Our big activity this week was attending our commune's annual Soirée Énoisage, the walnut shelling evening. We shelled only 350kg this year (vs 400kg last year). The nuts are sent to a local mill to make Mazerolles' own brand of walnut oil. For our work, we get to buy a liter of walnut oil at about a third of the cost in the shops.
We arrived to tables full of cracked nuts waiting our attention and got right to work.
As you work, you sweep the empty shells onto the floor. For those of us who were trained never to throw things on the floor, it's very difficult to get started with this. This evening, there was a young boy nearby who was distressed about this also and kept scooping the shells off the floor to put back on the table.
To start off, pitchers of kir were poured around—after all you can't start a meal without your aperitif. The apèro was followed by (French) onion soup, with thin slices of dry baguette for the bottom of the bowl, topped by cheese, then topped by the soup, upside down from the way this is served in the US. When you finish your soup, you pour in a bit of your red wine and drink the last bits right from the bowl. Then we had some delicious white bean soup, cooked with some not quite so appealing pork fat. Bowls of dandelion greens (pissenlit) and mâche were passed around to add to the soup. Then some camembert. Then some homemade gateau. We were all well-stuffed and looking forward to bed.
Earlier in the week, we were both sitting upstairs at our computers one afternoon and heard a loud Thunk on the mezzanine window. Ed went downstairs to see what it had been and found this lovely bird lying on the ground.
We think it's a juvenile sparrowhawk, too small to be an adult. After a few minutes it stood up and flew away. It was probably going after a bird from our feeder and we hope it learned a lesson.
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