Our Halls

Last month I started you on a tour of our house with a peek at our kitchen so let's carry on where we left off. Halls may not be all that exciting but they are jolly useful places!

I would just add that most these photos were taken the afternoon before Mum and Evs arrived, when after hours of scrubbing, the place was unusually tidy (gleaming even) - it really isn't generally like that!

At the top of the stairs opposite the kitchen is this random little hallwayleading to the balcony -one of three entrances to it. The upstairs was initially two bedrooms and a living room that you had to go through to get to the stairs but with all the family that keeps coming to stay, they decided another separate room was more useful, so they made various changes and added in this sliding door. Actually, first they added the doorway but the door only came a couple of years later! I was rather relieved to see it when we moved in, as it offers a bit more privacy and security.

This corridor used to be full of lots and lots and lots of junk which appeared to belong to no one in particular. Gradually, we have chucked items (we try to do it discreetly as Bertie's mum is very much a hoarder!) and moved others to hidden recesses downstairs. Now it is a lovely little space to sit and read or relax - very helpful with all the people currently in the house! We can't let Baby JoJo crawl unsupervised here as he heads straight for the stairs.

Through the sliding door to the right is this other hall - from this view the kitchen is at the far end on the right, the door and stairs are on the left and then the blue bit is the bathroom and the nearest door the girl's room. I love maps and we have two here - on the left is a very interesting National Explorer one of the Caribbean........and on the right is this one of Guadeloupe. It is fun to look at it and work out where you have been or are going (or which part of the coast was in the photo Mum took from the plane - working this one out took an hour of staring!).

Beefing It Up

Our neighbour's son came round on Saturday selling beef as he had just slaughtered his cow (which had been pastured near Pika), so Bertie put our names down for 2 and a half kilos. It turned up yesterday morning for a bargain €20 and this morning I set myself to chopping and cutting and grounding before freezing - it was a long process! Thanks to mum who gave an experienced hand and had the bright idea of sharpening the knife on the stone wall!
In the end, I put about 700g in my little blender to try and make minced meat - not quite as good as a real mince machine would produce but it did the job! I have been searching for mince for weeks so it was lovely to be able to make a spaghetti bolognese at last (I also slipped in the red wine Evs brought me from the plane - delicious!).

I have frozen 1 kilo of chopped beef, which I shall no doubt put in a stew or casserole of some type, and I have frozen a steak of 350g for Bertie and I to enjoy one evening (with a glass of orange juice for maximum iron absorption!). I was feeling rather cheated as I surveyed the big bone that was included, until mum came up with the obvious suggestion of making beef stock and that is now boiling up with some veg and a bay leaf - umm, it smells lovely!
Following all this beefiness, I decided to have a look online for more info on this subject and I found this website of particular interest. Bertie has assured me our cow was definitely grass-fed (no grain-fed cows in Guadeloupe he said emphatically, and judging by all the cows randomnly grazing in fields along the side of the roads I can believe that!) and it was nice to find out how good for us that is! It is lower in fat and saturated fat and higher in Omega 3 fat and vitamin E - hurrah!

However, I was interested to note that as a result of it being less fatty, it is much easier to overcook, leaving you with dry food. I had noticed this in my bolognese, so I will have to pay more attention to the cooking process next time.

I have been reading about people who buy half or quarter of a cow straight from the farmer and I am musing on the possibility of doing this back home. You would need a mighty big freezer - and what happens if the power goes off for a long time... Oh yes, that only happens here in Guadeloupe!

Anyway, if you have any beef recipes that you would recommend, do let me know!

Peeking At Pika: Cythere

Sorry for the delay in the next installment of my Peeking at Pika series - I can only put it down to having visitors here!

C is finally for (Pomme or Prune) Cythere Site Ambarella

An interesting part of preparing these posts is finding all the english names for fruits and vegetables I only know in French. It turns out the cythere has many many names, including Otaheite apple, Golden apple and Tahitian Apple or Quince, so take your pick for your favourite one!

There are many fruits here which are "Pomme something" including maracudja, mango, callebasse, cannelle and even pomme de terre comes to mind. What is it with the word apple that it is applied so liberally, I wonder...

Cythere season was during the couple of months before Christmas, when we had them in abundance and enjoyed a cythere (or two or three) a day. They were very welcome as no other fruits were available. Now we have one every now and then.

We have three trees I think and they are so tall, it is rather hard to see the top where all the fruit is. As a result, it is not a fruit that you pick - you have to wait for the it to fall first!

When it is not yet ripe, the fruit is green and very sour. It then is ready to eat when it turns yellow, although it is still very hard and has quite a tart taste. When it goes soft it is no longer good. It has quite a bit of flesh but on the inside there is a very strange large stone with spiky bits all over it.Aside from eating cytheres, we also make a lovely juice when it is still green but it definitely needs sweetening! Bertie makes it by the rather time-consuming method of taking off the flesh and blending with water then sieving several times, though it still remains thick. Others just blend the whole fruit, stone included, but I am not sure if that is very good for your blender! We have also been given some jam made from cythere - with the stones still included!

Good for you

There is not an abundance of information on the cythere but it seems to contain iron, calcium and vitamin C too.

Sources: wikipedia http://caribfruits.cirad.fr/fruits_des_antilles/pomme_cythere http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/ambarella_ars.html www.cess-martinique.com/alimentation.html

The Strike Is Over. Long Live The Strike!

We were expecting the end on Monday but in the end it carried on a bit longer as the LKP tried to get various organisations including Medef (the bosses for Carrefour etc) to sign up - unsuccessfully it appears. I hadn't realised when we went to Carrefour last Saturday that we were supposed to be boycotting it - well no one told me! No wonder it was so quiet.

