Le réveillon (a New Year's Eve party)

We rolled into the driveway at 2:45 a.m. on January 1, 2007. We didn't mean to stay out so late, but we were still at the table having cheese and then dessert at 1:30 or so, and the drive home took 45 minutes.

It was pouring rain and kind of windy, but the temperature was in the mid-50s F. And we didn't see any gendarmes or obviously drunk drivers on the road. In fact, we probably didn't pass more than four or five cars along the way. And we didn't see any deer, rabbits, owls, or sangliers (wild boars), disappointingly enough. It was raining too hard, I think.

The route takes us along little two-lane roads through a couple of villages (Mesland, Onzain), then across the Loire and right by the château de Chaumont-sur-Loire, through farm country for 10 or 12 miles (to Bourré near Montrichard), and finally across a one-lane bridge over the Cher River (from Thésée to Pouillé) and on through our own village to our house.

So what was the evening like? We arrived at 8:00 and another guest, Christine, was already there with her daughter, Alizée, who is 8 or 9 years old. The hosts, Brassia and Gilles, have two children, Yann (7) and Emma (5). Then came Valérie and Denis, a 30-something couple who operate a farm just north of Mesland near Santenay, and their children Louis (7 or 8) and Alice (5 or 6).

The final guests to arrive were John, an Englishman who teaches English in Blois, and his spouse Florence, who is French. John has lived in France for a long time and speaks French fluently. He's my age. Florence speaks English, as does Gilles. The evening was 99% French with just a few words of English, mostly between me and John.

The children were quite excited and were whirring around the kitchen island — Brassia and Gilles have an old farmhouse that they have been renovating for several years, and the party was in the main downstairs room, which is a kitchen on one end and a big dining area on the other. The room must be 20' x 30' (about 50 m2).

Brassia, Christine, and their two daughters immediately set about making little canapés with pâté Brassia had bought and some foie gras (bloc de foie gras) from the Dordogne that Walt and I contributed to the party. Then Gilles opened a couple of bottles of champagne and the eating and drinking began.

Valérie and Denis, the farmers, have been on their land for about 15 years now, Denis said. Before they started farming, they spent a summer in Indiana, he told me, on a farm there. It was a cultural and agricultural exchange program. They said they hadn't spoken English at all since that time, and they didn't speak any English during the evening.

Florence and John arrived at about 9:00 and by 9:30 we were seated at the big square dining table that would comfortably seat eight people. Problem was, there were nine of us, so Gilles squeezed his place setting and his chair in at the corner of the table between me and Denis. Valérie was on the other side of me. John and Brassia were on the right, and Florence and Walt were across the table from me. Christine was between Denis and Walt, on the left-hand side.

Christine had bought and contributed a big platter of seafood for the appetizer course. There were oysters that Gilles said he had opened (I must have eaten 6 or 8 of them, but some people didn't care to eat oysters). There were hundreds of cooked shrimp too, heads and all, as they are served in France. Those you peel and eat with your fingers. These weren't the tiny gray shrimp that you eat whole with butter. They were orangey-red ones about the size of my little finger.

There were also little sea snails called bulots, which are cooked in the shell and which you eat cold. You pull the animal out of the shell with a pick or a fork, trim it up to remove the entrails if necessary, and eat the foot muscle along with some home-made mayonnnaise. You can dip shrimp (crevettes) in the mayonnaise too.

With the seafood, Gilles served us a white burgundy from a village very near the famous wine town of Chablis in northern Burgundy. Florence commented on how good it was and asked about it. It turned out that Christine's uncle is a grape-grower and wine producer, and it was his wine. It was delicious.

We spent nearly an hour at the table eating shellfish and shrimp, talking, and drinking the white wine. At about 10:15, Brassia excused herself from the table said she was going to feed the children, who had been sent off to play in the bedrooms at the back of the house. Her son Yann had come out, representing the group, to say they were hungry and were ready for dinner.

I didn't even see what she served them, but she said they had asked for sautéed potatoes with whatever it was. They weren't interested in the haricots verts that Brassia had prepared to go with roast duck.

By 11:00 p.m., the duck Brassia came out of the oven. Or ducks, rather — there were two of them. And it turned out that they were ducks that Brassia had bought from Valérie's father, who raises them on his farm just up the road from Mesland. Denis and Valérie said we had better like them! No fair bad-mouthing les canards de Papa, Valérie said.

At another point, the subject of the pouring rain came up. Somebody complained about it, and Denis quickly said: "Laissez la pluie tranquille !" Leave the rain alone! I guess farmers know the value of the water that falls from the sky, and especially since our part of France has been suffering through a drought for several years.

To be continued