Camembert, Calvados, a Conqueror. . . and frozen peas

Today, a little driving in the French countryside. Ok, a lot of driving -- plenty of barely-two-lane country roads, bordered by fields of wheat or cows, centuries-old stone buildings and thick, green hedgerows. Plenty of roundabouts to navigate, so we were thankful (most of the time) for our Garmin GPS. We'd decided to search-out some of the products this Normandie countryside is famous for: Camembert cheese and calvados (apple brandy). Our first stop was a tiny family farm, which has windows in its cheese-processing building so that you can view the cheese-making process. Here, Monsieur Durand is ladling curds and whey into molds. We have seen firmer cheese being made previously, and it is striking how loose/soft these curds are. With firm (cheddar-type) cheese, the curds are like little chunks. With camembert, you can barely discern the curds from the whey at this stage -- it almost looks like custard.

Later, when the curds have drained from the cheeses, they are unmolded and placed on racks to age. They spend several weeks aging while they are salted, ripened and matured. Fromagerie Durand is the last small family-owned-and-operated raw-milk (non-pasteurised) camembert Fromagerie et Ferme (farms) in in the village of Camembert. Big factories are taking-over here, just like back at home in the U.S., and have changed the process by using pasteurised milk (big factories cannot ensure the safety of their products when they use unpasteurised milk -- they like the control of uniformity). This means that the big firms are not allowed to use the prized label, AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée) or controlled designation of origin. This is a label used in France to specify exactly where products come from, where their ingredients are sourced and how exactly they are produced. There are strict quality controls and rules for anyone who wishes to use the label. It is used for many agricultural products, such as cheese, wine and calvados.

We purchased a small round of camembert and a bottle of local apple cider (the non-alcohol kind) for our picnic today. We had bread from a boulangerie, and stopped to pick-up some fruit along the way. All around the French  countryside, you can find areas to pull-off of the road and have a picnic (usually a sign will alert you to small picnic areas with two or three picnic tables and some trees).

After lunch, we ventured out to another of Normandie's important producers, the pommeau and calvados distillery, Château de Breuil, which is still located on the land owned (and lived-on) by the Breuil family. The château and grounds are amazing  (looks like a fairy-tale), and the tour of the distillery was fascinating.

 

Below: part of the family estate which is still lived-in (and cannot be toured). Just a little country place.

The calvados (apple brandy) is produced from apples grown on the estate as well as in local Normandie orchards. In order for the calvados to carry the prestigious "AOC Pays d'Auge" (even more prestigious than an AOC label), it must be made of local cider apples and distilled twice under very strict rules.  After pressing and distillation, the calvados (a digestive) is moved to oak barrels for aging. Its alcohol content is carefully monitored, and the barrels are blended to maintain a uniform taste. 

 

The aging building is part of the estate -- and like the estate, it was built in the 16th and 17th centuries. The barrels are used many times, depending on the individual characteristics of that barrel. I think our tour guide said that the oldest one currently in use is about 100 years old.

A special vintage, from 2000, this one will not be blended with the calvados from other years. 

At the end of the tour, we tasted pommeau, an aperitif made on the estate (lower in alcohol than calvados), as well as a 15-year-old calvados (could have peeled paint off of the walls, it was super-strong, at least for a lightweight like myself), and a 25-year-old calvados (which was far smoother). As the calvados sits in the oak barrels, some of the alcohol evaporates through the wood  (this lost amount is called "the angels' share") while the oak flavor imparts a smoothness. We decided to purchase a bottle of the pommeau to bring home.

We ended our day with a visit to William the Conqueror's castle (he lived from 1028-1087), Château de Falaise, in Falaise, Normandie. He was the first Norman king of England, from 1066 until his death. Though the impressive structure, set on a hill overlooking the old town and modern city, is partially ruined, much of the structure remains. Visitors are given tablets, which allow you to scan the room you are in. When you look at the room through the tablet, you can see it as it would have been painted and decorated back during the time it was used by William. Technology brings it to life!

William, himself:

There was a great view of the city from the castle:

Mark enjoyed seeing all of the castle, while I waited on the lower floors. Unfortunately, earlier in the day I had twisted my ankle on a wobbly cobblestone (I like to call it a "wobblestone"), fallen and scraped my leg. While the scrape was my initial concern, it turned-out that the ankle/foot pain  was more of a problem. We stopped at a market on the way back to the B&B, and Mark got some frozen peas to use as a cold compress. It really helped me to feel better.

