For the first time since we bought Les Terraces Graham and I arrived here separately. I was working for a client in Africa and Graham came home to handle check-outs and meet & greet new clients. For me coming home was wonderful, but a bit of a culture shock – 48 hours earlier I’d been in a place where access to both running water and electricity was spasmodic at best and to have both simultaneously a marvel. To move from that to Sainte-Foy and, 9 hours after my arrival, a Saturday morning market was surreal. My diet went from white bread, omelette and margarine for breakfast and chicken & rice for supper (no veg) to the abundance and variety of market day. I gorged on fruit and veg.
I’ve now been home for 4 weeks (where has the time gone??). It has wonderful settling back into the rhythm of life here – including the very early morning realisation that once again, I’ve forgotten to put the rubbish out and running bleary-eyed half-dressed down the stairs to remedy that failure before the dustbin lorry passes the front door. Not always successfully. I should perhaps make it clear that we don’t have domestic rubbish collections in the BVI – we carry our rubbish to centrally located skips (dumpsters) that are emptied on alternate days, so one never has to remember to put it out.
Today we had guests to check out and, as we weren’t sure when they were leaving, I didn’t do my early morning run around the market to avoid the crowds. So it was just as the church bells rang 12 that I set out to shop. I didn’t have much to buy, just some raspberries (if there were any to be had), and some spuds, plus some merguez, bread, eggs and a little salad.
My favourite veggie stall is in the Place du Marche. They seem only to stock what really tastes the best that day. Today there were baskets full of courgette flowers, which I’ve always wanted to try, so I put a modest 3 into a bag and handed them to “Papa”, along with a few others. “Papa” looked at my sad collection of blooms and returned to the basket. He added a further 5 to the collection plus a few stalks of parsley. He weighed the salad and petits legumes and charged me a pittance for them. The courgette flowers were “un petit cadeaux”, which was accompanied by a blown kiss!
So this afternoon I came home and Googled the preparation of courgette flowers. I sort of knew what to do with them … make a tempura-style batter and them dip & deep fry them. Good thing I Googled, otherwise I’d not have removed the pistils!
So, here’s how it went …..
Slightly wilted flowers .... never mind
I think that it was probably a good thing that removed these.
Dredged in flour and ready for the batter (no clean fingers for photographing the next stage)
Some cooked, and the last 2 in the pot.
I loved them. Graham didn’t. So guess who was the piglet? Sorry, no prizes for getting it right.
