Fifty

Today is the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year. The first day of winter. And my fiftieth birthday.

Nothing says Holidays in France like clémentines from Spain or Morocco.

Not a big deal, but interesting. We'll be doing the usual birthday dinner of steak au poivre with a cognac cream sauce and french fries. I've had this birthday meal every year since 1981, well over half my life now.

This year the cognac will be replaced by a local gnôle, also called marc, a brandy distilled from the leavings of the grape pressing process (seeds, skins, stems). One of our neighbor wine makers, whose father still has one of the dwindling number of licenses to make the stuff, gave us a bottle this fall. We've been saving it for today.

Some will go into the sauce, some will go into us.

In other birthday news, I got "the letter" from the national health service. It's colonoscopy time!