My memories of Lamalou, a small town in the south of France around 1,5hrs west of Montpellier, will always have the taste of goat cheese and honey.
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Paula and I got invited to our host's friends' place, where we were supposed to learn how to make honey...
We started off with a dip in the pool. A very short one for me ( contrary to what we expected, the weather was more Icelandic than French) but 50 laps for Paula.
While walking through the kitchen, I saw numerous cooking books with French recipes and decided to learn something.
Maybe curry won't make it on the shortlist but am planning to use some of the found suggestions. One day. *cough*
Let's see if my future dinner guests survive it!
Let's see if my future dinner guests survive it!
All the reading and picture watching got me quite hungry, so it was a most lucky coincidence that by the time I was finished with the first book, our host brought ingredients for lunch. And what a lunch it was:
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| baguette, vin, jambon et melon; |
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omlette avec salade;
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fromage de chevre, pain et miel fait maison.
It's amazing how much coffee they drink in here. The amount of ciggarettes is even worse, though.
After a small repos, we took the car and drove up the hills to reach our host's bee hives. The weather was rather cloudy and rainy which, as we later found out, was very bad when it came to honey making. 'When the weather's bad, the bees are mad' was my catch phrase for the day. Normally, the host wouldn't even go to bother the bees but as we were there only for a day and were most eager to see the process, he decided to open the hives anyways. Before doing so he needed to calm the bees down. I'd have never guessed but your best weapon against mad bees is getting yourself armed with some smoke.
Ready for action:
A little snack before we risk our lives for some sweet honey:
And it's time to suit up! so to speak.
Playing it safe:
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Unfortunately, as foreseen by our new friend, there was no honey to be made that day. Additionally, what made things worse was the fact that two out of three opened hives were home to whole dead bee families (the queen dies and so does the rest I guess?).
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After getting shaky legs because of the few bees that started attacking once when we opened the only 'working and living' hive, it was time to stretch them out. The area was perfect, so a short hike was in order.
Enjoying a moment of silence and peacefulness.
