These are a truly French biscuit. They’re made by LU, a company that goes back to 1846 and which today is owned by Nabisco, which in turn is owned by Kraft. But back then, in Nantes, it consisted of husband and wife team Jean-Romain Lefèvre and Pauline-Isabelle Utile. I bet you can see where LU comes from now!

Originally they made fancy biscuits which they packaged nicely and sold to be given as gifts. Over the years as the company passed down through the generations, it morphed into large-scale biscuit production.

LU had an astute eye for advertising, commissioning top artists of the day to paint pictures that they could use as publicity. One of the most famous of these is Firmin Bouisset’s Petit Écolier (little schoolboy), which he created in 1897. It’s a painting of his own son eating a petit beurre biscuit, made, of course, by LU.

However, it wasn’t until 1983 that the Petit Écolier biscuit arrived on the scene. This is a petit beurre biscuit topped by a slab of chocolate that has the famous painting moulded onto it. It comes in milk, white, dark and extra dark chocolate, all equally delicious. They’re a very popular after school nibble for hungry kids off the school bus. There are plenty of cheaper imitations of these biscuits, but none of them have the little schoolboy picture on.

Ruadhri had a couple today after we came back from playing and ice trucking on the frozen lake. (No school today since the school buses were all cancelled again because of the weather.) We used the sledge to haul wood across from Ragondin Island over to the far bank where we can collect it with the tractor. Here’s Ruadhri with a load.

We messed around too, taking it in turns to tow each other. Here’s Rors pulling me! He deserved his Petit Écoliers after that!

Snow covered frozen lake

The phrase froid ressenti is appearing on the weather forecasts a lot these days. It translates literally as ‘cold felt/experienced’ but is pretty much the same as refroidissement éolien (wind chill factor) – nothing to do with windmills (éoliennes) this time!) Frequently the froid ressenti is 7 or 8 degrees colder than the actual temperature. I imagined that someone was estimating this, but the computation of wind chill factor is based on very sound science.

Wind chill is the felt air temperature on exposed skin. The first wind chill formula was created by Paul Siple and Charles Passel while working in Antartica. You can see what must have motivated them! They expressed wind chill in watts of heat lost per square metre of skin.  This didn’t catch on terribly well, so the formula was revised a few times by other people and these days it reflects the notion of equivalent temperature. This is what the formula looks like:

T_wc = 13.12 + 0.6215 T_a – 11.37 V^+0.16 + 0.3965 T_aV^+0.16

where _w is the wind chill index in Celsius, T_a is the air temp in Celsius V is the wind speed at 10 metres (standard anemometer height), in kilometres per hour (km/h).

Simple! So, the figures appearing on the météo each day have been carefully worked out after all.

Caiti hijacked Rusty Deux briefly!

There wasn’t too much noticeable wind chill today, which has been a balmy minus 4 actual temperature wise, although that’s dropping fast now that evening is coming. We fired up Rusty Deux the tractor to deliver hay bales to the llamas, sheep and goats. Then we drove down to the cabin to fetch the gas bottles. Our central heating is dodgy so we might need to get the gas heaters going.

One way to carry gas bottles around

I love the passenger seat on Rusty Deux. You get great views from up there. It’s quite deadly trying to take photos though, since it’s a bumpy ride and the seat is a small square of metal with a tiny bit of rail behind it so very easy to slip off!

And I did the famous End To End Ice Walk today – my death defying walk across our lake. It’s used to be a Christmas Eve tradition (the rest of the family were nobly prepared to share my pressies between them if I fall through the ice) but the last two years we haven’t been iced up by then. So it’s slipped back a bit. I don’t know how long the lake is exactly but it’s a 10 acre lake so it’s pretty big! It’s also pretty deep so I’m very careful on the way. Any cracks or strange sounds send me scuttling to the bank right away.

Tomorrow we’ll profit from the big freeze to do some tidying up along the banks. There are over hanging branches that need sawing off. It will be a lot easier doing them standing on the ice than from the rowing boat, which is what we’d thought we’d be having to do this winter since it started so mild.

Icicles over the stream

We anticipated at least some pipes freezing up, and that’s what has happened upstairs. Our old farm cottage faces optimistically south with the back wall taking the full brunt of the wickedly cold north winds that make Creuse winters so memorable. Despite thick layers of insulation on the inside, and the layer of enduit (plaster) on the outside that Chris applied during the summer, and not forgetting the two foot of stone and mud in-between, the cold gets through.

