Living the life in Saint-Aignan

A dusting

2012-01-31T07:00:00.009+01:00

The "snowstorm" turned out to be a mere dusting in the Saint-Aignan area. Instead of 2 to 4 inches, we got what looks like less than an inch of the white stuff. As a friend from Buffalo described some of my pictures of Saint-Aignan snow a few years ago, it looks like a sprinkling of talcum powder.

The view out the kitchen window late yesterday afternoon

I haven't been out yet. Walt took Callie for her walk yesterday afternoon. It wasn't all that cold yesterday during the day. The temperature was just above freezing, and our thermometer shows 0.0ºC this morning — that's 32ºF. Its supposed to get a lot colder over the next few days.

Looking out the guest bedroom window
late yesterday

This snow shower was caused by cold air moving in from Russia in the east and a warm front moving down the coast from the North Atlantic and the British Isles. Obviously, the cold air got to Saint-Aignan first and kept the main part of the precipitation east of us. This morning's news reports are coming from Chinon, where it seems the snow was heavier.

The linden tree out back early this morning

P.S. It's after eight in the morning and there's enough light to see outside. The snow is pretty and more must have fallen overnight, making the neighborhood and woods into a winter wonderland.

From the terrace at about 8:20 a.m.

Isn't it true that the season's first snow always looks beautiful?

Neige !

2012-01-30T07:50:00.003+01:00

Snow has started falling in the southern part of Normandy, including around Alençon and Le Mans. According to the weather reports on TéléMatin, the snow is moving south toward La Touraine this morning. Later in the day, it will start snowing in the Auvergne, which is the mountainous region in south central France.

I put Tours and Paris on the morning weather map
so that you can get yourself oriented.

Since we've lived in Saint-Aignan — nearly nine years now — we've had a little bit of snow nearly every winter. In December 2010 (a year ago), we had an unusually snowy period early in the month — snow stayed on the ground for a couple of weeks. Usually, the temperature doesn't stay below freezing for more than three or four days. Until now, it has been exceptionally mild this winter.

The orange area is where snow is supposed to fall today.

Predictions for snowfall amounts in this current "event" are 5 to 10 centimeters — that's 2 to 4 inches. The most we've ever had on the ground since 2003 has been about 15 cm (6 in.). This morning, we'll just stay in and see if it really does start snowing. We don't need to go anywhere.

A new permis

2012-01-29T08:07:00.009+01:00

My last U.S. driver's license expired four years ago. My French driver's license — mon permis de conduire — was issued in 1981. That makes it more than 30 years old. That's the way it's been with French licenses. Once you get one, it's good for life and never has to be renewed.

I got my French permis by exchanging my North Carolina driver's license for it. I had to hand over the N.C. license, but it was worth it. They handed me a French license. I was living in Paris at the time.

When I moved back to the U.S. in 1982, I had to go and take the written test in N.C. to get a new license, and then in Virginia a few months later because that's where I ended up living. Then in 1983, I had to take the written test in the District of Columbia because Walt and I moved into an apartment on Capitol Hill. At least I think I had to take the written test each time. I don't really remember.

Here are two panels of my French permis de conduire.
The picture doesn't look much like me nowadays.

To get my permis de conduire in Paris, I never had to take any test at all. At the time, North Carolina was one of the states from which the French authorities accepted driver's licenses for exchange. That agreement is no longer in effect, though sixteen U.S. states still are on the French exchange list. California is not one of them. Nor is New York. But Arkansas, Kansas, and Delaware are. Go figure*.

Walt had a California license when we moved to Saint-Aignan. To get a French permis, he was required to enroll in a driving school here and pass both the written and the driving test. He had to do it in French, of course. He learned a lot, and it cost him a lot — about 500 euros. If you move to France, your American license is valid for only 12 months, starting on the day you enter the country.

When I got my French permis, nobody in Paris cared that I didn't know what many of the French road signs meant. Actually, driving in France was not that different from driving in the U.S., except that everything seemed to go and happen faster. The cars were smaller. That year, I had bought a tiny 1972 Renault 4 from some French friends for 1,500 francs ($300). I needed a French license before I could get it insured.

Today, my thirty-something permis is just fine in France. It doesn't matter that it has a 31-year-old picture of me on it, and shows my old address in Paris. Nowadays, if the gendarmes stop you, they just punch your driver's license number into a computer and they pull up your driving record.

The only problem I have with my French license comes when I arrive in the U.S. for a visit. I haven't yet had to rent a car, but Walt rented one in Boston a couple of years ago. The rental agent at the airport didn't bat an eye when Walt presented the French license. Of course, Walt's permis shows a fairly recent picture of him and his current address.

I usually go to North Carolina when I fly across the Atlantic. My mother and sister still live there, in a small town. When I visit, I drive my mother's car. On my last two or three trips, I haven't ever needed to show my driver's license to anyone.

But in 2007, when I still had a valid California license, I was driving my mother's car in Beaufort N.C. when I ran into a routine driver's license check set up by the highway patrol. There was no problem, of course, with the California license. My mother was in the car with me, so no questions were asked about why I was driving a car I didn't own.

But what if that happens again, or I have an accident, or commit an infraction? If I present the old French license, which is a huge pink triple-fold document with my Paris address and my 1981 photo on it, is a local policeman or highway patrolman going to believe that the permis is a valid license to drive? The French consulate for N.C. is in Atlanta, 500 miles to the west.

Because of all that, I've decided it would be a good idea to turn in my old French license and get a new one, with a current picture and my current address on it. Lucky for me, the exchange is free. I have to turn in a couple of pictures with the application form — that's all. I'll get them in taken in a supermarket photo booth. I have to provide proof of my current address — a recent electric bill will do that. Then I'll feel safer when I drive in the U.S.

* Here's a list of the 16 U.S. states that have reciprocal driver's licence agreements with France:

Arkansas
Caroline du Sud
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Floride
Illinois
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Michigan
New Hampshire
Ohio
Pennsylvanie
Texas
Virginie

I got the list of state names off a French government web site so they are in French.

Still winter

2012-01-28T08:33:00.001+01:00

This is one of those mornings when you just want to pull the covers up over your head and stay in bed. I woke up at 6:30 to the sound of hard rain. Actually, rain that sounded more like ice pellets slapping against the windows had awakened me at five. I finally worked up the courage to get up at seven.

Not this morning, but an afternoon a few days ago

I knew I couldn't really stay in bed. The cat needed feeding, and the dog will need walking, even in the rain. With temperatures just above freezing, it won't be a lot of fun — at least for me. Callie won't mind unless it's raining pretty hard when we go out. We are supposed to have temperatures below freezing — finally — by Monday, with a chance of snow that day or the next.

Another photo?

What do you do on a Saturday when it's chilly and damp outside? You don't go to the open-air market unless you really need to. Go to the supermarket? I did that yesterday. I forgot to buy eggs, though, so maybe I'll get the Peugeot out of the garage and go again. Cook something? No need — we're eating left-over coq au vin for lunch. Read? I'm trying to get through part of Michelet's Le Moyen Age, which is a history of the Middle Ages in France that was written in the mid-1800s. It's not exactly a thriller.

Michelet was born in 1798.

Michelet's book is a real pavé — a paving stone — of more than 1000 pages. I've been reading parts of it off and on, and over and over, since I bought it in Paris in 1981. Yes, '81. It seems like I've been reading the part about the lead-up to the 100 Years War for about as long as that war lasted. What I'm looking for this time is information about the Touraine province, where we live. I'd like to find a good book about the history of La Touraine. If you know of one...

La Touraine is mentioned on this page. It says there was
a Scotsman named Douglas who became the
Count of Touraine hundreds of years ago.

Winter. A few months ago I had so much work to do in the yard and vegetable garden that I was looking forward to winter, when I wouldn't have to be busy all the time. Now I look forward to spring, so that I can get back to work outside. Isn't that the story of life?

A rooster cooked in red wine

2012-01-27T09:15:00.002+01:00

It was almost exactly six years ago that I did my first post about cooking a coq au vin — January 25, 2006. I had bought a coq — a rooster, or a cockerel, or whatever term you might prefer — at Intermarché because I had never cooked one before. Somehow, I felt I was cooking and eating Foghorn Leghorn, but in France roosters are for sale at the markets and in the supermarkets. Somebody must buy and cook them. Why shouldn't I?

Coq au vin — red wine — ready to serve

This 2011 rooster weighed in at three kilos, or nearly 7 lbs. I cut it up into cooking pieces — drumsticks, thighs, wings, and two breast halves — so that I could cook just half the bird at a time. Half the rooster would make a big meal for four people, or two or three meals for the two of us, served with vegetables, mushrooms, and potatoes, pasta, rice, or wheat berries. I cooked the first half of the bird about three weeks ago, in white wine (here's a link to the coq au vin blanc post).

Serving pieces of the coq after 12 hours
spent marinating in red wine

I just checked Google, seaching on the terms "cook rooster" and I got more that seven million hits. A Google search for "coq au vin" in French turns up more than two million web pages. Obviously, other people have cooked roosters. Here's an example from The Man Who Ate Everything, complete with a highly detailed recipe, quotes in Latin, and advanced research on whether or not Julius Caesar ate a rooster cooked in red wine when his army invaded Gaul two thousand years ago.

Sauté the rooster or chicken pieces with
some chunks of smoked pork bacon or ham.

In my own post for coq au vin blanc, you'll find the information you need for cooking chicken or rooster in white wine. To make the red wine version, all you have to do — surprise! — is substitute red wine for white. Otherwise, the recipe is the same. See also the link to the 2006 post that I included above.

For coq au vin, any dry red wine will do — a burgundy, made with Pinot Noir grapes; a Loire Valley wine, made with either Gamay, Cabernet Franc, or Côt (a.k.a. Malbec grapes); a bordeaux, made with Merlot and/or Cabernet Franc; a Côtes du Rhône... well, you get the idea. An Australian, Californian, South African, Chilean, or Argentinian red wine will be good too.

Stew the poultry in the marinade, including
the carrots, onions, celery, and herbs.

For this most recent coq au vin, I picked up a bottle of cahors wine at the supermarket. Wines from Cahors, a town in southwestern France, used to be known as vins noirs — black wines — and they are also made with Malbec grapes. The "black" wine makes a rich, dark sauce for the coq au vin. I paid 1.49 € for the bottle. That is not a typo. And I used the whole bottle to marinate and cook the 1.2 kilos (2½ lbs.) of rooster that I was cooking.

Sauté some mushrooms and add them to the stew
toward the end of the cooking time.

Besides wine, you really need onions, maybe garlic, and especially some good smoked pork to flavor the coq au vin. I used bacon fat as the cooking medium when I browned the pieces of poultry, and then I added about half a dozen good-sized chunks of lard fumé — smoked bacon (slab bacon if you can get it, or thick-sliced bacon) or smoked ham — to the pan. It cooked with the rooster pieces in the wine sauce too. Carrots, celery, bay leaves, and thyme make the sauce more flavorful.

