Saturday, April 20, 2013

New blogger, Brit cuisine, and hares


Who said blogging was a dying medium? Egged on by one or two of you, Tom has decided to make the transition from being a principle protagonist here and set one up of his own.  He's always been very supportive of my efforts, and has long enjoyed reading and occasionally commenting on other people's, and he's suddenly quite enthusiastic about doing it for himself, so with some encouragement might even stick with it.  His blog, called simply 'Gwynt' (you can find out why if you visit), can be found here, so far with only an opening post but I'm sure there will be more. (I was somewhat tickled to learn from his profile that I was one of his interests.  In this he proves to be unique, though there are twenty others on Blogger who cite 'my dog Molly' among theirs!)

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Having dealt with certain aspects of British cuisine here recently, by coincidence, last night we were invited along by the Quiet American and B the German doctor to le Bistrot du Marin* at le Légué, the very workaday port and docks end of St Brieuc, which I had already heard about from our Dutch friend E as serving good fish and chips.  While perhaps these were not quite typical of a lower end UK chippy, they were authentic, with good crisp, light batter and thick chips (fries, in American, but not the same, oh no), and the whole place (reputedly an Irish foundation) was a bright and lively delight, with deep red painted walls, chequered table cloths, blackboards and pictures and curios everywhere.  There was even malt vinegar on the table - though we did get salad, mayonnaise and home made tartar sauce as well, and my dessert was the best ever île flottante, a huge slab of meringue stuff floating in custard and caramel, smothered in speculoos biscuit crumbs and served in a sort of 1950s design cereal bowl.  

Best of all, it was packed and buzzing with noisy, happy French folk all enthusiastically tucking into 'les fish and chips', billed as such on the menu and not translated.  Result.

* link to French Tripadvisor, there's an English one too but the French one's interesting. There's a photo there too.

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And finally, some hares from my eponymous Pinterest board





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8 comments:

Zhoen said...

Wild hare.

zephyr said...

i really like Celia's hares, too.

celiahart.co.uk

Ellena said...

I'm trying to remember where I saw a hare running through a lawn. Will have to go to bed three nights in a row with that question in my head before I get the answer. It works.

Beth said...

Oh, I just love those hares! And how delightful to know about Tom's blog - he and Jonathan can start the new generation of bloggers together!

Francesca said...

I love hares too, and think that every representation I see of a hare tells me something more about them. It's wonderful to see one in real life - so much larger than one imagines.

Rouchswalwe said...

They are amazing creatures. My Great-Grandmama's mother was said to have been courted by Friedrich, a man from the neighboring village, because she was a hare-hunting woman who cooked up an excellent stew.

HKatz said...

The first image of the hares is stunning. It doesn't look as if they're playing, more as if they're battling or striving against each other, but at the same time they're at complete peace.

Lucy said...

Thanks all, and special thanks for going and giving Tom a welcome! I've grown a bit wary of trumpeting the blogs of those near and dear to me as in the past they've tended to peter out rather quickly, but he seems very committed at the moment.

Glad the hares are popular; I would have liked to put names to them but all the Pins were taken from isolated enlarged image URLs so not credited, which is rather bad. I should have gone looking via an image search really, but it's mighty time consuming.

Zephyr - thanks for the link to Celia's - her work is wonderful and I've pinned many of her hares, with full credits and proper links. Thanks also (think it was through you...) for putting me onto Sophie Digard, with whose things I have become quite obsessed, and even re-acquainted myself with crochet techniques! Though you need fairy dust too, really.

Ellena - I shall that next time I need to remember something, though the problem is often remembering the question...

Beth - I cited Jonathan's example to him as encouragement, in fact. In a moment of doubt he observed that no blogger's we knew of had partners who blogged, and I was able to say it was not so!

Franscesca - yes, often when I see them in the distance I think they are small deer. They are so much more multi-dimensional than rabbits, somehow, though of course rabbits are very endearing.

R - My German friend here, who dislikes the hunting scene nearly as much as I do, still approached a hunting neighbour to ask if there were any hare available. I've no doubt they are good to eat, and doubtless when good meat was hard to obtain they were a blessing to country people, our former neighbour told of of a marvellous dog they had as children during the war, under the occupation when there was no ammunition for hunting, which could chase and catch a hare, and they were glad of it. But I would never want to eat one, they are too magical and too rare, and unlike deer, also beautiful and tasty, there is no good environmental reason to shoot them. Best just to admire them I think!

Hkatz - yes, they are in perfect balance, aren't they? I used to have that picture as a greeting card print, but sent it to Chloë at Slightly Triangle, who is another hare person!