I had a nice hot bath on Thursday night, and the water is still sitting there on Saturday morning. It won’t drain away. Chris has drilled, poked, prodded as far as he can up the offending pipes but there seems to be a lump of ice just beyond his reach. The kitchen wastewater pipes have frozen too with some washing-up water joining my lurking bathwater before we realised what was going on. And I can’t use the washing machine for similar reasons so I’ll have to wash through the kids’ clothes for school next week the old-fashioned way this weekend. Rors gets through so many socks!

And last night, for fun, the electrics in the kitchen decided to stop working for reasons we can only imagine are connected with the extreme cold. Luckily, the kitchen is currently colder than my fridge at about six degrees (that French window facing north is the main culprit), so at least food won’t be going off! The main worry is that someone will trip over or strangle themselves in all the wiring and extensions Chris has strung up around the place to bring some power there.

I cancelled my trip with Caiti to Grenoble for the journée portes ouvertes at the University there because of the adverse weather. It was disappointing for us both, but sensible. Last night I took Rors into Boussac to see Le Chatpotté (Puss in Boots) at the cinema. I was well out of my comfort zone driving in, as the D2 had sheets of black ice over it in places. Specifically in places where certain farmers have taken down the trees and ripped up the roadside hedges. Why can’t the leave them alone? I didn’t go over 50km till we got to the main Boussac road, which is one that’s maintained by the Département, as opposed to the commune, and was blissfully clear and salted. The minor roads are dealt with by the communes and so subject to widely varying standards of treatment. It doesn’t look like Bussière does anything. Their stretch of the  D2 was worse even than our tiny little road which the maintenance guy at Nouzerines had bulldozed with his multi-purpose tractor/digger/hedge-distructivator.

Anyway, the film was fun and Rors got his long-promised treat, and a second one one when he saw a huge rat scuttling along the pavement! The things we do for our kids. (OK, my gesture doesn’t quite match Sarko’s action in flying his tummy-bug struck son home from Turkey in a private jet at a cost of €35,000 to the taxpayer, and a huge carbon footprint, but hey.) I survived the stress of the drive. But I don’t think I would have driving 500 km to the Alps in ever dropping temperatures. So hopefully we’ll be able to get Caiti up to Paris next week to visit the two universities there that she’s interested in. I hope so but the extreme cold is continuing for the next ten days with more snow on the way. So we’ll see.

All three lakes are well and truly frozen now. At least that will keep the cormorants off them. We went down to inspect the big lake and found hundreds of little roach wiggling around in the mud just below the ice. We’ve never seen this before in the yearly lake freezes. The fish seem to be displaying spawning behaviour by shoaling together in the shallows. We’d noticed some going on a week or so ago, when it was still unseasonably mild. But why they should be doing it in such cold, I’m not sure. They don’t seem to be stuck there, although the cold is making some of them dopey. Most of them wriggle away after a while. It’s quite a mystery.

Nessie wasn’t bothered by that, and was happy to sit on the ice and watch the world go by, with a couple of metres of very cold water underneath her!

First up, we’ve brought the generator indoors so it’s handy if things go black. We’ve lost the power before during bad weather, many times, so we’re being prepared.

I must be spending at least an hour a day just filling up water buckets with hot water for the animals as the current supply either freezes or is drained by thirsty animals. They’re all indoors eating hay and that makes them drink more than normal. When they’re eating grass, llamas go for days without needing water. The watering cans are staying in the kitchen between uses to keep them warm. Relatively speaking, that is. It’s been around 8 degrees C in the kitchen today, and that’s with the radiator on. Putting French windows in the northern end of the room wasn’t our best idea!

All the animals are either in or have access to shelter. It’s a bit crowded in the corner stable where Denis the llama and Maisy the goat have been temporarily joined by Dude and Dudette (aka Cuppucine and Zebulon, the two small alpine goats we inherited for reasons that still escape me!) D and D drive us insane since they’re typical goats and a right pain, but we haven’t been driven to turning them into curry yet!

A bit crowded but cosy

White Bun is looking after herself just fine. She spends most of her time in the hay barn but comes to nibble grass every now and again. The guinea pigs moved into the barn a while ago and are keeping cosy in there.

The cats spend a lot of time trying to get into the house and generally being rebuffed, unless they look really pathetic, but for the most part they curl up in one of the stables in the hay. The chickens and turkeys refuse point blank to come out of their stable any more, so I keep them topped up with straw, grain and water. Even the sheep are staying in their shelter, despite their mega thick woolly coats.