Serve champignons de Paris or some more exotic
mushroom with the stewed rooster.

The main point of this post is to show the pictures I took, and to say that making coq au vin is really pretty easy. You can start with chicken pieces — whatever pieces you prefer. You just have to adjust the cooking time so that the chicken or rooster pieces are cooked the way you like them — tenderness is the goal. Season the dish with salt and pepper to taste. Thicken the sauce if you want to, or don't.

Mushrooms are a standard addition. Sauté them first and then add them to the sauce toward the end of the cooking. Or just put them raw into the sauce and let them cook in it, releasing their flavor into the red wine. If you want to splurge on the calories, serve the coq au vin with French-fried potatoes. Or mashed potatoes. And many would say that the coq au vin is actually better served as leftovers, a day or two later, than it is when it has just finished cooking for the first time.

Language options on French satellite TV

2012-01-26T07:54:00.001+01:00

Living here in the French countryside, we have a satellite dish for television reception. We subscribe to the only available French service, which is called CanalSat. There used to be a competing service, but the two merged a few years ago.

Most of the programs we watch every day are in French. I like to put on TéléMatin in the morning for news, weather, and features. During the day, we often have Cuisine TV on the screen, watching for new and interesting cooking ideas and recipes. All its shows are in French too. Listening to such shows is great for your comprehension of everyday spoken French.

Cuisine TV has a cast of French cooks and chefs who host its programs, but it also broadcasts cooking shows hosted by English-speaking personalities including Jamie Oliver, Giada DeLaurentiis, Nigella Lawson, Bill Granger, Ainsley Harriot, Rick Stein, James Martin, and others. (If you're American, you might not recognize many of those names, because they are British or Australian cooks.) All those shows are dubbed into French.

Instead of "dubbed" I should say "over-dubbed." In other words, you can hear the English-speaking host's voice in the background, but there's a slightly louder French soundtrack superimposed over the English. It's annoying at first if you speak English, because your ear tries to focus on the original soundtrack rather than on the over-dubbed French. Sometimes you feel like you can't hear either language clearly. A lot of the science and travel documentaries we watch are over-dubbed the same way.

Dubbing is surely an expensive process. Some of Jamie Oliver's old shows were dubbed rather than over-dubbed, and the dubbing was done with considerable skill and talent. You can watch them and almost believe that Jamie really is speaking French with a perfect accent. But all the later shows are over-dubbed. I guess that's a better option for most viewers than on-screen subtitles would be.

Speaking of subtitles, we also get six or seven movie channels as part of our satellite TV package (called un bouquet in French). A lot of the films shown are American and were made in English. We have our decoder boxes set up to show movies with the original English soundtrack when there is one — in other words, if the film is broadcast in VM (version multilingue). If the movie is French, we hear the original French soundtrack.

If we want to watch an American movie with a French-language soundtrack, we can choose that option on the decoder box's menus. It's an option we never use. A lot of the American movies are shown, however, with the original English soundtrack with on-screen subtitles in French. I've gotten used to the subtitles. Often now I don't even notice them, but sometimes I enjoy reading them to see how the English dialog is translated into French. It depends on how many times I've seen a particular movie.

What we never get, however, is subtitles in English. So the two language options for most films are (1)English dialog with French subtitles, or (2) French dialog with no subtitles. Actually, there are two sub-options that are sometimes available. Newer films are sometimes shown in English with the possiblity of turning off the French subtitles. And for some movies and other shows, you can turn on French subtitles for the hearing impaired (les malentendants) along with the original French soundtrack.

The main point is that you never get English subtitles. The system is designed for French-speakers, not English-speakers or other foreigners. Last night, for example, we watched James Cameron's Avatar on one of the movie channels. It's a recent film, so we had the option of turning off the French subtitles and just watching the movie in the original English.

At some points in Avatar, however, the characters speak a language that is neither English nor French. For those segments of incomprehensible dialog, French subtitles, not English, appear on the screen. Those subtitles seem to be hard-coded into the movie. As I said, we never get English subtitles.

Neither do we get any American channels. Some of the French channels show American TV series, with the same language options as for the films on the movie channels. We've seen episodes of Glee, Battlestar Galactica, The Good Wife, and a few other series. There are many more U.S. series on different French channels that I've never watched or even heard of.

Our satellite decoder boxes are both equipped with hard disks onto which we can record shows for watching later. We do that a lot. All the language options I've described above are also available on the shows and films we record.

A number of the British people we know have decoder boxes that they've imported from England and dishes aimed at satellites carrying BBC and other British programming. They watch the same TV programs they would watch back in the British Isles. There's no such option for American television programming, at least not via satellite.

Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc

2012-01-25T08:20:00.000+01:00

I bought a new tripod a couple of weeks ago. The old one had broken. In fact, I bought two new tripods within the space of a couple of weeks. The first new one was too hard to use and not tall enough, so I bought a second new one.

Ever since, I've been experimenting with it to see how stable and adaptable the little tripod is. It's a table-top model, not a floor-standing model. I use it exclusively in the kitchen to take pictures like the ones in this post.

A typical Loire Valley wine bottle

My test subjects yesterday were a couple of wine bottles and their labels. Yes, I actually bought some wine in bottles. Usually, we buy wine in bulk, having our little 10-liter jugs refilled at the winery the way you would pump gasoline into a jerrycan for use in your lawnmower. Or we buy wine in what they call a BIB (pronounced [beeb]), which means "bag in box." In more proper French, a BIB is called a fontaine à vin.

Anyway, I bought some actual bottles of wine because we were having friends over and that provided me with a good reason to try some different vintages. I bought, for example, a bottle of Chardonnay from the Loire Valley, and a bottle of Chenin Blanc from the Saumur appellation, which is also in the Loire Valley. Both these wines come from the area to the west and downriver of Tours.

Bottles of Chardonnay and a Chenin Blanc wine

Chardonnay is not a grape variety that is usually associated with Loire Valley wines, but it's grown all up and down the river valley. The wine produced from Chardonnay here doesn't carry the AOC (appellation d'origine contrôlée) label, but is sold as a vin de pays. While in the Loire it isn't an AOC varietal, Chardonnay is the white varietal grown in Burgundy, including at Chablis and Mâcon, where it produces AOC wines.

A closer view of the labels

The vin de pays ("wine of a specified region") denomination was created in 1968 to recognize local wines not covered by the AOC system. They are a step up in quality — at least theoretically — from wines that are made with a blend of juices from grapes grown in different, unspecified regions. In 2009 the name vin de pays was offically changed to IGP — meaning indication géographique protégée. The AOC label is more prestigious.

Chardonnay gives vin de pays in the Loire Valley.

You'll notice that the Chardonnay I bought came in a bottle with a screw-off cap — no need for a cork screw to open it. That surprised me. The bottle had a little round label affixed to announce that the wine had won a bronze medal at some regional competition last year.

The Chenin Blanc grape, on the other hand, is a quintessentially Loire varietal and the wines carry the AOC designation. It's the grape grown in Vouvray and Montlouis, east of Tours, and in Chinon and Saumur to the west. Chenin Blanc, also known as Pineau de la Loire, can produce dry, medium-dry, or even sweet ("mellow" or moelleux) wines, and also sparkling wines.

The Saumur wine won a gold medal — a Liger d'Or — last year.
Liger is the Latin root of the name of the Loire River.

This Saumur appellation wine was labeled with a round sticker saying it had won a gold medal at the Concours des Vins du Val de Loire in 2011. I bought it at the supermarket for about four euros, which gives you an idea how inexpensive wine is here in the Loire Valley. The Chardonnay, also from the supermarket, cost me something like 2.25 €. Both were good but the Chenin Blanc was drier and more subtly flavored.

Spring cleaning

2012-01-24T08:20:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I noticed that primroses have already started to bloom out in the yard. Wild cyclamens started blooming a month ago. And one big flowering bush in our neighbors' yard is already covered with red flowers. There's still no mention of freezing weather in the long-range forecasts.

As long as the weather feels like early spring rather than mid-winter, we though we might as well start our spring cleaning chores. Now that we have the upstairs loft finished and we spend a lot of time up there, we have a lot more vacuuming and dusting to do — or that we ought to do — than when our living space was smaller.

Here's the kitchen on a normal day.

That means other rooms risk getting short shrift. The kitchen, for example, which we occupy for many hours each day. The tile floor gets its share of spills, drips, and splashes. It gets a little wipe with an old sponge as needed, but periodically it also needs a thorough cleaning — it's what's called faire le grand ménage in French. We also pull out the fridge and sometimes the stove and dishwasher to clean under and behind them.

Out go the butcher's table and bar stools, and
in come the vacuum cleaner and the mop.

The kitchen probably looks quaint. It's not large. The only major change we've made since we moved in is a new coat of paint. The cabinets and sink were already here. That was important, because many of the houses we looked at back in 2002 had no kitchen fixtures in them at all — the room called la cuisine was a completely empty space with only a water pipe sticking up out of the floor in one corner.

Other houses had kitchen fixtures that really needed to be ripped out and replaced. With this kitchen, we just added appliances and the butcher's table and started cooking when we arrived in June 2003.

Dim light photos

2012-01-23T08:16:00.000+01:00

If I steady my camera on a support post out in the vineyard, I can actually get a fairly clear image even at dawn — that means about 8:30 a.m. And on a Sunday, that's before the hunters show up. Here's an example.

The vineyard on January 22 — the vines
have been pruned, leaving just one cane

That doesn't mean that there are a lot of interesting things to take pictures of. But at least the photos aren't too blurred. Reminds me of the restaurant that has mediocre food but big portions. Sometimes the top of the support post isn't level, so I end up with pictures like this one:

The grain silo and water tower in the distance are on
the other side of the Cher River from our house.

Here comes another gray morning. Isn't that a line from an old song?

Paradise?

2012-01-22T08:00:00.001+01:00

This is the time of year, and we are having the kind of of weather, that makes people think about a different life in a different place and with a different climate. Une vie meilleure — a life that would be better. Ailleurs — somewhere else. A lot of the problem might be post-holidays letdown.

I went to the pharmacy in the morning. It seemed half the population of the département was out and about. Well, Saturday is market day in Saint-Aignan, so it was to be expected. I had decided not to go shopping in the outdoor market because I'm still suffering the after-effects from the bad cold I had in late December.

Parking was scarce, and I ended up leaving the car down by the bridge and trudging up the street to the pharmacy. The weather had been windy and misty earlier, but the mist at least had stopped, and it wasn't at all cold. When I got to the pharmacy, I was greeted by a woman who works there and who I've come to know a little over the past eight years. She was friendly with the woman who sold us our house in 2003 — that's the connection.

I told her I had been suffering sinus congestion for a month. That was causing me to cough quite a bit. "What you need is a dose of that old California sunshine," she said. She was surprised when I told her the weather in California — at least the part of it where I used to live — is about the same right now as it is here in Saint-Aignan. Hollywood and California dreaming worldwide has done a successful propaganda job, that's for sure. People think it's always sunny and warm out there.

