BLOGGING BLUNDERS

I have spent the day trying to recover my e-mail, which totally disappeared after my book posting last night. After setting up the blog initially, I move on to Beta - after many problems I discovered that it is not compatible with Safari so I downloaded Firefox - it didn't seem to be any better and definitely slower than Safari. It seems to me that after posting a photo yesterday, that is where the machine started to go wrong.

Fortunately my son also has a Mac, and his worked - he had a Wifi connection, I didn't - so using his internet settings I tried to reset mine - no way! In total disgust I shut down the laptop, I even banned it to another room incase I was tempted to throw it in the trash and went and did some mundane jobs. An hour later, feeling calmer, I go back to the laptop, and everything works! Why? I have absolutely no idea (I trashed Firefox) but so far, so good - we shall see if I can post this.

What annoys me is that after a night of snow, the weather here today was simply gorgeous - sun, blue skies and sparkling snow; all very 'carte postale'! And I wasted the whole day trying to get the laptop to respond. I took a couple of photos this morning but don't think I will post one yet - it might be tempting fate!

Tonight we are having 'raclette' - the real McCoy! I will take some photos and post them another day! Raclette was invented in the Valais, so we are spoilt for choice as far as the cheese is concerned. We used to eat raclette in France using our little Tefal raclette machine - we no longer dare bring it out here! The real way to prepare raclette is to melt it in front of the fire but unless one is properly equipped this becomes a hot, greasy and difficult operation. We now have a large raclette machine which is electric and nearly everyone now melts the cheese in this manner - I know of only two restaurants here that still melt the cheese in front of the chimney. The quality of one's raclette depends on the cheese and there are as many different raclettes as days in the year! We have a wonderful fromager here in the village who has some excellent raclette on offer but I must confess to buying tonight's raclette in Carrefour yesterday - they were having a 'degustation' so Lucie and I had a mid-morning snack and decided that it wasn't bad!

The raclette is served with cooked ham, air-dried ham, 'speck' which is in fact streaky bacon (air-dried too), viande de Grisons (dried beef), coppa, lashings of gherkins, pickled onions and the special raclette potates. I can eat 3 to 4 portions when I am really hungry - Pierre ate 11 portions in a restaurant last winter! Fortunately for me, it was a 'much as you can eat' formula!

The minus side of this dish is the smell in the house afterwards - the chalet smells of raclette for 48 hours, despite eating with the windows open! It's a good thing that blogs don't smell!