As villages go, and even though it is not fortified as such, Môlay (near Chablis in Burgundy) felt very much walled in. You can see from the Google Earth aerial view below that the village's borders are very clearly defined, with only a few buildings lying outside its "ring road" (la rue des Fossés). The population now is about 120, but in the second half of the 1800s, three times as many people lived in Môlay.
Below, a closeup of a dry stone wall — there's no mortar to hold the stones together, they are simply stacked.
Other examples of walls around the periphery of Môlay
On the home front, we went to the market in Saint-Aignan yesterday and picked up our Christmas turkey along with some beefsteak for Walt's birthday lunch today.
At the poultry vendors' stall, I asked the woman in charge whether she thought I could keep the turkey in the fridge until Wednesday night, or would it be better to freeze it. In the refrigerator is fine, she said, but unwrap it completely and put it in the fridge « toute nue » — completely naked. I don't know if an American butcher would advise that strategy. The turkey cost 34 € for 3.5 kg. That's over $40 for a little less than 8 lbs.
At the butcher shop, we saw a nice looking rolled and tied beef roast that carried a sign saying « Façon Tournedos ». It was 24 € a kilo, and we decided to get some. The butcher wrapped it up, weighed it, and told us the charge would be 31 €. As we left the shop, I stopped and looked at the butcher's receipt and saw that the piece of beef weighed 750 grams — less than a kilogram. The price didn't make sense. Looking again, I saw that the butcher had charged us 42 €/kg instead of 24. Forty-two euros a kilogram is the equivalent of slightly more than $23/lb., and was nearly twice the advertised price!
I turned around and went straight back into the shop (which was a madhouse of people buying food and others placing orders for their Christmas foods). The butcher saw me walk back in and said to me: Est-ce j'ai fait une erreur ? Oui, I told him — you got the price wrong. He apologized, said it was an honest mistake, and refunded us 14 €, bringing the price of the piece of beef roast down to 17 €. I wonder what I would have done if I didn't speak French as well as I do.
I turned around and went straight back into the shop (which was a madhouse of people buying food and others placing orders for their Christmas foods). The butcher saw me walk back in and said to me: Est-ce j'ai fait une erreur ? Oui, I told him — you got the price wrong. He apologized, said it was an honest mistake, and refunded us 14 €, bringing the price of the piece of beef roast down to 17 €. I wonder what I would have done if I didn't speak French as well as I do.
The area outlined by the "Rue des Fosses" and "Rue de la Porte" looks, to me, like an aerial view of a Roman fort.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if the place was fortified in the distant past...
names like Grand Rue and Rue de la Porte seem to indicate so, too.
Perhaps a stone built structure was there...
possibly an old Roman fort...
with a ditch outside [the fosses]...
and the area that would have been the "vicus" [the civilian settlement] possibly bounded by the road "Rue de Derriere les Fosses"...
all the stone, from any original walls, now robbed out and incorporated into the current buildings.
I haven't found anything about the history of Môlay. In fact, I can't be sure whether the road around the village is the rue des Fosses [FOHSS] or the rue des Fossés [fuh-SAY]. Michelin and Google maps give Fossés, while the village street signs and the IGN maps site put the word in all capital letters as FOSSES, so you don't know if there would be an accent on the E or not.
ReplyDeleteTo confuse matters further, there is another village nearby (but not in the same département) called Molay, without the circumflex accent.
Personally I think the advice to leave the turkey unwrapped is good. It dries out the skin so it cooks with less steaming. Another good trick is to paint the bird with a small amount of eau de vie, especially if you are not using a farmhouse bird.
ReplyDeleteThose drystone walls are fantastically neat.
Susan, it is a dinde fermière. Actually, I plan to poach it first (partly because I want the broth) and then brown it off in the oven. I've cooked turkeys, ducks, and various chickens that way many times in the past. It's a method I learned from Eric Léautay on Cuisine+ TV here in France. It makes for moist meat and a crispy skin.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing happened to me at the market here yesterday. The traitor gave me 10€ less change than he should have…are these actual errors or just a way to make a little extra money on the backs of foreigners?
ReplyDeleteoops! Traiteur, not traitor.
ReplyDeleteBarbara, in your case I cannot see the difference!
ReplyDeleteI really hate the modern style of leaving the accent off the capital E. Local people will know how to pronounce the word FOSSES! Is anyone else likely to care? Yes! Pauline
ReplyDeletePS at TSYS, the guys fried the thanksgiving turkeys in a metal dustbin because they wanted to serve them Georgia style and they couldn't find a pan big enough.