Just a day or two before, we had taken Bertie the Cat to the vet's and had about the same conversation with the young man who takes care of Bertie and Callie. It started when the question of whether to give Bertie a rabies shot came up. The vet said it was optional — there's no rabies in France nowadays. Unless you are going to travel with the animal, you don't need to worry about la rage, as it's called.

We said we had no travel plans that would involve either animal for the time being. The vet asked: "You are happy here in the Loir-et-Cher, aren't you?" Yes, we are, and we don't foresee going elsewhere. "All of us dream of going to live in California," he said. People here think we are crazy to have left the sun and surf and palm trees of cette Californie paradisiaque.

Paradise where you yourself are not, I guess. I just checked the weather, and the part of California where we lived for nearly 20 years is in the middle of a five-day rainy period with temperatures in the 50s Fahrenheit. Just like Saint-Aignan.

“Christmas” cactus

2012-01-21T08:05:00.001+01:00

When we moved into this house in 2003, I found a big Schlumbergera growing in an old clay pot down in the garage. I wonder if it had been watered during the two+ years that the house had stood empty before we bought it.

I moved it upstairs when we settled in that summer, and I started watering and feeding it regularly. I still have it, and it's going strong. It didn't flower much this year, probably because December was so gray and rainy, and it didn't get much sunlight.

But over the years, I've broken off branches and started several new Christmas cactus plants. One of those sits on a window sill under one of the Velux roof windows we had put in year before last. It gets full western sun, such as it is during our gloomy winter. And it flowered quite a bit in December. It's nearly finished now.

I never realized until reading about them this morning that the Schlumbergera plants are leafless. It's the branches that are green and perform photosynthesis. In they wild, they grow in a small part of Brazil and are epiphytic (they grow on tree limbs) or epilithic (on rocks). They are very easy to keep, requiring little water and not that much direct sun.

I did posts about the original plant in 2008 and in 2006.

More zoo pix, etc.

2012-01-20T07:50:00.001+01:00

The weather isn't very conducive to photography right now. The gray wetness has returned, bring mild temperatures (low this morning just 8ºC / 46ºF) but very dim light. In January, there are two choices: gray and gloomy, or bright and frigid. You pays your money and you takes your choice, comme dirait l'autre.

This kind of weather does move me to cook, but my latest project was choucroute garnie — again. That's Alsatian-style sauerkraut served with boiled potatoes, smoke-cured meats, and sausages.

It's really too bad that the sauer- in -kraut sounds so much like the English word "sour" — it discourages English speakers from enjoying the sweet, mild, fermented cabbage that choucroute really is.

Anyway, I've posted about choucroute garnie so many times that I didn't think it useful to do so again. The sauer in the word must be related to the French saumure, which means "brine" and not vinegar. Sau- derives from sel or sal-, meaning salt.

It's the same prefix you see in the words saucisse (sausage) and saucisson (salami). Such meats, like sauerkraut, are cured in salt, not vinegar. Salt, unlike vinegar, washes away in the choucroute soaking and cooking process, leaving the fermented cabbage tender, savory, and sweet.

Looking at the dictionary, I just realized that the word sauce (same in French and English, with a different pronunciation of course) derives from the same root — salt. Think "salsa." Salt is the spice of life, I guess.

Sorry about this post where the text has nothing at all to do with the images. Some days are like that when you blog every day. You might have noticed something about me: I'm not a very disciplined blogger — or person.

Some zoo faces

2012-01-19T08:02:00.000+01:00

The last time I went to the ZooParc de Beauval was at the end of August. Our friends Evelyn and Lewis were here, and we spent an afternoon walking over all the 65 acres. I of course took a lot of photos, but for some reason I never posted any of them. Here are six examples.

Beauval means "Beautiful Valley" — and it is one. The stream that runs through the valley is called the Trainefeuilles — in French the verb trainer means "to pull along, to drag" and the noun feuilles means "leaves" — so it's the "Leaf-Dragger". Beauval is just four miles south of our house, but we didn't even know about it when we moved here nine years ago.

The zoo was created as a parc ornithologique in 1980. In 1989 it expanded its collection by adding a few big cats and primates, and in two decades, it has grown into a major zoo that is visited by half a million people every year. There are restaurants in the park, and there's a new hotel-restaurant complex just outside the zoo entrance. With the recent arrival of two giant pandas from China, Beauval is bound to pull even greater crowds.

Along with the major châteaux — Chenonceau, Cheverny, Chambord, and Chaumont-sur-Loire — the ZooParc de Beauval is a major attraction in the Loire Valley, and it's the major tourist facility in the immediate Saint-Aignan area.

The crack of dawn

2012-01-18T07:30:00.002+01:00

On January mornings when the weather is clear, the sunrise shines directly in my face as I'm doing my blog post or reading other blogs on the laptop computer in the living room. Sunrise today, for example, is at 8:34 a.m., so it's not an early dawning. By the time we really get some rays of sunshine, it's nearly nine o'clock.

This fact makes me realize that dawn has a whole different meaning at this northerly latitude.

Dawn breaks late in Saint-Aignan

Once I open the heavy wooden shutters that protect the French doors from the cold and the living room from prying eyes at night, I'm blinded by direct sunlight. I have to go work elsewhere. But it's nice to have the rays of the sun streaming in.

One of the pleasant things about this house on the edge of the vineyard is that we have a clear view of both the sun rising and the sun setting — when the skies are not cloudy all day.

Saint-Aignan now home to two pandas

2012-01-17T07:50:00.004+01:00

Saint-Aignan's biggest news story these days is the arrival of two giant pandas from China at the ZooParc de Beauval, on the south side of town. The pandas are on loan for 10 years from China, and landed in Paris's CDG airport on Sunday for the three-hour drive down to the Cher Valley. They are the first pandas to take up residence in France since 1973.

I grabbed this photo from the Parisien.fr site
of the Paris newspaper Le Parisien.

Beauval's pandas, Huan Huan (« Joyeuse » in French) and Yuan Zi (« Rondouillard» or "Chubby"), won't be available for viewing by the grand public until February 11, but over the next two or three weeks they will receive a string of important visitors, including Président de la République Nicolas Sarkozy. Here's a link to a ZooParc de Beauval blog in French, and one in English.

Beauval, which is just about three kilometers from our house, is among the world's finest zoos. It covers 65 acres and has the largest collection of animals of any zoo in France. Beauval specializes in the preservation of species that are endangered around the world. In warm sunny weather, it's a great place to spend a day.

Here's a link to a 2007 post I did about the zoo, and here's another. with photos of some of the animals that live there. A friend in California — you might know her as chrissoup — told me that even the San Francisco Chronicle published an article about Saint-Aignan's pandas.

Bertie on the hearth

2012-01-16T07:42:00.004+01:00

Now that it has finally turned cold, Bertie is much more interested in coming into the house. He likes to sit by the fireplace when there's a fire going in the stove.

Bertie the Black Cat by the fireplace

Yesterday morning he sat there waiting to get warm. Problem was, there was no fire. He finally found a warm radiator and sat next to that for a few minutes before asking to go back outside a while later. It's not freezing cold down in the garage where he sleeps, but it's colder down there now than it has been in quite a few months.

Financiers, or “gold bars”

2012-01-15T09:36:00.004+01:00

The little almond cakes called Financiers got that name because they are usually made in a pan that gives each cake the look of a little gold bar. They're golden brown. Financiers seem to be either French or Swiss in origin, depending on the source you believe. The recipe has been around for about 125 years.

An almond-flour mini-muffin made with Financier batter

I made a batch of Financiers yesterday, but instead of cooking them in the shape of gold bars, I cooked them in the min-muffin pans that Walt bought at the supermarket in Blois a few days ago. They are little muffins that are almost bite-size — or if you don't have a big mouth, each one might take you two bites to consume! You could also cook the batter in a madeleine pan.

Golden mini-muffins cooked in purple pans

Financiers are a good way to use up the egg whites you save in the freezer after using just egg yolks in French sauces and stuffings or for making your own mayonnaise or hollandaise sauce. You know, you could make them with those egg substitutes called Egg Beaters that you buy in American supermarkets. They are mostly egg whites with yellow food coloring in them — aren't they?

Cooling on a rack, they look a little like mushrooms

To make them really low in cholesterol, substitute vegetable oil or margarine for the butter. I think they'll still be good. And to make them gluten-free, make them with almond powder only instead of half almond powder and half wheat flour. And finally, this recipe calls for beaten egg whites, but others Financier recipes I've seen use the egg whites as is. Since there's baking powder in the ingredient list, beating the egg whites isn't absolutely required, but will make the cakes lighter.

Here's the recipe in my translation. The original recipe is one I got off marmiton.org and it's in French, but it says this is an Alsatian version that is also called Eiwisskuche out there on the French-German border.

Financiers

6 egg whites
150 g sugar (6 fl. oz.)
100 g almond powder (6 fl. oz.)
110 g flour (8 fl. oz.)
½ tsp. baking powder
a pinch of salt
50 g butter (4 Tbsp.), softened
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 tsp. almond extract

Pre-heat the oven to 400ºF / 200ºC.

Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt and half the sugar until they're fairly stiff.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, almond powder, and the rest of the sugar.

Add the softened butter, vegetable oil, and almond extract. Mix well. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake in silicone mini-muffin pans for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Test for doneness with a wooden skewer. Unmold the muffins after they have cooled slightly.

The fluid-ounce quantities in the recipe are approximate but they'll work fine. I've also cooked the Financier batter in a regular cake pan and then cut the cake into squares after it has cooled completely. That works too.

Credit ratings and exchange rates

2012-01-14T08:00:00.000+01:00

The big news in France this morning is that the country's credit rating has been downgraded from AAA to AA+ by the big international banks. That might not sound like a catastrophe, but it means that France will have to pay higher interest rates to borrow the money that the country needs to finance its huge budget deficits.

Looking out the back gate yesterday afternoon

Long-term, the downgraded credit rating will make prices and taxes here go up. Government services will probably be curtailed, to reduce deficits. The government will have to crack down and impose budgetary rigueur — austerity. That's what has already happened in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Now France. And also in the U.S., by the way, but the American economy and budget are so enormous compared to the individual European countries' that the U.S. is in a category by itself.

The afternoon of Friday the 13th no. 1 turned out mostly sunny

Pessimists will say that the euro zone is falling apart. But for most people in France, the effect of the credit downgrade on everyday life won't be felt for a while. For us expatriates whose pensions and assets are in, for example, U.S. dollars rather than euros, the effect is immediate. The euro is declining in value, which means that our dollars are worth more. My retirement income has increased in value in euros by more than 15% since I started collecting it last May. A 15% raise is nothing to sneeze at.

The house seen up and across several rows of grape vines

Meanwhile, inflation rates are going up in France. Everything costs more, especially oil. It's a vicious circle, of course, and there's no such thing as a free lunch. But I'd rather have a little more income and control my spending myself rather than living with the low value of the dollar as the factor that restricts my budget. It's partly psychological.

