Quiet Day - 8/13

A lazy morning sorting out washing and other domestic duties before heading out to Eryagues to visit with Mathilde and the Vidal family.  Mathilde is another student who stayed with us in Victoria last year and they invited us out for a quick visit and lunch as this is the only day they are at home in between their vacation travels.  Their house is a bit hard to find so we arranged to meet at the main square in their town so we could follow them back home.  We had a very nice lunch of grilled sausage and pork tenderloin, a fantastic zucchini terrine, pasta salad, bread, and a dessert of fresh red nectarine with ice cream and meringue crumbled on top. A very nice bottle of champagne accompanied the appetizer round of tapanade on toast, nuts and chips while another lovely bottle of local Rosé complemented lunch.  The girls had a quick dip in the pool while we chatted about travel and food.  The Vidal's have a small number of olive trees on their property and they described the harvest of the fruit and how they get a quantity of olive oil when they have enough olives.  As is typical here, they harvest the olives in November and take them to a local processor where they are weighed and added to all the other olives from the area getting a corresponding allotment of oil in return.  At the end of our visit they gave us a gift of Callisson's, a provencale cookie/cake treat, and a small tin of their own olive oil.  Later we headed back to Avignon for a wander into town to orient ourselves a bit more and to plan for some shopping heading back to the Blouquet house later for another wonderful dinner.