Saturday, April 18, 2015 - Company for dinner

Today is cleaning and sheet-changing day. And a lot of de-crumbing - croissants sure are messy. We seem to find bread crumbs in every corner of the kitchen.

Janis cooks bacon and eggs for breakfast. Finding American style bacon is tough. This stuff is closer - but cut horribly thin and very salty. Having said all that, it was really tasty. Oh, and of course, croissants all around.

After breakfast, I start making the bread pudding we'll serve for dessert tonight. We keep accumulating bits of bread left over from our day's bread allotment or from when we've had a change of meal plans. We have several baguettes stored in the freezer and we have cut pieces on the counter in plastic bags. Bread pudding seems like the perfect solution for getting rid of the bread. It has a brandy sauce in the recipe, but the boys were only able to find cognac, so we're having cognac sauce to put on our bread pudding.

By late morning, with Dave and Clark's help, we've finished the household chores and everything is tidied up. We were planning on doing laundry, but the washer seems to have sprung a leak. Paul is working on it. Luckily I have extra underwear for a day or two.

After lunch, Clark chauffeurs Janis and I to the asparagus farm where we pick up asparagus for tonight's meal. Back home, Janis and Dave go for a walk in the neighborhood that takes them down to the river.

our hillside is behind David. The river is in front of him.

view of the La Borie manor house complex. We live behind the wall you can just barely see on the left side of the houses. The Manor house is the grey roofed house with its dependencies below and to the right of the main house.

Jeri and Paul are coming at 6:30, so we have a leisurely pace of prepping the meal. Just before 6:30, we put aperos out in the garden.

Clark didn't give us much warning before taking this photo

The meal is great fun. Jeri and Paul have bought new chairs for the table and a new grill which gets inaugurated tonight by grilling the rumpsteak.

Jeri and Paul - our guests and hosts. We're using all their dishes, kitchen equipment and we especially love this table and its new chairs!  We spend a lot of time in this garden.

We eat dinner outside, but the weather is changing and the temperature begins to drop quickly. We finish inside with the bread pudding and cognac. Suddenly, we begin seeing lightening in the sky so it's time to batten the hatches and clean up the dishes. We came close to using every dish Jeri provides in this well-equipped kitchen.  But the clean-up is quick thanks to the new dishwasher. And now we're sitting in the living room letting our sides recover from all the laughing.

Good food, good friends, good conversation, great setting. Life is good. Oh and the empty wine bottle collection is growing.

We asked Paul about building shelves inside the fireplace for us since this is only an 18 day collection. He was non-committal, I wonder why????