Callie is looking through the barbed wire fence to see if the
donkeys are in their pen. She's justifiably afraid of them.
Donkeys really detest dogs.

Long-term, I'd like the see the dollar-euro exchange rate stabilize at a reasonable level — say a dollar worth 80 to 85 eurocents, which would mean a euro worth about $1.20 U.S. That's what the exchange rate was six years ago — I've gone back and researched it.

Wild cyclamens blooming yesterday in the back yard

At one point in 2008, the euro was worth as much as $1.60, and that was worrisome to say the least. At that rate, I'd lose 20% of my current income in euros. These are the realities and uncertainties of life for an American expatriate retiree in France.

Quoi de neuf ?

2012-01-13T08:45:00.002+01:00

What's new, that is. Here's what the 8:00 a.m. news on France 2 television is reporting this morning, Friday the 13th. The news presenter's name is Nathanaël de Rincquesen. Can you say that three time fast?

First, the weather. It's foggy again, but colder. Still, there has been no hard freeze yet this winter. The mild weather is on its way out, however, with a cooling trend starting tomorrow. There's a lot of snow in the French Alps.

The body of a French television journalist, un grand reporter, who was killed in a mortar attack in Syria this week has been repatriated. Suspicions are that the attack was the work of Syrian government forces, not rebels. The French government is asking for an investigation and an official explanation.

The partially burned body of a 14-year-old boy has been found in eastern France, near Montbéliard. A 17-year-old suspect with previous drug-related arrests is being held.

A Paris taxi driver has been arrested for allegedly raping a female customer and then insisting that she pay the fare for the cab ride.

The emergency services (SAMU) doctor called to treat a woman who died of a heart attack in late 2007 is on trial in Bordeaux for malpractice. The doctor's defense is that the emergency services were very disorganized at the time.

Seven thousand of the 81,000 American troops currently stationed in Europe will be soon be withdrawn.

Today is the first anniversary of the 2011 popular uprising in Tunisia. After 23 year in power, the dictator Ben Ali fled the country. Forty of his collaborators are under arrest and being tried. The Islamist party won recent elections in Tunisia, where corruption and unemployment are rampant.

France is 100 days from the first round of voting in its next presidential election. President Nicolas Sarkozy has not yet declared himself a candidate. The Socialist Party has nominated François Hollande. Marine Le Pen of the extreme-right Front National hasn't yet qualified by getting 500 signatures from the 36,000 mayors of towns and villages in France that are required to validate her candidacy.

There is a severe housing crisis in France, with many homeless people unable to find affordable lodgings this winter.

A new poll shows the French, for once, are more optimistic than people in other countries that 2012 will be a better year than 2011 was. The Japanese, Italians, and Swedes are the most pessimistic.

Today is Friday the 13th — the first of three Friday the 13ths in 2012 — and for many French people who play the lottery it's considered a lucky day. One man interviewed, when asked if he is superstitious, said no, being superstitious brings people bad luck!

After defeating Norway, the French handball team will dispute the European championship this month against Serbia.

The dog sled race called "The Grand Odyssey" is under way in the French Alps.

Bonne journée !

Cauliflower: winter food...

2012-01-12T08:30:00.005+01:00

...even if the weather is not wintry. The mild autumn and even milder — relatively speaking — beginning of winter must have created perfect conditions for the cauliflower crop. I've never seen the big white flower buds more beautiful at the supermarket, and the prices are lower than I can remember over the past seven or eight years.

The problem with cauliflower is that it's easy to get into a rut. Gratin de chou-fleur in a béchamel sauce and a lot of grated cheese (Gruyère or Comté) melted over the top is so good that it's tempting to cook cauliflower that way every time. But there are other options: raw cauliflower served with a home-made mayonnaise is really good. Cooked cauliflower in a vinaigrette dressing too. Or cream of cauliflower soup.

A Thai-style curry of cauliflower with coconut milk,
shrimp, and rice noodles

For something entirely different, though, what about a Thai-style curry of cauliflower? I don't think I'd ever made such a dish. I found the idea while looking around on the 'net for unfamiliar but delicious-sounding recipes for the plump unblemished head of cauliflower I had bought at SuperU for just one euro.

The cauliflower has been plentiful, inexpensive,
and beautiful this winter.

It's a really simple recipe. The most time-consuming part is cutting up the cauliflower. First I cut it into big fleurettes, but that didn't seem right for a curry. So I cut each large fleurette into much smaller pieces. In all, it probably took about 20 minutes with a sharp knife to get it all cut up. You could do it much faster by just chopping the cauliflower with a large knife, and the result would be just as good if not as pretty.

Reduce the cauliflower to its individual fleurettes or buds
for quick and even cooking.

After cutting up the chou-fleur the way you decide to do it, it's just a matter of blanching the fleurettes in simmering water for five to ten minutes. Some people like their cauliflower well cooked and tender, while others prefer it with a little crunch. This first step is just a blanching, so don't overdo it.

Blanching...

... and blanched

While blanching the cauliflower, make a curry sauce. Dice up an onion or two, or some shallots, and sauté them in a pan in butter or vegetable oil. Add a tablespoon or two of curry powder, or smaller quantities of individual spices to make your own: half a teaspoon each of cumin, turmeric, cayenne pepper, and so on. Salt and pepper. Garlic. Toast the spices in the pan with the chopped onion.

The curry sauce made with onions and coconut milk

Pour half a cup or more of coconut milk over the onions and spices and let the sauce cook while you drain the blanched cauliflower pieces in a colander. In Saint-Aignan, coconut milk is available in the supermarkets, no problem. I think you could use cream, or half cream and half milk, or yogurt to make the sauce if you don't have coconut milk.

Gently fold the blanched cauliflower pieces into the sauce
and let it cook for a few more minutes.

Add the blanched cauliflower to the pan and gently toss it in the sauce. Add some broth or some more coconut milk as necessary to make enough sauce for the cauliflower to cook it for a few minutes. After five to ten minutes, depending on how cooked you want the vegetables to be, it's done. A squeeze of lime or lemon juice, or some kaffir lime leaves added during the cooking, will give it a nice freshness.

You'll see in the pictures that I added a few shrimp to the curry. I added them about five minutes before I thought it would be ready. They were raw and they cooked in the sauce. You could also add sauteed pieces or strips of chicken breast meat to the sauce instead of shrimp. Or what about scallops? Langoustines? Or tofu?

Winter continues...

2012-01-11T07:39:00.003+01:00

...to be autumn in northern France. That's what people are saying. We haven't yet had any cold weather. Not one morning has seen temperatures below freezing, and only one or two have given us a little bit of frost. Winter is too timid.

Now, the fog has come back. That's the weather we get when there's a high pressure system dominating the weather. La grisaille est plaquée au sol, they say. I guess it's some kind of inversion. And it's better to have thick fog than strong winds.

Yesterday on La Route Touristique du Vignoble, where
I sometimes walk with Callie in the morning

Right now, and for the last day or two, France is divided in half, north vs. south. Saint-Aignan is right on the dividing line, as usual. The northern part of the country is foggy and gray, with little difference between morning lows and afternoon highs (both in the high 40s to low 50s F). The southern part is having cold mornings, and sunny warm afternoons.

The pond out back hasn't frozen over even once this year.

This morning, the temperature in Toulouse is –1ºC, while at our house outside Saint-Aignan it's +6. In other words, it's more than 10 degrees F warmer here that it is a few hundred miles south.

Callie at the edge of the vineyard in fog yesterday.

Health authorities are reporting outbreaks of bronchial infections and gastroenteritis that they are attributing to damp conditions unusually mild temperatures. Actually, I'm still suffering aftereffects — a dry cough, and stuffed-up sinuses — from the cold I had at Christmastime. There's no outbreak of flu, however. They say it's not cold enough for that.

Vines, evergreens, and poplar trees at 9:00 a.m. yesterday

We still have flowers in the yard and in the vineyard. And we still have bugs. It's not cold enough to kill them or make them go dormant, so they come into the house. Yesterday I put a live bee outside. Flies buzz around my desk lamp in the morning. And I keep finding punaises — stinkbugs — up in the loft. Two or three a day.

They are promising us colder weather by the weekend, and I hope they are right.

P.S. 8:45 a.m. When dawn finally broke this morning, I was surprised to see a pretty sunrise rather than yesterday's gloom. The fog/no fog line has moved slightly north. I can see the fog bank to the north when I look out the loft window that faces toward Blois. So it's sunny again. I'll take it.

Le Chambourdin

2012-01-10T07:24:00.003+01:00

There are several of restaurants at Chambord, very close to the castle. One is called Le Chambourdin. We didn't eat there, but we parked in the restaurant's parking lot and then walked to the château. Since it was about ten in the morning, the restaurant was closed and the parking lot was empty.

The entrance is not on the street but just off
the parking area to the left.

Le Chambourdin looks like an old road house to me. I've searched around the 'net for more information about it, looking especially for customer reviews, but I've come up empty-handed. It looks like a much more substantial restaurant than some of the fast-food, snack-bar places that are clustered around the edge of the main parking lot for château visitors.

An old roadhouse?

As is customary or even required in France, the restaurant's carte and menu are posted outside so that passers-by can look it over and make a decision about eating there or not. Here's a photo of the set-price menu.

If you want just a main course and a dessert, it's 18 euros. For three euros more, you can have a starter course and a main dish (but no dessert). If you want all three courses, it'll be 27.90 euros. That's about $40 U.S. It's on the high end of what you might pay for lunch in a restaurant out in the country — but this is Chambord, after all.

The choice of appetizers includes a salad with goat cheese melted on toast, or a terrine of red mullet with cocktail sauce. The main dishes are a piece of salmon fillet with vegetables and saffron rice, or chicken with stuffing, a Tourangelle sauce, vegetables, and potato. Desserts include the classics: crème brûlée, mousse au chocolat, ice creams, sorbets, pastries, charlotte, or chocolate cake with egg custard sauce.

If you've eaten at Le Chambourdin, I'd like to hear about the experience.

Coq au vin blanc

2012-01-09T09:33:00.001+01:00

Usually, coq au vin is made with red wine. It is nothing more than a chicken fricasee — une fricassée de poulet — and that is a stew. So coq au vin is chicken stewed in wine, and usually it's red wine, but you can do the same thing with white wine. That's what I did a few days ago.

The word fricassée has been around for 550 years, according to the dictionary. It was first used in writing by the medieval French poet François Villon in 1460. When Villon was 24 years old and living "a turbulent life" in the Latin Quarter in Paris, he got into a fight and ended up killing a priest. He had to leave Paris and went into exile in Blois. He was later in prison in Meung-sur-Loire, between Blois and Orléans. But that's a story for another time...

The supermarket ad used the verb braiser (to braise) but the
label on the rooster used the verb mijoter (to simmer or stew).

