used rabbit)
1 part kind of fatty meat (pork)
1 part fatty meat - by "fatty meat," I mean fat that has little streaks of meat in it (we used pork throat, which I'm still a little unclear about)
shallots
seasoning (we used parsley, salt, and pepper)
We started with the rabbit, which was a whole entire rabbit (but yes, minus the fur and skin). As memorable as it was, I didn't take a picture because ...you know, it still had its eyeballs and organs. Whoa. Our task was to get all the meat off the bones, which is one thing when it's a steak, or maybe a ham, but this was the whole thing: tendons, veins, and all. Bernard cut it in half and asked which half I wanted: the back half or the head. The head was bloody with a little eye and a tongue sticking out. No thanks. So we did that and then did the pork. He got out a meat grinder and we ground the meat up along with the shallots and parsley.

Anyway, it ended up being pretty good. Not much of a rabbit taste, according to Bernard (who knows what rabbit tastes like), but tasty nonetheless, especially on fresh bread with little cornichons (mini-pickles).

Later Monday we went on an intense bike ride: 27 km = almost 17 miles. This is not only more than halfway from my house to UNC, but also impressive because two years ago I wasn't riding bikes, and hadn't for seven-ish years because of a biking accident when I was little. Three cheers for overcoming your fears!

One afternoon, Jon took the boys and me to visit the Chateau de Langeais. On the way there, we stopped at another chateau, this one in a little village called Gizeu.

And here's the Chateau de Langeais:
Apparently the prison (which is almost right next to the castle) ...
...was "one of the most important strategic sites of Henry II's [remember?! Eleanor's second husband!] military set up, the most dangerous Capetian rival," according to the sign. Cool!!

Friday evening we were invited to go on a boat ride/barbecue with one of Jon's friends, and Pascal asked me to make another tomato pie. When I went out into the garden to pick the basil, I found that there were lots of unpicked ripe raspberries!
So I picked them, and ate them all. Most of them I ate plain, but the last few I mixed with yogurt, because I have fond memories of eating that at my grandmother's house. (She has raspberry bushes in her back yard.) This tomato pie was easier to make (the other one involved guessing quantities of grams and blending the filling with a smoothie/juice maker), but harder to bake. It turned out okay..."I prefer it like a pizza rather than a tart!" says Pascal. He insisted I take this picture:
as proof that my tart was part of a very traditional French picnic. Here are more pictures from the boat ride and barbecue:
Sweet little village.

I'm on a boat.

At one point we saw a hot air balloon floating over the little village and then down over the Loire. Cool!

This was how we cooked all the meat, because they forgot the grill. It worked pretty well, and looked positively Iron Age, except that the skewers are steel.

The sky was pretty as we were coming back.

Today Bernard left for Brittany to visit his family for a week. I'm happy for him that he gets to go, but I'm sad that I'll be without my bike riding/pâté making buddy for a while. Some people are arriving on Tuesday and staying through the end of the week, but otherwise I have no idea what my week has in store. I was surprised to realize this morning that I have less than three weeks left here! I'm excited to go to Montpellier, though. It's all such an adventure.