Pictures of animals
Growing up in this era (at least in the Western Hemisphere) usually means that you try to leave the coup after eighteen years of age, and only to return to visit your parents for holidays and long weekends. You develop your own life and you become consumed with your own aspirations and desires. Whenever I go home to visit my parents in Detroit, there’s usually a lot of eating, and often there would be meals that’s not what my parents eat normally. Maybe there’s an extra dish or two, or maybe the dish is done up in a special way. At Steph’s parents house in Brittany, we’ve been eating the kind of meals that’s fit for kings on holiday. For example, at lunch the other day we had pigeon. Not just any pigeon… a pigeon they bought from a neighbor. Really, we live in New York City. Buying pigeons from a neighbor is not only impossible, but might be a weird city pigeon. And it’s not just a randomly cooked pigeon, it has a reduced wine sauce that was cooked down from an entire bottle of wine, and figs from southern France that we got on sale at the farmers market for like a euro. We drank a Bordeaux in those big curvy wine glasses. All this for lunch. We then took a walk because there’s some animals around here.
Brittany is known for good dairy products and good cider. Just like in the back of Ch√Ęteau Richeux, there’s lots of apple trees everywhere. Many of them are not quite ready to eat though, but it’s cool to see.
I also noticed there’s lots of corn being planted. It’s not like driving through the Midwest in the U.S. or anything, where you could see miles and miles of corn. But there are small plots of corn scattered here and there. The last time we came here to Brittany was in the spring time and corn was no where to be found, but for late summer, I guess it’s the crop.
Being a city boy, as far as I’m concerned, blackberries come from a plastic box in a grocery store. So imagine my delight when Steph told me about the wild blackberries that seemingly grow randomly everywhere. Also imagine my surprise as I’m eating blackberries that would go for five bucks at Whole Foods, that the plant has thorns. Those damn blackberries don’t make it easy on you! They were dainty and delicious though. Some blackberries were off limits as they grew in the thick of poison ivy. Gotta love the country side!
Walking around more, we saw some chickens. There’s lots of roosters around that cluck all day long for fun. In between clucking, they like to chase hens around for fun. This is why I need to carry the flipcam around so that you guys can see how flustered the rooster was with the hard-to-get hen. Les coqs… always up to no good.
There’s also some horses around. They, like the donkeys, are very friendly. Unfortunately I didn’t have apples this time around, since the apple trees are usually behind a fence. After the horse realized that I was a chump, he just turned around and went back to grazing. You know, why stand around when you can go eat grass.
By far the coolest things though, are the cows. They are super curious when you stand there. In fact, once they notice you’re there, they just trot up slowly as a cow would and just stare at you. Their tails are always swishing around left and right, as it’s a natural fly swatter. Too bad they don’t have one on their head though, since flies are on their face too. They don’t seem to mind one damn bit either way, they just go on looking cool and eating grass. Like I said, they’re all curious and three cows just walked right up to just stare at me. Between donkeys, horses, and cows, I could have a gallery of animals-staring-at-me pictures. Yup, France is awesome.
Posted by Danny on September 13, 2011 at 9:06 am
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