Coq au vin was traditionally a way to cook and tenderize a tough old rooster or coq. You can make the dish with a younger chicken, and you don't have to cook it as long. What I bought in December was a coq à braiser or à mijoter— a rooster for braising, or stewing. I got it at Intermarché and it weighed about 3.5 kg — over 7 lbs. — and cost only about 10 euros.

Cooking instructions and times are given on the label.

I cut the coq up into 10 serving pieces — two wings, two thighs, two drumsticks, and four pieces of breast meat. Then a realized that I still had close to 6 lbs. of meat so I froze it in two packages, with half the bird in each plastic bag, for cooking this winter. I made broth with the carcass and wing tips and froze that too.

The coq all cut up — half the pieces, actually

To make coq au vin, you can choose first to marinate the chicken pieces or not. Walt wanted it marinated, so we chopped a big carrot, a big onion, a couple of garlic cloves, and put that and the rooster pieces in a dish. We added herbs — bay leaf, thyme, rosemary — and salt and pepper, and then poured on enough white wine and chicken broth, about half and half, to cover everything. That went into the fridge to marinate for 24 hours.

It's easier and less messy to brown the chicken parts in the oven
than in a pan on top of the stove.

The next day, what you do is take the chicken pieces out of the marinade, dry them off with paper towels, and brown them in a pan or in the oven with some butter or vegetable oil. When the pieces are well browned, put them in a baking dish and pour the marinade back over them. Put the dish in a hot oven and let it cook for an hour (for a chicken) or two to three hours (for a tough old rooster or stewing hen). It's pretty much done at that point.

Coq au vin blanc avec champignons et farfalle

One way to serve it is to take the chicken pieces out of the stewing liquid, put them in a serving dish, and pour the liquid through a strainer over them. That takes out the bay leaves, carrots, and onions, which have given their flavor to the sauce (a.k.a. gravy), especially if the dish has cooked for two hours or more. You can thicken the sauce with a butter-and-flour roux or with cornstarch or potato starch if you want.

Leftovers of bow-tie pasta, mushrooms, and some chicken

The traditional garnish to serve with a fricasseed bird in Burgundy is some chunks of bacon or ham sauteed in butter, and some mushrooms also sauteed in butter. If you can get pearl onions and want to be bothered peeling and cooking them, they're good with it too. I think you can buy peeled, frozen pearl onions in the U.S. (I haven't found them here in Saint-Aignan). Put the sauteed mushrooms and bacon or ham chunks, and the pearl onions, in the gravy with the chicken. Serve with rice, pasta, or potatoes (boiled, fried, or mashed) and a green salad. Bread and wine... Bon appétit.

Monstrosity or masterpiece?

2012-01-08T08:05:00.007+01:00

“...one of the great European symbols of royal megalomania, a truly glorious and absurd monster of French architecture.” *

“...a staggering sight, looking like a riotously exuberant yet self-contained royal city.”

“...a ‘hunting lodge’ [that is] a palace... one of the greatest buildings in France.”

“...although Chambord contains a panoply of Italianate Renaissance features, its general forms actually harp... back to medieval architecture. The formidably solid round towers at the corners... with their roofs like great upturned funnels, could come from a textbook image of a chivalric castle.”

“...an obsessively ordered building, [with] neo-classical Renaissance ideas imposing symmetry and precise proportions on the façades.”

“...bear in mind what an important royal seat the nearby town of Blois was at the time. Chambord was... a deliberate demonstration of royal magnificence and power...”

“Inside, what you see and visit... [is] one of the first apartment blocks in modern Europe... hundred of rooms repeat the same patterns... a staggering 85 staircases...”

“[the] wonderful roofs [have] been compared to an overcrowded chessboard, an exotic Eastern palace... un gigantesque bouquet de pierres...”

The Château de Chambord was built starting in 1519 by order of the early French Renaissance king François Ier — he was 25 years old at the time. Leonardo da Vinci may have had a hand in designing the castle, but it's unclear who the chief architect was.

According to some local people here, "the good king" François liked to hunt in the woods just south of Saint-Aignan, at a place called La Lardière. Chambord is about 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan, and the stone out of which it was built was quarried just a few miles down the Cher River at Bourré, near Montrichard.

At this point, I have outlived King François Ier by ten years...

By the time François died (of syphilis) in 1547, at the ripe age of 53, Chambord was nearly finished. It stood basically empty for a century, until Louis XIV — le Roi-Soleil — took an interest in it. Great parties and celebrations were held there. In 1670, for example, Molière staged his first production of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme at Chambord for the Sun King and his court.

A few generations later, during the French Revolution of 1789 and the following years, most of the interior of Chambord was stripped bare. The château now belongs to the French government. You can visit the grounds and see the building for the price of parking in one of the surrounding lots. There's a huge gift shop. To see the interior, including the famous double-helix staircase that is at the core of the building, there's an entrance fee.

* All the quotes above come from the Cadogan guide to the Loire (1997, 2001), written by Philippe Barbour. The book is a great read.

Views of Cheverny

2012-01-07T08:12:00.001+01:00

One of the routes we "borrow" (que nous empruntons — that's French) when we drive from Saint-Aignan up to Chambord takes us up through Saint-Romain (a wine village) and Contres (a farming town), past the Château de Cheverny, and finally through the winding streets of Bracieux (a pretty town with an old market hall) into the vast wooded park that surrounds the Château de Chambord.

Le Château de Cheverny, where the long-time owners still live

At Cheverny, for some reason, there's a big opaque fence that blocks the view of the château from the road. When you're up close, you can see anything, unlike at Chambord where you can get clear views of the building from the roads all around it. Maybe it's because the Château de Chambord is owned by the French state, while the Château de Cheverny is privately owned (and occupied, at least in part).

The main street through the village of Cheverny

Yesterday, Walt was driving so I could have a look around with my sightseeing eyes — and camera. I noticed that I could see more of the Château de Cheverny from farther back on the road, because I could sort of see over the fence. I grabbed my camera and snapped the picture up above, using a long zoom. The sunlight was pretty, and was a real treat for a change.

As you can see, there aren't many people out on the streets this time of year. The Château de Cheverny was built between 1604 and 1634 — a hundred years later than Chambord. The Cadogan guide describes it as "the most refined Loire château of the lot, a lesson in French architectural and aristocratic good taste." During the German occupation of France in the 1940s, Leonardo's Mona Lisa was hidden at Cheverny for safe storage.

Off to Chambord and Blois

2012-01-06T07:55:00.004+01:00

We're headed to Chambord, the enormous château in the banner photo above, this morning. We have a specific reason for going, and I'm sure Walt will write about it in a day or two.

After Chambord, we'll go on a shopping excursion at Vineuil, which is the "suburb" on the south side of the Loire River across from Blois. There's a big zone d'activités commerciales in Vineuil, including an Auchan superstore and all the major big-box stores — Darty, Grand Frais, Casa, Bricorama, Truffaut, Picard, But, GoSport, InterSport, and on and on. It's about three-quarters of an hour north of Saint-Aignan by car.

The wind and rain stopped last night and today is supposed to be mostly sunny and pleasant. The winds we've been experiencing aren't much compared to the 100 mph gusts they've been having up in Scotland, for example, and the 120 mph gusts they had in Corsica overnight. We've got quite a few small tree branches down, and at least one big limb has fallen out of the huge cedar tree in our yard.

It's supposed to rain on Saturday and Sunday. Arrrgh.

P.S. My post was scheduled to go at 7:55 p.m. today. I meant it to go at 7:55 a.m. So I fixed it, but it's pretty late.

Mistletoe

2012-01-05T08:45:00.004+01:00

It's called « gui » in French. C'est le gui, ou du gui, and it's pronounced [GHEE] with a hard G. The word derives from the Latin name for the plant, Viscum album, according to the Grand Robert dictionary. The English name, mistletoe, has German roots.

That's funny, because mistletoe seems to be a rootless plant. Actually, mistletoe's roots are modified to penetrate the branch of a tree and draw sustenance from the tree's pulp and sap. Le gui is a parasite, and it thrives on certain tree species especially — apple trees and poplars, for example.

Mistletoe "taking root" on the branch of an apple tree

The oldest and biggest apple tree in our yard has three or four big clumps of mistletoe growing in it. Walt says he's going to try to cut them out this spring. Another smaller apple tree out by the back gate has a couple of big balls of mistletoe in it too.

Same tree — the gui is starting to form its characteristic ball

One popular name for mistletoe in French is Vert de pommier — Apple Tree Greenery. Mistletoe stays green through the winter, and that's when it's most visible, up in bare tree branches.

Clumps of mistletoe in our biggest apple tree

Yesterday I noticed that a spindly little apple tree out in the vineyard, next to the vine workers' shed, has been colonized by mistletoe too. It seems mistletoe is spread principally by birds called "mistle thrushes" that eat the white berries of the parasitic, epiphytic plant. Some of the berries pass through the thrush's gut without being digested. The seeds are in the bird's droppings, which land on tree limbs.

You can see a clump of mistletoe in this shot of yesterday's sunrise.

Mistletoe only rarely grows in oak trees. When ancient druid priests found oak mistletoe, it had special religious significance for them. So now it's an important symbol around the beginning of the new year. XOXO

Up the hill and through the woods

2012-01-04T08:30:00.000+01:00

This what we see when we leave home and walk or drive toward Saint-Aignan. The center of town is only 3 km (2 miles) from our front gate, but it feels like we are far out in the country. And there isn't much foot or car traffic.

January on the rue de la Renaudière, just outside Saint-Aignan

From the other direction, the road passes a few houses down below — twice as many houses, actually, as there were down there when we arrived here in 2003 — before driving or walking up the hill through the woods to get to our little village. It's a hamlet rather than a village, really, because there's no church, no shops.

The road in...

When you get past the houses and into the woods, the hill is very steep and narrow. In wintertime, with all the rains, the shoulders are soft and muddy. If you're driving and meet another vehicle, you have to pull halfway off the pavement to get by.

...and up the hill

I looked back at our weather record for the December that just passed. We had rain on 15 out of 31 days, and more rain that we've ever had in a month since we starting keeping track of precipitation and temperatures about 7 years ago. Luckily, we live at the top of the hill and don't have to worry about flooding.

Savory Rice Pudding — Gâteau de riz salé

2012-01-03T07:52:00.002+01:00

Do you ever make rice pudding? I do, as a dessert. I use a recipe (Gâteau de riz au four) from the book called Cuisine pour toute l'année (1969) by Monique Maine. One of the big differences between this recipe and most rice pudding recipes is that Maine's doesn't have any eggs in it.

The other day we were going to make a meat fondue — une fondue bourguignonne, from Burgundy — and I was trying to think of what we would have with it. Pommes frites was one idea, but I thought the French fries might just get cold while we were busy cooking chunks of lean beef in hot peanut oil at the table.

Another idea was to make a gratin dauphinois — potatoes au gratin cooked in cream or milk — but I just had a few little potatoes left in the cellar — the bottom of the bag. And then I thought about rice. Specifically, rice pudding. What about a savory — salty rather than sugary — pudding of rice and milk, flavored with onions, carrots, and celery?

