Eat, Pick, Love - Food Foraging in France

Walking the dogs along country lanes is one of our favourite things. Always has been, but here in the Hérault our walks have turned into something quite different.  It’s a feast on foot!
 

The abundance of wild growing produce is thrilling to us, and something I’d quite forgotten about.  I had great fun as a child picking wild blackberries and returning home with a black tongue, pips in my teeth and nails, turning my haul over to my mum or grandma and looking forward to blackberry and apple crumble.  But this is something else!  

We now carry bottles and baskets with us as we walk the dogs and to return home with so much ingestible booty seems sinful.  But it’s quite the opposite, it’s nature providing for the winter months ahead and actually quite logical but still - it feels so generous!

 

We have come to the end of the blackberry season and the freezer is full of them waiting to be added to more crumbles and fools, whilst our homemade blackberry jam is served at breakfast every morning.  And Alex has made blackberry vodka!  This concoction needs to infuse for three or four months before it's ready to make its festive appearance at Christmas.  Can’t wait.

 

We have now moved on to figs, almonds, quince, grapes, apples, peaches, pomegranates, mushrooms and apricots; following later will be the olive harvest.  We are about to attempt an adventurous fig and almond jam; I am consulting recipes for poaching quince; all the other fruits can be eaten straight off the branch!  There are even fresh water springs dotted around the landscape dispensing pure mineral water that is delicious, refreshing, locally famous and perfectly free.

 

It’s fabulous French fecundity and we love it.  It’s also a robust reminder that autumn is around the corner and inevitably the long, long days and blazing sunshine of summer will wane – actually, mother nature has already hit the dimmer switch – but we don’t really care. Our pantry is full, our jam is sweet, we have nuts to crack, vodka to look forward to and the Vendanges (the grape harvest for this year’s wine) is in full flow.  La vie en rose indeed.

Water Jousting in Sète

One of the things I love about France is a kind of tacit acknowledgment (as I understand it) that if you do something stupid it's your fault and you have only yourself to blame.  Thus, if you injure yourself diving head first into an empty swimming pool that's your look out and there's no one to sue because an "Empty Swimming Pool - Do Not Dive" sign had not been erected. 

 

Which brings me to The 346th Annual Water Jousting Festival in Sète.

This five day aquatic party has been going for nigh on three hundred and fifty years and shows no real signs of having changed much since 1666. Basically, boys and men ten years old and upwards and with seemingly no height, weight or agility restrictions practise all year, then on the given date clamber atop boats fitted with a tintaine (a fitted wooden gangplank) and sail at each other armed with wooden shields and steel tipped jousts, the aim being to poke and topple your opponent into the water who then has to endure the 'swim of shame'.  There is a blue team (traditionally single men) vs. a red team (the married men).  The loss of a working body part / eye / dignity is seen as integral to the proceedings - all part of 'bigging up' as a Man.

Righty ho, let the games begin, and what fun it was too!  We relished once again the total lack of police presence,  gleefully noting that St. John's Ambulance or equivalent were missing entirely, revelled in the large bars lining the streets freely selling wine, pastis and beer for 1 euro a go, appreciated the band playing frantically, observed with interest the teenagers inking each other with marker pens and laughing uproariously every time a known associate humiliated himself. Any man, woman or child could have fallen into the water at any moment as there were no barriers and I sincerely doubt a great deal of thought had been given to public liability insurance.  All of which makes for a great laissez faire atmosphere! 

 

 

It was especially interesting to watch the boys clambering up the gangplanks of boats and setting sail on a direct collision course, wearing outfits basically unchanged for about a hundred years, armed with a steel tipped pole and protected by a small wooden shield.  I couldn't help thinking that in many other countries - certainly in Australia - participants would now be wearing life jackets and protective helmets at the very least, brandishing full length body shields made of kevlar, their poles probably replaced by something akin to a pool noodle.  Not in Sète.  If they want to joust, this is how it's done and competitors enter at their own risk.  Another "PC" thought - is this encouraging aggression and violence in youth or channelling human nature to a celebrated outlet with historic and cultural significance?  I incline rather towards the latter - especially when rival reds and blues are all gathered together after the event enjoying churros and galettes alongside the older competitors indulging in the 1 euro vin. Very typical, very historic, very French, very good!