Je t'aime, le fromage de montagne!

There, I said it. Okay, so I know that "I love you, the mountain cheese!" may not make complete sense gramatically. It does to me, though, and to my friend Bucky who first uttered the phrase over 10 years ago in adoration of a different type of cheese from a different French mountain range.

This time, it was the Alps and the Reblochon. I ate alot of it, with almost every meal in the course of our long weekend in the Haute-Savoie. To summarize, I ate it:

- with a baguette in front of a mountain chapel

- with a baguette, some terrine, and some rosé by the lake

- baked in a tartiflette (potatoes, onions, cream and bacon)...twice

- as part of an after dinner cheese course (the cheese course being one of my favorite things about France)

Me and a French dinghy

I learned that "reblochon" basically means "milked again." Further research discovered that it actually comes from the word "reblocher" which literally means: "to pinch a cow's udder again." In the olden days the Man used to tax the farmers on how much milk they produced, so they would only partially milk their cows, measure the milk, pay the taxes, then go back and milk the cow again after the taxman left. Apparently, the remaining milk was richer and used to make this delicious cheese.

Between episodes of mountain cheese consumption, I did other things. LSB has all of the pretty pictures here (including a montage of me looking contemplative on a dock). I'll try to cover the rest below.

We stopped at the store and picked up a baguette and...er...reblochon and hiked up into the mountains. Near the top is La Grotte de St. Germain and a chapel built directly above it. As I understand it, St. Germain was a monk at the priory in Talloires who, in an effort to live a more simple and rustic life, started spending his nights in a small cave (the aforementioned "grotte"). After a while, I think he went a little batty and just stayed up there, living the life of a recluse. A hermit with a view.

la grotte de St. Germain

While LSB was in meetings, I took a boat tour around the lake to Annecy. I met a couple of caravaning Scots on board with their two friendly spaniels: Paddy (a cocker) and Fudge (a springer). I never did get the names of the people, but I learned that they were traveling through France and then onto Italy. It was in Annecy that I ate my first tartiflette of the trip. I washed it down with a bottle of strong "Yeti" beer at a restaurant on a canal.

Yes, that is A Moveable Feast next to my tartiflette (I am the cliché)

Once Leah was free from work, we spent our last afternoon in Talloires, sitting in the grass on the lakeshore, drinking rosé and eating baguettes with a certain mountain cheese that I tend to enjoy.

LSB, Lake Annecy, and Reblochon

I had tartiflette again for dinner that evening and dreamed about a cave-dwelling life, double-milking cows for my livelihood. Strange. Maybe it was all the cheese. Or maybe it had something to do with this guy...

creepy saint at the chapel of St. Germain

Bon nuit!