Staying close to home

Since it was Saturday, we started the day off at the market in Ste. Cecile. With all our driving around, we've only filled up the car three times so far. Fortunately diesel is still the cheapest fuel here at $1.72 a litre at the grocery stores, who continue to have the best prices for fuel. Regular gas at most pumps quickly passes the $2 a litre mark. And we complain in Canada!
Most vehicles in France continue to run on deisel and most are significantly smaller and fuel efficient than the Renault I'm driving, which is by the way, more fuel efficient than my VW Jetta at home. I guess that's how the French afford it. Plus, they don't drive nearly the distances we do on a regular basis.

Dawn has a hard time staying out of the nursery section of markets and today she came home with not only a flowering Bromelia Brigada, but also a fig tree. She has continually said, "Peter needs a fig tree!" So guess what Peter? You've got one! Where you'll put it, I have no idea. And don't think we won't be checking on it regularly either.

Following the market, we drove to Orange for a little more shopping, through the town of Camaret, shown above. It's interesting, the number of ancient fortified town centres like this one that remain in France, where the only access to the old circular town centre is through arches and gates like this one.
While at the Carrefour Commercial Centre in Orange, we browsed the aisles of Thiriet, which is France's answer to M&M's. The difference here is in the volume of gourmet dishes available, where items we in Canada would only see in high-class restaurants, are found in their freezers. A couple of examples from today's excursion are shown below.

Here we have snails in a puff pastry with champagne sauce and molten chocolate/caramel cakes. Well, that's the better part of an excellent meal, wouldn't you say?
As the afternoon wore on, the skies clouded over and we began to get some rain, which is to continue on into tomorrow.
We don't often go out for dinner in the evening, but tonight we made an exception. We'd not yet experienced the cuisine of Campagne, Vignes & Gourmandises in Ste. Cecile, so this was yet another first.
This restaurant is a relatively unassuming house on the edge of town. They have a nicely shaded patio, but tonight we ate inside. The place was hopping on a Saturday night as the restaurant cat made his rounds.

Dawn had their market menu for 21 Euros consisting of a salad of octopus, ricotta cheese and small vegetables, followed by a breast of veal in prune sauce and finishing with pineapple sorbet with peach juice.
I had the Compagne menu for 32 Euros starting with a crab canneloni with pine nuts, continuing with lamb on a bed of eggplant and finishing with roasted figs in a carmel sauce with ice cream.
I think it's safe to say that we both stepped out of our comfort zone a bit tonight, but were rewarded with excellent food. The crab & figs are shown below.