Today the Association Culturelle Dizannaise (St-Dizant-du-Gua's event organisation) ran an afternoon featuring some local food-producers. I was expecting a few displays, some tasting, and a lot of buying, so it was confusing to find the hall of the Foyer Rural set with rows of chairs.
There were three stalls: a baker, a wine-maker, and the owner of a prepared-food delivery company. Not a lot, you might think, for a whole afternoon. Ah, but that was why there were rows of chairs. Each one gave a talk about their work, and answered questions. I was afraid it would turn out to be rather boring, but indeed it wasn't.
The baker, who delivers around here, was the first surprise. He makes a wider range of bread than goes on the van, and gave us snippets of information about what goes into the bread and how the different loaves are made. None of this knock-back and prove for 30 minutes casual attitude to the Staff of Life: most of the breads are fermented for at least 12 hours, and one type for 3-4 weeks! I can now tell you that chestnut and fig bread is delicious, and the baker even knows which fields the wheat for the Grand Resèrve comes from. And I bought a loaf of bread made from spelt (l'épeautre) which is reckoned to be the oldest type of grain grown for flour.
The vineyard bloke is a fifth-generation viticulturist and agriculturist (he grows wheat too) who produces grape juice as well as the local standards of cognac, vin de charentes, and pineau de charentes. He brought along various ages of rotted grape juice, and some delicious young sparkling unrotted grape juice. Apparently the pineau is good and also cheap; all I can say is that some of the alcoholic liquids are beautiful colours.
The ready-meals person didn't look so promising. In a white chef's coat, he stood behind a trestle table decorated only with a few menus and rather nervously told us about the food-preparation place and that they deliver to schools and care homes and to people who are temporarily or permanently off cooking duties. Things cheered up when he mentioned catering for parties and weddings, and he was much livelier when answering questions. Then he said "Shall I fetch the trays now?" and in came masses of party food which was utterly delicious, plus a bag for each one of us, containing one of today's meals. I'm just eating mine. It's nothing like the school dinners I remember - there are five courses and all very tasty. At €8.50 it's nearly twice as expensive as Meals on Wheels, but well worth it. I think it could be useful for catering for Music Weeks. My only complaint is that the bread roll is nowhere near as good as our baker's :)
