Thursday, September 5, 2013

some recent photos, bought my first truffle.....

Bonjour

Hope you are well.

Jane and her mum, Jules, are heading to Paris tomorrow for a few days so I thought I would get a blog out there before they go. With two small kids to be looked after, I won't have much spare time on my hands. I'm sure we'll have heaps of fun, looking forward to it.

The weather has been fantastic over the last week with temps hitting 30C and I'm still doing laps daily in the pool. It was Connor's birthday on the  26th of August and Jules was here to share it with him. 



It's not often you get to blow out your birthday candles in the South of France.....

 
Earlier in the day Connor had fun unwrapping his presents. This one was a toy petrol station.... in Connor's words "Car, car, car!" 


Here is the unwrapping of the racing car shirt, ....."Car, car, car!"


It was my duty to help put the petrol station together, not as easy as you would think...


At one stage Connor had decided to give Sophie's baby company in her basket...cute hey

 


It's been really nice showing Jules around the sites of The Lot and the Dordogne, which is where I took this photo. The legendary Beynac castle is there across the valley behind Jules, what a vista..


It was a hot day so headed up to the nearby fortified village of Domme where we had a well deserved ice cream. Here is Jules and Soph taking a rest in the shade next to a church there.  Soph was wearing the top Nanna bought her, very French...

 

I've turned into a walker. Just about every morning I head out for a walk of between 2 and say 6 km, and sometimes even close to 10km I'd say when I walk with Denis and Tony. Now those guys are impressive, I'm talking say 6 to 8km power walk nearly every day, yes I did say power walk. I get to see some amazing sun rises and the country around here looks so good early in the day, and then there are the animals you see along the way, red squirrels, deer... Below is one of the sunrises I saw from the back of the house during this last week.. 


I went to the Souillac markets last Friday and bought my first truffle. Here is Tony and I having a good whiff......

 
So that night I decided to cook a batch of spaghetti carbonara with the whole truffle, beautiful! Got the thumbs up from Jules and Jane so I was happy. Below is a close up of the truffle beforehand, just after I washed it, looked like a small pine cone. Apparently the summer truffles are not as good as the winter ones. This one cost me ten euros, I expected to pay much more. 


The following day we all went to the markets at Sarlat. The words, "now that's not a truffle,...... this is a truffle"......come to mind. Check out the size of this puppy..... The width of it was about size of the palm of my hand, all for just 489 euros, or close to $750 Aussie dollars.


Here is my classy looking wife and my gorgeous daughter in a park in Sarlat later on that day..


Here are the girls and Connor in the centre of Sarlat next to our mates the bronze ducks... (by the way we're having duck and foie gras tonight, being Jules' last night here and all)


And here is a nice photo of Jules and the kids just after lunch in Sarlat..... We had duck that day too, we just can't help ourselves! They sell duck and foie gras everywhere here, it's delicious!


Denis and Tony invited us around for brunch during the week. Here we are under the shade of a tree.....


They have a an absolutely beautiful spot here in the hamlet. We were saying if their house was in Australia it would have already been in a bunch of house style magazines for sure, at least Country Style anyway.. Here is Tony showing Jules around..


Ahh, and it's been a while since we've shown you a picture of Keralley and Ziggy, they're well....... Here they are with the kids at the back of the property here....


Bye for now, best wishes
Jane, Soph, Connor, and me, cheers!

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