Oh, and we also saw other cute creatures

There were also some dwarf goats, vietnamese pigs, agora goats, feasants, and bunny rabbits.
The dwarf goats were pretty damn cute (another idea for a pet?). Some of the babies, because they were small enough, were able to hop through some holes in the enclosures onto the path. The guide told us it was normal. I guess the Italian woman who was in our group didn't hear her because she started screaming that one was loose and began running after it to catch it.

Wolves

The wolves are pretty big. Just a little bigger than a husky. They appear massive, anyway. However, they do not represent any kind of danger to humans. First of all, the fact that we are bipedal highly impresses them and even the alpha couple will be submissive towards us.
Wolves are very shy creatures. In the wild, they will tend to hide from approaching humans. It is actually very rare to see a wolf in the wild because they are so afraid of us. Moreover, their fur helps them blend into their environment extremely well. In the parc, we only saw our first wolf from afar because it moved. Otherwise, they are invisible.
The wolves in the parc, however, were curious. Because they are so used to the presence of humans and because it's the humans who feed them, they tended to follow us behind the fence while we walked through the forest.

Wolves - eating habits

The parc is pretty big and is organised according to packs. Every enclosure covers a more or less vast piece of forest. For example, the biggest pack possesses a very extensive enclosure with a few dens in which wolves only mate and care for the new puppies.
The packs are fed twice a week just like they would be in the wild. Apparently, they can eat up to four kilos of meat in one sitting. Then they digest for 2-3 days. They don't chew. Just swallow. Their jaw can apply a pressure of up to one ton. A pitt-bull: 50-80 kilos. In other words, wolves can bite into a cow's femur just like we would into an apple.
If they are really in a tight spot, they can eat frogs, birds, and even little berries to cleanse their digestive system.
The parc keeps a pack next to the observation post so they can put on a little show for the guests: feeding time. This pack is fed every day (little pieces of expired meat from grocery stores) at 4 PM. In the background, we could hear the other packs howling loudly out of jealousy. They could smell the meat from where they were (200-300 m away).
Here is a picture of the wolves (Belgian breed) at 4 o'clock. You can see one jumping (they jump pretty high) to catch a piece of meat thrown at them. The other picture is of the wolves pacing 45 min before feeding time. Before that, they were sleeping.

Les loups de Chabrieres

Yesterday, we had planned to go to l'Ile d'Oléron, where Fort Boyard is, but when I learned that it's a 3h30-drive away and that it would be a pretty cloudy day, I suggested that we go somewhere a little closer. We looked up things to do in our region. There are castles to visit, horse-back riding, and different forests to walk through but none of them really seemed appropriate. We did find a place near Guéret, a forest where we can watch wolves in captivity. They have different breeds, namely Italian, Belgian, and Tchecoslovaquian breeds. They also have the Alberta Black wolf and the Canadian Arctic wolf.
The last remaining wolf of french soil was slaughtered in 1940. Now the parc near Guéret is making efforts to reinstate the wolf in France, albeit in captivity. Otherwise, the sheep breeders nearby wouldn't be too happy.

Whoopie pies!!

2011 is decidedly the year of revolution. First it was Tunisia, then Egypt, then Algeria and Lybia, and now the US. The Whoopie pie is taking over the well-established reign of the cupcake.
It appears to be a cross between the regular American cupcake and the French "macaron". The cake, or biscuit, is made of your usual suspects: flour, baking powder, 100% or 50% cocoa, coffee, egg, etc. The filling is made of "sucre de glaçage", vanilla extract, and butter. It's pretty fattening.

Italian macaroni

As you know, I have been experimenting in the kitchen. I have developed a taste for cooking and baking various meals. Here is some italian macaroni, a fairly easy dish to make.

Soirée Québécoise

Last Wednesday night (Feb 9), we had some friends over for dinner. We met them through couchsurfing, a website that allows those who are registered to look people up in different cities around the world and ask them to sleep on their couch. This concept was developed for travelers on tight budgets. So let's say you want to go to Split in Croatia, you simply look up the people who have couches available there and you ask them if you can stay with them a night or two. The whole thing is free.
Back in October, I chose to use the website to find friends here in Limoges. Luckily for me, a group had already been created for those who want to make friends in Limoges.
I joined the group and presented Martin and myself in a short, bilingual e-mail. Within hours, I was invited to go out for a drink the next evening with the group coordinator, Fanny.
The next evening, I went to a famours bar in Limoges called "Brasserie Michard" and met a lot of great people. There were mostly French people but I also met a scottish man, a romanian girl, an american girl, and a group of chinese people who unfortunately kept to themselves all night.
As months have gone by, Martin and I have gotten closer to a smaller set of people from couchsurfing. One of them, Renaud, has already been to Québec and loved every bit of it. So the day after a raclette evening at Joanne's, a girl from Scotland, I invited four people over for dinner the next Wednesday for a Québécois night.
I served poutine, sheppard's pie, and poudding chômeur.
The poutine I had some trouble with. Apart from the fries, it's impossible to find the right ingredients in France, or anywhere else in the world outside of Canada.

For the sauce, I used the sauce that can be found in a large can of cassoulet. I just drained the beans and sausages of all the sauce and used that as a base for the mix. Its mostly made up of lard, which is perfect. Then, I prepared some meat sauce you can find in any Knorr packet. I tried two different ones: sauce trois poivres and another one which had mushrooms in it. The name evades me now. I prefered the latter. I mixed each of them with some of the lard and it made a pretty decent poutine sauce.

For the cheese, forget about finding any "fromage en crotte qui fait "kouik kouik"" here. The cheese lady will only look at you weird. So I asked for the youngest cheddar they had which, in Québec, translates to a medium cheddar... going on strong.

It was good, actually. But they especially liked the sheppard's pie and the poudding chômeur which was much lighter than the first time I made it. The first time I made some for Martin, I nearly found myself having to learn how to drive stick-shift in 5 min flat so I could take him to the hospital to treat his diabetic coma.
This time, the cake was nice and fluffy and the sauce was a lot better. I got the recipe for the poudding off "recettes du Québec" but this time, instead of using white sugar for the cake, I used brown sugar. It's a lot better.