Our French life - du boeuf

One week ago we decided to have some beef for our Sunday dinner, we don't have it often mainly because it is to expensive but also because we have yet to find a decent piece that our old teeth can chew, they cut it on the cross here for reasons known only to them, even the steak is tough unless it is cooked on the barbie, well someone kindly said try leaving it in the fridge for a week because the French don't hang their meat as soon as it is cut up it is in the shops so to speak, now I didn't like the idea of this but thought it was worth a try.

Well the beef was kept in the fridge for a week getting darker by the day and I was convinced it would be off by now but when I took it out of the fridge this morning it didn't smell bad at all, so I seared it and put it in a roasting bag with some stock, it cooked nice and slowly...The result was a piece of meat that was considerably more tender but there were bits that were still tough and chewy, one thing we did notice was it had a better more beefy taste that we were more used to - overall I think I must try beef from the butcher
/http://www.elliottsboucherie.com/
and see if there is any difference so will let you know.
 

French Life - What a service

Dear Readers,
You are most likely aware that my lovely hubby John as bad knees, he also doesn't like injections and I mean really doesn't like them, well I eventually got him to see a specialist, a very nice lady who told him that his knees were just about as bad as they can get and that she would try the injections in his knees but if she was honest surgery would eventually be his best bet otherwise he would be in a wheelchair, the thought of this is quite scary especially as our house has many stairs, our kitchen and dining room are on a different level to our living room and of course the bedrooms and bathroom are upstairs. It really is time to look for a property that is on one level but it seems so daunting and I am not even sure if we can afford to move, the fee's are so high for the estate agents and then you have to pay so much to the notaire it leaves you with such a small amount for the actual house, This is one that's looks perfect..

Anyway I digress... back to our visit with the nice lady, she informed us that we would have to get the injections ourselves from the pharmacy with a prescription and she would also give John a prescription for some knee supports on our way out along with paying a princely sum  (most of which we will get back via our Carte Vital ) 3 more appointments were made for the afore mentioned injections once a week for the rest of March, next stop was our ever friendly Pharmacist to get the injections, these are all ready in individual syringes and don't need keeping in the fridge, John was taken into the back to be measured for his knee supports, again we use our Carte Vitale, this is the social security card that we are entitled to as pensioners here which pays for 70% of our health care and we have to have a top up insurance for the other 30%.
This was at midday and the Pharmacist said to come back at 17h30 and they would be there and sure enough they were... now that is a brilliant service.
Next stop the till, now for our normal monthly medication we don't have to pay but the knee supports come under a different category and we were expecting to pay quite a lot, the knee supports price was 248€ but we only had to pay 32€ and that we can claim back from our insurance so win win I would say, but what do you think.
The upside is that John can walk much better with them and virtually pain free, the Pharmacist has nicknamed him Robot Cop, love it.

Please go to the bottom and click comment to leave your thoughts, many thanks, and if you haven't already done so please join as a follower, Merci Beacoup  

Our Life in France - And I wait

I look out of my dining room window and espy a world that I don't recognise, they tell me it is my garden but my garden is a wonderfully warm and colourful area where I sit on the decking sipping wine with my very best friend in the whole world who is my John, where we plan all the wonderful things we are going to do (one day) and reminisce about the past wonders that is our life together, the reason I don't recognise it is because it is not summer but this awful wintry watery late winterdom, everything is soggy yet the spring flowers are out due to our earlier attempt at spring which was just to fool us, so I stand here at the window like Miss Haversham waiting but unlike Miss Haversham my love will come.

Of course to make it happen I must get motivated to turn a sod or two, plant a mammoth amount of seeds for this beautiful floral display will not happen unless I put the work in, alas at the moment my will power is at a very low ebb as the afternoon telly is still beckoning me to cuddle into the chair with a warming fire to toast my toes leaving this comfort only to make even more comforting meals to keep us sustained, where my mind wanders to warm hazy days when I can go barefoot and wear sleeveless tops and lazily sit in the Jacuzzi with bubbles easing my old bones after a long fight with the weeds (Mauvaises herbes)
Tomorrow I will look out of that window and who knows it could be the very day that I say " it is time to get out there" and once again the daily conversations with my French neighbour will begin, hopefully this summer I will understand so much more, hopefully she will be pleasantly impressed.

