La Manif à Cherbourg

'La Manif' in Cherbourg

Cherbourg seems to be the place for some crazy demonstrations. I've not seen them in action yet, but I have heard about three since I arrived.

I'm still yet to find out exactly what the 'Manif' or demonstrations are about as they rarely seem to make local news or are talked about much.

The other week, at French Class, I had heard that there was a Manif (it was the reason why some people were late). I had seen more police than usual that morning, but hadn't thought much of it.

On the way home, I walked a slightly different way, which took me through the centre of town, and I came across a huge traffic jam, lots of frustrated drivers, and corn sheaf waste dumped in the middle of a busy junction (which cars were trying to drive through/around).

I still don't know why exactly, but we think it was a Farmer's protest. Whatever it was made Cherbourg smell of rotting vegetables for a few days... Yuk!

Le Bébé de Chocolat et Bonne Fête à Rayures!

Today I was really poorly. We've all been suffering with a nasty cold since last Thursday, but it's really caught up with me today. Not fun.

Fran went out to teach one of her lessons this afternoon and left me with the children. Marc is also feeling poorly and was apparently up at 6am, so he was playing up. As a bit of a bribe/calming him down after school thing, Fran let him have one of his chocolate eggs (he still has some little ones left over from Easter!) and rather than having just one, he brought his whole chocolate stash bowl into the living room.

He then had one of his eggs (after opening one other and deciding that he didn't want that one anymore - probably because it was broken but he just had a tantrum about it) and I stuck him in front of Sesame Street (I have about 75 podcast episodes of this on my laptop and he loves it!) while I went to make dinner in the next room.

Aurianne has finally learnt to crawl and is now getting into everything so I came back in every few minutes to check she hadn't found wires/got stuck under a chair. I then went out to serve up their dinner and was definitely not out of the room for more than 3-5 minutes. I walked back in to tell Marc that it was time to come and sit up to the table, and heard Aurianne scrunching some plastic. She had her back to me, but when she turned round I realised what she'd got; a plastic bag that (had) contained Marc's star chocolates and foam fish sweets. I then noticed there was no chocolate in this bag, and that, instead, it was all over her face, hands and clothes. She was really pleased with herself!

I took the remainder of the sweets away (just some of the foam fish sweets, one of which she'd clearly chewed on and decided she didn't like...) and tried to clean up the sticky baby! She'd managed to get it everywhere, including on the glass table and the carpet! I wish I'd taken a picture because it was hilarious, but I was too busy trying to sort her out.

I was mid-stripping her clothes off while trying to keep Marc, who was attempting to punch/hit his thieving little sister, at a distance, when Fran came back. Not quite the 'calm and well-organised scene with children happily eating dinner up to the table' look I was aiming for! So embarrassing!

Chocolate cake and
Chocolate/Raspberry Sauce

I decided that I would make a chocolate cake this afternoon (cravings), but didn't get a chance to thanks to the chocolate baby, but did once the children were asleep. I had planned to use the Kenwood but it seemed like more effort in the end...

I used the BBC All in One Chocolate Cake recipe to make it. When they say "the cake mixture will be very liquid" they aren't kidding! It also says 'Preparation time less than 30 mins' but I'm pretty sure it took me well over an hour - partly because I'm not feeling very well so everything is a bit all over the place, but also because I don't know where Fran keeps all her baking stuff yet. I also managed to pour boiling water, straight from the kettle, all over my finger, which obviously slowed me down even more.

Chestnut Creme
(It doesn't taste like Christmas)

"Mmmm, so moist!"

We also made a chocolate sauce which we'd intended to make into a ganache, but instead we made it with creme fraiche, dark chocolate, frozen raspberries and chestnut cream or 'Creme de Marrons de l'Ardeche' which Fran & Charly insisted I tried, telling me 'it tastes like Christmas!' (for the record, it doesn't taste like Christmas, it tastes like fig rolls).

The cake ended up being very well-timed though as it turned out that Charly actually got a promotion today! Being in the Navy, this means another stripe on the uniform (hence the 'Happy Stripe Day' blog title) so a cake was very befitting.

Fran got out candles, and then Fran and I sang 'Happy Stripe Day to youuu' to Charly and then we ate cake.