This photo was taken after I'd cleaned it up and applied neosporine ointment. I'd been so careful during the trip, too. Always being extra-vigillant on stairs, cobblestones and the like. I knew that one wrong step could be  the ruin of my time in France. Fortunately, this happened near the end off the trip, when we had a car, and it wasn't too bad!

A Day in Bayeux

After touring the Normandy battlefields and D-Day landing beaches yesterday, we had decided to spend this day in Bayeux. The cathedral is inspiring for photos any time of day, and the town is small and charming. Our B&B was conveniently located in the old town, so we could leave the car and just walk to the places we wanted to see. The two main sites for the day were the museum of the Bayeux Tapestry, actually an embroidered cloth that is 230 feet long,which  tells the story of the Norman conquest of England through the Battle of Hastings. It was thought to have been commissioned and created in 1070, and is an amazing example of Norman Romanesque art, which is still colorful and has been remarkably preserved over the centuries.

Photos are not allowed in the museum, so I found this to share:

When you enter the museum, they give you an audioguide, which is organized according to numbers which have been placed above sections of the cloth. The audioguide tells you which portion of the historical story you are viewing, pointing-out interesting things like chopped-off heads, royal characters, etc. It didn't, however, point-out or explain why there were a few naked people in interesting poses along the border in one part of the cloth  (see below). LOL

We also visited the new Art and History museum in Bayeux, which had one room that featured the finely-detailed lace that Bayeux is famous for. All of this lace is handmade by ladies, who have the silk or linen on spools (bobbins) which they somehow twist and turn (many bobbins in each hand) and create this unbelievably complicated lace (in many different patterns) for shawls, scarves, fans and other clothing and fine homegoods.

In the evening, Mark and I decided to visit the German WWII cemetery. It is a somber place, with a peace garden planted with hundreds of oak trees.

I found this quote at the cemetery: "The German Cemetery at La Cambe: In the Same Soil of France Until 1947, this was an American cemetery. The remains were exhumed and shipped to the United States. It has been German since 1948, and contains over 21,000 graves. With its melancholy rigour, it is a graveyard for soldiers not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight. They too have found rest in our soil of France." Actually, many of the American dead who were exhumed from this land were buried at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. It was up to the soldiers' families to decide if they should remain in Normandy or be brought home for their final resting place.

First Day in Normandy with Mark, part 2: Various WWII Sites, and Bayeux

Our tour guide, Stephan, standing in one of the hundreds of craters still evident at Pointe du Hoc. He is 6' tall, so you can see how deep the craters are that were created by the bombs. You have to be really careful in this area to stay on the trails, because there are craters like this everywhere, as well as twisted steel cable, bags of petrified cement and other rubble from the bombed gun emplacements.

A small bridge (to the left, out of view) in la Fière was the scene of a battle in WWII. The bridge was a strategic point -- the fields were all flooded at the time, so the bridge was basically the endpoint of a causeway. It was a key objective of the Paratroopers to hold that bridge. They got control of the bridge after three days, but the Germans came in tanks from the other side. Eventually, the Paratroopers (with help from Sherman tanks that had come from Utah Beach) were able to keep the bridge.

A church in Angoville-au-Plein has stained glass windows that commemorate the US 101st Airborne Division. During the invasion of Normandy, two US medics set-up a field hospital in this church (bloodstains from the wounded are still visible on some of the pews). Here, the medics treated both Allied troops AND Germans! They said that they couldn't treat some men and let others die.  This likely saved their lives, as more German troops came through and saw that they were taking care of their soldiers. For a time, there was an agreement that all men would leave their weapons outside, making the church hospital a neutral zone for the wounded.

 

More windows from this tiny, Medieval church. . .

. . . and the altar. 

After our tour, Mark and I walked around Bayeux (where we are staying in a really lovely Bed & Breakfast, Hôtel Particulier Poppa). We looked around a small outdoor market, where we tasted some local cheese, and got some great photos of the town's Merry-Go-Round (Every French town seems to have at least one. They were all over Paris, too.) I love the detail of the animals and how they all seem to be different (and each has its name painted-on).

 

Marguerite. . .

Nemo . . .

. . . and my favorites, Pim, Pam and Poum (the three little pigs).

The market and menagerie (merry-go-round) were in front of Bayeux's Hôtel de Ville. Every town of a decent size has its own Hôtel de Ville, which is not a hotel, but the City Hall.

