The hunting season began last Sunday and there's a cornucopia of mushrooms in the forest at the moment (trompettes-de-mort, bolets and chanterelles) so as a result I spent nearly all weekend in the kitchen pickling and bottling and making terrines and sauces. Mini-B and Roquin gave me half a kilo of trompettes-de-mort and 8 kilos of sanglier (wild boar) and the Combets brought a crate of ripe tomatoes with them on Friday. I also had to do something with the last of my green tomatoes (chutney), my walnuts (Katie Bear's mum sent me an excellent recipe for English walnut cake - thanks Maman Bear!) and finish bottling my vin de noix. It will probably be the last year for our walnuts because the tree is leaning at a precarious angle after the roots were disturbed putting in the new lamp post and will have to be cut down before it falls on top of the house.
You won't catch me out mushrooming during the hunting season. The first husband of Poire's wife was killed by a stray bullet while out hunting and one of Mini-B's horses was shot when a hunter mistook it for a deer!?!? You're not even safe in your own home. Last year a family was sitting having lunch at the kitchen table (a medley of wild mushrooms as it happens) when a bullet came flying past them through the (closed!) front door and lodged itself in the kitchen wall.
BB was removing the last of the old slates on the right-hand side of the roof today when a little visitor joined him up on the ridge - my cat Rhuma. It took him all day to do the final section because it's the highest part of the roof from the ridge to where you would hit the ground if you fell off. He's actually afraid of heights (as am I) so I don't know how he manages to go up there. I couldn't even bring myself to get out of the lift at the top of the Empire State Building.
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