Catherine Stock's Blog, page 22

Ballade on two wheels

Took advantage of balmy weather to cycle to Sarlat yesterday. Started in Cieurac, a lovely village just across the Dordogne from Souillac. The train track between Souillac and Sarlat was removed a few years ago and paved as a bicycle route. It's beautiful. The track is relatively flat and follows the river much of the way, winding around farms and villages, at one point disappearing into a long tunnel, until it turns north towards Sarlat. Then the climb through an oak forest is long but not ...

Inspired artist: Mato Atom

Coquille d'oeuf

When I came to France in 1991, I wanted to buy a Deux Chevaux, but all my friends groaned and told me to grow up. So for years and years I drove a nondescript but faithful Renault 11. Finally one year the engine blew up and as no one was around, I got to search for and buy my dream car.

My friends had a point though, my Coquille d'ouef (eggshell) wasn't up to long drives, steep hills or picking up friends and their baggage from the train station, so my wonderful mechanic put a new (second-h...

Roman Holiday and Me

Before my friend Rachel returned to New York last week, I persuaded her to leave behind her DVD of one of my all time favourite movies, Roman Holiday.

The morning after watching it, I got an email from a lovely Canadian I had spent two days with in Rome in 1970 when I was a sweet and innocent 17 year old. We had visited the Coliseum, the Vatican, and the Spanish Steps among other sites together.

Doug tracked me down a few years ago via Google, and now he was emailing me birthday wishes. He incl...

Coulemelles

Found this box of mushrooms in the market on Friday morning after Gym Tonique for five euros. I think they're coulemelles, one of the tastiest mushrooms to be found this time of year.

Cooked them in a pan with butter, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and a little fresh tarragon, added cream and served them up on fresh noodles with parsley and parmesan. Delicious.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month...

Armistice Day (November 11) is a national holiday in France. It commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning - the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in 1918.

The French soldiers were decimated in the trenches. Not one village was spared by the veritable massacre during this terrible time, and every village commemorates thi...

Boudoir haiku

It's very gratifying when someone expresses interest in buying one of my pictures that I am especially attached to. Here is one of my watercolour "boudoir haiku", probably executed in less than five minutes, that I am about to part from.

My project for the winter is to capture the simple spirit of these little pictures and work them up into oils.

Paying the piper

Friends be warned: if you overstay your weekend at Le Tramizal, chances are that you will be press ganged into modeling for my Monday evening drawing group.

The second drawing is inverted by the way. My doctor friend was not required to balance on his toe for ten minutes...

Quéribus

Just escaped to the Pyrennees for the few days. The weather was warm and sunny and the Mediterranean was still gloriously swimable. We crunched up leafy paths through chestnut forests to waterfalls, soaked in steaming sulfuric thermal pools in the wilderness, discovered a magical small village called Jojuls, and hiked up to the remote St Martin de Canigou Abbey. On the way home, we had a picnic lunch at Quéribus, one of the Cathar pogs. The holiday, as always, was over in a flash.

Mrs Ersoy's sundried tomato sauce

I didn't know what to do with all the tomatoes that were rapidly ripening on the vine this summer, so Mucella, a watercoloring engineer from Turkey who was taking my class, told me how her mother preserved her tomatoes. When she sent me these photos of the famous sauce and her fabulous mother, I had to add them to my blog.

Here is the recipe:
Cut tomatoes in half and place in deep pan with some salt. Place in full summer sun and cover with netting to keep bugs out. Every morning and evening...