Midi-Pyrenees, Languedoc, France

26th March

We have left the Provence area of France and are travelling roughly southwards towards Spain. The weather is superb again and shows off this wonderful green countryside.

 

 

   

 

Here we see this incredible bridge, near Millau. 

 

We are on our way towards the township of Roquefort, home of the iconic cheese. You could suppose that this is an unusual destintion for a vegan, and of course you would be correct. However the production of a vegan version of this cheese is high on the vegan agenda, with one recipe recently being published on the web, using the same mould, Penicillium roqueforti with a cashew cream instead of dairy milk.  My daughter and I have both been making this cheese and are on the lookout for refinements to make it better. You might be surprised how much it does taste like a reasonable blue cheese, but not up to the standard of the original roquefort.

 

 

 

Here we are at the entrance to the caves in which the cheese is made. 

 

 

         

The nails are to make holes for the air to get in. The mould requires air to develop. The mould is definately visible on the outside of these cheeses. At this point they wrap them in foil to stop the growth of the mould. Perhaps that is where we are going wrong with our cashew based versions.

 

 

Here is a photo of my cashew blue cheeses.. They could do with wrapping I think! They don’t look so great on the outside, but they did taste good.  

I learned a number of tips in the caves here which I will use at home, so it was well worth the visit.

 

  

 

 

 

Next stop Carcassonne, a very pretty and very large old town. 

 

  

 

And yes this is a pile of dung. There are many, many such piles of dung which has accumulated over winter in the sheds where the animals are kept. The stench is incredible even just driving past. We saw this all over Europe last time we were here, and also in Japan. I think it has implications for climate change. So far animal agriculture has received very little attention despite being responsible for a large percentage of greenhouse gasses. It seems to me that a ot of the gasses from this dung could be captured with some sort of scrubber during the winter while the animals are housed. And given that they are housed for months each year that would save a significant amount of greenhouse gass.

 

But forget the dung. Cafe Matilda popped up again in the evening at our camp-site on a lovelly lake.