I'll start with Friday. On Friday we visited a Rouge de Près cow farm (that's the type of cow). They are a typic cow from this region that is very large (with large bones), very vocal, but pretty sweet. They didn't like the camera man much though, but granted, he is pretty creepy.
The farmer was also really nice and answered all of our questions. He was young, but his family had been farming there with these cows for generations so he knew a lot about them.
We also went to a salt marsh up north where they harvested sea salt. It was the most interesting visit so far, but it was windy, cold, and rainy so I didn't get to take pictures. I never knew how complex harvesting sea salt was, although, they did everything by hand there, and the salt tastes really good because of it. It takes three weeks for salt from the ocean to get concentrated enough for it to be harvested. It goes from something like 3 grams of salt per liter in the sea water to 270 grams per liter before it crystallizes either on the floor of the pan or the top of the water.
We visited a cheese factory too! The tour itself was kind of lame because they apprently don't make much cheese on Fridays, but the tasting afterwards was delicious. Two cheeses tied for my favorite, one was called Secret of the Convent and it was fairly mature and slightly funky, but soooo good by itself. The second was a cheese they made up there, a very young cow milk cheese that was still very soft. It tasted a lot like goat cheese, which I love. Anyways, here is a picture of the spread, but it was dark in there so it's not very good.
We also tried some fresh raw (unpasteurized) milk. I have never really liked milk, especially when drinking it plain, but this was super smooth and not at all off-putting. I drank a lot of it...
After a whole bunch of tours and many lectures I had a nice relaxing weekend. It included: A super weird movie called Tree of Life that I kind of want to recommend just for the wtf moment in the middle when there is a random scene of a sympathetic dinosaur, a trip to the farmers market with a really large fish market and live chickens and ducks for sale,
a picnic by the fountain and dinner with my friend Aimee, and a nice long bike ride out to the lake.
Also, here is a random picture of a glass from my host family's house. They love the Simpsons and I love how cute this glass is. :D
