Christmas

This year's Christmas patisserie project is a raspberry and chocolate entremet with layers of genoise sponge, chocolate mousse, raspberry compote and chocolate.

For main course we have some local red deer venison marinated with juniper berries and extremely slow cooked at 100°c.

A short trip to Lisbon

It's been a very long time since Susie and I have had sometime away from Quélébu together and as Sheri needed to go to Lisbon on a fact finding mission before she leads a Linblad cruise there, we decided to make a trip of it with her and Michiel.

Despite the stormy weather when we were there, we found it a very interesting city and ideal for a weekend break. 

Unfortunately despite wearing a facemask on public transport links, at the airport and on the flight, I managed to get COVID. I felt pretty ill on the Monday and after a bout of uncontrollable shivering on disembarking from the aircraft at Toulouse, I took a test which confirmed all.

At the botanical gardens after a massage at The Vintage Hotel

At the tile museum

 

Porto-born French engineer Raul Mesnier de Ponsard designed this tower. He was a student of Gustave Eiffel to whom the tower is often wrongly attributed.

Cherry schnapps (called Ginjinha in Lisbon) in dark chocolate cups 

 

A trip to Belém with a monument to the Portuguese explorers of the age of discovery

Wild boar

We've had a lot of wildboar damage this year and I even saw a red deer stag above the Quélébu a few weeks ago. I shot a wildboar on Joubac last weekend but in general we haven't had much luck this year finding them. Today I was on a walk with Susie and I stumbled across a group of three stags (just managing to snap a photo of one of them before they bolted). Then twenty minutes later when we were descending from the summit 15 wildboars paraded in front of us!