So my dear readers - I wait

Our French Life - A milestone

Hello dear readers and followers,

Today I sort of reached a milestone in my French language learning, at approx 11h30 this morning the telephone rang and John answered it, I heard him say the usual "Do you speak English"  the lady on the other end clearly didn't and so he handed the phone to me saying " I have no idea what she is going on about".

I said Allo and the lady babbled so I said " vous parlez trop vite pour moi" so she slowed right down and I got that she was the secretary of the Doctor John has to see tomorrow regarding his knees and she was making sure he was going to attend and for him to bring last blood tests, x-rays and letter from Doctor.

Well I can tell you it was such a brilliant feeling finishing that telephone call having understood everything, I still struggle to put a sentence together sometimes, I seem to clam up, its like a barrier comes down whenever I am confronted by someone and I just want to become invisible, but one day I hope I will be able to say "YES" when I am asked do you speak french.

But if any of you are trying to learn a language the understanding part is the last to come, I am the first to say when asked that I speak a little French but one day when you realise that you have just had a conversation with a French person and understood it all then you also realise that you are improving or going in the right direction at least..

So 1. don't give up

    2. Always use the telephone calls as a free french lesson

    3. Never give up

Please leave a comment below as it helps me get further up the blog ladder.

Our French Life - A trip too far

Hello dear friends and followers..

I thought I would write today about our trip to Jersey, well we decided that we would pop over to the darling little island to get some new glasses, as you know the island comes under English jurisdiction and so they have have all the normal shops you would find in the UK Specsaver being one of them.
Ok we saved for months because even though they do the usual buy one get one free offer, we both have verifocal lenses, you would be amazed at how the cost mounts up with all the little bits and pieces.
Anyway, enough about our glasses it is really the trip itself that I am writing about.
To try and make the experience as easy and cheap as possible we decided to drive to St Malo  as that is where we were getting a ferry at stupid o'clock on the Saturday morning, we had booked a room at the Ibis budget hotel there for Friday evening and were quite looking forward to it, this was the first mistake, talk about basic, all the room had to offer was a bed, thankfully an ensuite and a very small TV on the wall. no chairs to sit on and only one pillow each - well the bed was as hard has bullets  when we looked it was just a box with an inch thick mattress, there was a bunk bed over the head of the bed which John kept hitting his head on, we did get two extra pillows but the TV was so far away and so small we could hardly see it.
Next we ventured downstairs to look for the restaurant, when we asked where it might be located we got a real look of shock on the receptionist's face, oh no we don't have one just a buffet breakfast in the morning, so we thought we would find a shop and get a sandwich or similar, we found an Intermarche in a complex where there were some restaurants and thinking of prior experiences where we struggled to find anywhere open in the evening we made the decision to eat at lunchtime instead so in we went and ordered a steak, the lovely waitress asked how we like it cooked, we both said well done, I don't mind my steak rare but a good vet could have got these going, NO a bad vet could have managed it. 
As we had to be at the ferry for 7am we had to get up for 5am so that we could fit breakfast in ( I must say the breakfast was excellent albeit a continental there was plenty of everything but you had to serve yourself even toast your own bread in a toaster, bearing in mind we stayed over so that we wouldn't have to get up in the middle of the night to get to the ferry on time, we gained absolutely nothing and lost a whole nights sleep 

We decided to go as foot passengers, the journey out was ok they provided a coach to the ferry but on the way back we had to walk and with John's poor knees this wasn't good, leaving Jersey was a bit of an ordeal, we had to take all outer clothes off and put in a tray with our keys mobiles etc to go through the x-ray machine, I went through the posts and no bleep then John went through and set it all off, it turned out to be his hearing aids, then my bag gave them cause for concern as well as me ( you always feel guilty even if you aren't) Mine was a very tiny battery in a torch on a keyring.
All in all it was a pretty traumatic time but at least we will have our new glasses and be well informed for our next visit..
The moral of the story is: 

1. Don't stay in a Budget Ibis Hotel
2. Don't go as foot passengers and take the car
3. Stay overnight in Jersey so that you don't have to rush about and you can see the sights
4. Don't go in the winter

Hope this helps any of you thinking of doing the same

Our French Life - January has gone

Feb 3rd 2016

Well January has left us already along with my birthday but I had a wonderful day thanks a million to my dearest Hubby and some very special friends (Pauline, John and Brenda), we went to an all you can eat Chinese buffet restaurant, then a little teeny bit of retail therapy followed by coffee and cake at our other dear friends (Sue & John) many thanks for making my day so special all of you..

