Game

It was another foie gras sort of day.

Enough meat for awhile, I told myself after the walk down the hill from the restaurant to our house. But les chasseurs were having a party.

This past month in Auvillar, my housemate and I have had the opportunity for a few brief conversations with the hunters who have a lodge next door.

"Good luck with your hunting," we told them if they were still gathered out front when we unlocked our studio in the mornings and climbed up the stairs for a day of writing. And if we crossed paths in the afternoon, we politely asked if they'd gotten anything.

Things began to get interesting a couple of weeks ago when they returned from the hunt with five wild boar. We'd didn't see the carcasses unloaded ourselves, but we heard the clinking of glasses and dishes and conversation after they made themselves dinner.

Today they got deer and the carcasses were strung up just inside their door. Their meal was pretty much over, but the men and a couple of their young sons and even a girlfriend were still gathered around the table when we walked by this afternoon.

"Sit," they said. "Try some boar." So we did. And deer sausage. And homemade prunes in Armagnac. And 2 kinds of homemade wine, and finally, coffee. The food was delicious. The hunters were very nice. In fact, marriage was proposed.

I declined.

I did, however, get the instructions for making prunes in Armagnac.

Duck, Duck, Goose

Duck is a big thing in this region of France. I ate duck gizzards twice today.

We VCCA folks had lunch at the home of a French sculptor. She served us a delicious salade landoise which is a lightly dressed plate of greens with duck gizzards and dried duck breast.

Tonight, I ate a salade Gascogne at my favorite restaurant in Auvillar, Sadoul de la Tour. Salade Gascogne is toped with the aforementioned bits of duck plus a roasted duck leg and a nice slice of foie gras on toast. It smells like Thanksgiving. The waiter at Sadoul de la Tour looks like a cross between Tony Curtis and Emilio Estevez and always speaks French with me very patiently. After my salad and my dessert of glace liegois, I needed a digestif so I ordered an Armagnac and he brought it with 3 sugar cubes and explained to me that one can ease the firepower of the Armagnac by eating a couple of sugar cubes dipped in Armagnac first. Sort of a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

Which made me remember that today at lunch the sculptor explained how the French like to partake of an eau de vie (which means literally water of life) after they have coffee following a meal. The eau de vie is poured directly into the empty but still warm coffee cup which enhances the aroma and the taste of the eau de vie. We had two to chose from--a locally made plum eau de vie that she had added vanilla bean pods to or a mirabelle (a tiny yellow plum the size of a cherry) eau de vie from the Alsace region. I chose the mirabelle.

Oh--and then there was the apple tart.

The concept of joie de vivre requires absolutely no explanation after a day like today.