Crab Hunting

I really wish I knew more French. The old lady that swims everyday came back and sat by me. We were able to ask each how we were doing, but that was as far as the conversation went. I think I am going to write some phrases on my hand to say to her... Anyway so today at the sailing lessons while lying on my towel soaking up some rays (it was sunny and warm today, about 75 degrees for the high), I noticed the waves were getting closer to me. I thought I was crazy so I just sat there for maybe five minutes and realized that the tide was coming in fast. So I had to move to a small sunny spot in between boats. Luckily the water never got close to me again. Once again, another old Saint-Malo native (the majority of the people here are old/older) tried to make some conversation with me. I tried to say I didn't speak French, but I don't think he heard... I don't know if it is me, or if it is just these peoples' elderly ears. So I just nodded and smiled until he was done speaking. Good thing he didn't ask me any questions... I decided to lie down and pretend to sleep while listening to my iPod. That would prevent anyone else from trying to talk to me!

When we got back to the house, Bertrand's mother, Veronique, was home making lunch. We had rice mixed with some red cabbage, onion, artichoke, pickles, and some type of crustacean meat. I don't know what it is with pickles here, but they use it in a lot of salad type of things. I don't know if I particularly like the addition of pickles, but I'll eat it anyway. Veronique made an apple dessert. I don't know what it was called or how it was made, but I will try my best to describe it. The bottom crust tasted like an egg white, but it had a sort of bready type of texture. On top of the egg bread was tiny chunks of apple and cinnamon and sugar to top. Basically, it was like an apple pie but with no crust on top and a thicker eggy bottom crust. It was absolutely yummy!

This next piece of info is for my dad. I haven't really cooked anything new. And I really haven't cooked all that much this week. I remember cooking vegetables. The dish had broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, carrots, potatoes, and left over rotisserie chicken. I remember watching Karine make a similar dish so I copied something she did. I cracked one egg and added some soy milk (Marion and Bertrand can only have soy or things from goats) and mixed them together. Once the vegetables were hot and the butter was melted, I added the egg and milk mixture. It tasted similar to Karine's vegetable dish so I think it was a successful copy. Other than that, I haven't really had to cook much. But I'm sure this next week I will have more things to share with you all.

After lunch, we went crab hunting again. There was no way that we could have a meal with only four crabs. At first, our hunt was pretty pitiful. We could only find teeny tiny baby crabs that were the size of a dime and fish (one fish jumped out of the bucket at my face so I through it back in water; I was not going to deal with fish jumping at me). Eventually the kids asked an older man for help. He was glad to help. So the next two hours, he lifted huge rocks to help the kids find crabs. We were very grateful for his help because when he joined our crab hunting crew, it was nonstop crab catching! Eventually I got tired of picking up all the pails and shovels the kids ditched and following them, so I just parked myself in the middle of the area they were searching. The buckets were filling fast! So my job turned into the crab watcher. The only buckets we had were little pails for making sand castles, so the sneaky crabs would try and crawl out. My job was to poke them back into the pail (I had gloves on) and settle any fights between the stacked crabs. The pails were too full for any more crabs so Maelle-Marie and Marion ran to empty a trash bag I had and started putting crabs in there. The old man helped the kids all that time and with all that crab. When he was finally parting ways with us, I thanked him and understood what he said back! I can't remember how exactly it was said and with all the words, but it would translate to, you're welcome, it was fun for me. Funny how the day before we spent two hours hunting and only caught five crabs, and today we spent a little over two hours and caught a grand total of 39 crabs!

Later that night, we had crab for dinner. And I'm sure we will be eating crab tomorrow as well.

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