Sunday 14th April
I’ve had a madeleine tin in the back of the kitchen cupboard for several years, but have yet to make a batch. I dig past the stack of cake tins and the box of piping nozzles to find it tucked behind the mixer attachments.
The batter is simple, flour, ground almonds, eggs, milk, melted butter and baking powder, I add a little almond extract and vanilla too. I need these to work, so I’m following Molly’s recipe and notes.
Even with expert tips, I overfill the shells on the first batch, they stick horribly to the tin and I quietly ask myself why I’ve attempted this between cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for our retreat guests? But I need something sweet for lunch tomorrow so I try again, Tim is more than happy to eat the scraps.
More butter and flour in the tin, less batter and the second batch come out better. Not perfect though, they don’t have that tell-tale madeleine bump. The batter needs to be even colder I think. I chill it in the fridge while Monty and I walk.
It’s warm, the sun strong and the breeze cool. There are flowers everywhere, blue bugle popping up in the lawn, bright pink herb Robert in the verges, stitchwort in sunny pockets in the ditches, puffs of hawthorn in the hedgerows. Even the elder that’s sheltered at the very edge of the woods has its first flowers, enough perhaps for a batch of cordial next weekend, a few weeks earlier than usual.
Back in the kitchen I butter and flour the madeleine tray again. I scoop a little of the now very cold batter into the shells and freeze the tray for five minutes as per Molly’s instructions. Into the hot oven they go and I watch, crouched at the oven door, peering through the glass. This time they bump and turn out onto the clean tea towel all at once when I tap the edge of the tray. Sweet little cakes ready for tomorrow’s lunch. The air in the kitchen warmly scented with almond and vanilla.
While the madeleines cool I mix up some frangipane for a tray of almond croissants for tomorrow’s breakfast, and make some raspberry and almond brioches for tonight’s pudding. Then I steal a quick five minutes to check on upholstery progress in the gîte kitchen.
The mounds of hair on the seat of each chair are now covered with hessian. Each guest is beautifully sewing the seat pad into shape using long needles and a skilful twist of thread. It’s amazing to watch and just looks so professional. Everyone is smiling, happy, I think, with their progress.
Monday 15th April
There’s a brisk westerly wind and stormy skies, the temperature has dropped by a good ten degrees. I make a roasted root vegetable soup for lunch, something warming to relax fingers stiff from close work and a cold day. I leave it to bubble away on the stove until lunch.
There’s a power in the woods today. Something about how the wind is whipping through the new leaves, bending branches, making everything move to its rhythm. Everything feels young and ancient at once. The canopy suddenly closing in, making the trees seem majestic, a green cathedral towering above me.
I feel caught in a battle between the trees and the wind. The energy of it fizzes, coursing through me like the wind chasing around the trees, curling around trunks, aggressively ruffling every leaf. Teasing and taunting, not maliciously, but powerfully playful.
My cheeks are pink with the ice in the wind, my hair wild, I come back to the kitchen filled with an energy I didn’t have before. The restorative magic of walking in the woods on a windy spring day.
The soup is ready, there’s fresh bread, good cheese, pink and white radishes and a green salad with a mustardy vinaigrette. And madeleines for pudding of course.
It’s cold enough by mid-afternoon for me to relight the Rayburn. The kitchen soon warming up again, that gentle tick of burning logs in the background again. There’s a run of cold nights in the forecast, another week of hauling logs perhaps?
Final fabric is going onto the chairs in the upholstery workshop, neatly tacked into place, tricky corners folded, hammer taps ringing out. They work late, most running out of time to add the final trim. A few tweaks to the schedule next time perhaps, it’s always a learning curve with a new retreat. We hope they’ve had fun though and learned a lot too. One final dinner all together before everyone leaves tomorrow morning.
Tuesday 16th April
I lie in bed watching the sun sink behind the trees, letting the gold of it stream into my eyes, watching it play on the panelling around the window. The light is mottled as it travels through the wavy old window, dimpled and textured, the garde corps casting its mirror image in shadow on the woodwork.
A blissful early night for me, after a busy few weeks of retreats; cooking late each night and getting up in the early hours everyday to manage school runs and breakfast time. The upholstery retreat guests left this morning, and we spent the day with Nicki cleaning rooms and getting the house organised again. Just the gîte left to do next week before we open again for the summer. So I am relishing this early night, one of the last few I’ll have until next autumn. I soak it up, trying to capture the feeling of it to get me through a summer on my feet.
Wednesday 17th April
I wash vases, sort flowers, organise fridges, write shopping lists, sweep floors, wash load-after-load of towels and fold tablecloths and napkins for the ironing pile. Slowly bringing order to the chaos of our side of the house.
Tim is at Nicki’s helping her fix and service her sit-on mower. A job he’s learned to do himself, because waiting for mower servicing here often means you end up with a waist-high lawn.
