Passadoc Gazette - No 168

Happy birthday to Passadoc
who makes daily appointments to all the inhabitants
cities and villages of France and overseas!

The weekly 168

Eight years ago...

Eight years ago, day to day, Passadoc was born!

Some 2650 days of life and thousands of publications, hundreds of quizzes, dozens, dozens and dozens of messages and comments... whole photo albums and piles of memories. Listen!

To drive away the miasms of the days of confinement of sad memory, Francis had the idea of a virtual aperitif. It's March 14, 2020: Aperitif number one!

The Echoes of the Week
The new fountain
Socca
But what is this weird object?
At the corner of the fire
Shepherds

The new fountain

We've been talking about it for so long that we didn't believe it anymore... Yet one day the works began and when everything was finished, M. the Curé, M. the Mayor and all the musicians of the band found themselves at the foot of Marianne's statue for the inauguration of the « La Fontaine Nouvelle » Hey!

A series of postcards were published which the Roquebrunois enjoyed sending to the cousins of Paris, to those of Nîmes. What a pride!

The tree that shades for years is still there. In this winter morning, the place is empty and « the fountain of the square speaks by itself« .

[Citation: My father's Glory – Marcel Pagnol] – Photo André Abbe.

But the tree that was believed to be eternal was infested with a lignivorous fungus that left no chance of survival to the plane tree. On February 3, 2017, pruners and loggers began at the « peel » ...

Jean-Pierre Serra Remember:
When you shoot a tree, it's a part of us going!

As far as I am concerned, this one, like all the others, is an integral part of my life in this village where I was born and where I still live today...

He gave me his shadow in my childhood, sheltered our ball parts like our first kisses on this concrete bench that he covered with his foliage, seen in and out so many times in this town hall where I spent 31 years of my life...

He offered his generous shadow to generations of married and married families patiently waiting for the beginning of the ceremonies ...

How many memories have gone away forever!

Socca

What a beautiful old postcard! Everything is there: the saleswoman with her socca dish, the young boy in beret, the Promenade des Anglais and its palm trees...

We take advantage of it to drag you the recipe* Socca:

In a salad bowl, put the water (500 ml) and dry the chickpea flour (200 g); salt, pepper and add two tablespoons of olive oil and mix vigorously to obtain the right consistency.

Heat olive oil in a large pan (crepear type or paella pan)

Put the dough on. Remove when the look is golden.

In Nice, we have fun with soccer... In Pont-Aven, we enjoy the kouing-amann... To each his choking Christian!

*Thanks to Josyane Boselli for her recipe.

[« Christian suffocation » was there only to smile; a smile that was not everyone's taste.]

Claude Boyer
And in Toulon it's « cade »... It is often misconceived that the Toulouse cade is only a variant of niçoise soccer. Yet his origin, as old as his Nice cousin, was born in Marseilles before migrating to Toulon.

Frédéric Mistral says that at the end of the 19th century, in the streets of Marseilles, genoese street vendors shouting "Tourta tota cada" (hot turn); They would have given the name "cade" to this Marseille crepe.

The difference between the two cousins is that the cade offers a crispy top and a softer bottom, similar to the texture of a flan... But we are not going to get into a debate. « chocolate bread – chocolate » Hey! It is clear that both recipes come from our transalpine friends.

As for saying that socca or cade are stifling-Christians, there I'm insurgent!

Denis Harvier
Socca choking-Christian? The person who decreed it didn't have to taste it often and not the best. During my studies, it was my lunch three times a week and cheaper than a ticket to the university restaurant around the 60s/65s.

But what is this weird object?

There were some deliberately crazy answers!

Jeanne Monin
– Fly Tape (1200 BC)
– Gong dating from the invasion of the Barbarians.

Alain Cathala
– Billig (for Breton crepes).

Momo dela Etdici
– Adapter for induction plate.

And of course several good answers!

Claude Boyer
– Je no longer know the name of this tool but it was used in olive oil mills to recover oil that floats on water.

Monique Gastinel
– Isn't that the sheet, to take over the first oil of first pressure?

Giselle Penat-Lorde
– I have already seen such items in oil mills – and also at the ATP Museum in Draguignan. There's a saucepan called « the breakage » And I think that flat plate is « the sheet » ? Uses used to recover the remaining oil on water.

It is actually a leaf to pick oil after the olives pass under the press.
At the time there was no centrifuge, the properties of the elements were used,
that oil floats on water. – (Photo of the Coudoux Mill)

At the corner of the fire

YearDr. Abbe :

It was once people who warmed up by burning wood in their fireplace and I was part of it. I even thought I was an ecologist because wood is a renewable energy.

I hear it's become harmful because of the microparticles.

