Omelette de Pâques revisited

It’s Easter weekend.  For my continuing re-blogging festival, an Easter themed post seems in order.  Let’s try this one from 2010…..

April 2010

Omelette de Pâques

Come to the Ariège on Easter Monday, and you won’t be too far from a community omelette. Communes and clubs all over the department seek out their biggest frying pan, get hold of dozens of eggs, sugar and rum, to make this sweet confection to round off, with any luck, the first barbecue of the season. Why? Nobody in our walking group could tell me, and Google wasn’t much help, but it does seem to be an ancient tradition dating back to….ooh, 1973 at least.

Anyway, the Rando del’Aubo have made this an annual event for some years now. For the last couple, it’s been rainy and cold. Not this year though. Down at the bottom of the page, you’ll find a few pictures of our walk between La Pène, an Audois hamlet on a delightful small lake, and Monthaut, which is a hill….higher up. It was a great way to work up an appetite.

Because the weather was warm, sunny and spring-like, we relaxed at the lakeside after our walk, chatting and enjoying those woodsmokey smells of a barbecue coming to life. Apéros first: Muscat, suze, pernod, whisky…all the usual French tipples, with nibbles to stem our hunger. Then grilled pork, grilled Toulouse sausage, bread (and wine of course), Coulommiers cheese, vanilla or chocolate pudding. And then we still had to find room for the all-important omelette.

Since the beginning of time, it’s been Marie-Therèse’s ‘job’ (good French word, that) to make the omelette, and of course it all ended in noisy recriminations because there were too many cooks all muscling in, breaking eggs, beating eggs, heating the pan, greasing the pan, measuring the rum. Half the raw egg mixture tipped out onto the grass, and Etienne and Danielle dashed off to every farm they could find to buy another….. 4 dozen.

Finally, it was done. Really, this omelette is scrambled egg with lots of sugar chucked in at the end, and flambéed with rum. Once a year is quite enough.

It wasn’t the end of the party though. Oh no. We couldn’t go before downing glasses of Blanquette de Limoux, an Alpine eau-de-vie, then cups of coffee (with madeleines, in case we were still hungry). And as a final touch, Easter eggs.

We came away suntanned and rather full, at the end of an Easter Monday that was one of the first really hot and sunny days of the year. A taste of things to come?

 

My contribution to today’s Ragtag Challenge: egg.

And a Malcolm update:  He’s out of hospital now with lots of medication and check-up appointments.  Looking good!

Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

32 thoughts on “Omelette de Pâques revisited”

      1. Maybe. As you wrote, it is not the easter omelette (or any such thing) which is as interesting as the French of custom of a communal lunch on some holidays. That is genuinely such a wonderful thing.

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  3. Today the Jazz festival has started in Mirepoix, just down the road from Laroque. Just music today but the massive omelette will be tomorrow. I am sure Malcolm would love it. I can imagine him sat at the back cracking jokes like a schoolboy.

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    1. Of course, I’d forgotten about that. Well, enjoy the rest of the holiday weekend. But you can eat the omelette so I don’t have to 😉

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  8. Not sure which I am most impresed by: the amount of food, the amount booze or the amount of exercise! It looks like it was a memorable day and a lovely way to mark Easter. We have BBQ weather this time around too. Should we be thinking of you cracking all those eggs back in sunny Yorkshire? 😉

    Thanks for the update, good to hear Malcolm is recouperating 🙂

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  9. First, thanks for the Malcolm update–a big relief! And next, what a neat/odd tradition this omelette thing is. Does it just happen in the Ariège? The whole day sounds delightful–a good hike and lots of food and community.

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  10. So glad Malcolm is out of hospital and making a good recovery.
    Liked your blog about the sweet omelette, but don’t think I’ll be making it here. Enjoy the heatwave in the UK, the weather in Spain is wet and windy. Best wishes to you both xx

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    1. I really didn’t like that omelette! Malcolm’s doing ok, but immensely tired. Two visiting grandchildren, both under four could have something to do with it! Hope the weather improves for you very soon. You poor things

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    1. Didn’t we just? Mind you, we’ve just had a fun weekend with grandchildren. Though they come with a large dose of exhaustion added, particularly for convalescents.

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      2. ‘Voluntary child care’ sounds like Community Service, put that way. Good fun, but it IS exhausting (depending on ages of children….). Nurse Margaret knows that there is a reason she didn’t choose this career…..

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  12. I’ve never seen so many eggs cracked for an omelette. There was a time when the cardiologists told heart attack patients to avoid egg yolks – haven’t heard that at all recently since the introductions of statins. Hope Malcolm’s not rattling too much!

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  13. Never heard of the easter omelette….. sounds like tremendous fun and a pretty fine ending of an outdoor meal. Every time I get to read one of your earlier posts I wonder why you‘re back in UK! Not being negative, but you seemed to have the time of your lives! I, on the other hand, can‘t wait to end our time in F and return to CH for good. AND to return to F as it used to be – to conduct a love affair, visit places, meet kind and friendly people, w/o the hassle of stressed-out Parisian citizens.

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    1. Sometimes we wonder too. But it’s not necessarily easy, I think, to grow very old in a society where family ties are stronger than those with friends. And how could we have been in France while in England, Ellie’s husband was dying and (as it turned out) she too was going to be so ill? And my son’s family had difficulties too. So…. yes, we’re quite often homesick for la France, but we know our decision as the right one.

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      1. Aaah, thanks for telling me Margaret. Yes, you did the right thing, most definitely. And you can always go back for a holiday, that’s we will be doing too – once we no longer live there….. BUT mostly we let our hearts in Devon, with so many dear friends.
        And also, we both still have our very elderly mothers in Switzerland, in the region where HH is working , so every time I visit him (every 2 weeks I go for a weekend and the other weekend he returns to F for it), I go and have lunch with my mother. He is looking after his mum and I phone with her or go along when we have time the weekend….. I’m SO happy for Ellie!!!!!!!!

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      2. Yes, at last the future does look bright for her, and for the boys. And now you have your own problems to face, in elderly parents with increasing needs. Good luck!

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