Traumatic food weekend

It's been a bit of a traumatic weekend, food-wise, for me. We did lots of lovely things and had lots of fun, but after going to bed hungry last night I am now sitting here with a lump of lard in the pit of my stomach, wishing I had brought the Eno (of course it is sunday here and all the shops are closed). It started yesterday when I visited the charming mountain town of Le Vigan, in the Cevennes mountains, about 45 minutes north of here, with some friends. It's autumn here, and the Cevennes are known for apples, and for the special salad onions that grow there, and are mostly exported to the USA. However mushrooms are also a bonus of this season, and Cepes are one of the local favourites. Lots of people go out and collect them themselves, in the forest, but you have to know where to go. A stall at the market was selling them, and, ready to try anything, I bought several big ones, under the supervision of my friend, and local connoisseur, Antoine. These are big, ugly mushrooms, and I got 800g for just over 11 euros ($22 NZ!!!).



On saturday night, after an afternoon exploring the garrigues near Viols le Fort (will post pictures separately), I carefully cut up the cepes, and prepared them as Antoine had told me. They looked pretty good, smelled good too.



But ugh!! The taste!! They tasted minerally, earthy, and it was too strong to ignore. I had a few bites but then couldn't go on - Al had to eat the lot. Which he did, bravely, manfully.

Today was a nice still sunny autumn day and we decided to head to the sea, to Meze, which is on a salt-water lagoon by the Mediterranean Sea. Lots of oysters and other shellfish there ... blech, but Al likes them, so we decided to find some lunch there. We found the sea, and a parking spot, and a restaurant that was full and bustling so we settled down with a menu. 45 minutes later someone took our order and it was all downhill from there. Al's plate of coquillages (shellfish) was quite good but the mussels were disappointing - tiny and flaccid, and he couldn't figure out how to get the sea snails out of their shells. I had a salad to start, which was okay, but my main course was the worst food I have every paid for. It was lamb chops provencal - sounds good, doesn't it. But when it came it was two of the fattiest chops I have ever seen, crumbed, and deep fried. After digging around for 10 minutes or so, I found some meat near the bone, which was quite nice and tender, but the damage was done. It feels like there is a rock in my stomach still, hours after we left.

Al had bull stew, which he said was so gamey that it was almost but not quite inedible. I notice he managed to choke it down, without too much trouble. Emily had a plate of chips, which she said were very good.

Because the food had taken so long to arrive (we were there for more than 2 hours) we didn't have time to look around Meze, because we wanted to get to the dinosaur park, which closed at 5pm. Here are a few pictures that I took on the way back to the car. The dinosaur park was pretty good - they found the largest cache of dinosaur eggs in Europe there a few years ago, and the park was full of life size skeletons and models. Cool!