Market Morning and Bike Ride Afternoon

I’ve written a number of times about the Sunday morning market in Esperaza. The last few times we have gone the weather has been windy or cold, so when the predicted rain didn’t show up this morning m, we decided to go to the market. 

The trees are in bloom along the river

We bought some fresh eggs, the farmer picking out each egg and placing it in a carton. 

Asparagus just coming ripe cost 4 euros a bunch. Expensive but less than last weekend. Two barquettes of strawberries. 

Some Gouda cheese from René and a wheel of chèvre (goat cheese). 

When I told Earl we were having strawberries and asparagus for dinner, he suddenly had a craving for sausage so we stopped by the cheese and sausage stall for a dried sausage with cèpes, a kind of mushroom. 

We bought three violets to plant along our back wall. 

They were only 1,50 euros each. 

There are 9 holes along the wall, so we'll need to buy a few more. 

Earl planted them while I was teaching this afternoon. 

Pain aux raisins, literally bread with raisins, but this is definitely pastry with flaky swirls

When we go to Esperaza, I get a pain aux raisins, because theirs is the best. We can also get coffee à emporter (to go) from one of the cafés. We sit on a ledge in the sun and enjoy our pastries and coffee,  before masking up again to move through the market. 

We were watching HouseHunters International and we saw an episode set not far from here in Montreal, France. The show followed the American home buyer to the market in Mirepoix where I saw a vendor who comes to Quillan and Esperaza. I took this picture of him and showed him this morning. He was delighted and asked me to send it to him. 

He thinks the show was filmed perhaps two years ago.

After I finished teaching, we were out the door, driving half an hour away to Voie Verte en Pyrénées Cathares. It's a former railroad line that has been turned into a "greenway" bicycle path. We followed our friends Matthew and Jo to Chalabre, our bikes hung on the back of the car. 

The way is fairly flat, no hills to speak of, but when we turned around after 8 1/2 miles, a vicious head wind impeded our travels. Around that same time, my butt, not used to bike roads, began to complain too. We ended up riding nearly 18 miles, around 27 kilometers. 

A tunnel lit up as we traveled through it. 

At the turnaround point, we stopped for some clementines and water. Jo and Matthew had brought a thermos of green tea and real glass cups. Yeah, things are different when you travel with Brits. 

Tea time on the trail

An action-packed day with minutes to spare as we returned home before out 6 p.m. curfew. 

Au Naturel

I know that it is healthier for me and my family to eat locally grown foods fresh from the garden. That's why I stopped by our pitiful excuse for a Farmer's Market yesterday where there are two vegetable stands and two homemade soap stands, along with some fresh-baked goods.
I bought some peppermint, tea tree hand soap and then got down to the business of buying vegetables.
Not a lot is ready to be harvested here in Ohio. I bought two zucchini with shiny green peels, two tomatoes that need a little more time on the window sill to ripen, some small red potatoes and a big green cabbage.
When I got home, I pulled off a few of the showy outer leaves of the cabbage and flushed it with water to get rid of the dirt that gathers around the stalk. Then I set it upside down beside the sink where it stayed until I got home about 8 p.m. from a marathon swim meet.
Around 9:30, when I thought I had the energy to get up and eat something, I decided a few slices of cabbage would be a healthy snack. I pulled off another outer leaf of the cabbage and it felt a little slimy underneath. How many of the outer leaves are you supposed to pull off, I wondered. Then I saw a couple of tiny, quarter-inch slugs. They really were too small even to be considered slugs, more like snail wannabes.
So I pulled off their leaves and a few more then a few more just to be sure.
At this point, having dealt with dirt and slugs, I really didn't want to eat the cabbage. I was feeling a little queasy.
I reminded myself that the reason cabbage in the grocery store doeosn't have slugs is that it is sprayed with toxic chemicals to kill things, which is probably much worse for me than anything left behind by the slugs.
I forced myself to eat a wedge of cabbage sprinkled with salt.
I guess it's a good thing I didn't grow up on a farm. Then again, I'd probably be much thinner if it were down to picking off bugs and slaughtering chickens.