It turned out to be really good. The cooking time is long —60 to 90 minutes — but the prep time is minimal. You do have to dice up an onion, a carrot, and a stalk or two of celery. After that, there's not much to it. Here's the recipe:

Savory Rice Pudding

1 cup (240 ml) of white rice
1 quart (one liter) of milk
1 bay leaf
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, cut into dice
2 stalks celery, cut into dice
1 tsp. salt
1 cup grated cheese (optional)

Add the chopped vegetables and the bay leaf to the milk in a saucepan and bring it to the boil on top of the stove. Meanwhile, rinse the rice thoroughly in a strainer under cold running water.

Add the rice to the boiling milk, pour the mixture into a baking dish, and bake, covered, in a 300ºF (150ºC) oven for 60 to 90 minutes, until all the liquid is absorbed by the rice. Optionally, at the end of the cooking time scatter grated cheese over the top of the pudding and let it melt in the oven, uncovered.

Cool slightly and serve hot or warm by spooning the pudding out of the baking dish at the table.

Monique Maine's rice pudding recipe calls for the same amounts of milk and rice, but also three-quarters of a cup of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. She makes a caramel (sugar and water) in a serving dish, packs the cooked rice pudding into it, and cools it in the refrigerator for three hours before unmolding and serving it.

Confit de canard and cassoulet

2012-01-02T07:59:00.009+01:00

The southwestern French bean dish called cassoulet doesn't always contain duck or goose, but in my opinion cassoulet is always better when it does. Depending on the cook and the recipe followed, the only constant in cassoulet is beans. The meats served with the beans can include fresh or brined pork, fresh pork sausages, slow-cooked duck or goose, lamb or mutton, or even partridge.

Cuisses de canard confites
Slow-cooked wing & thigh meat of a duck

In France nearly anywhere, you can buy confit de canard packed in tins/cans. Confit is duck, usually leg, thigh, and wing sections, that are marinated for a day and then cooked slowly in enough goose or duck fat to completely cover all the meat. The leaner duck breast is reserved for grilling or pan-roasting.

Here is the confit de canard with the skin stripped off.

The word « confit » means slow-cooked. Confiture is slow-cooked fruit. Fruits confits are pieces of candied fruit. Both those process require a sugar syrup. Confit de canard or d'oie is duck or goose cooked in the savory equivalent of syrup, which is liquid fat. Cooking fruit is sugar syrup, or cooking meat in fat, has one purpose: the food is preserved in a form that can be stored long-term. And the flavor is actually enhanced.

Duck and Toulouse-style pork sausages are good in cassoulet.

Part of the process in making duck confit is letting the duck pieces "cure" in the fat they've been cooked in. The curing can take a long as three months. Submerged in duck fat, the meat is protected from oxygen and from bacteria that would cause it to spoil. It can be kept in the refrigerator or in a cool cellar for the time it takes to cure completely.

Here's what's left after you put the duck meat in the beans.

The result is meat that is tender, flavorful, and falling off the bone. There are two ways to eat confit de canard. One is to take the duck leg & thigh sections out of the fat they cooked in, put them on a rack in the oven, or even in a pan on the top of the stove, and heat them until the fat on them drips away and the duck skin crisps up and turns golden brown.

Making cassoulet — another layer of beans goes on top,
over the boneless meat and sausages.

Another way is to heat the "confitted" duck pieces up slightly and then strip the skin and meat off the bones. The skin can be cut into strips and fried in a pan to make "cracklings" that are good cooked into cornbread, served in a salad, or served with a dish of beans like cassoulet. The meat stripped off the bones is what you put in the cassoulet beans, along with some pork or pork sausages.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T08:15:00.000+01:00

I'll just say Happy New Year — Bonne Année — and Best Wishes — Meilleurs Vœux — today. I'm in the middle of cooking up a big New Year's Day cassoulet. That's a SW France dish of white beans (cocos blancs) cooked with carrots, onions, garlic, and herbs, and then baked in the oven with with slow-cooked duck legs (confit de canard), duck fat (graisse de canard), Toulouse-style pork sausages (saucisses de Toulouse), and a brined hamhock (jambonneau demi-sel).

Since we don't have a big meal on New Year's Eve or even stay up until midnight to welcome in the new year, we can eat a big meal today.

While we had the fondue pot out for Christmas, we decided
to make a fondue bourguignonne — tender steak cooked
at the table in hot oil — this past week.

The weather here in Saint-Aignan is extraordinarily warm — this morning it's +12ºC — mid-50s Farenheit — and wet. We ended up getting at least 160 mm of rain — more than 6 inches, which is three times the normal — over the course of a very mild December 2011. The days have obviously been very gray and gloomy.

Happy 2012.

La Touraine du Sud

2011-12-31T07:59:00.008+01:00

It's nice to be in better health for the job of ushering out the old and welcoming in the new. 2012 just rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? And I've always said that 12 is my lucky number, so I have high expectations. I hope you do too, and that those expectations are met.

“Downtown” in Le Grand-Pressigny one evening
during the holiday season

Here are some more pictures of our 24 hours in Le Grand-Pressigny. I can't say enough how beautiful the surrounding area, La Touraine du Sud, is at this time of year. It's all green rolling hills, spotted with little villages and towns that seem lost in time. In comparison, the wine country area we live in along the Cher River feels almost bustling and modern.

More holiday lights and the church in Le Grand-Pressigny

If you want to see more photos taken in Le Grand-Pressigny, at different seasons, there are at least seven more posts on this blog to look at: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. They date back to visits to the town that I made with friends including CHM in spring 2006 and summer 2007. Also, have a look at Jean's blog, A Very Grand Pressigny, for more information and photos.

Le Grand-Pressigny

Le Grand-Pressigny is just about 20 miles south of the bigger town of Loches (pop. 8,000), which is a good place to base yourself for an excursion around the region. It takes about 40 minutes to drive those 20 miles on little roads that pass through numerous villages like Ferrière-Larçon, Betz-le-Château, La Celle-Guenand, Le Petit-Pressigny, Charnizay, Saint-Senoch, Esves-le Moutier, or Neuilly-le-Brignon. The bigger towns include Descartes, Preuilly-sur-Claise, and Ligueil.

Christmas cheer in rural France

Administratively, La Touraine du Sud is made up of 21 towns and villages, only one of which, Descartes (pop. 3,800) has more than 1,500 inhabitants. The area of the little region is about 640 sq. km (250 sq. mi.) and the total population is just shy of 16,000 — and it has been declining since the late 1960s. Don't expect to see a lot of crowds or much traffic. Do expect picturesque villages, little family-run restaurants, weekly open-air markets, and friendly people.

Nick and Jean served these pears poached in red wine as dessert,
along with a molten chocolate cake.

Here's how the Cadogan Guide to the Loire Valley describes "the southern tip of Touraine":

Not many tourists come down this way, but the area has profound charm thanks to the numerous deep little wooded valleys that carve their way through it... there are also plenty of attractive rural villages to potter round in these parts, with their Romanesque churches, little local museums, and their own châteaux, as well as the odd dolmen, proof of a much earlier thriving human presence.

24 hours in Le Grand-Pressigny

2011-12-30T08:05:00.000+01:00

About an hour south and a little west of Saint-Aignan by car there's a pretty area known as the Touraine du Sud. The southern part of the Touraine — the historic old province centered on the city of Tours — includes several quaint old towns and villages, including one named Le Grand-Pressigny. Blogger friends of ours, Jean and Nick, have a vacation home there.

Looking down on Le Grand-Pressigny from up at the château

Just over a thousand people — les Pressignoises et les Pressignois — live in Le Grand-Pressigny, which has existed under different names since prehistoric times. The town is built in valley at the confluence of two small rivers. The streets and houses climb up the side of a hill, with the ruins of an impressive medieval château at the top.

Callie enjoying a run in front of the château ruins

Like many French little French towns and villages, Le Grand-Pressigny's population now is only half what it was 150 years ago, when people started leaving the countryside to live and work in the big cities of France. The result is a place that feels like a town but has the population of a village. It also feels timeless, as if it hasn't changed in a thousand years.

Typical old cottages in Le Grand-Pressigny

According to French Wikipedia, there are 660 housing units in Le Grand-Pressigny, 94% of which are single-family dwellings. Five hundred houses are occupied year-round, and 75 are vacation homes. Nearly 90 more stand vacant. I can attest that the town and the surrounding villages are home (whether permanently or seasonally) to quite a few British people.

A bridge over the Claise River at Le Grand-Pressigny

The château grounds at Le Grand-Pressigny are also the site of a museum dedicated to the surrounding area's ancient past as a place where flintstone tools were fabricated and then exported all across Europe. The industry dates back to 2500 B.C. and employed the local residents for a good 500 years in the Neolithic era (the "New Stone Age").

Callie and Nick in the fields with the château ruins
and the prehistory museum in the background

We were lucky with the weather. It didn't rain. It was foggy on Wednesday, but we were able to take a long walk through the countryside just around the edge of Le Grand-Pressigny with Nick, our dog Callie, and his and Jean's dog, Lulu. Thursday dawned chilly but clear, so we took a second long walk. Before the first walk we had a great dinner of slow-cooked English lamb, vegetables, and English Christmas cake, and after the second walk we enjoyed a breakfast of back bacon, black pudding, and oatcakes (pancakes).

I'll post a few more photos tomorrow. It was a very fine holiday excursion for us, and a good time with friends.

New and unusual reading material

2011-12-29T08:00:00.007+01:00

For the first time in many years, I have subscribed to a magazine. I mean a magazine that will be delivered once a month par la poste. I must have subscribed to a few glossy magazines in California in the years before we moved to France, but I can't remember what the last subscription might have been.

Okay, so now you know it's a print-and-paper magazine, not an e-mag, but I bet you'll never guess which one. Cuisine et Vins de France ? Non. Guess again. A newsmagazine like L'Express, Le Point, ou Le Nouvel Obs ? Non plus. Paris Match ? Mais non !

The January 2012 issue came yesterday.
And no, I don't intend to take up hunting.

I'll tell you. It's called Le Chasseur Français — “The French Hunter”. It's a magazine I've been leafing through for the past six or seven years chez Madame Barbier in the village while I wait to get my quarterly haircut. Madame Barbier — her real name — runs the hair salon down there. She has a stack of old magazines for customers to read while they wait, but most of them are examples of what is called « la presse people » in France — gossip rags. Le Chasseur Français has been in publication since 1885, making it one of France's oldest existing magazines. It's monthly circulation is about 400,000 issues.

Un héron attrape un poisson.

Le Chasseur Français doesn't run articles about les peoples — celebrities — but about les animaux. Game birds, boars, deer, hares, water fowl, and even insects get coverage. The articles give information about unwanted animal invaders, real and potential, including American bull frogs and gray squirrels, that might change the balance of nature in France, and about animals that are not considered as game to be hunted (herons, dogs, and so on). There's a video about the magazine here, on the TF1 television web site.