So all the animals are warm and coping well. As for us, we’re keeping the fire stoked up and wearing a lot more clothes than normal. Gloves, scarfs and socks get wet regularly since we’re sloshing so much water ar0und, and trudging through deep snow, so there’s always some drying in front of the fire.

And we’re eating a lot of pumpkin soup! The grand froid isn’t getting us down. (Well, maybe just a little since we have some frozen pipes …)

Caiti bought this book of traditional French recipes, in French, for Chris a couple of Christmases ago to extend his culinary repertoire and also his linguistic abilities. It has entire sections of recipes featuring a particular winter staple – such as, you guessed it, pumpkin. But there are also recipes using endive (chicory), topinambour (Jerusalem artichoke), noix (nuts), poireaux (leeks, you’ll remember) and more lavishly dattes (dates), mangue (mango) and extremely extravagantly truffes (truffles).

Chris plumped for Soupe Auvergnate today and duly began the exciting task of peel pumpkins this morning. Ruadhri happened into the kitchen, and, as with the mince pies back in December, announced a desire to help. At lightning speed he found himself with a knife in his hand and a small pumpkin on a chopping board in front of him. He happily chopped away for ages and without inflicting any wounds on himself, I’m glad to say.

Chris's soupe Auvergnate

The great pumpkin soup cook-off ensued. Chris produced a large pan of his Auvergnate while Ruadhri, helped by his dad, plumped for ad hoc herby pumpkin soup. Both are very nice. No one can remember what Rors put into his, but here’s the recipe for Chris’s.

Soupe Auvergnate

1.5 kg of pumpkin flesh cut in cubes

3 small leeks

Veg oil

1.5 litres of chicken or veg stock

150 g of grated Cantal or Bleu d’Auvergne cheese

1/2 litre cream or fromage blanc

Sauté the pumpkin and leeks in the oil until soft, then pour on the stock. Simmer away for half an hour. Just before serving mix in the cream/fromage blanc (optional) and the cheese. (Now, I can’t eat blue cheeses since I’m allergic to penicillin, and that’s the only cheese we had in the fridge, so Chris sprinkled his over his bowl of soup rather than mix it in. It worked well like that.)

Ruadhri's herby pumpkin soup

We’ll be eating the soup for several more days but that’s OK. It’s all part of the winter experience chez les Dagg.

And a couple of unrelated snippets to finish. I’ve very kindly been given an award for my blog, the Leibster award, by awesome blogger and freelance writer Vanessa, for which I’m very grateful, and will blog properly about soon. Also, if you have a mo, do pop over here and read a guest post I’ve written for an upcoming fantasy author, Gary F Vanucci, whose short stories I recently had the pleasure to edit.

With that, I’ll shut up and go and eat soup!

Nessie surveys the scene

It’s not the snowiest it’s ever been here at Les Fragnes, but it’s pretty impressive. We were on vigilance orange (orange alert) for snow all of yesterday, but it didn’t start falling till we were walking back with Rors from Nouzerines around half past five last night. And it just kept going. Announcements were made online and on the radio in the evening that school transport was cancelled in Creuse for the 31st Jan so Ruadhri went to bed happy in knowing that he’d be skiving off next day.

Ruadhri in the snow

The animals have varying reactions. Nessie loves it. The young cats were wary at first and aren’t massively impressed but are taking it in their stride. Suddenly Wendy doesn’t look quite so white any more.

Wendy looks a bit grubby!

The camelids are being wimpy so far. They’ve been hanging around the stable and not venturing far. But that could have something to do with the new bale of hay we put out for them in there two days ago. Llamas and alpacas are equally greedy.

No one's going far

The chickens and turkeys don’t like snow. Limpy has found a cosy place to shelter.

Limpy Chick and Number 28

We had a walk round the big lake after we’d sorted out the livestock. The trees are beautiful down there.

And finally my attempt at an artistic shot!

Off to check out what the road is like next and then after dinner I think a bit of sledging is in order. Usually we sledge down the hill and out onto the frozen lake – great fun. However, the lake isn’t frozen yet so we need to remember to brake in time!

Stay safe and warm if you’re snowy too.

As visitors to our gite and fishing lakes will be aware, we are building up an old style farm with a selection of animals. OK, they didn’t have llamas on an old fashioned farm but that is another story). Currently we have llamas, alpacas, sheep, turkeys and  chickens and pets such as a dog, some cats and guinea pigs. Now we are planning to expand into old breed pigs. In preparation for this I attended a pig experience day held in Poitou-Charente by David  and Lorraine at Le Logis old breeds farm (www.lelogisfrance.com). Before this course I hadn’t been closer to a pig than the supermarket meat counter!