But what a very mild winter we have had all told (just one or two frosts) lets just hope that mother nature hasn't been pushed to her limits and recoils with the winter later, now as I look out of my window into a very slightly untidy garden (I am sadly a fair weather gardener) I can see all the signs of spring, daffodils prancing in the wind on a superbly sunny day with a chorus of very yellow crocus dotted about to complete the symphony, not to forget the two oh so lonely snowdrops, bulbs of which were given by a friend who assures me that next year they will be more in their numbers as long as I don't dig them up by mistake...The birds have eaten us out of house and home this winter and are ever hungry, so much so that if there is nothing on the table they will send a couple of their bravest to our windowsill to attract our attention, i sometimes wonder, are they the same birds that alight for food every day or perhaps different ones that are passing through, I would like to think that just maybe they are the same ones all the time but we will never know.

Daffodils

Two snowdrops in among the weeds

Crocus as a grand finale

So here is February, normally a very cold month but I am already thinking about getting out into the garden and I have this overwhelming desire to sow seeds albeit indoors, I am a container gardener now as we have patio'd (not sure if this is a real word) over the veg garden but I still like to grow such produce as tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries and anything else that can be grown in a tub, oh yes and the chillies must have them, not sure if I should preserve them in oil or freeze them...how do you do yours my dear readers.

This summer we are going to put the Jacuzzi/hot tub in the gazebo next to the house and have our sitting area on the bottom patio, not sure if it will work but nothing ventured nothing gained, as we are very open and have direct neighbours both sides I am also going to try to grow shrubs and small trees in containers to try to make a screen, as much as I love our neighbours we do sometimes like a bit of privacy, and of course we need some sun shade but it is an area that is open to a cross wind so whatever we have there will have to have concrete shoes... I will take a before and after photo..

I have to move now as I am in John's way, he is putting steels up on our living room wall in readiness for the plasterboard, our walls are wattle and daub and nothing can be hung on them and it insulates the room too..speak soon dear readers and please leave a comment as I do so love to hear from you all.

Our French life - Winter has arrived at last

The winter and welcome guests

We are expecting guests, our dear friend Fernando who spends most of his time in America ( he is married to an American lady but is waiting for his full residency ) and his sister Chus who lives in Spain, 

After his long haul flight to Spain Fer (as we call him) set out by car with Chus on route to our house for a couple of days R&R with us, and this means partaking of a few bottles of the old vin rouge and the obligatory meal out, if you live in our part of France you will know that most restaurants are closed in the evening and only open fully for lunch but, we have a local hostelry that caters for lorry drivers and therefore while providing them with an evening meal is open for the likes of us too, needless to say the portions are good too in fact it is a veritable feast, that said, I must stress that just because they provide for drivers nothing is lost in the quality or presentation, the starter was as big as a main and a good feast was had by all..

        John with his apple tart

Fer with his profiteroles 

That was Wednesday and by Friday morning they were gone on their way to visit family in UK but not without us all having great chats and catch ups and so much laughing we feel like we have broken ribs..

After such lovely spring like weather the temperature has plummeted to below freezing and Le Meteo tells us that we are expecting snow during the early hours, I do not like the cold but I do get very excited about snow and could sit in the window all day watching it, something I used to do as a small child, and always loved getting my wellies on and being the first to make footprints on a freshly snowed upon field or if there were little animal tracks I would follow them in the hopes I would see the perpetrator, can you tell I lived in the country?

