Marché Gourmande d'Eyrenville

This was just a little local market.   Eyrenville is our nearest village and has a few houses and a church - that's it! About 100, maybe less, people live there.  We went with another English couple and a French couple. 

There were just 8 stalls, all selling food which you could eat at the tables and benches they had filled the square with.  You took your own plates, glasses knives and forks, chose a spot at a table and then walked around choosing what to eat.   I guess about 300 people turned up.  I had a trio of things for starter which we shared, 1/2 a small charentaise melon, with the seeds scooped out and replaced by the sweet dessert wine that is made here.  I also shared a platter of mixed patés and a lovely salad - yes of course the patés were all duck!!! and I at last did something I have not got around to before.  I had snails!!!!

This was the first time I had eaten snails.  I enjoyed them - funnily enough one of the guests I had gone with with asked me if I would share some with her because the smallest portion was 2 dozen and that was too many for her - so I said yes and we bought them.  I took a dozen and she took a dozen, out of the tub of 2 dozen, so then there was only about another 2 dozen left!

I chose PORK!!!! for the main course which was served  with delicious potatoes fried in pork dripping.  After that we just had dessert - fruit tart!!! There were lots of other things I could have had and it was fun walking round and looking at everything and chatting to the producers.  My friend Sylvie was there.  She owns a vineyard right here - In fact her land backs onto ours I think - and was selling her wine as well as water and bread.  And then after eating  we just sat in the sunshine and listened to the music - there was a good band but not my favourite one this time - and finished the wine!

The square is in the centre of the tiny village with the church on one corner and  houses around the sides.   I sat looking at the church, my mind drifting to somewhere far away, full of good food, good wine and good company.   Quite suddenly, the whole of the church lit up as the bright golden evening sun reached a particular point where it had uninterrupted access to the white stones - the stone changed colour to a vibrant gold as I looked at it.  It stayed like that for about a half an hour and then the stones changed back to their normal hue as the sun set.

It provided a rather breathtaking end to a superb evening.