Christmas Day we will spend with friends. Christmas Eve is just us and a traditional Polish evening meal. It's a day of fasting and abstinence in the Catholic calendar, so the break fast happens at the first star and the meal is fish. Traditionally in Poland the fish is carp - bony and pretty tasteless. I think I had it once, many years ago, when Tod prepared a meal for his mother, sister and her children. We've always agreed since: "not carp".
So it's usually something like monkfish or a meaty piece of "dos de cabillaud" (fillet of cod). The challenge is that the French (also following a day of fasting and abstinence) opt for seafood. So from now onwards great swathes of the fish counter in Leclerc are given over to huge platters of mussels, prawns, oysters, crabs, lobsters, clams. Boxes and boxes of oysters are stacked in great piles. And the white fish vanishes from sight.
This morning's early dog walk was close-by the Garonne on the edge of town and not wanting to make the car journey twice, Tod nipped into Leclerc to buy the cod on his way home.
He was lucky. As he was leaving, the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) were setting up their barriers on the same roundabout where I got caught a month ago. These are not "casseurs" (a new word I learnt through all of this meaning hooligan) but just local guys who are very, very fed up with the way their central government has been treating them and they are just not giving up or going away.
Tough though on anyone who has only this weekend to prepare for Christmas.
I've not picked up your Polish connections and fish is a good way to fast! Enjoy your Holydays. Lesley
ReplyDeleteHello Lesley, thanks for dropping by. Yes, Tod's family came over from Poland after the war and he was born in the UK, but grew up in a Polish household. Best wishes to you too fo a happy Christmas and New Year.
DeleteYou're right! Fish, as such, sort of disappeared!
ReplyDeleteWe had a friend, a retured Paris bus driver, who used to make the staff open the box of oysters and let him open one to test the quality....it was a performance well worth going out to see!
I hope the GJs continue their protests and are not crushed...someone needs to do something about the state of France.
Hello Fly, ah, yes, the dying breed of French who are gourmets and really care about their food! I'm ambivalent about the GJs - France does need to change, but I'm not sure they are prepared to accept what any change would mean. We'll see.
DeleteI've been a vegetarian for 38 years, so I've had no fish or mussels, etc. for all that time. But I remember when I used to buy Torsk (a kind of cod) at the market and lay it on a bed of celery leaves and then over the whole with milk. It was tasty!
ReplyDeleteI was raised Roman Catholic and so we had fish every Friday, but I don't remember fish on Christmas Eve. Perhaps we did; I'm not sure.
Here in the States, on nightly television, we are seeing what is happening with the yellow vests. And I think most of us understand the feeling that these demonstrators have about a government that doesn't listen to them. Peace.
Hello Dee, maybe Christmas Eve was just a "normal" day? For both Poland and France the "big day" is in fact Christmas Eve. Christmas Day is for sleeping it off! Here's hoping our governments start to listen, and quickly!
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