Today is France's national day. I have always loved France, and also have one of my best friends living there - Marie Noëlle. We have spent summer vacation together with Marie Noëlle and her family several years, and she has really showed me so much of the French beauty. I have been home from work today, taking care of Marta who had such bad pains in her ear last night and have had a headache today. The weather was cool, but still sunny, and I decided to use the opportunity of "my extra day" to prepare a French meal for Terje, me and Marta.
Spent a long time looking through recipe books, but in the end I decided the right ting to do was to go to the grocery story to see what was in stock.
And there I found lamb, which is among my favorite meat. The meat was actually meat for barbequing, but I decided to make a special dish for the oven. In the herbgarden I found a huge variety of fresh herbs, and together with spring onion and fresh champignon I made a bed for the meat. It went in the oven for about 45 minutes together with a whole califlower with cheese sause.
While the meat and the califlower were in the oven I prepared a cold potato salad, and a salad with mini tomatoes, olive oil and
ruccola salad from my garden. And I also made three starter dishes for us, with a slice of melon, local pepperoni, sour cream, a mini tomato and fresh herb.
The table was set in the garden, though it was hard to decide if we should rather eat inside with Tour de France on the telly. We love watching it, both because of the Norwegian 
syclist Thor Hushovd, and because of the beautiful French landscape. Todays sycling was in Digne les Baines, very close to where we spent our holiday with our French friends two years ago. Of course the sun won in the end, but Marta went to and from updating us on the TdF situation.
We had three dishes, ending with Creme Bruille - my favorite French dessert. I had also bought fresh strawb
erries - the local sweet and very good strawberries are ripe now. But as we eat dinner quite early in Norway, the strawberries, and more fruit and ice cream can wait a few hours for our coffee time.
And coffee must be enjoyed indoors, the temeratures dropped and it started to rain as soon as our meal was finished.