Un lièvre en train de déguster
de délicieuses feuilles de ronce

But Le Chasseur Français also has features on fishing and fish, gardening and plants, cooking and wine, and houses and furnishings. Over the years, I've read a lot of interesting articles in it at Madame Barbier's. And now, SuperU has offered a cut-rate subscription for it's faithful customers (the ones who have a carte de fidélité, including me) and I've decided to subscribe for a year. If the magazine had a full web site, I probably wouldn't have paid for an abonnement. By the way, Le Chasseur Français is well known for its extensive petites annonces matrimoniales.

Thrushes are on the wing.

Expect to see some blog posts based on the articles I read. I'm looking forward to reading articles about grives — thrushes — and sangliers — wild boars — in the January 2012 issue that I received yesterday. Along with one about barrages — dams — on French rivers, and another about the gigantic wild mushrooms people are finding this winter, thanks to the mild, wet weather that we're having.

All the pictures in this post are thanks to Le Chasseur Français magazine.

Late December days

2011-12-28T08:01:00.000+01:00

It's hard to believe that we still have flowers blooming in the yard and out in the vineyard in late December — roses, for example, and a few wildflowers. We haven't yet had a freeze this year. By this time in 2010, we had had a major snow snowstorm, after which snow stayed on the ground for a couple of weeks and temperatures stayed frigid.

A rose blooming in the garden on December 27, 2011

Last year, with snow and rain, December was the wettest month we'd had since we put a rain gauge (un pluviomètre) out in our back yard in 2004. We recorded 130 millimeters of precipitation over the course of that month — that's slightly more than five inches. But wait — this December, we've already had more rain than that: nearly 150 mm, or six inches. A normal month produces two inches of rain.

I was out at sunrise for the morning walk yesterday, in the fog.
Sunrise was at 8:40 a.m. — no heroic effort was involved.

Overall, 2011 has been very dry. And according to the news, it has been the warmest year in the history of meteorological record-keeping in France, which began about 140 years ago. 2011 was warmer overall than2003, the year of the great canicule, or heat wave, which welcomed us to Saint-Aignan nearly nine years ago. The heat has been less extreme than back then, but lasted much longer.

The vineyard crews have been pulling out a lot of old, rotting
support posts and replacing them with new ones.

December isn't over yet, and now we're going into another rainy period, after a period of cold, gray, but dry weather that's lasted for several days. Tomorrow a rain front off the Atlantic will sweep cross the country. Another big area of rain will cover most of the country on Friday 12/30 and Saturday 12/31.

As recently as October, the waterholes all around the vineyard
were completely dry. Now they're nearly full.

Rain at this time of year usually brings warmer temperatures, and this episode won't be an exception. We're expecting afternoon highs around 10ºC/50ºF, rather than in the 30s F (single digits C). Morning lows will stay well above freezing. That's nice for us — we'll use up less firewood and less fuel oil. Home heating oil and diesel fuel are selling at near record high prices in France right now.

Two more views of the state of the Renaudière vineyard
in late December 2011

One factor in those high fuel prices is the slight decline in the euro against the U.S. dollar. Oil is priced in dollars, so as the dollar appreciates and the euro depreciates, it takes more euros to buy a liter or gallon or barrel of petroleum product. The U.S. dollar is trading at about 76 eurocents right now, compared to 67 or 68 cents just a few months ago. As a result, for example, my U.S. retirement pension is now worth 12% more in euros than it was last spring. That's significant, believe me.

The verdict

2011-12-27T07:38:00.002+01:00

The restorative powers of Guinea Fowl Soup are real. I can affirm that. Last night I slept "on both my ears" — j'ai dormi sur mes deux oreilles, as they say in French — for the first time in a week. No clogged sinuses, no coughing.

Soup seen through fogged-up glasses

In the broth made from simmering the carcass in water and white wine, cook some celery, carrots, onions, and rice, and at the end add some of the Guinea fowl meat, shredded. Even if you're not suffering from a cold, you'll feel better after you consume this soup. And it's a good idea to breathe in the steam rising from a piping hot bowl of the soup as you eat it.

Days of tea and honey (and lemon)

2011-12-26T08:21:00.008+01:00

French honey, exotic lemon, English tea, and a mug from North Carolina have been my best friends for a few days now. It takes a while to get better, and the tea, lemon, and honey are therapeutic as well as comforting.

Mes meilleurs amis du moment

We cooked the Christmas Guinea Hen with cornbread stuffing, gratin dauphinois potatoes, and Brussels sprouts. It was good, but you know how it is when you have a cold and you can't really taste much? We probably should have cooked everything with a lot of hot red pepper sauce. Today will be another day of just taking it easy and trying to get back some strength.

Question for the day: Do you think Guinea Hen Soup has the same restorative powers as Good Old Chicken Soup? I'll let you know.

Have a happy Christmas...

2011-12-23T08:38:00.000+01:00

...or whatever other end-of-year holiday you might celebrate. With this awful cold, and all we have to do tomorrow and Sunday, I'm going to sign off for the weekend. I'll be back Monday morning.

Next week we'll be spending a couple of days with English friends who live about an hour south of Saint-Aignan. Walt and I would both like to be feeling a lot better by then. I feel a little better this morning, but I felt the same way yesterday morning and then got worse and worse as the day went on.

Christmas decorations in Saint-Aignan

Oh, didn't I mention that I have now passed the crud on to Walter? He today is where I was on Tuesday — just the beginning stages. Sigh. Now it's time to take the dog out for her morning walk. Somebody's got to do it. And tomorrow I absolutely have to get to the morning market in Saint-Aignan to pick up that guinea fowl capon we plan to cook on Sunday.

Steak au poivre for a birthday

2011-12-22T09:27:00.002+01:00

Somehow I've managed to catch a very bad cold. That's un gros rhume in French. Je tousse (I'm coughing), j'ai le nez qui coule (my nose is running), et j'ai mal à la gorge (I have a sore throat).
I have no energy and I'm sleeping 15 hours a day. Except for the miserable cold symptoms, maybe that's a good way to get through the winter.

It was a huge steak (565 grams) and we have leftovers for today.

Yesterday was Walt's birthday and we made our “traditional” birthday dinner of steak au poivre (pan-seared steak served rare in a black pepper & cream sauce) with pommes de terre frites and salade verte. It's a dinner Walt had in a restaurant in Antibes, near Nice on the Côte d'Azur (the "French Riviera"), when he turned twenty-something in 1981.

The sauce is also good with the French fried potatoes.

We spent his birthday together in 1982 and I cooked steak au poivre for him — he didn't really think I knew how to make it, but it was a dish I had learned to cook during my time in Paris in the 1970s and early '80s. Unless my arithmetic is off, this is the 30th year in a row that we've enjoyed the birthday steak au poivre together — and the ninth time in France.

Don't forget the French bread (delivered by the village baker)...

The dinner yesterday was excellent, featuring a big, thick slice of what is called rumsteak in France. I think that's a transliteration of the term "rump steak" but I'm not sure it's the same cut of beef. Whatever it is, it's very lean and pretty tender. The sauce made with crushed black peppercorns, cognac (or the Normandy apple brandy called calvados this time) and crème fraîche goes really well with it, compensating for the meat's lack of fat.

...or the red wine, a 2010 Saint-Nicolas de Bourgueil
from the Loire Valley.

Maybe this cold will go away before Christmas Day, but I'm not counting on it.

Chimneys and fireplaces

2011-12-21T09:21:00.001+01:00

For English-speaking Americans, the terminology that describes fireplaces and chimneys in French can get fairly confusing. I won't talk about other regional Englishes, because I'm not sure all Anglophones use the same vocabulary in this area.

In the U.S., the chimney is the conduit through which smoke and gases are allowed to escape from a fireplace, a stove, a boiler, or a furnace. The chimney is "the passage" through which fumes pass, according to the American Heritage Dictionary. It is also the vertical structure (usually in brick) though which the chimney passes, and it's the visible part of the structure that sticks up through the roof of a building.

When I heard that a chimney at our friends' had blown
down in the recent storm, this is not what I imagined.
However, there is significant damage to the roof.

In French, « une cheminée » is something more. According to the Grand Robert dictionary, it is "a device or structure (un dispositif) composed of a fireplace (un foyer) and a pipe (un tuyau) designed to evacuate the smoke from a fire." That's the first meaning.

More specifically and in everyday language, the cheminée is "the lower part of the device or structure that extends into a room" and in which a fire is lit. In other words, cheminée is the French word for fireplace.

Of course, cheminée in French also means the passage smoke and fumes pass through to the exterior, as well as the structure through which it passes and which is visible on the roof of a house or other building.

The chimney that fell over is one that takes away fumes
from the oil-fired boiler.

So when you want to say something about a chimney (U.S. meaning) or about a fireplace, you used the same word in French. To distinguish between the two, you can use the French word conduit, meaning "flue," because the everyday meaning of cheminée is the fireplace. Passer une soirée autour de la cheminée means to spend the evening sitting in front of the fire(place).

A feu de cheminée is not at all "a chimney fire." A chimney fire is to be avoided at all costs unless you want your house to burn down.

In American English, we also use the word "smokestack" to describe the towers on factories or locomotives that let smoke escape. Those too are cheminées in French. According to the AHD, British English calls those chimneys too.

And then you have to figure out the differences in meaning between foyer in French and "foyer" in English.

Walking with dogs in winter

2011-12-20T07:15:00.001+01:00

Sunday morning, Walt and Callie were coming back home from the morning walk when they met a neighbor who lives down the hill walking two golden retrievers. They stopped to talk out by the crucial poteau électrique about the big storm and the ensuing power outage.

Sunday morning view of the vineyard

Sundays are hunting days, and we make sure our walk is finished before 9:00 a.m., because that's when the hunters show up. The neighbor woman was just arriving at that hour, and heading out into the rows of vines. I guess she knows what she's doing. One of her dogs was on a leash, I think, but the other was running loose the way Callie does.

You can see the red car that belongs to Roland, one of the faithful hunters, parked out by the vineyard workers' shed.

Collateral damage

2011-12-19T07:05:00.002+01:00

Some American friends of our own a house out in the country about 10 miles south of Saint-Aignan. They don't live here at this point — they just come over and spend a month in the summertime. We went out there and watched the Tour de France cyclists race by last summer.

Our friends weren't so lucky with the recent storm. They got a report from a contractor who checked their property Saturday saying that one of their chimneys was blown off by Joachim's high winds on Friday.

I made a yogurt cake with shredded coconut one day
last week. Guess who was interested.

I'm going to drive out into the country this morning to meet the contractor, who is a stone mason. I'll give him the keys to the house so he can get in to patch up the damage and then do a permanent repair this winter. It's supposed to rain tonight.

I took a walk in the woods late yesterday afternoon with the dog. There are a lot of trees down, especially small spindly ones. I had to step or even climb over a few that were lying across the path — Callie scooted under most of them. I think we'll have to avoid that path for the next few months, because a couple of big trees are leaning precariously and risk falling on anybody walking through.

