Finally, I said to myself, "I'll offer to get someone else a glass, and then see what happens" - well, of course you know! Not two seconds after I poured a glass, half a dozen people swarmed the table and poured for themselves too! (Yes, I smiled)
Well, besides drinks, this is the lovely "brasucade-sardinade" that awaited us!
Yes, it's a giant barbecue! "Brasucade" is a term specific to our region, and comes from the occitan language - it refers to either the wood fire that you grill things over, or the party with that theme :-) . A "sardinade" is when you grill sardines!
Well, while we waited for the fire to burn down to cooking coals, we listened to music and ate paté. And, actually started to meet people!
Everyone watched the first several batches of mussels cooking - the scent was unbelievably yummy!
After many, many cycles of mussels, they started grilling the sardines - and I finally saw first hand how to eat these tiny fish! (They weren't gutted, which surprised the heck out of me) You simply put part of in your mouth, and scrape off the meat with your teeth - any bones hard enough stay with the fish; the rest, you just eat! The "insides" are cooked down to nothing - they're either left behind with the head and spine, or eaten un-noticed...
We slowed down our mad scramble for grilled goodies, then came the cheese! Our group had a great table, and an in with the grillers - it was funny to notice that our little corner was quite well stocked... Even when the dessert came, we had *all* the options (and still plenty of wine).
Eventually, things wound down, and the tablecloths were magically rolled up - it was time to go. We traded contact info with our new neighbors, and headed out for our long walk home.
After a full night of standing (6:30-10:30), followed by 40 minutes of walking, I was simply exhausted all day today! But really very happy :-)
~~~
* actually, it started much earlier, as Sunday buses are infrequent - we left our apartment a smidgeon after 6...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment