Taste of the Sea

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Cheryl and Brian are here for the weekend, and Brian brought oysters! I was craving oysters just minutes before; these people are reading my mind! (or maybe they're just reading my blog?)

I had these juicy little shellfish in my head because of the Eating Hemingway idea, and I actually visited the fish counter at Sobey's (after stopping by the adjacent NSLC for a 4 for 3 box of Las Moras Chardonnay) with half a mind to pick some up for an appetizer. But the real reason for my trip to Sobey's was to buy eggs (for the first time in two years) to make the Grau du Roi breakfast the next morning, and I decided the oyster quote re-enactment would have to wait for another time. 

When I arrived home at 5pm, I was really regretting not getting those oysters because the fog bank that looms over L'Ardoise had not - for once! - rolled into the Riviera on a Friday afternoon. The sun was shining, the water was sparkling, the wine was chilling, and I was thinking that it would have been a perfect day for slurping oysters. And then ... Bri-guy showed up with a big bag 'o' bivalves! Yay.

In case our cholesterol and uric acid levels weren't high enough, we followed the oysters with a round of lobster.

les homards

Meanwhile, the brioche hummed away in the bread-machine. No, I'm not joking - I actually found an automatic recipe for brioche which we ate this morning with raspberry preserve, boiled eggs, and coffee. Click here for the quote to complete your Eating Hemingway experience.

Very funny. Hemingway did not write French Women Don't Get Fat

Now it was time to get outside and work off all this fine food. Backyards and Kitchens is all about balance ... can't spend all our time in one or the other. So after breakfast had settled, Brian ran 14km, Cheryl biked 11km, and I dug up the herb garden and mowed the lawn. Sammy, who dined on mackerel and brown rice, walked 2 km and spent most of the afternoon in the sunshine on the deck supervising our activity.

Brian tuning up the bikes

lawn before/after

Campesina toiling in the herb garden