Chateau Keyboard

Thursday, June 19: First class

It's the inaugural meeting of Mrs K's Autour Du Gard book club http://www.chateaukeyboard.com/wendy/thebookclub/index.htm this morning. We meet up at 11 at the Grange de Labalou, run by Isobel and Franck who had their excellent Terrasses d'Anduze restaurant washed away in the floods last September. At the time they were devastated - the local paper carried a picture of Isobel sitting in the ruins looking so sad, it brought tears to your eyes.
Now, all is changed. They've bought this property - it was a barn belonging to the Mairie - and made a fantastic job of decorating it.
There are nine of us and we sit out on the covered terrace, drinking coffee and chatting about our favourite books and what we might read together over the next month - a very pleasant way to pass an hour or so. We decide on J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and move on to lunch.
Which is very good. The €14.50 menu is excellent value - poached egg and bacon salad or smoked trout mousse (delicious - not too firm, not just frothy like so many can be) and then curried calamars or - yum - smoked salmon penne pasta. Excellent, really very good indeed. Just right for lunch.
And then some fresh fruit salad with home-made vanilla ice cream and a carafe of rosé to wash it all down.
It beats working for a living, that's for sure