Below, some of our B&B (which hosts/owners Phillipe and Sophie have told us used to be a place where porcelain was made).

Mark, in the reception room, which is open to guests for relaxing. They have plenty of maps, books and information about the area for guests to use.

The view from the front door and stairs up to the rooms. This house is comfortable, pretty and has lots of historic charm (including wonky stairs and slanting floors).

Mark, making friends with their big tomcat in the garden. :)

First Day in Normandy with Mark, part 1: Omaha Beach and Pointe du Hoc

Mark and I visiting Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. Today, we took the all-day tour of WWII sites with Operation Overlord Tours. Our guide, Stephan, was knowledgeable and friendly. We enjoyed the tour very much, and got to see a lot of the Normandy countryside in addition to the war sites. The crowds are lower now that the big 70th Anniversary of D-Day has passed (6 June). We were here at low tide. When the tide comes in, the water will be all the way up to the pebbles.

One of the German gun emplacements on the ridge overlooking Omaha Beach. Originally, these were covered on top with soil and grass, to make them less conspicuous.

The sand and pebbles of Omaha Beach.

Just alongside all of the monuments and rusting war machines, the beaches of Normandy are now used like any other long, beautiful beach -- for fun!

At the American Cemetery, this is on the large memorial wall. The maps on the walls show the movements of the Allied and German forces.

Omaha Beach again. Mark is standing on the only visible part of the Mulberry Harbors here. These were manmade harbors placed here and off the shore of Arromanches as part of the D-Day landing strategy. Unfortunately, the Omaha Beach harbor did not last long enough to help in the landing, as it was destroyed by a big storm just days after it was placed offshore.

Pointe du Hoc. This is where the U.S. Rangers had to scale the cliffs to destroy German guns placed above the cliffs. With a fast-changing tide and shifting sands, it is amazing that anyone could scale these crumbling cliffs.

This gun emplacement is just one of many waiting for the Rangers when they reached the top.

Inscribed inside the concrete bunker are the names of the Rangers. One has my maiden name, Dailey, same spelling (which is not common). I don't think we are related.

Wandering Around Paris, the last couple of days

We were very lucky to have pretty nice weather during the moth we spent in Paris. The last week, however, was extremely rainy. I woke up to pouring rain, and my little Southern California umbrella really got a workout!

Found this dude (and his twin on the other wall, not pictured) on the wall of a building which was a boys school during WWII. It is located in the Marais, which still has a large Jewish population. There was amemorial  plaque on the wall which explained that dozens of kids were taken from here by the Nazis during the Occupation, and deported to the concentration camps. Another plaque credited the headmaster of the school for saving many of the students as well.

Still in the Marais -- a little humor: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité . . .Beyoncé?

Love the sculpted rams and the wooden dragons! Doorways in Paris can be so beautiful!

Just another gorgeous building. Rebecca Edwards and I had coffee at a café across the street and were admiring the pretty tiles and wroght iron balconies.

My host's kitty, Meune, found a spot of sun in my room while I was packing to leave.

Farewell Dinner

On our last Thursday night, the group enjoyed a farewell dinner (organized by Pierre) together at a fantastic Moroccan restaurant. Left-to-right: Sarah, Saul, Madeline, Eloy, Rebecca and Jessica

Oleya, April, Denise, Gladys, Rebecca, Megan, Giselle, (Mike) and COC Art Prof. Rebecca Edwards

Rebecca, me, Pierre and Kristie

Dara, Mike, Iris, Sarah, Christtina, Robert, Megan and Me. I tried to get everyone, but I think my photos must have missed a couple of people. We really had a wonderful group of people, students and professsors alike. Everyone was made to feel welcome, we all enjoyed each others' company, and everyone participated with enthusiasm. It was so much fun gettting to know them all, and I really hope that we can get a reunion party together to share photos and visit!

Le Centre Pompidou, Modern Art Museum

A giant work by Alexander Calder sits in the place in front of the Pompidou. Calder is credited with the origination of the mobile. If you know any babies who enjoyed those over their cribs, you've got Calder to thank. This art has no motorized parts, it just moves wherever the wind takes it.

I was sorry this photo was blurry -- the guys were having fun. Tristan and Eloy, two of the students in our group.

The modern (and, in my opinion, ugly) Pompidou is set right in the middle of many old and beautiful Parisian buildings.

My favorite art in the Pompidou -- the electric signs glowed against the matte gray background.