Garlic

Oooh can I but in here? I live not far from Mazamet and have done for some years...I really dispute this winds thing...We really don't get much by way of wind over here (north side of montagne noir)...I think the fallen trees that you saw were probably from 'the exceptionally bad and very unusual winter' that winter affected the whole area and involved a very heavy snow fall which combined with loads of other stuff includuding lack of rain the previous summer and a sudden thaw of the snow combined to overload the trees and it was devasting...loads of trees fell, electricity was cut off and roads blocked but it really was nothing to do with wind... I love it here...if you want to see wind go to Carcassonne!

I went through a phase (as you do) of washing my hair with ecover wool wash...comes in big bottles and is nice and kind to the planet...and...swears not to strip the oils from your woolly jumpers[:)]

Charallais, Yet another to give you advice! Your daughter can't get child benefit in the UK if she comes to live in France but she can claim and receive it in France. She needs to notify Newcastle of the date she is leaving England and they will supply a letter in French which needs to be given to CAF when she applies. You can download the application form from the CAF website (caf.fr) there you will also find the child benefit rates. This is not scrounging but simple european entitlement. I don't know how good your French is but the form is not that complicated, if you are struggling with it then the local CAF office will help you. Ours are very helpful but I'm sure there are awkward ones. She will also be able to register with the anpe as looking for work. In order to do this she will probably need to register with assedic who are the unemployment benefit people even though she won't receive it. If she registers with the anpe she may be able to get help with french lessons which will help her to get employment and also help with retraining all of which will help her to get a job.  

It's raining so I thought I'd post a recipe. I've never done that before[:)] I love a good curry but I've got to have a naan to go with it, they sell something that calls itself a naan in Atac but a) it's dear and b) it ain't. I've been doing this sort of recipe for eons I found it somewhere but can't remember where and it was different I've sort of simplified it because I do it so often and can't be bothered with fuss. So the recette: You need natural yogurt (plain without sugar) flour bog standard farine de ble baking powder  levure chimique Probably salt but I never bother A heavy bottomed cast iron frying pan or griddle thingy pop the yogurt in a bowl I use two small pots to make me eight mediumish breads add some flour and about a third of a sachet of levure stir with a fork keep stirring and adding flour till it forms a dough...(I don't like sticky hands and the dough gets under my finger nails so I stir a lot till it's a quite solid dough) then start neading adding more flour until it's a good not sticky dough. Nead it until you get board, I do it all in the bowl. form the dough into a ball and cover with a damp tea towel leave it in a warm place for an hour or so if you have time. Form it into 8 balls roll each one out on flour (you can add loads of stuff now by rolling over eg, slivers of garlic or cumin seeds or both or others. Heat your pan very hot and slap one in (dry no oil or anything but the pan should be HOT) when it browns a little on the bottom flip it, It should then puff up and that's fun. When it's done it's ready. I like to cook the whole batch ahead and sometimes reheat so I stack em in foil four to each parcel and brush each side with melted butter cos I'm a pig. Eaten fresh from the pan these also work well as a sort of pitta (definitely minus the butter) and you can split and stuff them too. I ran out of normal flour the other day so I made them with gateaux flour and no levure they were denser and according to the kids more like a 'real' naan. Really simple and really yum and really cheap! Oh I also reckon you could cook then in a very hot oven on a pizza stone but I've never tried.

My jobby and I do have several as you need different jobbys for different jobs is according to Dicks link a casserole or cocete...never new that! But it is a cheap and cheerful supermarket version. It is just incredibly versatile quite large but with a reasonably  flat bottom. It also lost it's knob which enables it to function in a steamy sort of way or if I fill up the hole then it has pressure cooker characteristics too...Like I say versatile. I'm a great fan of cast iron cookware it's a pain to lift and shift but cooks like a dream. Anyway...we had tortilla cooked with potatoes from the shed, onions from lidl and eggs right out of chickens, all cooked in another cast iron jobby that's flatter and wider and lost it's handle which was wood so it goes in the oven as well but it doesn't have a lid...[:)]  

My jobby has a lid but I lost it for a while and tin foil was fine...

Uh dunno, just think dauphin peeled, tortilla unpeeled...works for me anyway!