As I sit toasting my toes by our wood burner waiting with bated breath for the snow, I have a tinge of sadness for our dear friends who lost their beloved horse last night, 

R.I.P Tiffany, enjoy it on the other side of rainbow bridge. xxx

 

Our French Life - I almost forgot

I know forgetting is a sign of old age....I don't need reminding, it seems to be happening a lot lately, well I am putting it down to stress and lack of sleep due to the ongoing cough situation ..

Anyway let's get back to the matter in hand,
the thing I almost forgot, it was this:















This was the most amazing full Moon I have ever seen, it was the one on Christmas Day the like of which we haven't seen since 1977 and we won't see it again until 2034, I am hoping we will still be here to see the next one although we will be really old and wrinkly by then, but I do think our life in France is a far better more relaxed life than it would have been in England, I think we get by far a better health screening and care so that should give us a few more extra years - we are keeping our finger's crossed anyway.

The most stress we have had today, we went shopping for some large storage boxes because we have a store room at the end of a bedroom which has started to take over the said bedroom so we thought let's get some storage boxes, we travelled to our nearest Gifi and decided on the largest plastic boxes (2 of them) at 15.99€ each, we were quite happy with our choice, we then popped across town to Action, and! you have guessed it the almost same boxes were 9.98€ each, yep 6€ cheaper, So I have to bring in to play here one of my Mantra's for 2016, try to find the good in every situation, well to be honest Hubby reminded me by saying "go on then find the good in that" me not to be out done thought very hard for 5 seconds and said " we will need more than the two we have and at least now we know where to buy them cheaper" there was a mumbling as he walked on to the next aisle - bless him..he is still waiting for the day when he gets one over on me.

Have any of you ever grown one of those Amaryllis flowers, I was given one as a gift in bulb form, I popped it into a pot as instructed, for ages it did nothing, Then it started to grow and I mean grow, it reached 30 inches and then it bloomed..

Oh yes and it was supposed to be pink and it is clearly white but beautiful

Speak to you all soon x

Our French life - Superstition

3rd January

I know we are not supposed to take down the decorations until 6th January but once new year is over I always feel they are surplus to requirements, so down they had to come, I must admit we don't put an awful lot up - The tree of course with lights and a few other bits and bob's, some of which have been around since I was a child, Christmas was very special in our house but never seems to be the same now






It is a very old one but I might just get a new one for next year





John always struggles with the lights, putting them up and taking them down, I just let him get on with it, he has more patience than me.

All packed away for another year.
We have a fairly big Father Christmas but I forgot to take a picture of him and he has gone back into hibernation now.



As you can see it was John who took them all down and put them away, So while he was doing that I was cooking a nice Sunday lunch, just roast chicken roast spuds carrots and sprouts with stuffing and cranberry sauce, really enjoyed it, I tried to save the big glass dish from getting baked on by lining it with foil before cooking the chicken and roasters in it but it backfired as it took longer to get the baked on foil off and then had to scrub it, not one of my finer idea's

Must set the alarm tomorrow as we have been getting up later and later and although we are retired we do like to have a project or job to do on a daily basis, got to do the jobs while we still can :)

Hope you have enjoyed this instalment - if so why not go to join this blog and never miss one...

Our French Life

Happy New Year

Well it is the 2nd January and I would like to wish all my readers and friends a very Happy and prosperous new year, and to be really honest 2015 wasn't the best due to my health ( had a cough since July which they now say is Asthma) but onwards and upwards as they say.
I am going to try and post every week in 2016 about my life so bear with me as my life can be a little boring.

I    saw today on a friends Facebook page 12 steps for self care.
1.  If it feels wrong don't do it
2.  Say exactly what you mean
3.  Don't be a people pleaser
4.  Trust your instincts
5.  Never speak bad about yourself
6.  Never give up on your dreams
7.  Don't be afraid to say "NO"
8.  Don't be afraid to say "YES"
9.  Be kind to yourself
10.Let go of what you can't control.
11.Stay away from Negativity.
12.LOVE.
I am going to add no 13. Always try to see something good in everything
Now that to me is a good way to run your life I think...Thank you Carol Gibbon.

That's it for today, Please leave a message below as I love to hear from you,
Have a great day...