Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

The sky is clear as I’m having breakfast at 8am so I make a quick decision to go for a bike ride. On the way to Midleton I see a sign to the Mogeely entrance to the Greenway, where I ended up last weekend. I head there instead and less than an hour later I’m at the somewhat unprepossessing Youghal end. It’s a car park with the old station nearby blocked off.

I had imagined I’d end up at the beach that you can see on the map. Fortunately, a couple of locals out walking their dogs (who share my view that it’s a pretty sad end to a nice path) explain that I can get to the beach where the path crosses a road a 100m or so further back.

I don’t hang around though since (as you can see), the sky is no longer clear. Sure enough (Welcome to Ireland…) the light drizzle that starts just after I leave Youghal has become what I would call rain before I’m halfway back to Mogeely. I resist the temptation to turn on the electric assistance, though, so I feel the scone from Friday that I have with a cup of tea back in the cottage to be amply merited.

Then it’s time to check on my water kefir in the fermentation HQ. This turns out to be fairly anti-climatic. We open our jars and all agree that the kefir is too sweet. Maria says this is probably because its cold so the grains are taking their time to process the sugar. Back again tomorrow. The down side is that I forgot the mandarin peel I’d saved to flavour the second ferment. Maria was going to let me have some rhubarb but as I’m leaving she tells me not to forget the mandarin peel tomorrow.

After an afternoon catching up on crosswords I cook an early dinner (I’m an hour ahead on my timing having spoken to J. & S.). Sea bass I’ve filleted and fried peppers.

And an early dinner means an early blog post.

PS: It’s raining again.