I was happy by the fire... And I carried all over in winter the smell of wood fire with me.

Not so long ago, I visited the Cognacq-Jay Museum, housed in a private hotel in the Marais district of Paris (3rd), a high place of painting, furniture and art objects of the 18th century French, one does not make more chic in Paris.

A guard in uniform who was supposed to be Caribbean or Guyanese addressed me, saying:

– You wear the smell of wood fire, you remind me of my youth, it makes me happy.

She had a nose. She was not mocking but rather nostalgic, moved anyway. I told him that I was actually warming up in the woods in my old house and that my clothes were getting the smell of smoke.

This discrepancy between the words exchanged cordially and the place was much appreciated. We were her and I between a Louis XV armchair and a painting by Fragonard, the great fatsois who had climbed to Paris. In the time of Fragonard, all the inhabitants of the Marais warmed up in wood and the insert did not exist!

Some people will think "Abbe galège", but not that it's experience!

Giselle Penat-Lorde
The fireplace fire this « magic that transforms ordinary »...

And I've missed this magic a lot for a few years, just like the smell elsewhere.

These are a thousand childhood memories, homework at the corner of the fire, readings without forgetting grills on fire...

Wood crates prepared in advance: carefully selected logs, small wood, pine apples, leaves of Var Morning Sometimes, a whole ritual...

To succeed in starting the fire, while at the beginning, one gets angry. Know how to power, handle the bellows. Understanding mechanisms, air circulation, an art.

Les petits craquements, la chaleur naturelle, un chat sur les genoux ronronnant… Et on se sent transporté dans un autre temps, une autre époque, un autre lieu…

Il y a cette lumière tremblotante, si belle. Et l’odeur de campagne, qu’on emporte sur nos vêtements avec bonheur. À l’heure du coucher, lumières éteintes, le feu se mourant doucement, rappelle quelque part la luminosité orangée du coucher de soleil.

Beaucoup de nostalgie à l’évocation du feu de cheminée …

Et cette phrase, hors saison hivernale : Il ne fait pas bien chaud, si on faisait une petite flambée ?

Et c’était, oui, comme savourer un petit bonheur du quotidien aux vertus apaisantes, une parenthèse d’oisiveté après une journée de dur labeur. La chaleur dégagée par un feu de cheminée a ce pouvoir de nous détendre, de nous envelopper, de nous anesthésier, de nous rassurer.

C’est une énorme bulle de bien être… C’est rêvasser pendant des heures, un livre ouvert pour se donner bonne conscience mais l’esprit ailleurs transporté par l’imaginaire. C’est goûter le temps qui passe … On regarde le feu comme on regarde la mer, il y a ce même mouvement perpétuel déstressant.

Que de moments conviviaux, intimistes et rassurants passés autour de notre grande cheminée à refaire le monde !

Le matin, il fallait certes nettoyer, enlever les cendres, recyclées au jardin et dans les champs, mais c’était toujours avec joie en pensant au soir, jamais vraiment une corvée…

Shepherds

– Quelle belle vie !

Parce qu’on a en tête les textes de Daudet, de Giono, de Mistral… l’image du berger qui – ses moutons parqués – s’endort le nez dans les étoiles, on les envie un peu ces hommes qui avancent au soleil, rythmant leurs pas sur ceux des bêtes.
Ils ne connaissent pas les horaires de bureau, ni les rapports à rendre, ni les courses haletantes pour attraper le bus avant qu’il ne quitte l’arrêt…

– C’est ça qu’on aurait dû choisir !

André Abbe dit la réalité :
Ils s’occupent de leurs bêtes 365 jours par an… Julien Raynaud est – parmi eux – celui dont je vous ai le plus souvent parlé. Sa vie professionnelle a duré soixante-dix ans. Il n’a jamais pris de « vraies » vacances. Il m’a raconté plusieurs fois sa visite du Salon de l’Agriculture, porte de Versailles, mais ses escapades ont été rares.

Jean-Philippe Tinois
Je pense qu’on se posait moins de questions à son époque, quand M. Brun (Francis) me racontait son parcours de vie il y avait beaucoup plus de place à l’action, l’opportunité du moment l’événement qui arrivait et qu’il fallait gérer plutôt qu’a la réflexion . Mais bon… il y a matière à discuter longuement sur la toxicité ou la providence du loisir.

Cited in The Gazette :
André Abbe
François Abbe
Claude Boyer
Alain Cathala
Momo dela Etdici
Monique Gastinel
Denis Harvier
Jeanne Monin
Giselle Penat-Lorde
Jean-Pierre Serra
Jean-Philippe Tinois
Editor in Chief
Jeanne Monin