Pine Cone Mobile

When we went to France in the summer my daughter began sneaking pine cones into her bag, which she then insisted on keeping and bringing back home!  I wanted to help her do something interesting with them but thought it unlikely that they'd last until Christmas when we could spray them gold or silver and hang them as decorations.  So we sat down together and painted them in other bright colours and created a mobile for her bedroom!

We can also add to the mobile as it's just two sticks tied together with string, and the hanging items looped over.  As you can see we've already added a salt dough heart that she made - it just needed rearranging a bit to keep the balance.  We used quite rough brown string to keep it looking rustic and natural.  Plus it makes life easier if the intentional look is a bit rough around the edges!

Moules Frites aux Sœurs

I apologise if that is bad French!  I'm half French, yet those prepositions and contractions still confuse me!

Anyway...after a wonderful trip to the seaside in France a couple of weeks ago, my sister and I decided that we could definitely make our own Moules Marinière and we definitely didn't need to fall into the tourist trap and pay for a ridiculously overpriced meal.  We hastily and over-excitedly bought 2 kilos of local and very fresh mussels.  That is an awful lot of moules for 3 people, but I didn't really know how to get the fishmonger's attention and get him to stop filling the bag!

Both my sister and I assumed that the other was a dab hand at preparing this particular meal.  We get home:

     "So, what do we do?"

     "What?!  I don't know, I thought you knew!"

Uh oh.  We scoured the shelves and found a couple of old French recipe books.  Neither of which contained the right instructions.  We've both eaten moules marinière a few times in our lives so we just decided to take a stab at it!  And it turned out pretty tasty, so I thought I'd share what we did here in case anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation.

This 'recette' is for 2 kilos of mussels.  This could easily feed 4 - 6 people.

Ingredients:

2 kg of clean Mussels 

6 bulbs of some spring onions we'd used in a salad the day before - or try shallots, chopped

4 gloves of garlic, finely chopped

1.5 glasses of white wine - make sure it's a tasty one so you can enjoy a few glasses with your meal.  Or drink the whole lot whilst cooking and find something else suitable for dinner.  Of course we didn't do that.

A couple of large knobs of butter

A splash of olive oil

A large handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped

A pinch of salt and pepper

A load of potatoes chopped up into chips

We suspect that at some point your supposed to put some cream in.  However a) we didn't have any cream, and b) we weren't sure when to put it in.  So we decided to omit it.

Before tackling the mussels, my sister used a deep fat fryer to start the chips.  On a medium heat deep fry the chips for about 6 minutes.  Remove from fryer and set aside.  Then turn up the heat as much as possible.  While the oil is heating up prepare the mussels.

1.  Find a saucepan large enough for your mussels.  Splash oil in pan, add butter, and place over a medium heat.

2.  Once butter has started to melt chuck in chopped onions/shallots and garlic and allow to soften, moving it about with a wooden spoon occasionally to prevent sticking and burning.  Make sure your pan doesn't get to hot.

3.  When the onions and garlic are nice and soft place all the mussels in the pan.  Throw over the wine, some salt and pepper, turn up the heat a bit and put the lid on.

4.  Leave the mussels to steam for about 5 minutes.  When the mussels have opened remove from the heat.  We were fortunate enough to have a glass topped pan so we could judge by our eyes rather than time, but I reckon 5 minutes will do it.  

5.  Now carefully put the chips back in the fryer for another 3 minutes.

6.  Sprinkle the parsley over the mussels, give it a stir and then place the contents of the pan in a lovely serving dish.  And serve.

7.  Remove the chips from the fryer, give them a good shake.  And serve.

Et voilà!  Bon appétit!  They were wonderful - you could tell they were fresh and hadn't travelled far.  None of that weird chewiness where you resort to an open-jawed, no biting, weak smile to convey delight and maturity of your taste buds!

Remember - don't eat the mussels that haven't opened.

Un Petit Round Up

As a fairly new blogger on holiday I soon felt a little ill-prepared.  I really should have put something in place for whilst I was on away so that there wasn't a massive gap between posts.  But alas I didn't.  So in lieu of preparation I thought I'd give you a little round up of what we've been up to so you know I haven't just abandoned the blog.

My parents have a lovely house in a tiny hamlet called Goupilleau du Pinier on the border of the Loire-Atlantique and the Vendée regions of France.  There are only about 5 houses in the hamlet, the others inhabited by friendly French folk with fabulous French names like Didier, Catherine, Pierre and Loulou.  It was a perfect place to holiday with a little one - not too far to drive but far enough that you feel 'away' and the weather to be better, amazingly tranquil but only a short drive to towns, beaches, markets and other holiday delights.  If anyone is interested in staying there then send me a message and I'll put you in touch with my mum.

My parents' house at Goupilleau du Pinier - the perfect place for a relaxing holiday!

And here are some of my highlights...

Moules Frites - fresh local mussels with proper chips.  Deelish!  Will write about this more soon.

Family bike riding in St Jean de Monts.  I chose to ignore the little voice in my head that was saying, "Really?! A toddler on the front of the bike with no safety apparatus!?" and away we sped!

He read a whole book!  This is unheard of for a man who barely wants to sit still let alone read.  My dreams of a lazy beach holiday have been reborn!

For the last 5 years or so I've had my eye on some amazing green Mary Janes in a baby shop in Brighton.  You're right - my little girl isn't even 2 yet, but since I started popping in for presents I've had them in mind for my own little one.  When the time finally came it turned out they cost a fortune and my little girl's feet were too wide.  Imagine my delight when I came across these in a French shoe shop in the sale and just what I wanted!  You may curse me for saying this but I'm a little bit gutted that it's too warm for her to wear them straight away!

There's something really special about eating fruit straight from the tree and our first cherry picking experience didn't disappoint.  So tasty!  

I've got so many happy childhood memories of visiting Mont St. Michel; I really wanted to show Ben and Jola and start making our own memories.  We were a little disappointed to discover that you now have to park on the mainland and take shuttle buses to and from the island, which we didn't think would work with our brief visit.  I managed to persuade Ben that it'd be worth it, even if we could only stay 20 minutes.  Fortunately they both loved it!  Ben loved the Diagon Alley-esque magic of the narrow streets and tiny staircases, and Jola just loved the bus!

And now back to normality!  I'm so happy that we've come back to some lovely sunshine!