We wanted to spend the whole day at Mt St-Victoire today, but I had one class that I had to go to and it was in the middle of the day. Almost nothing was accomplished in this class and I was really frustrated that I had wasted half of the day so that we could go to it.
But I guess we were at least able to use the morning to go to the vegetable market and buy vegetables to cook. I picked out all my favorites: eggplant, zucchini, yellow pepper, tomato...all the things that would taste so good cooked up together. I got a cucumber and radishes and lettuce to make a salad. I couldn't wait to make our meal that night. Ironically, I know nothing about cooking.
After my class, we took "la Victoirine" bus to Mt. St-Victoire. We weren't sure where to get off, because each place the bus pulled over seemed far away from the mountain and really remote. Finally, the last stop was in a tiny village and we had no choice but to get off. In the winding roads of the street, we weren't sure which way we should go, but I suggested we go up the streets since that was probably the direction of the mountain, which is also up (isn't that eloquent logic?) Indeed, we found ourselves at the foot of the mountain this way. But we couldn't find a trail, so we just continued up. Until 'up' became a cliff that was too steep to climb and we had to start at the beginning again. This time we found trail markers, but we had to learn to decode them along the way. A red "---" meant 'this is the red path' an "X" of the same red color for 'this is not the red path'. A 'Y' in red meant that we were at a fork in the road, but it didn't really suggest which part of the fork we should take. We hiked up the trail and we could see the colorful fields and little towns along the countryside below and I told him it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. It was. When we had climbed pretty far we found ourselves at a clearing and he asked "should we go back now or should we continue? It's already late afternoon". I was flabbergasted that he would turn back now. Safety over adventure...that's the decision I unfortunately have trouble making. So we continued to ascend and we finally reached the top. Or one of the peaks, at least. We could see all around, and the sun was making everything golden in that perfect time of afternoon.
On our way back down the mountain, we picked a little bit of the rosemary from the side of the path. This was probably very interdit (not allowed) but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to use fresh-from-the mountain rosemary in the cooking that night.
It started getting even chillier on the way down. And we missed the bus by ten minutes, meaning we had to wait another hour and a half for the next one. We walked around the town, but all the shutters were closed and lights were off by this time. We shivered on a park bench, until we finally spotted the bus. Feeling that cold made me realize how lucky I was that my push for adventure didn't leave us stranded on the mountain in the dark for the night.
At home, I was exhausted...from the climb, from the wind. We started to make a ratatouille recipe through guessing. We sauteed garlic and onion. We cut up the rest of the vegetables in huge hunks and cooked all everything together in a huge pot. We added provencal spices and thyme, and then the special ingredient: fresh rosemary from the mountainside. We let it simmer for at least an hour, and then we found we had made the best thing we'd ever tasted. And certainly the best ratatouille that had ever been made in the history of Provence. I'd love to remake this tasty dish someday so that I can show anyone else how delicious our serendipidous recipe turned out to be.
