So, with my parents arriving tommorrow, and my sister and her boys coming on Wednesday, I went out at the weekend to get a new spare bottle to see us through the upcoming catering marathon. However, my visit to Hyper U in Fontenay was unsuccessful.

“Pas de gaz” yelled the lady in the booth as she saw me lugging the heavy empty bottle towards her.

“Eh?” was my instant reaction. there’s always gas at Hyper U…

“Je n’en ai plus!”

Yikes, that’s not good.

So, off I trotted to the other side of Fontenay to back-up provider Leclerc. Once again I drag the empty bottle out of the back of the car and hobble over towards the cabin like Quasimodo. But once again I was met with the same response. No more gas left.

Now this is getting serious. Without gas we have no means of cooking. Potentially a more desperate a situation than lack of heating.

So back I came to do some research. Suspecting that Lisa had made some arrangement with the local supermarkets to run out of gas as a good excuse to force me to buy the electric oven she has always wanted, I consulted t’internet for evidence of gas supply problems. And that’s where I read about the current crisis with Russian gas supplies being blocked on their way into Europe [BBC news]. Presumably this has caused mass panic among the French populace and they have all bought up extra gas bottles in case supplies dry up. Either that of Sarkozy has ordered rationing and we are only allowed one each.

Whatever the cause, it’s slightly worrying and I must now go out on Monday to try to hunt down a gas bottle from wherever I can find one. Probably from some shady dealer in a dark alley of the rough-end of Fontenay. I’ll probably have to swap it for one of the children, or maybe a kidney or something, but at least we can eat!

Salad anyone…?

The apple juice pressing is an annual event organised by the Association Vendéen Pour l’Utilisation Naturelle des Jus de Fruits, who have been collecting the local apples and pressing them into juice for the last 50 years.  Luckily for us, the local barn – there are 2 others in the Vendee – is just behind our house, so it’s very convenient for us to pop round and get stocked up.

So, having seen the crowds massing at the barn for the last two Saturdays, we finally took the plunge and I took Joe round to see what it is all about. Luckily one of the mums from school works there so she gave us a tour and explained the process.

Basically, the apples are picked from the trees across the lane and brought over to the barn. Here they are emptied into large crates…

These crates are then loaded up onto a machine which empties the apples out onto a conveyor belt. This conveyor send the apples along to a squisher (my word, not hers!), that squished up the apples into what looked pretty much like a big apple mush. From there the mush is delivered onto a square mesh sheet which  fits over a wooden frame. Several of these frames are stacked up on top of each other and placed into the big pressing machine. This squeezes the juice out of the nush and collects it in a pipe and it is pumped up to the storage vats, where it is pasteurised.

Once you are ready to collect your juice, you grab a wheelbarrow and fill it with bottles – either your own or those provided (it’s obviously cheaper if you bring your own). Then you join the queue for the bottling machine and wait your turn. When you get to the head of the queue, its time to start loading your bottles into the machine that will fill them with lovely pure fresh apple juice. As each bottle comes out of the machine, a quick pull on the bottle-topper seals the bottle, ready to be loaded back into the wheelbarrow again. Pay your money and you’re off!

And the price is fantastic. For the juice itself you pay €0.37 per litre. To press the juice into your own bottles costs €0.29 per litre. And to press the juice into new bottles costs €0.59 per litre. So basically a new 1 litre bottle of juice costs €0.96! Compare this with the price in Hyper U for a similar bottle of apple juice – €2.33. Bargain-tastic!

Now, as we didn’t really know how it all worked, and I missed a few words of the explanation, we didn’t realise that you needed to ring in advance to book your “slot” at the machines. We had seen it being really busy and assumed it was a free-for-all, but clearly its a bit more organised than that. So we were told to return at 6pm when they should have room for us.

First job was to wash the bottles!

Then, with the bottles all shiny and clean…

…we popped them round to the barn. Sadly, they were still busy and so we had to leave them there. Someone would fill them later in the week when it was quieter and we could collect them as and when.

So this we did!

Being so close we could simply wheel the barrow round to our house and unload it into our makeshift cave…

Et voila! 60 bottles of freshly-squeezed jus de pommes to keep us going for the next few months. And all for a shade over €50. In the current climate this was a job well done. And next year we’ll get it even cheaper by recycling our own 60 bottles! Cheers!