Berkshire pigs

It was an old fashioned drive across France. I say old fashioned because the centre of France has no east-west motorways, so it was a case of travelling from town to town like England in the 1960s. It took 3 ½ hours to drive 150Km west to Poitiers and then 30 minutes to drive the last 60km south on the motorway to arrive at the pretty Charentais farm. After coffee and introductions we went out to get hands-on experience, starting with feeding and maintenance. We tiptoed past one of the farrowing stalls where one of the sows had given birth to a litter the previous night. Lorraine explained how critical the first 24 hours were to the welfare of the new litter and Mum can be very touchy.

We first met the Berkshire pigs that Le Logis is becoming famous for and it was immediately obvious that these animals were a cut above any farm animals I’d met up to now.  The pig is rated the 4^th most intelligent in the animal kingdom, only behind chimps, dolphins and elephants. The Berkshires trotted over to greet us, vocalizing amiably (it would be an understatement to just say grunting like in a childrens story). They tucked into their food and played around with the buckets afterwards. Lorraine explained that they loved to play with toys and that an overweight pig could be slimmed down with a toy that had some treats concealed within.

We topped up their shelters with straw and I was amazed at how clean and tidy they kept their sleeping quarters. I know some teenagers who could learn a thing or two from them (mentioning no names).

Gloucester Old Spots

Lorraine talked us through the various breeds that they have at the farm, not just Berkshires but Gloucester old spots and the rather fetching Oxford Sandy and Black, also known as the Plum Pudding pig!

All too soon it was time to drive back to Notaire’s but with plenty of time for planning where to raise the pigs; in the wooded section below the house lake where they could have a very naturalized life or should we use them to turn over the cereal field next to house where we could spend more time with them. Watch this space and I will keep you posted on our progress.

Rounding up an escapee

A slightly snowy scene

OK, Snow White first. The first proper snow of this winter has started to fall. It’s rather slushy snow and I can’t see it hanging round long, but at least it’s snow. Rors is delighted, the youngest cats are puzzled, since it’s the first they’ve seen, and the chickens are decidedly unimpressed. They don’t like snow. I’m not fussed either way. So long as I can get a top-up food shop this afternoon and Chris can get back safely from his pig-keeping course tonight, then I don’t mind being snowed in for a while after that. We’ve come to expect that here in Creuse, at least for a week or so each year.

Now the Seven Arts. It’s the annual BD (comic book) festival at Angoulême this week. This is a massive event. Bandes dessinées (or bédés) are big business in France, bringing in around 350 million euros to publishers every year. (I’ve written a bit more about this on my Books Are Cool blog here.)

BDs are reckoned to be the neuvième art (ninth art). I’d heard cinema referred to as the septième art (seventh art) a few times but not been interested enough to find out more I’m ashamed to say. However, now that there’s a ninth one, it’s definitely time.

Poster for BD festival

Étienne Souriau, a French philosopher and aesthete who lived from 1892 to 1979, came up with the idea of the Seven Arts in 1969. He wrote about it in his famous book La Correspondance des arts, Eléments d’esthétique comparée. So what are they?

1. Sculpture and architecture

2. Drawing

3. Painting

4. Music

5. Dance and pantomime

6. Writing

7. Cinema.

Seven seemed to him quite enough at the time, and it’s as good a number as any. It’s popular for groups of things after all – the seven seas, seven colours of the rainbow, seven wonders of the world, seven days of the week, for example, not forgetting the seven odd socks in Ruadhri’s drawer. But we’re now up to eleven arts. Sauriou’s list has been augmented with:

8. Television (including radio and photography)

9. BDs

10. Bizarrely video games and model railways are lumped together, and

11. Multimedia.

To become an official member of the list, a particular art form has to stand the test of time and be popular with the public. However, I haven’t managed to find out who the bureaucrat officially charged with keeping the art list up to date is. There’s bound to be one somewhere.

It’s an interesting idea to classify the arts, and exemplifies the French need to categorise everything, but doesn’t seem to serve much practical purpose other than to give me something to blog about!

And a final non-related photo. Here’s Rors being given his yellow-white belt at judo last night after passing his grading.

Now, you know how those 5 minute jobs never turn out to be 5 minute jobs? Today Chris wanted to charge up the Fiat’s battery. He’s heading off on a pig-keeping course tomorrow and will be away overnight and wanted to make sure my slightly unreliable car would be reliable enough to do the running around for a couple of days.

There used to be a handle there!

