Yesterday we went to a friends farm overlooking the city to help out with their grape harvest. It was another gorgeous autumn day, and the sun was pretty hot. Our friends had left it quite late in the season to pick their grapes, in the hopes of the grapes themselves getting sweeter. Some of the grapes had started to turn into raisins!!
Afterwards we sat down to afternoon tea, with bread, zopf, salami, salametti, pickles and cheese - all homemade made there on the farm. With apple cake afterwards. Oh, and coffee, wine and iced alpine tea. Delicious!!!
Your blog is super. So are your photographies. They make me hungry. I have spent a nice moment when seeing them. Thanks a lot.
Posted by: Eleonora | November 10, 2008 at 11:49 PM
That sounds like a most decadent afternoon...especially all those wonderful bites being homemade! That is a long-term goal of mine and it is refreshing to hear of it.
Also, some people can be very snobby about their wine--my husband and I are snobby about our grape juice!
Posted by: my year without | November 18, 2008 at 05:11 PM
As I recently moved from France to Germany I am going through the familiarization process of getting to know where and how I can obtain my favorite cooking ingredients. I very much related to your comments made back in 2005 about the difficulty of finding brown sugar. While in France, I too had to rely on good friends sending care packages containing this beloved ingredient (once even customs took a sample to make sure it wasn't heroin!). Anyhow, after 4 years of looking and near the end of my stay in France I finally found my Brown Sugar. It is sold by Béghin Say under the name Vergeoise. It is Golden Brown Sugar but I am not complaining. Unfortunately, only months after this discovery I moved to Munich and now the search begins all over again. Perhaps by now you have found a reliable source of the golden brown sugar of the gods, but if not you might want to look for Vergeoise. Another close alternative is this sugar from South America that you can buy at any Marché Equitable or Bio magasin. Unfortunately I can't remember the exact name. Thanks for the entertaining blog.
Christine
Posted by: Christine | November 24, 2008 at 06:49 PM