I never pre-cook the spuds for gratin dauphinous or fart about with them at all. Just layer up: garlic (to taste) fine-ish sliced spuds, butter and creme fraiche always cook in a heavy cast iron jobby chuck in oven, leave for ages and when the potatoes are almost just right uncover to brown a bit. ...If I wasn't too lazy to peel potatoes we'd be eating it tonight but I am so it's tortilla instead.

Bones is right about the snow in Les Martys, I nearly died trying to drive home from Carcassonne once caught in a blizzard. I think Cabardes is similar. Mazamet has a golf course and it's below the snow line. Also Castres airport now does decent priced flights to Paris and there is talk of cheapish England flights (there are already good London flights but pricey)

Yes you see here we don't eat du pain (pan?) which I understand is generally eaten in France, no we don't we eat something called payng...It is jolly nice though and resembles that British treat known as bread

I think when French people looked like they couldn't understand my French it was quite simply that they couldn't, They still can't alot of the time. Maybe English acquired French is part of the issue. When I speak to my kids English prof or see the work the kids get it is to my mind French acquired English and it sort of works in the broader sense but regions have their own nuances. I live in the Tarn on the Herault border and oh boy do we have an accent. I may in a thousand years be fluent in Tarn French...Just like I was fluent in SE London English but I'll always sound weird and use unknown expressions in Paris just as I would have done in Liverpool...  

TU Thanks do you know how I'd go about getting it and does it actually work? I wrote to a French medical site and they recommended finding a dentist who practised hypnotherapy but I don't have a clue.

I truely would rather have a baby than visit the dentist, however I'm getting to old to have babies and the visit to the dentist is inevitable[:(] for anybody who is interested there are annuaires of dentists http://www.annuairedentaire.com/  and http://www.annuaire.chirurgiens-dentistes.fr/recherche.html and I'm gradually working my way through them the problems are that they don't have email, they don't answer letters and if I phone they seem to make an assuption that being scared of the dentist is normal but so far I haven't found one with the skills to understand and treat that 'not normal scaredness' (probably to do with limitations of language) Hence looking for other peoples experiences, so keep thinking I am determined to get my mouth sorted out before next xmas[:)] 

Thanks Frizz, I just get a geographer Boitier when I google. As I understand it dentists here aren't allowed to advertise? I'll keep on trying and please everyone keep them coming. I don't expect it to be easy but I will find someone one day[:)]

Thanks Chris, Funnily enough I was sort of getting over my fear with my English dentist some years ago and then I had a baby kicking a tooth incident and went to see the local dentist here. I told him I was scared of dentists and he with that gallic shug said 'c'est normal' proceded to torture me (in my mind at least) with the end result that I left the chair in tears without the treatment and haven't been back since. He wasn't old or nasty either, I think it's me that has the problem or rather I need a dentist who understands the difference between 'peur c'est normal' and very scared. I probably ought to see my doctor but I'm quite good at finding excuses to avoid talking about dentists[:)]   I feel a lot better 'coming out' rather than just sitting here with tooth ache feeling sorry for myself[:D]

[:(] Ok, can anybody help me, I'm looking for a dentist preferably in Tarn, Aude, Herault but I'll consider anywhere sort of. The problem is I'm quite seriously scared of dentists (please don't laugh I'm not scared of spiders!) this is a real problem and not the same as not liking the dentist. In England I would be able to look for a dentist who specialises in 'very anxious' patients, but I'm finding it impossible here partly I think because dentists can't advertise. The nearest dentist I have found so far is in Barcelona and much as I like Barcelona it is just a bit too far to go. So if you think your dentist might be helpful could you pass on details by pm or if you're visiting your dentist would you ask if they know of anyone. My French isn't terrible but an English speaker would probably help in terms of my ability to explain the complexity of my problem. I'm writing to dentists that I grab out of the annuaire and sending them a stamp so that they can reply but not having any luck so far. I'm going to post this on other forums so apologies if you end up reading this more than once. Thanks in advance[:)]  

Thanks jpe, We have a chance that the broker can give us the advance we need but if not I might approach your people, could you pm me their www? Although I don't have a buyer lined up yet, My property has been valued by an estate agent who can do it for 'proper' valuations and I'm asking for less than 70% of the lowest valuation.

