My birthday was a typical day here at the chateau. I got up and started working on our painting project in the morning. At around 1pm we stopped for lunch. Since it got sunny last week, we have been having lunches out on the back patio under the columns. Mike made a tomato sauce (tomato, red pepper, eggplant, zucchini) with an egg in it over pasta and we had a mache salad with beets, kiwi and tomatoes.

For the “special” birthday dinner, we started with Kir Royals on the patio with creme fraiche and smoked salmon and caviar (caviar is pretty normal here, cheap and easy to find). Even though it was just the six of us, we still ate in the fireplace room, since I love it so much.

Mike made a chicken caccitore with potatoes and I made an unsuccessful Oeufs a la Neige (Eggs in snow?). The neige turned into a baked pancake when it should have been a fluffy snowy thing that sits in english cream. Luckily, Linda had made a walnut and chocolate flat-cake, so we put that in the creme. I drank Negrita and coke all night, the others had their choice of red or white wine.

After dinner, we talked by the fire and I got some beautiful soaps and some stiff french linens from everyone. Mike got me treats, popcorn, the Negrita and coke and some mache seeds for taking home. It was a lovely day to add to the list of lovely days here. It feels like everyday is my birthday!

by Azure

After the first attempt at making brocciu failed, Mike called the farm to get more supplies for my birthday. Do you want to good news or the bad news first, he asked me after he got off the phone.

It turns out, the milk they had given us was pure, unpasteurized, whole goats milk. Which, on another note explains some things about the bowel movements that were happening on the days when I thought I was drinking 2%. The good news was that they had all the supplies, so Patty drove Linda, Cryus, Mike and I to go get more milk and petite lait.

It was 6pm when we arrived and she happily gave us all that we needed for only 3 euros. This time I got enough for two more trials, one slow cooked and the other faster cooked. She filled the buckets we had brought and sent us on our way.

When we got back to the chateau we realized that we had forgotten the fresh milk. Linda, Mike and I piled back into the car and drove back out to interrupt their dinner and retrieve the milk for brocciu.

After dinner, around 11pm, we started the first trial. This one was slow cooked. I added less salt this time and the proportions were perfect. It got hotter and hotter and finally when the bubbles parted we waited longer and sure enough the brocciu arrived! I scooped in out and put it in my little pot and couldn’t wait to taste it. I got a little spoonful and put it in my mouth and it was so so bad. It tasted just like curdled milk. I had to spit it back into the pot.

Try number two, we figured we had overcooked it time before, but being almost 1am by this time, I had to heat it quickly. It went faster this time, I didn’t spend as much time watching it. I feel like I am getting to know the milk, so I don’t need to. Anyway, when it heater up, I didn’t want it to sit in there too long again, so I turned off the burner as soon as it split, but the brocciu never arrived at all. It was just foam! Again I was so disappointed.

Perhaps it is actually really difficult to make brocciu like people have been telling us. Mike could see that I was getting really down. He told me that when Phillipe had asked how many times Mike thought it would take us to get it right, Mike had answered 10. That made me feel a little better, but I am just not good at this whole persistence thing. That’s Mike’s department. I guess I need to learn that too. I’m counting down though, only seven more tries until I eat the sweet brocciu.

Cyrus and Patty wait patiently while the supplies are bought at the cheese farm.

by Azure

We woke up yesterday morning feeling some of the residual effects of the night before. After resigning ourselves leaving the scooter at Jean Paul’s house and selling it for whatever price we got on ebay (I truly would have been happy to get half of what we paid for it) we went out to see the only American we know in Paris–a bar owner from Florida whom we met because he was the guy who bought the bar that Mike worked at in 2001. The night only ended with a reinvigorated hope and some good old American can-do attitude. He thought we could sell it here or there for this much and our eyes lit up and we thought that maybe we’d sell it easily again.

Nope. And luckily this revival of ambition didn’t last longer than 9am the next day. We really had to leave Paris ASAP and kept telling ourselves, we’re leaving today, we’re taking the scooter to Jean Paul. We’re leaving today, we’re taking the scooter to Jean Paul.

We packed up our bags and loaded the scooter for the real last time. It was a little nerve wracking because we didn’t have insurance and it was registered under Jean Paul’s name, so he was liable for us. And, as I pointed out to Mike, driving through and around Paris put us in contact with more people and police than we had seen the whole rest of the ride. We looked it up online, however and saw that the fine for driving without insurance was a mere 1500 euro fine, but no jail time. Of course our motto of the day was “No jail time!”

We made it ok, of course. We drove past the Palace of Versaille and I caught my first glimpse of the enormous place, up the side roads and made it to the “Buffalo Grill” parking lot where Jean Paul would meet us. There was one random checkpoint at one of the roundabouts, but we made sure to exit the roundabout before we got to the checkpoint. Of course my heart raced.

When we parked the scooter in Jean Paul’s garage and he said we could leave it there until next year when we came back to pick it up, I paused and thought, well maybe… My mind appears to be completely incapable of remembering pain or fear. We still had our helmets on when he mentioned leaving it, my heart was just slowing down from fearing the police, and I actually considered it. Of course we wouldn’t do something like that because that would be a pain for him, but now I think why wouldn’t we buy another scooter? We would just go about it differently. No lesson learned.

He invited us in for a glass of wine, we got to witness the most incredible being on the planet, Morgane’s dog and later, Jean Paul took us to the RER. The next part was shockingly fast, coming from a vehicle that went a top speed of 70km/hr, but averaged more like 50. To ride the scooter from Paris to Poitiers would have taken us about 14 hours, we would have scheduled two days for it. When we fell asleep on the train out of pure emotional exhaustion, we woke up to find we were over half way there. The whole ride only took 1.5 hours. (on another note: I just don’t think you see the country the same way when your are going that fast)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QHZFdDLx-Q&hl=en&fs=1]
“The most incredible being on the planet”

Nash picked us up in the old white chateau car. It was good to see that some things don’t change AND that some people appreciate good old vehicles. We pulled up to find many of the flowers in bloom and the place to be just as tranquil as I remember it. I feel like we’ve been put out to pasture here to spend the remainder of our time roaming about and doing projects on the grounds.

The Chateau car

We had dinner (Salmon topped with creme fraiche, caviar and mint, sides of potatoes, broccoli and salad and of course cheese and wine and chocolate) with Nash and Linda (the owners of the chateau), their son Syrus (sp?) and Patty, a woman I met my first time here who also cooks for guests and has made a really great part-time life here. We had great, easy conversation, though afterward I feared we talked too much about ourselves-oops. It turns out we have a lot in common, not only our living proximity to Greenlake, but our love of food and slow life and gardening and just the ability to live part, or in their case all of our lives over here.

We are staying in the building that is the back side of the chicken coop (this reference is probably only good for Kim and Adam). The chateau grounds house a small abandoned village, where all the work used to be done. There is a barn, carriage house, paper press building, a place to house the farm equipment, the list goes on. These buildings go about one city block along an unpaved road. All of the buildings are being turned into either living spaces (ours has been turned into a 3 bedroom apartment) or spaces to house events. Our room is lovely and the bed is the most comfortable we have had in a long long time.

When we walked back from dinner in the darkness I felt so at peace, so opposite of how I had felt the night before — we are already a whole world away.