Gazpacho

Yesterday's lateish night is backblipped. I'm just not keeping up!

A rather chilly swim this morning. At least when you're in the water you're sheltered from the wind. I was not surprised to swim in splendid isolation, but shortly my fellow length-swimmer turned up. I only stayed for 20 minutes. 

Then I made a quick visit to the market in Lagrasse, which was crowded, probably because it was too windy for the tourists to go to the beach. And by the time I got there, there wasn't much produce left, but I bought tomatoes and peaches.

At home, I sorted through the fridge and found almost all the ingredients to make the watermelon gazpacho I stumbled across online a couple of days ago. It was pretty good, although you couldn't tell it had watermelon in it, probably because watermelon doesn't taste of anything. Here it is.

In more exciting news, I managed to book a table for lunch at Les Grands Buffets in Narbonne for November -- they'd closed bookings completely while they revamped the booking system, and now a whole load of dates have opened up. It's become a global phenomenon in the last few years, and previously there was a year-long waiting list. The reservation process now is somewhat like applying for French citizenship, or getting a US visa -- you have to jump through lots of hoops and among many other conditions agree that once you've reserved you can't change your reservation in any way. You also have to pay online at least a month before you arrive. I opted for paying 5 euros per person now, for the right to cancel it up to 11 days beforehand.

We actually ate there in about 1995 when it was an above average all you can eat buffet, housed in the same building as Narbonne's municipal swimming pool (it still is). It's become considerably more elegant and extravagant since then (69 euros a person) and does hundreds of covers a day. Not our normal type of eatery ... it will be interesting!