However, the agreement (with 165 points) was signed on Wednesday and the people of Guadeloupe were told to get back to work and in fact work twice as hard as usual to provide the money for the extra €200 a month that the lowest earners in the island will be receiving.

But ending a strike of 44 days isn't all that simple it would seem. The schools have been reopening bit by bit and the pupils returning in dribs and drabs - LissaLou will have to wait to Monday now. As to how they are going to make up all the lost time, well that remains to be seen. Bertie went back to his private lessons on Thursday so it will be nice to see a bit more income again but with all the extra lessons pupils are going to get he may have to jiggle his timetable a lot more.

Carrefour was closed due to its staff striking on Thursday and is again today. Yesterday we had no water and electricity again. Various other shops are still closed and those that are open have bare shelves. We are also wondering how the island's bosses are going to work out who will and won't be paid for not working during this time.

Other signs that Guadeloupe has resumed normal business - the roads are chockablock with cars (I would love to see how the air pollution has been affected over the last 6 weeks) and we went to the (finally open) Post Office and faced a queue of, oh 30 people. Somethings never change!

I am keeping my eyes open to see the hard-earned results of this strike: the price of petrol going down as well as the cost of the 100 most necessary basic items...

What The Girls Have Been Up To

And we thought the Carnival was over! The girls have had great fun dressing up with whatever they can find and marching round the house with their Carnival song (very realistic too) and barely a day goes by without it

This was last Thursday when we had a friend of LissaLou's over. After the Carnival, we went on to Activity Time and they had a great time making birthday cards for a cousin, puppets, daffodils, drawing...all with Mamie's new ducklings in the background! (We are looking forward to Duck a l'orange...)

Beautiful Guadeloupe

Just to assure you that there is more to this beautiful island than striking, here are some pictures from our day out last Wednesday, driving across La Traversee through the mountainous Basse-Terre then up round the west coast before returning home.

We stopped off at la Cascade aux Ecrevisses and had a great time bathing in the freeeeeezing cold river! (Didn't see any ecrevisses - shrimps though!)
After a picnic lunch we carried on to Pointe Noire and looked out westNever can resist a few coconut trees!Then we headed north to Deshaies and admired the pretty bay there

I think this boat's name is I can't hear...the mind boggles!

Bertie's sister Nadia and her daughter and friend were kind enough to take Mum and Evs in their car and it was very funny driving behind their erratic stop-starting as they enabled Evs to take lots of photos at random points in the journey. We were slightly concerned when we saw cameras shoved out of both windows but happily no casulties.

Nadia's car struggles up hills whilst ours had worn brakes (since replied, hurrah!) so we screeched our way down them. I suggested to Bertie we tie them together but he didn't seem to think that this was such a good idea...

This was the first day of major rain since the Londoners arrived - typical! But it cleared in the afternoon and all in all was a lovely day.

A Nice Day Out

Our church organised a morning walk and afternoon bathe for Ash Wednesday - happily everyone had petrol to get us there and our friends gave us a lift to sort out our lack of car space. We began the day at a place called An Ba Bwa La (looks exciting but simply means In The Woods!) which actually begins at the train station for the little Beauport train we took through sugar cane fields. No sign of the train though - presumably on strike for a better way of life.
Our walk was a good two hours and (we reckon, based on our exhausted feet and burnt arms and necks) at least four miles. At least! The scenery was beautiful, with all sorts of delightful plants to admire and photograph. On the far right top and bottom is the mahogany tree and its seed - looks nothing like the wood I must say. The bottom left photos are of a baby version of the passion fruit - delicious! No idea about the names of the others but they look pretty.There were also plenty of sugar cane fields to admire - these should be being harvested right now but...you guessed it, they are not due to the strike! However, the owner was driving through and he kindly gave Bertie a couple of canes to enjoy. Mum enjoyed using them as a Lechy stick!
The second part was through the woods and much cooler to our relief. Unfortunately, LissaLou spent a good hour of the walk moaning and crying - must work on her walking skills, as it is something we love and intend to do lots of in the future.

Baby JoJo was in our backpack for the first time and loved it - look at the cheeky boy stealing a bit of bread from the pocket!

After completing our walk and enjoying our well-deserved sandwiches, we set off for the beach. We returned to Porte d'Enfer a place that Bertie and I visited as a young, carefree couple in 2000 and have never been back to since - what a difference a few extra children makes!

It is a beautiful calm lagoon, great for children, with a grassy area all the way down the side complete with trees for shade and huts for picknickers (though you have to get there very early to bag one of these!) and a distinct lack of sand, hurray! At the end of the lagoon is the actual Porte d'Enfer, or Gate to Hell, where the Atlantic and Caribbean meet and the sea becomes ferocious. Venture along here at your peril! For some interesting details on the name (in french) have a look at this blog I happened upon.

Mum and Evs went for a walk along the cliff to Trou a Man Coco where you are meant to see water crashing in but for some reason they didn't (oh of course, it was on strike!). I must look at my photos from 2000 and see what it was like on our visit. The girls enjoyed the sea, Baby JoJo had a happy time scrabbling in the dirt, and Bertie made a great comeback to triumph in a game of Petanque with some of the other guys!

We stopped off at a viewing point of the magnificent coast before returning home.
Ah!
Mum and Evs have the proper Mother & Daughter photos but I quite liked this angle! Can you guess who is who....
We all slept very well that night! The only downside is that Bertie lost his mobile phone somewhere on the 2 hour walk...so we may be doing it all again!