Please don't shout at me but I do live in an area with a virtually non existant incoming population all though there are more here than when we arrived there was an 'english' kid in the college but he had lived here since he was 8mths old. My kids were the first non French speakers pretty much that the schools had to deal with. At primaire my daughter didn't get any help but I guess that was because they knew they'd hand her on to college the following term. This is a poor rural area and even so they have found finance and arranged stuff so my two did get language support for the first two years which for them was enough. They were 13 and 11 when we arrived. Eldest is now at lycee and although there is a european section (courses taught in English) he's quite happy in the normal section (all taught in French). Someone mentioned keeping up English skills and this is a challenge, my daughters English writing and grammar leave a lot to be desired but the work load in college is hard and fitting in 'extra' English is difficult on top of her normal homework. I think it is probably very important (with the benefit of hindsight) to explore educational issues before coming from this conversation it's obvious that people have very different experiences. Maybe also bear in mind your own ability to help your children for us we really struggle understanding their homework and that's a problem sometimes. As an aside I just got back from the hospital A&E because my littlest had a very nasty fall and so we dashed her off there fearing skull fractures. Thank god I've learnt French since I got here (not perfect but it works!) I was just talking with the doctor and was so relieved that I understood what he was saying and only had to get him to repeat one thing once...Whatever else learn French!

Thanks Lori, they're better known as the hay eaters second only after the donkey hayeaters!

Thanks No I don't need a mortgage, the 70% they will give against my house is sufficient to buy the house that I want to buy. The problem is that they still want my income to be equal to 3x the monthly interest on that sum and it's not, partly because they won't include some parts of our income as they are not 'durable'. I do understand the problem it's just a bit irritating as it seems that I will have to sell, rent and then rebuy in order to move and I like the house I already have it's just I've found a project I'd like to take on and by the time I've sold it may well have sold. I may just have to give up on the idea.

I'm trying to get a pret relais. I've been offered 70% of the value of my house but I need a monthly income equal to 3x the monthly interest repayment. My income fluctuates so this is a bit of a problem does anyone have any recommendations of agencies I can approach who may be slightly more flexible? Thanks

I guess we were really lucky as my children were given FLE without us asking...It's a small college in a small town and there weren't many foreign children just my two and a Morrocan boy. It did take a while to kick in as they'd already done a term and a half before it started...They had help for two years and yes they did get behind with other subjects but have slowely caught up (at least the one that works has!). They were put in the year beneath them to start and both have had to redouble as well so are two years behind. They also feel very hard done by because the English prof was very hard on them and accepted nothing short of perfection in English. The FLE stopped as suddenly as it started the powers that be must have just decided that they didn't need it any more. Retrospectively I can't believe I was so laid back about the whole business...It could have all gone horribly wrong. The hard thing for us is helping with homework although we get better every year and I suppose it stretches the brain! 

Hi, Yes the llamas are lovely, the donks too! Do get in touch if you head this way. On the central heating front...If I was going to fit it (and I think those prices quoted are just silly, but what do I know)...I'd look very seriously at a wood/solar fired option...If you are living here there are tax advantages and knowing that a)power cuts sometimes happen, b)electricity is expensive and c)wood is very available...it really makes sense!  

I maybe shouldn't be saying this as I could be creating competion for myself[:(] But have you consider slightly further south into the Tarn? There are some great lakes and where we are only an hour from the coast. Not as over developed as some areas and quite popular with the French for holidays...Non of this avoids the fact it's damn hot in summer and bleeming freezing in winter oh and school can be a pain, my son has had to go 80kms to find a Lycee that offers the course he wants...

I moved out with an almost 14yr old, an 11yr old and a 1yr old 3 and something years ago...and moved from central London to the middle of nowhere...It wasn't always easy for them and they have been held back but they have also 'got there' My eldest is very settled now and finally off to lycee this year. I think we were quite lucky with the school the big children went to as the school went out of their way to provide language classes...that and my kids are soooooo nice that they made friends quite easily and picked up 'real' French that way....we don't have any regrets but only the individual knows how their own particular family will adjust. Interesting challenge for one could be absolute nightmare for another...I have known families for whom it didn't work and they are back in England now.