fires and booze

Since arriving, by my count (even counting sometimes gets fuzzy) I’ve attended four outings, for lack of a better term. Two were for St Jean’s day, two were festivals local to southwest France, called Bodegas.

St Jean’s day technically falls on June 24^th, but is celebrated whenever the local towns decide to celebrate it. I’m hopefully not stepping on too many Catholic toes by calling it a pretty pagan celebration. I compare it to Sweden’s similar bonfire holiday in late June. St Jean’s has the obvious religious connotation; Sweden’s is pretty outwardly-traditional/pagan. In any case, as it goes, it involves food (whether as simple as Savignac’s sausage grillade or as elaborate as St Aubin’s more intricate plate including pâté, grilled pork, veggie sides, and dessert), followed by a bonfire at nightfall (a late 23:30 at this time of year). St Aubin’s was rather tame while Savignac’s (Vincent’s) left me with a headache the next morning. Vincent corralled us up for the walk to his house, where he broke out his own pear eau-de-vie, prunes soaked in armagnac, along with a medley of beers and cognac. A cool bit of slang I learned for the post-drinking phenomenon (it sounds cooler in French than in English) literally translates into a “hair ache,” or “my hair is growing inward.”

Bodegas are an altogether different beast. The term is Spanish, but it refers to a township’s summer block party, if you will. Like the bonfires, they range from a smallish couple-hundred people dancing to bad ‘90s remixes and eating mediocre food (as we did outside of Monflanquin, to the much larger summer spectacular we at Issigeac (Bendicte’s hometown). Here, we started off with a hearty white bean soup slowly stewed with lots of pork skin, moved on to crepes stuffed with sautéed onions, crème fraiche, and ham, followed by a grilled brochette of duck breast. There’s no shortage of beer on tap and very drinkable box wine sold for less than a coke (1 euro). Throughout, we grooved to various bands playing throughout the picturesque village, from French marching band to contemporary French fare to a good blues cover band.

In any case, small or large, elaborate or simple, I can only think of one event I’ve attended (alas, I wanted to USA-bash with an honest zero) in the States that would begin to match the experience: Danny Meyer’s Madison Square Park BBQ spectacular (the queues are ridonculous (sic), but the food is outstanding). Seems it’s time for me to hit up some real southern BBQ fairs…