We've just had the worst hailstorm I've ever experience in my entire life. It's the equal of or worse than the one I experienced many years ago in Richmond VA where the hail left dents in cars. The hail just now ranged from sugar cube size to ping pong ball size! And most of it was in the larger range. Bye-bye terrace plants. The older established trees and bushes are fine. But all the new tender seedlings and herbs I had recently started growing are ripped to shreds by the hail. The wind that drove the hail was very high and horizontal gusts banged open every window not double secured. The mess in the house is unreal. Water and chunks of ice driven 12 feet or more past the windows - all over the floors, furniture, papers.

And yes, there are dents in some of the cars from this hail.

I just made chopped chicken liver. Now that may not sound delicious and enticing and start craving rising within you, but that's only because you've never tasted my homemade chopped chicken liver. This stuff is gorgeous. It's better than any professionally made pate or terrine. It's simply perfect.

There's fresh chicken livers from organic grain and flower petel fed free range chickens, sauteed in Brittany butter and then finished with lashings of moscato grappa. There's 2 very large onions and 6 large garlic cloves chopped and sauteed in lots of butter. There's 3 hard boiled free range eggs. Everything is individually prepared first. Then the eggs are shredded on the fine side oif the grater. The onions and garlic are then mixed into the eggs and freshly ground pepper and salt added. The livers are roughly chopped with a large knife and then tossed into the cuisineart machine with their butter and grappa enriched juices. A few pulses with the knife blade of the machine grind them to almost the perfect course texture. Then the eggs and onions are dumoped in and the whole thing pulsed a few times. Voila, perfect texture. The taste is perfect, no need to adjust seasoning. Then the mixture is packed into a plastic container and put into the fridge to allow it to cool and the flavours to blend and develop and mellow.

This is going to be killer eating tomorrow. (I'm sure it will be the target of a late night tasting raid, tho.)

This is all the spin off of our massive grocery shopping in Saint Louis, France yesterday. We drove into France before 9am and stopped at a local patisserie hoping that a croissant would sooth and control our hunger before we reached the supermarket. It didn't work. We went nuts - the food was gorgeous and the prices were unbelievably low. Meat was cheaper than New York City prices. We were in grocery heaven.

I bought fresh roquefort cheese and made creamy dressing from it last night. I had a salad for lunch today and the creamy roquefort dressing was all I had dreamed. Oh lord, is it good!

Supper tonight is coquilles st jacques. Yumm! With apple tart for dessert.

(Tom - we bought almost a pound of local made double smoked bacon and about as much genuine black forest ham. The black forest is just up the road and local farmer still make the traditional hams on small family farms.)