Ken, you bet we would challenge a 14-euro error, even using our unconvincing French!
ReplyDelete"SVP, monsieur, je crois que vous avez fait une erreur avec le prix. Regardez le..." or possibly la, and since I can't remember the word for receipt, I'd show it to him.
I'm sure it was an honest mistake, because no one would do that on purpose in a shop full of regulars.
Here is a comment that was meant for this post but, for some reason known only to google, landed in Susan's post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Susan, these murs de pierres sèches are gorgeous.
Depending on the browser you use, the text to type is easier or more difficult?
Google seems to be messing round, making things more complicated and user unfriendly.
Now, I want to delete the comment above because the first line is missing and google tells me that I don't have access to this post...?????? What is going on ????
There are more mistakes this time of year, some are honest.
ReplyDeleteI always wonder when I see the word Foss, it is everywhere in Europe and means different things.
CHM, you deleted the 14:27 comment you had left above. That couldn't have been the one that ended up on a different blog, could it?
ReplyDeleteKen, I copied my comment from Susan's post and then added the first sentence. When I pasted the new text into the comment field, I did't notice the first sentence was missing for whatever reason. Then I tried to delete that comment and google [lower case on purpose] told me I couldn't have access to your blog. google says one thing and does another one! I'm fed up with these changes.
ReplyDeleteI'm completely confused by all this, CHM. It seems obvious that Blogger is making changes in the commenting interface, but I have no real information about the scale or purpose of those changes.
ReplyDeleteHi, Ken. I can't speak to your particular event, but I can say that I personally have experienced such "honest mistakes" many, many times in France (at markets, in restaurants, in cafés, even at the post office). Each time the "mistake" took the form of a missing €10 or €20 note. Each time that I've challenged the short changing, the vendor has immediately reached into his/her pocket and produced the missing note (and most irritating of all, always with a "heartfelt" apology).
ReplyDeleteA couple of times I've been ready to explain the situation, but before I can even open my mouth, they've handed me the missing note!
Barbara, did the'traitor'give you your 10 euros back? I guess there are advantages to paying by carte bancaire. No change.
ReplyDeleteDean, I haven't had very many such experiences. I have been shortchanged in Paris cafés a time or two, but those might have been honest errors. I've never detected a pattern.
Interesting about the price. At least you can see that 42 and 24 might just have been transposed when he was calculating... if it was an honest mistake, I'll bet he had a funny feeling after he told you it was 31€, and was thinking that it couldn't have been right :)
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday to your husband!
Here is a post I wrote about these kinds of issues a few years ago.
ReplyDeletehttp://ckenb.blogspot.fr/2007/05/strong-euro-and-honest-waiter.html
This summer in mid-town Paris, tne bakery clerk didn't even go through the charade, just handed over my money without a change of expression. Tony and I call it the Tourist Tax.
ReplyDeleteChris, I don't have memories of tourist tax collectors in Paris like that, and certainly not here in the Loire Valley. Maybe my memory is selective. I've always been a person who keeps an eye on his money and his budget. I'm sorry that you, Tony, and others have had these negative experiences in France.
DeleteLOL, Chris- tourist tax it is.
ReplyDeleteHello Ken and Walt.i do look at your web site on occasions and have fond memories of living there .im living back home in wales now near my brother and sisters. i facebook janet and she is well, how,s bertie the cat .god love him the rabbit catcher. looking forward to Christmas with the family..maybe i will get round to taking a ryan air flight in the spring you never know,,how,s the pizza lady in the village ?wishing you both the seasons best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ,David Kelly
ReplyDeleteDavid, it's nice to hear from you and I hope you see this blog comment. Is there an e-mail address where I can write to you? Bertie the cat is doing great, though Callie pesters him something fierce when he tries to come in the house. He basically lives in the garage and we feed him every morning and see him again in the afternoon, when we give him some treats. Because Callie is uncooperative, Bertie doesn't get as much attention as I think he'd like. We see Janet on Facebook some but don't hear from her much otherwise. Walt is on Facebook more than I am, but we both look in once in a while. The pizza lady and her husband down in Saint-Aignan retired and I think one or more of their children took the place over. We don't go there often. I didn't know you had gone back to Wales, I hope you are happy there. Happy New Year to you and let us know if you decide to take a trip to the Saint-Aignan area. Ken
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