Let's just say that almost all my weekends are spent collecting wood...
Which means to say that I have not been able to spend as much time as I'd like to in the potager...
Which means to say that I have not been able to spend as much time as I'd like to in the potager...
Anyway, we are fortunate to live in a hamlet surrounded by lots of wood...
Plus, lots of friendly neighbors who are land or rather 'hill' owners...
Many of these folks are senior citizens, and they need people to trim their forests...
That's where we come in...
Sometimes we cut the trees for them, sometimes they have workers cut the trees for them...
In both instances, we get to collect the wood...
The above scene focuses on a quaint little work shack owned by one of the kind, elderly, forest-owner ladies...
She told us that she is going to tear the shack down in a week or two...
And the next instant found me rushing home to grab my camera...
Meanwhile, experienced wood stove owners tell us to go for the oak trees...
They are hard wood and the fire they give out is excellent and long lasting...
Am not so sure if this is oak...
But I do appreciate the beauty of the ring-like patterns within...
My missus says, 'ah? a pic of the breakfast plate again?'
Did a check, and indeed, I had posted a similar picture...
Only that this time, the veggies are home-grown...
Lettuce, carrot, rocket, broccolli...
I never get tired of this breakfast menu even after all these years...
And this lunch plate as well...
I can never get tired of gnawing at this stuff...
Almost always the same ingredients...
Shrimps, carrots, bean sprouts, mushroom, onions, garlic, some greens...
Hmm, think I shall request my missus to cook this stuff again this weekend...
There are quite a number of folks here in Aji who live off the sea...
We got to know a fisherman family who specializes in pen-shells...
The father and son team goes diving for the shells geared up in thick, bright orange, rather clumsy-looking dry suits...
They apparently dive down to depths of 20 meters to collect the pen-shells...
The mother handles the dinner operations...
We tried the dinner last winter...
The taste?
The meat from the pen-shells look like those of scallops...
But we think scallops taste better...
The pic above shows the sashimi dish...