Just one last thing to add, Charly had to help a barge that had fallen over in the harbour today. Apparently, 'just like in one of Marc's Thomas the Tank engine books'. I wish I had a picture to post, ideally with the caption 'go home barge, you're drunk', but I don't. A shame really as the pictures Charly was showing me were hilarious.

Fête de la Pomme

Fête de la Pomme

Jams and crates of apples
(in case you didn't want to PYO)

A Norman tradition, a bit like a country fair in celebration of the Apple, held in late September/October.

We went to one in Yvetot-Bge, near to Valognes on Sunday and met us with some of the family's church friends. It's quite normal for the hosting Orchard/Farm to open up their apple trees to public picking (which you then pay for at the end based on weight).

Apple Orchard

We bought a basket (from the basket weaver stall), and then went to pick some apples. Marc kept getting confused by 'to pick apples' in English and (I think) 'à pincer des pommes' (to pinch/steal apples) as 'pick' and 'pincer' sound similar and kept saying we were going to do that instead of 'à cueillir des pommes' (the french for picking apples).

Bakers Oven

There were also local farm shops selling their apple juice, cider, jams, duck and apple sauces, cider vinegar and cheeses. In addition to this, there were also some food stalls selling local sausage and chips, and a few craft stalls including apple themed artwork and a basket weaver.

Pomme de Pain

A Norman Man singing

There was a Baker who had come along to sell bread, which they were also baking in one of those old fashioned oven things on site. They were baking 'Pomme de Pain' too - a whole cooked apple encased in bread. It was tasty, but why wouldn't you core the apple first? You have to eat it with a knife so you can cut out the core and stalk before you eat it!

Later in the afternoon, they also had a local troop of traditional Norman folk dancers/ performers who arrived in full traditional Norman dress and put on a show on the stage. Marc loved this but Aurianne was tired so we had to leave before it had finished.

The Von Trapp Norman Family Singers
(we're convinced it was all one family!)

Norman Dancing
(Didn't get much more technical than skipping
round in circles, bowing and clapping)

Labyrinthe Vegetal

We also walked over to the farm just over the road, whose persistent French owner was insistent that all passers by should come in and try his 'Labyrinthe Végétal', basically a 'Maize Maze' in English. (Internet link here...) Apparently it's also known as 'La Clé des Champs' or 'The Key Fields'.

Which we did, and the children loved it. We didn't do it properly though as we had small people with us and only spent about 20 minutes in there before coming back out the way we came (Marie-Agnes had made leave signs on the ground so we could find our way out again).

Apparently it's supposed to take an average of 60-90 minutes!

A Path in the Maize Maze

Beautiful Blue Skies

Farmer had some giant rabbits

One of those 'Head in the Hole' photo boards. 

Flowers on a cart. The farmer/maze owner saw me
taking a picture and tried flogging them all to me!
"vous aimez? vous voulez acheter?
Oui, oui, vous pouvez en acheter un si vouz voulez!"

But first, let me take an Apple Selfie

Soirée Pizza

Nutella, Almond and Raspberry Sweet Pizza
Tasty!

On Friday night, Fran (and I) invited the Cherbourg Language Assistants over for Pizza. Fran used to be a language assistant so thought it would be nice to offer them some general support, and for me to get to know them a bit better.

However, the whole family (Fran particularly) has come down with a nasty cold, and so she needed to chill out in bed, which meant that I spent the day making pizza!

Fran and Charly have recently bought a Kenwood. They both love and use constantly to make pasta, smoothies, cakes, soup etc.

Spiced Sweet Pizza
When it was cooking, the dough rose with one big air bubble!

I made 12 (6 savoury and 6 sweet) and I'm kicking myself for not taking more photos. I remembered when they were all ready to go in the oven, but thought 'no, I'll take pictures when they're cooked', which I then forgot about.

Savoury pizzas consisted of créme fraiche bases (Fran's allergic to Tomato), with a variety of cheeses, onion, mushrooms and bacon lardons. The sweet ones were enriched dough with either Nutella, almonds and/or raspberry or melted butter, cinnamon/sugar spice mix and then decorated with icing (like a chelsea bun).