My parents arrive late morning, squeezing in a trip to see us before we open again. The afternoon passes around the kitchen table as we chat over lunch and then tea and then dinner, getting up only to put logs on the Rayburn or to cook. My body stiff from this unusual lack of movement after such as busy few weeks.
Thursday 18th April
When we talked to the children about moving to France they didn’t really understand. At five and seven, moving was a concept that meant little, moving to another country, even less. I remember Rufus asking me tearfully one bedtime if he could please bring his bed and his bunny to the new house with him? He didn’t want to leave them behind for the girl who was buying our house.
I hugged him, tears in my own eyes, and told him that we would be bringing everything from his room, all of our things in fact, and that there would be space for so much more. Space enough for a trampoline in the garden.
He clung to the trampoline idea, both boys did. So it became a bargaining chip of sorts - we’ll move to France for this new adventure and you’ll have a trampoline in the garden. We bought one and packed it into the removal van with the rest of our things.
The trampoline was one of the first things Tim and Dad built when we arrived. A place for the boys to play while we made the house into as much of a home for them as we could. Today we took it down.
After almost seven years it was becoming tatty, a hole in the bed, the safety net tearing, cushioned pads rotting. The boys at 11 and 13 no longer use it and it’s too grim to leave in place for guest children.
As we unclip springs and unscrew bolts we laugh about how Monty, as a puppy, would run around underneath trying to nip the children’s feet through the bed, how happy minutes of bouncing would swiftly turn to cage fights and how we would jump with them and bounce them high into the air while they laughed crazily, wheeling their legs and arms in the air, momentarily weightless.
It’s bittersweet, the ugly trampoline finally gone, but the end of an era of sorts. It feels oddly emotional for me, a sign of them growing up, no longer children but teenage or almost teenage. Getting tall in a tangle of legs and arms.
We move the swings too, lifting them from the ground and with the four of us, me, Tim, mum and dad, each on a pole, walking them to the other end of the garden, where the boys now play football. The swings sit inconspicuously at the edge of the woods, hidden at the back of a side garden that isn’t much used by anyone but the boys. Doing double duty now as both swings and goal posts.
Mum mows the lawn where the trampoline once stood and I tidy the flower beds around our little ramshackle shop. It all looks very neat and tidy, as if the trampoline and swings were never there.
Friday 19th April
My knees are damp, even through my knee pads, a thin veil of mud clinging to my trousers. My nails are a fetching shade of matte brown, the earth seeping through my gloves to coat them. Despite all the rain we’ve had, the top layer of each cutting garden bed has a hard crust, soil pummelled to solid, craggy, slabs by the storms. Pulling the weeds is slow work. I dig out dandelions with my hori hori knife, carefully trace the roots of the pernicious and ever present bindweed and mercilessly pull out the copious sycamore seedlings.
Once each bed is clear I spread a layer of fresh compost on top as mulch. Dark, soft, crumbly soil for the worms to pull down into the bed. I plant out the hardened off larkspur seedlings and the cerinthe, hoping that they are tough enough to survive the slugs and snails and any coming cold snap.
Mum is weeding the raspberries, pulling out bindweed, creeping buttercup and potentilla, dad going backwards and forwards with a wheel barrow between us both and the compost heap, Monty trotting along at his heels. We’re all stiff by dinner time, sitting around the kitchen table with rosey cheeks and pink noses from a day outside in a stiff westerly breeze.
Saturday 20th April
I set the breakfast table and slide a tray of almond croissants into the oven. The sweet smell of them baking bringing everyone to the kitchen. It’s dad’s birthday today and we’re heading into town for lunch.
We try Brasserie Madeleine, a traditional French bistro; smart tables, unusually friendly waiters, warm lighting and lovely views of the cathedral. Dad has oysters and there are moules marinières, gravalax and rillettes, good burgers for the boys. We laugh a lot and Rufus is defeated by an Ile flottante that the waiter says is less an ile and more a continent.
Home again and we go back into the garden to work off lunch. Mum back in between the raspberries and me sowing seeds. I scatter rows of tiny grey ammi seeds directly into a freshly mulched bed, replacements for my carefully over-wintered seedlings, which were mown down by the snails.
I re-sow some cosmos and rudbeckia that suffered a similar fate and then some new trays of zinnias and sunflowers too. I do a final sweep of the sprouting dahlia pots, lifting each one in search of illegally concealed slugs and snails, hurling them outside for the birds, a revenge of sorts for the ammi, cosmos and rudbekia.
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Hi Rebecca and family, you amaze me with your achievements at your chateau! Cornwall finally sunny! We are back to Brighton for 2 nights next weekend then…. France!👏👏.see you in 10 days.! 🥰
Hi Rebecca, greetings from South Ontario,Canada. It’s been a cold week,we have had a beautiful start to spring but it’s colder now and will be for the foreseeable week.
So love reading your blogs.I really enjoy how you described you life in France. It nice your moms d dad are there to help out. Your table always look so inviting.
Thank for sharing your life with us all. Wishing you a good week. Looking forward to next week.🇨🇦.