Post-vacation adjustments, and gratitude

First breakfast cooked by myself in more than three weeks. Not an unpleasant adjustment because I like to cook, and I like my cooking. I don’t even mind washing dishes. But still … four days after touching down in Chicago, I’m still in post-vacation fuzz, really not wanting to do much except look at my vacation photos and smile.

In the midst of this happy haze, however, I am quieted with gratefulness. First, to God for providing this vacation with all its abundant, artfully presented meals. Because of dietary and budget restrictions over the years, I have almost always rented vacation lodging with kitchens so that I could do my own cooking except for one or two restaurant meals. So to the best of my recollection, for probably forty years I have never had a true vacation from cooking.

During the past three weeks in France, I was the gauche tourist taking pictures of all the wonderful food. I will just include one shot from each week. Week One (European Experiences) is a salad from Café de la Fontaine in Maussane. Week Two (Paint Provence with Tess) is our awesome chef Anna with her gluten-free strawberry tart. Week Three (Hotel Valdys in Saint-Jean-de-Monts) is  one of many healthy fresh seafood dinners.

I’m also super-grateful to my gourmet-chef hubby Robert for all the incredible meals he prepares. And better late than never, I am thankful for my mother’s faithfully putting healthy, balanced meals on the family table for my first twenty or so years. Having such an extended break from meal prep, I guess, increases my appreciation for all those meals and acts of service I tended to take for granted.

Might as well change my watch back to Chicago time today. Tough saying au revoir to my beloved France.

Sea Salt from Les Valencières

Emmanuelle, our hotel’s tour guide took us to visit one of many Vendée area marais salants, or wetland salt farms. Along the road we passed once-rectangular, now overgrown marais salants, as well as active ones. When we arrived at Les Valencières and met the salt farmer, or saunier, we learned that he had restored an abandoned marais salant to create his working salt farm.

 

We could see the picturesque village of Bouin from Thierry Odéon’s sea salt salorge, the hut where he keeps his tools and sells fleur de sel. We all sat inside the salorge while Thierry explained his process.

Although harvesting salt from the ocean has a science to it, the method is a simple harnessing of nature’s gifts in nature’s time. Grids of basins are dug so that high tides can deposit saltwater in the basins. Both sun and wind are needed to evaporate the water, leaving white salt, which the saunier then rakes up. The earth in this region is rich in a gray clay that enhances evaporation, so Thierry creates his grid of trenches from that gray clay.

 

Thierry controls the flow of water with a very simple, primitive really, method of plugging and unplugging a hole in a tiny écluse, or lock, with a weather-beaten wooden stick. In this photo, you can also see gray clay, dry and cracked during low tide. The deep-green, low plant growing in the clay is salicorne, which we broke off pieces of to eat. It tasted salty with a nice crunch.

A few interesting tidbits unrelated to the business … Black and white wading birds called avocettes find shelter from their predators in the salt marshes because foxes don’t like salt. Fish find the marais salants’ basins way too salty, so they are not a problem for sauniers.

On our way back to the hotel, we got even better at recognizing abandoned versus active marais salants across the landscape. And now we also recognized dark brown salorges dotting fields with hand-painted signs by the road inviting people to buy their fleur de sel.

Predictable floods on this causeway, Passage du Gois

Calling all fools, daredevils, and people who welcome unhappy surprises or have always wanted to pilot a submarine. The Passage du Gois challenges you to beat its rapidly rising tides. Not respecting tide timetables, or the many flashing and nonflashing red warning signs, will result in submerging your car under 12 feet of water and having to be rescued or climbing one of nine rescue poles to wait for the next low tide. This happened to five unhappily surprised people just Tuesday. Respecting timetables for low tide, you can also park your car alongside the narrow stone causeway and taking your small bucket, walk across the sand to collect edible seashells, mostly clams, oysters, and cockles to enjoy later with your favorite white wine.

Yesterday, Emmanuelle, tour guide from our hotel, drove us 2.5 miles across Le Passage du Gois—at low tide! She showed us lots of photos of inundated vehicles whose drivers dared and lost to the Bay of Bourgneuf, the waters between the mainland point of Gois and the island, Île de Noirmoutier. The island had prehistoric inhabitants, and the only means of access was by boats, which the Vikings used to attack the island’s monastery in 799 A.D. Gradually, the bay silted up, and people and animals could walk across at low tide. The Passage du Gois first appeared on a map in 1701. In fact, the name Gois derives from the verb goiser, to walk getting one’s shoes wet.

In 1780, the first buoys were installed along the causeway. In 1786, 18 balises, or rescue poles, were installed, of which 9 remain today. In 1840, regular crossings by horsedrawn carriages or on horseback were offered. From 1935 to 1939, paving stones were laid on the sandbank causeway. Finally, in 1971, a bridge, unflooded at any time of day, was built to link the mainland village Fromentine with l’Île de Noirmoutier.

Taking calculated risks on the Passage du Gois are athletes running the Foulées du Gois race at the onset of high tide and Tour de France cyclists in 1993, 1999, when one took a serious fall on the slippery surface, and 2011. And of course, intrepid tour guides like Emmanuelle.

This last photo is of an inlet at Port du Bec, just after the Passage du Gois. It is used by professional oyster fishermen. I include this photo to show the height difference between low tide, where these boats sit in the mud, and high tide, the level of the wooden piers.

Our olive mill experience

Back in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Kathy and Charley of European Experiences took us for an explanation of an olive mill at Moulin du Calanquet. The mill’s rep, Joseph, explained to us they produce 400 tons of olives in a year, some from their own Calanquet olive groves, some from trees of agriculteurs in the neighborhood. Wind spreads the seeds, so the fierce Mistral wind that people shelter from is an olive grower’s friend.

Joseph showed us a chart of their olive varieties. The same variety can be picked at different times, resulting in green to black colors. Green is youngest.

Too rough a picking process or crushing method results in oxidation, which is bad. Joseph showed us a long-handled tool with flexible tines that they use to not bruise the olives. We dubbed it the olive tickler.

Processing has five or six steps, each further broken down. For example, Étape 2 = le nettoyage, le broyage, and le malaxage. 

We were impressed that the Calanquet company crushes and burns olive pits to fuel the entire plant’s operations. And it processes olive leaves to make a kind of peat moss to naturally fertilize their olive groves.

We were able to taste many of Calanquet's olive-related jams and tapenades.