We went out to do the deed.

“Pop the hood,” says Chris.

So I felt for where I thought the handle was, but it wasn’t. Clearly I was having a premature senior moment, as they say. I got down on my knees outside on the gravel and hunted round the appropriate area of the car for the dratted thing.

By now, Chris was there, rolling his eyes and no doubt thinking unflattering thoughts about women in general and wives in particular.

But he couldn’t find it either. Anywhere. We looked at each other blankly. This was plain weird.

Since all else had failed, it was time to read the instructions. I got out the car manual. A very vague picture showed where the handle was meant to be. We finally hunted down the spot – and it was exactly where I’d first groped for the handle. There was now just a hole.

More trim removed - poor old car

The last time the bonnet had been seen open was when I’d collected the Fiat from the auto-contrôle centre. My car gets light usage so I hadn’t needed to go under the hood to top anything up since then. Now, the handle was there when the car went in for its test since we’d used it the day before. I’m guessing it wasn’t there when it came out. We suspect Monsieur was a bit heavy handed with my ageing car and pulled it off. I occasionally knock or pull things off the cars but I always own up, and I didn’t do it in this case. After 25 years of marriage I know how to get round Chris so he doesn’t stay mad for long! So I didn’t do it and neither of my two shiftless eldest kids have yet learnt to drive (short pause while I tear my hair out) so it wasn’t them. And I don’t think animals were involved.

It had to be Monsieur so it was presumably guilt that made him pass my car! I just wish he’d told us he’d had the mishap. We’d have understood that it was an accident. It would have meant that we could have got it fixed in a relaxed fashion and not in the rain. Gallic sigh.

Recharging at last

Anyway, we were stuck. We needed to open the bonnet but it looked like an impossible task. So we resorted to the Internet. Thanks to ShadyDude and a few other similarly named folks on some dodgy car-breaking-into websites, we got hints on what to do and finally got the bonnet open by alternative means. It involved Chris having to peel away yet more of the plastic trim inside my car (there’s not all that much left any more) and using pliers to move the mechanism that Heavy Handed CT guy had broken the handle off. But we did it, the battery is charged and my beloved little Stilo is back on the road.

I do like that car – it’s small, sleek, slightly scuffed and shabby since it’s seen better days and only prone to the occasional breakdown. It’s me in car form!

My fève collection

Not any more. They’re just a couple of euros now and definitely a bargain. I can add to my fève collection, and do a spot of low-key favophilie.

Favophilie (sometimes fabophilie) is the activity of collecting the fèves from Galettes des Rois. Seasoned favophiles are after rare ones, or are trying to build up whole series of special edition ones. Either way, they’re probably slightly sad people.

The tradition of a single fève in festive cakes began in the 13th century in France. Cakes containing two fèves appeared later, one was black and one was white signifying ‘king’ and ‘queen’ respectively. But come the Revolution there could be no more religious based fun, so Twelfth Night became the sans culottes (without trousers) festival, and the Galette des Rois became the Galette d’égalité, still with fèves. Even that gateau was banned on and off for a while. But the tradition persevered.

The current trend of porcelain fèves (with a brief eruption of plastic ones in the 1960s and 1970s) began in Germany in 1874. Porcelain swimmers were the first models. Twenty years later, fèves of all sorts were being produced. Different themes predominated at different times – santons (saints), doves, angels, professions and so on. These days cartoon and film characters tend to prevail, which is rather naff but clearly a good selling point. This year I’ve gained a Harry Potter bust and a truly awful mini-plaque of Titeuf, that strange cartoon guy with the yellow hair. My other less classy fèves include Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean momentoes.

I do have some nice ones including a sheep that Rors brought home from school on Tuesday. Clearly the caterer at his school is like me and buys in bargain food since the kids got a Galette des Rois for pudding out of the blue. Rors came up trumps when it was dished up and got the fève, so he also got the cardboard crown. He wore it for our 2.5 km walk home and I think he was disappointed that no-one else got to see him. We rarely come across anyone during our walks.

There are some lovely fèves out there – this is one set I saw on a website. It’s a collection of the 13 desserts served on Christmas Eve in Provence. You can get animals (I found a set of pandas and koalas aka world’s dopiest animals!), flowers, trees, Disney, Hello Kitty, symbols, letters, books, playing cards – the list is endless these days. Look up fève on eBay and see what comes up. A lot are claimed to be rare or ancien - although probably take that with a pinch of salt! But there are some cute and clever ones to be had.

Actually, I think I’m beginning to see how you can get drawn into favophilie …