Strawberry Tarts Forever

Today we trekked twenty minutes to the village of Nabirat for the 12th Annual Foire de la Fraise, a celebration of the strawberries of Périgord. The weather was disappointingly cool and damp, but our enthusiasm carried us through.

First we tried parking in a muddy lot on the edge of the village, but found that the nearly bald tires on our Renault Laguna couldn't gain traction and we feared being mired in for the day. Albert expertly maneuvered the car out of the boggy field and into a safer spot on a side street in the town. We wandered through the festival, eyed some junky odds and ends at the vide grenier tables, but managed to resist temptation.

The main attraction is a giant strawberry tart, over 25 square meters, put together by the bakers of Grolejac and Nabirat and 15 or 20 village volunteers who assemble the creation of pastry, custard, fresh strawberries and glaze. The powerful berry aroma from the tarte géante pervaded the town square, blended with overtones of roasting caramel popcorn and horse manure. Yummmmmm.

In 2004, strawberries grown in the Dordogne area achieved their own special IGP status (Identification Géographique Protégé), and along with that, the right to mark them "Fraises du Périgord." Similar to the AOC system used for remarkable French wines and cheeses, IGP protocol mandates that the strawberries must be proven to have specific organoleptic qualities, must be grown in very specific geographic locations under defined conditions, harvest must be made at optimum sugar levels, early in the morning under "fresh" conditions, and delivery from grower to market must be swift. The entire protocol is comprised of 60 separate conditions that producers must comply with, covering standards of culture, harvest, delivery, traceability and marketing. If you'd like to know more about "Fraises du Perigord" and the IGP standards, AND you can read French, click here.
It's French bureaucracy at its finest, yet it guarantees a freshness and quality that we don't see in those flavorless red objects we're so accustomed to in American supermarkets. Unlike supermarket strawberries, the varieties here are developed and cultivated for aroma, sweetness, flavor...not just for how well they ship and how long they'll last on the shelf. What a concept! The season begins with early varieties Gariguette and Darselect, followed by remontant strawberries such as Mara de Bois, Charlotte, Cirafine and Seascape. Growers strive for a perfect equilibrium of acidity and sugar.

We serve Fraises du Périgord every morning at our breakfast table. Only the best for our guests here at "La Tour de Cause B&B!"

First of the Foire des Fleurs

Sunday, April 19 -- We ventured out and about, paying a visit to one of the first foire des fleurs of the season, in beautiful Cadouin. Time to start loading up on flowers for the window boxes and old pots around the garden. There'll be many more flower fairs to come -- next week is the big one in Le Bugue, and our favorite of all will be later in May at L'Abbaye Nouvelle near Leobard. We bought geraniums, mostly.
Funny, I never really liked geraniums when I was young; they made me think of old ladies' gardens -- the peculiar smell of the leaves was unpleasant to me and I promised myself I'd never plant them in my own garden when I grew up. But somehow, here in France, I find geraniums are everywhere, natural and brilliant and colorful. I'm addicted. Does this mean I'm an old lady now? Will I start planting hollyhocks and hydrangea too?

We also visited our first foire des brocante of the year, at Le Buisson de Cadouin, just a few kilometers away from Cadouin itself. There, we browsed among other people's junk and a few overpriced antiquités. After browsing through dusty picture frames and bug-eaten furniture, the best thing we found was Andrea and Barbara, our Italian friends who've transplanted themselves from Milan into an old house in Montfort, where they now operate their own beautiful and tasteful B&B, L'Ombrière.

That's Andrea Polato on the left, Albert in the middle, and Andrea's wife, Barbara Menzio, on the right. The abbey of Cadouin is in the background.

Must be spring

Thursday, our first day here, was glorious and sunny, balmy almost, and we reveled in the beauty of spring in our little Céou valley. We made a thorough inspection of our garden and found tulips in perfect form, the flowering quince (cognassier du Japon) fading, and the lilac buds forming. Weeds of all sorts are rampant, of course -- so we spent most of the day pulling, mowing and trimming. I love love love this time of year, until the ugly dark side of spring shows itself...which it did beginning Friday morning and continuing through the weekend. Gray skies, showers and chilly temps chased us inside to do the important work of housecleaning.
We took time on Easter Sunday to take a quick drive around the area, checking out the Easter crowds whose enthusiasm seemed undampened by the cold, wet weather.

We drove up the hill to Domme and searched for a parking spot on a side street, finding all the public lots full up. Families and couples, mostly French, wandered about the charming cobbled streets, chatting, browsing through postcard racks, eating ice cream (brrrr!) and seeming to find pleasure on a wintry afternoon holiday. These two large white tourists from the Pyrenees were well-dressed for the weather!

Our first guests arrive on Wednesday afternoon, so no more excursions for the next few days as we put the finishing touches on guest rooms and put on our happy host faces.

Pissenlit

We have returned again, ready for another year of adventures in Perigord...we arrived last night at our house, exhausted from our 24-hour trip from Santa Rosa to Pont de Cause. Good friend John Virball was insane enough to volunteer to fetch us at the Toulouse airport and haul us and our bags back to La Tour de Cause.

Starving at 8:15 p.m. (20 hr 15) as we entered Cénac from the south, we were thrilled to see the Pizza Lolo wagon was still open. We stopped and ordered our favorite "Indienne" pizza so we'd have something to eat before falling into bed.

After the usual first night's sleep -- forcing ourselves to stay awake until nearly midnight, then crashing, then waking at 4 a.m., forcing ourselves to go back to sleep -- we finally arose near 8 a.m. and jumped into gear, pulling weeds, cleaning the refrigerator, opening up the guest rooms, taking down shutters, hooking up the computer, vacuuming, unpacking, mowing the "lawn" (weeds). Still found time to snap a couple of photos. The weather's gorgeous today, but neighbor Odette says rain is prévu pour demain, so we decided to spend most of our limited energy on outside work, leaving the indoor housekeeping for tomorrow.

The walnut orchards around us are full of vibrant pissenlit flowers, a name which is always a bit of a conundrum for me. The French are said to have called it "dents de lion" or "lion's teeth" because of its dentillated leaves -- hence "Dandelion" in English. But in our little Céou valley, during my first springtime here back in 2002, I tried calling it "dents de lion," thinking to impress my new neighbors with my impressive vocabulary. I received quizzical looks until finally someone suggested I probably meant pissenlit. I've seen a neighbor gather basketsful for his rabbits, the young tender leaves are lovely in salads, and each year since then I imagine I'll finally try making dandelion wine. I really mean to go out and gather the blossoms first thing in the morning when they're still damp with dew as my recipe recommends. I don't get to it, then a few more mornings slip past, and suddenly -- poof! The fields are no longer yellow but white with the downy blown blossoms. Maybe this year?

But why pissenlit? One is warned to consume dandelion leaves with moderation -- and the same with the wine. Its diuretic powers are notorious, hence its popular name, which means, literally, "piss in the bed."