The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
We bought a car, zoop! zoop! It’s a Kia Rio 1.4 diesel. It’s a 2012, with only 11280 km on the clock. We got a decent deal. It’s still under the manufacturer warranty for 6 years, has power everything, sun roof, heated seats and a full set of winter tires.
Now Katy just needs to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, in the wrong side of the car :)
While Katy’s parents are in town, we have babysitting! We made full use of it last Friday night to go have a late anniversary dinner at Le Petit Manoir. It’s a one-star Michelin restaurant that’s 5 minutes from our door. This might prove dangerous!
We got there early and were whisked to our table. We both decided on the Hunter’s menu, where each serving would be paired with a glass of wine selected by the chef.
Our meal started with a mise en bouche of sweet potato mousse with a smoked lard foam and small slices of roasted veal. Katy then had a venison Wellington-y sort of dish, with sauteed cabbage, pumpkin salad and juniper berries. For me, to cater for my allergies, the wellington was replaced with sauteed venison loin, with the same sides. Katy had a pheasant tartelette with mustard endives while I had wild duck foie gras. That was followed with a supreme of roast pigeon, with salsifi and a wild mushroom emulsion (THAT WAS TO DIE FOR!!!). The main course (!) was seared deer cubes with braised red cabbage and spaëtzle. We then had a cheese board, with some cracking cheeses (Katy discovered well-aged Gruyere and I discovered Livarot, as well as a blue cheese from St-Galle) paired with a beautiful Bordeaux. The meal was rounded off with coffee, sorbets and a platter of petits fours that Katy had to sacrifice herself and take on by herself. In the end, we were royally stuffed! It wasn’t cheap, but it was very, very, very good!
One of the more memorable moments of the evening was when another party came in with a huge dog. Nobody even batted an eye – which is fairly commonplace in Switzerland – and the dog was very well behaved and spent most of the meal under their table. The funny moment was when they asked for a bowl of water for the pooch, it was served in a fine bone china bowl on a plate :) At one point, the dog was wearing the tablecloth on its head like a nun’s headpiece. It was very cute.
So, if you’re in Morges and have the chance to go, I strongly recommend it.
I got this email in my work inbox this morning. I could read the words, but had no clue whatsoever as to what it actually meant. This is not an uncommon occurrence.
From: C,N,LAUSANNE,Systems Nutrition & Health Sent: vendredi 18 octobre 2013 07:43 To: RDDOR: All Users Subject: Cuchaule et moutarde de Bénichon Main caf building H Bon weekend et bonne Bénichon N
For future reference, cuchaule is a brioche with saffron from Fribourg. The “moutarde de Bénichon” is more of a spicy, savoury jam than a mustard and the Bénichon itself is a traditional harvest feast where everyone eats and drinks too much.
As part of the team building we’re doing at casa Buitoni, we cooked our own dinner tonight. We made 2 types of pasta and some pizza. This was above and beyond the other courses we had. This continues the sinister plot to try and kill us all with massive quantities of good food.
The Swiss post office offers a service that I think is brilliant. I’m always needing to post stuff but I don’t always have stamps on me, or I don’t have time to go to the post office. Solution: send a pre-paid SMS, get a code, write it on the enveloppe, send letter!
This is one of those brilliant ideas I wish I’d thought of.
It comes with its own nuclear bunker.
Seriously.
Apparently, it’s Swiss building laws that all apartment buildings need to have one. Generally, it’s where all the storage units are kept. But still.
NUCLEAR FALLOUT BUNKER!!!!!!
I went on the Chocolate Train yesterday. It’s a touristy thing, but hey, I’m a tourist :) It goes from Montreux to Gruyeres, visits a demonstration cheese factory and then the old town and castle, then goes to Broc to visit the Maison Cailler chocolate factory. I left the house at 6:45 in the morning and got back home at 7:30 at night. I killed my back carrying my bag and camera, but all in all it was a good day out. The idea was to scope it out to see if this would be a Bean-friendly activity, but I think it’s a bit too much for him and he’d get bored after a while. It was a 4 hour train journey in total, with lots of downtime to explore the city. The chocolate and cheese factories were a bit meh, but the city and the scenery were beautiful. There is also an HR Giger museum in Gruyere. That man was not in his happy place for most of this life.
Bobble was there to keep my company and keep me out of trouble. He entertained the train stewards and even had a hand in driving tee train.
All pictures here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/gruyere_broc_aug_2013/
Having a jambon cru sandwich in the old town of Gruyère.
Lavaux is a region in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It consist of 830 hectares of terraced wineyards that stretch for about 30 km along the south-facing northern shores of Lake Geneva. Although there is some evidence that vines were grown in the area in Roman times, the actual vine terraces can be traced back to the 11th century, when Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries controlled the area. Since July 2007, the Lavaux is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
A funny thing happened to me on the way to watch a movie this morning. Swiss movie theaters will assume that you already have 3D glasses, because you have to purchase them in advance. I went to see the Wolverine movie and I hadn’t noticed it was in 3D until I sat down mid-previews. I didn’t have glasses. As regular readers will know, I’m night-blind and have shit low light vision, so I wasn’t keen on leaving the seat I’d managed to stumble into. I ended up watching the movie without glasses, yay! On the flip side, it didn’t give me too bad a headache, and they were nice and reimbursed my (outrageously priced) ticket.