Stage 2: Auray --> Saint-Brieuc

OK, no more doubts about the menu for tonight: an Anne Willan recipe for Cotriade Bretonne, a fish stew with sorrel and leeks. It calls for two types of fish, which seems appropriate for a stage that goes from one shore town to another, as well as mussels, creme fraiche, leeks, potatoes, lemon, butter ...

Who is interested? If B and N are eating, we'll have an early dinner at my house, maybe 5:30. Otherwise the time is up for grabs.

I've been DVRing the coverage of the Tour in HDTV, and it's gorgeous.

Brunch update: I tried a different buckwheat crepe recipe. It was tastier and much easier to manage. Just about as I finished making a stack of crepes, B and E returned from a bike ride, and we ate all of the following permutations of crepes:

• Asparagus, onion, and a (unidentified) grated cheese
• Asparagus, onion, and a soft (also unidentified) French cheese
  
• Elodie Farms fig-and-honey chevre with a warm compote of peaches, apricots, and plumcots
• Shrimp, corn, hot peppers, and more of the grated cheese

Can you tell that I was using up leftovers from our various refrigerators? For me, the winner once again was the Elodie Farms chevre :)

The crepe recipe was inspired by Anne Willan's Look & Cook French Country Cooking. For 10 crepes, I used the following ingredients:

• 2 TBS butter
• 3/4 cup buckwheat flour
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 cup 2% milk from Maple View Farm
  

Dinner update: The fish stew was fabulous. The recipe called for one pound of a white fish (cod, haddock, hake, or whiting), one pound of a rich fillet (eel or mackerel), and 1 1/2 pound of mussels, as well as a pound of sorrel. What ended up in the soup pot was a pound of cod, a pound of bay scallops, half of a pound of Spanish mackerel, and 10 ounces of arugula ... Nonetheless, the stew was excellent: rich, flavorful, multi-faceted.

For those interested, the recipe is on pages 100-101 of The Country Cooking of France, by Anne Willan.