Captain Shaddock.

Monday 16th September 2017 - Cazilhac, near Carcassonne.

I have a late entry to the blog on request of a friend called Andy Shaddock. I give his name because I mentioned a pamplemousse (grapefruit) in the blog and he wanted to bring attention to a Captain Shaddock who discovered/bred the grapefruit and sometimes a grapefruit is refered to as a 'shaddock'.  I thought this was an interesting fact that I hadn't heard of before, so I googled it.  Google's version becomes a bit sketchy because the story seems to be that a Captain Shaddock of the East India Company brought either a Pomelo plant or seeds from Java to the West Indies.  A pomelo is bigger than a grapefruit and is green coloured but it got crossed with citrus fruit and became a grapefruit.  So far so good, however, historical records do not show any Captain Shaddock existed??  When records were checked a Captain Chaddock was located around the same time and travelled between the Indonsesia and the West Indies so there could be some truth in the story even though it cannot be confirmed.  The name Chaddock and Shaddock are apparently both used in the same family trees!  So, after all that effort...thanks Andy for mentioning an interesting story.

We revisited Carcassonne old city today.  Being a Monday it was much quieter than when we first went in on Saturday.

We walked all round the outside of the walls and then popped back in for lunch.  We did the three course 'menu complet' which was good value.  We both had 'cassoulet' as a main course as it seems to be the local speciality.  

It is a casserole of white haricot beans, duck leg, Toulouse sausage and some other smaller pieces of pork.  It is warm and tasty.  I also had my first ile flottante of the trip.  It wasn't presentationally up to my exacting standards but it is a floating meringue  on a sea of creme anglais, covered in a caramel drizzle.

Janice's tarte aux pommes is visible too.

We walked over the old bridge into the town centre and had a mooch around.

Janice was keen to relive her youth on the merry-go-round but she couldn't quite fit on the fire engine or the aeroplane!  Merry-go-rounds are very traditional features of many French towns.

Back at the site we are very aware of the effects that Hurricane Ophelia is having in Ireland and back home in Cumbria.  Janice is is also concerned that we will get the tail end winds tonight especially after  having the cassoulet for lunch!!  It's already getting rather breezy in the Mistral department.

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