Canned

My husband's getting sick of hearing about yoga so here's my attempt to change the subject - yet I'm sure he will point out that I couldn't even refrain from using the 'y' word in the first sentence. Habits, eh?

So, it's been chilly in Hobart. On Saturday night we had dinner in front of the fire:

The menu was inspired by the south of France - even better, each course actually came from France, admittedly in a jar or a can.

It doesn't look particularly appetising yet, trust me, it was delicious and so incredibly simple to prepare. Entree was Foie Gras with brioche and toasted fig seeds:

Again, a big thank you to Nicole from Espondeilhan for providing us with the goods!
Followed by main course of Cassoulet with Toulouse sausage and confit de canard:

My husband likes to make this yet it consumes almost three days of work by the time you cure the duck legs in salt and then cook it submerged in duck fat, make the Toulouse sausage with the sausage making attachment on the Kitchenaid, and slowly simmer it all together with white beans. Or you can just open the tin and cook it in the oven for half an hour. If you are tempted and you live in Hobart you can buy it at the Wursthaus Kitchen at Salamanca - where else - and Peter will even probably sell it to you speaking French if you ask.

I have been obsessed with reading this tale of a Melbourne family who bought a chateau in Normandy:

So I made the French Flourless Chocolate Cake on page 280 for dessert:

I wish there was a recipe to follow for acquiring your own chateau in France. Sigh.

Needless to say we ate a lot of fruit and vegetables on Sunday to compensate for what we had done to our constitutions with this typically French feast.

Have you been admiring my Laguiole cutlery with the distinctive bee on the handle:

Did you know that the Laguiole bee is not trademark protected and that it can legally be manufactured anywhere in the world? That means that Laguiole cutlery that you buy at Your Habitat or Peter's of Kensington almost certainly doesn't come from the village of Laguiole in the Midi-Pyrenees famous for making knives. Ours does, we subjected the children to a day in the car to get there, ate the local speciality aligot in a restaurant in the town, bought the cutlery and Felix, who gets car sick, had the obligatory vomit down the windy mountain road to prove it.

On Monday night the whole family went to the boy's school art exhibition:

Our children over the years have been dragged around to so many exhibition openings of other artists work - yet on Monday it was their turn as they both had work included in the show. This was Felix's piece:

And Toby worked on this.....along with his whole kindergarten class:

On Tuesday there was no more posing around at art exhibitions, there was cross country to be run:

It was a long way.

R

Mick.

Another friend of mine originally from Launceston, has just started up her own contemporary fine art gallery in Paddington, Sydney. It's called Mick.

She has a stable of interesting artists including Nicholas Blowers, Michael McWilliams and Geoff Dyer who all work out of Tasmania.

If you don't remember, Geoff Dyer won the highly contested Archibald Prize in 2003 with a portrait of the Hobart writer Richard Flanagan. He was a finalist for the Archibald again this year. I really like both of their work - I took Richard Flanagan's book The Unknow Terrorist to hospital to read after Tobes was born. I took Margaret Drabble with Mimi, Patrick White with Felix and Iris Murdoch with Camelia, just in case you were wondering.

Earlier this year there was a Michael McWilliams exhibition in a Hobart Gallery. For years I have coveted one of his smaller sheep paintings. I registered my interest the day before the show opened and was duly emailed the catalogue an hour before they started taking calls. By the time I got through an hour and a half later the show was almost entirely sold. I missed out.

Now because this post is a bit light on the photo's here's a before and after. Today was Tobes' last day of preschool before he goes to kindergarten next year. This was him on his first day at the start of the year:

And this was him this afternoon when it was all over:

Hasn't this year gone quickly?
R