Day 78

We are in southern France one year ago today and yesterday we went to a foie gras farm [pronounced 'fwah grah', and try to roll that r]. The farm was way out in the country, up on a hill. When we arrived there was no one outside. We parked and walked into the little store on the premises. The lady behind the counter rung us up for the tour and when mom went to pull out her credit card, it was gone! We looked everywhere, in the car, in all of our pockets, and everywhere else we could think to look; nowhere. We then called Dad and told him what happened. He reminded Mom about a second card she had and her first card was at the house, relief.

When we were finally in the museum we took our time. There was lots to read, videos to watch, and games to play (Landon and Bria liked that a lot). Foie gras is a gourmet food, made from fattened duck liver. The museum was a walk through tour of the history and development of foie gras. The foie gras idea first started in Egypt. The Egyptians found this out by watching the ducks eat lots of food, then migrating. They then caught the ducks and ate them. They loved the sweet liver, with its smooth buttery texture. Eventually people began deliberately over-feeding ducks for their liver.

Editor’s Note: People have been force-feeding ducks ever since, developing the practice to a real art. Some people feel this is an outrageous cruelty, and I understand some conditions might qualify for that judgement. But for a well run farm with skilled workers I think it truly is not an inhumane practice.

The last thing of the tour was, a video of how the foie gras was made, and how to eat the special kinds, also how to make all kinds of different spreads. It appears that the French people eat a lot of this tasty treat.

When the video was over, we walked into the shop area and looked and looked at all the foie gras for sale. The lady made up some little sandwiches for us to try. There were three different preparations of the foie gras to try. There was so may different kinds of spreads. After looking at everything and saw that everything was really expensive, we choose a pack of pre-cut meat to take home, similar to dried beef only it was duck. The meat did not last long at all.

One thing that was disappointing was that, we missed the day of when they butcher the ducks and you can walk through the area and watch each part.

Outside of the store we walked down to a barn and looked in the window to find DUCKS! There was a man inside feeding ducks, by grabbing a duck, then holding it still while he put a long tub down the ducks throat then pressing a button and grain would go straight into the ducks stomach. This is called force feeding or gavage. The man had to do that to every duck in the barn. It looked like there were a couple hundred ducks in the barn.

After the barn we went an looked at ducks that were not yet full grown. They were all laying together in a pack, in the sun. When we came up to the fence they all ran away and laid down again further away from us.

When we arrived back home, we started making Landon's birthday meal! The cake was a chocolate cake, with one big red candle in the middle with sour gummy alligators all around. After the meal and the cake Landon opened his present. It was a Lego set.

PS: This is Wednesday, November 30th post.