La tempête appelée Joachim

2011-12-18T09:00:00.000+01:00

The wind started blowing really hard after midnight — in the wee hours of Friday morning, in other words. The house shook and the roof tiles clattered. It rained about 1½ inches — 37 mm — in just a few hours.

Since we sleep up under the roofline now that the loft is finished, the racket and the shaking is much more perceptible than it used to be. And the two big cedar trees in our yard are right outside the window, on the northwest corner of the house. I could hear the gusts whooshing through their branches.

Getting the power back on

The way the wind was blowing, the tallest tree would not have fallen on us, but away from the house, if it had succumbed to the wind. However, it bent and swayed and rocked quite a bit. In the early morning, as light started to dawn, I could see its branches waving around just outside the loft windows. I knew it hadn't blown over, at least. The wind was still gusting as high as 70 mph.

The electricity was on at that point, because I noted the time on my digital clock radio. It was about 6:50 a.m., and I thought I might get up and make some tea or coffee. Turn on the heat. Look at the computer and the television for news. But I dozed for a few more minutes.

The poteau électrique out back was the focus of a lot of attention.

My eyes were sort of half open right around 7:00 when there was a sudden flash of light outside, as if a bright lightning bolt had descended from a cloud. But Joachim was a cold storm, and there was no lightning or thunder in it. The bright flash of light also woke Walt up, and it cut the electricity off — the clock radio went dark.

It must have been a transformer burning out, or exploding, one of us said. Damn. We made it through the night without a power cut, and now at 7:00 a.m. we're dead in the water. Walt got up and started lighting candles and making tea. Since we use bottled gas for cooking, we could boil water. Walt had taken the precaution of bringing in enough dry firewood to get the wood stove going for heat.

Our neighbor the mayor — madame le maire — consulted
with the EDF work crew.

In preparation, we had closed all the shutters around the house, so we couldn't yet see outdoors. Besides, it was still dark. The hard wind and strong gusts would continue until nearly noontime. We finally got a look outside around 9:00, and we saw that all three of our tall conifers, as well as the big decrepit apple tree, were still upright. I walked out on the road to a point where I could see the roof and confirmed that no tiles had blown off. I got soaked of course.

And then we waited. I tried to call the people at the mairie, but the phone was constantly busy. We have a couple of old-style telephones that don't require electricity, so we were not completely cut off from the outside world. And we have a couple of battery-powered radios, so we could get some news. A ship ran aground off the southern coast of Brittany; the crew was rescued. Trees and a grain silo fell on railroad tracks and main roads all around western France, so traffic was perturbé. People were evacuated from low-lying areas along the Atlantic coast.

Our back yard is none the worse for wear.

Meanwhile, we had leftover blanquette de veau for lunch. It was hot and comforting.

In the afternoon I succeeded in getting somebody at the mairie on the phone. The current was back on down in the village center, and they were saying ours would come back on by nightfall. Nightfall came and we really were in the dark — no restoration of power. What should we do about the freezers, we wondered. Walt went up to bed at 7:30 p.m.

I sat in the living room and listened to the radio by candle light. Bertie the cat came meowing at the window so I brought him in and held him in my lap for half an hour. Then he wanted to go back out. I kept putting logs on the fire until I too gave it up and went to bed, at about 9:00.

Putting up the new transformer

The wind had died down hard rain fell at several points. I had taken Callie out for an afternoon walk and had a look around the hamlet. Thank goodness no trees were blown over and the rooftops all around were intact. No windows had blown out, and we all had stayed relatively warm and completely dry in our houses.

Saturday morning we still had hot water! We were invited out for the afternoon to have a long lunch with American friends who live down the road. They hadn't lost power at all, and had no damage from the storm. I called the mairie again, and they told me the power should be back by early afternoon. We were glad to be able to take showers before going out.

Then they were gone, and we were back on the grid.

It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny. I went to the market and order a guinea fowl capon for next weekend's Christmas dinner. I got back home before noon and shortly afterward, four or five blue EDF (Electricité de France) trucks drove up the road. The had a sort of crane and a cherry-picker. Minutes later, there were six or seven men working out back.

They took down the old transformer, which didn't appear to have exploded and didn't have any burn marks on it. They put up a new, larger transformer. Then they drove away in all those trucks. Five minutes later, the power came back on. We checked all around to make sure everything was working and then we left to go to our friends' warm house for lunch.

The power outage had lasted only 30 hours this time, compared to 5 days in February 2010. Our only casualty, as far as we can tell, was Walt's computer monitor. It's one we've had for more than 10 years. I think a surge burned out its power block. Too bad, because it was a great monitor.

The impending tempest

2011-12-16T08:15:00.008+01:00

« Reconstruite au 16 siècle et flanquée d'une haute tour Renaissance à lanternon, la cathédrale [de Blois] fut presque entièrement détruite en 1678 par un ouragan... »

“Rebuilt in the 16th century and flanked by a tall Renaissance bell tower, the [Blois] cathedral was almost entirely destroyed in 1678 by a hurricane...”

The quote above is from the Michelin Green Guide to the Châteaux de la Loire.

Let's hope it didn't happen again last night. I'm writing this on Thursday evening 12/15. Weather forecasts call for a strong windstorm — une tempête or "tempest" — that will hit northwestern France tonight, with gusts up to 85 mph on the coast and 70 mph here in the Saint-Aignan area.

City hall and the cathedral in Blois

The storm is named Joachim. Winter storms like this can be called "hurricanes" in French — ouragans — even though in English the term means a "tropical" storm. According to an article in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro, 22 such storms have "devastated" France since the year 1700. And that doesn't include the one that destroyed the cathedral in Blois in 1678.

Another article I read today says there were terrible tempests in France in January 1362 (not a typo) and on the Toussaint holiday (Halloween) in 1570. The author says that the French government possesses very detailed records of such historical events because the national government was so well developed and centralized under the Old Regime — before the 1789 Revolution. Unfortunately, historians haven't yet done much research using the existing data.

Here's a graphic from an article in Le Figaro.

The latest severe storms in France were the Christmas 1999 ouragan, and the late-February 2010 storm named Xynthia. The '99 storm caused great damage to houses and trees, including in the park at Versailles and on the streets of Paris, and the '10 storm caused severe flooding on the Atlantic coast north of La Rochelle and 50 or more deaths by drowning.

Expect more news on Saturday from Saint-Aignan, where the shutters are all closed tight, all outdoor objects are moved indoors or tied down, and the residents are hoping for the best.

Blanquette de veau

2011-12-15T08:02:00.005+01:00

Blanquette de veau is another of those classic dishes — like bœuf bourguignon, choucroute garnie, coq au vin, cassoulet, or gratin d'endives au jambon — that Walt and I make at least once a year, and sometimes more often. All are wintertime specialties, a.k.a. comfort food.

All food, though, is comfort food to me.

Blanquette de veau

Looking back over my blog, I can't find a single post (out of the 2,047 blog topics I've posted since 2005) with photos about blanquette de veau. I once posted the blanquette recipe that I follow, and I posted once about blanquette de dinde. I also wrote about American chicken and dumplings, which is a very similar dish. Poultry blanquettes are good, but the veal version is the classic.

Cut the veal into chucks for stewing with aromatic vegetables.
You can put the spices and herbs in a tea ball to make
them easy to remove from the broth.

Blanquette de veau — white veal stew — is actually really easy to make. Of course, you need a couple of pounds of good, pale pink veal. The best cut of veal for the stew is the shoulder, and I usually buy a rolled, boned shoulder roast of veal when I want to make a blanquette. At the markets they also sell other, fattier cuts of veal — breast (poitrine, tendrons), neck (collier), or shank (jarret) — sometimes still on the bone.

Here's the pot ready to put on the heat.
I added leek tops and shallots.

When you use cuts of meat with a lot of fat or bones, you probably get a very rich broth, but the standard recipe calls for cooking the meat and then trimming it of bone and fat before you put it in a white velouté sauce made with that broth. With veal shoulder, little or no trimming is necessary, and the price is only slightly higher for the leaner-but-tender shoulder roast.

As I said, it's an easy recipe. You just simmer chunks or pieces of veal in enought water to cover them with a pint of white wine added. Flavor the stew with a whole onion or two (or shallots), a couple of carrots cut into chunks, bay leaves, thyme, black pepper, salt, and either a clove or two or a half-dozen allspice berries. A stalk of celery and some leek leaves are good additions. At the beginning of the cooking time, skim off any foam that rises to the surface of the liquid. Let the pot simmer on low heat for two hours.

The meat and vegetables after two hours' cooking
in wine and water

Meanwhile, trim and wash half a pound of mushrooms and half a pound of pearl onions. To peel pearl onions, drop them in boiling water for two minutes and then put them in a cold water bath. When they're cool enough to handle, the skins will slip right off. If you can't get pearl onions, just coarsely chop a big yellow or white onion and use that. It won't look as pretty, but you'll have the flavor.

Here's what a veal roast looks like. Cut it in half with a
big knifeto remove the strips of fat and the string
before cutting up the meat.

After two hours, take the pieces of meat and the vegetables out of the broth and put them aside to cool. Trim the meat as much as you feel necessary. Discard the aromatic vegetables (or keep the carrots and celery if you want to add them to the final stew). You can do all this the day before and keep everything in the refrigerator overnight.

With the broth, make a velouté sauce — melt 6 tablespoons of butter in a pot and cook 6 tablespoons of flour in it for two or three minutes. Stir well, and then add a pint of the veal broth and stir the liquid constantly over high heat until the sauce thickens. Add a cup of liquid cream for richness and color, and add some more broth if necessary to get the consistency you want.

Stewed veal, vegetables, mushrooms, and pearl onions in a
velouté sauce make a blanquette de veau.

Then add the mushrooms and pearl onions to the sauce and let them cook at the simmer for 20 to 30 minutes. Try an onion to make sure it's done. When you're ready, add the veal and any vegetables you decided to keep and let it all heat through. It's ready to serve. One addition that really perks up blanquette de veau is a squeeze of fresh lemon juice at the last minute, or even at the table.

Blanquette is usually served with rice, but it's also good with pasta or boiled potatoes. You really need a green salad with a sharp vinaigrette afterwards to cleanse your palate.

December storms and menus

2011-12-14T08:09:00.002+01:00

We are still having 40 to 50 mph winds this morning. Hard rain beating against the roof and the skylight windows woke me up at about 4:00 a.m. I just watched the weather report on TéléMatin. This wind is supposed to continue through the day, with bands of rain sweeping through.

Yesterday we decided to go ahead and go out shopping despite the weather. In fact, by 10:00 the wind and rain seemed to have died down. Fat, wind-driven drops of rain started falling again just as we pulled out of the driveway, and by the time we got over to the Intermarché across the river the wind had picked up again and "ropes of rain" were coming down, as they say in French. We had to run from the car to the entrance of the supermarket.

Here's the house all closed up against the wind and rain.
It's nice having shutters to protect the windows.

Callie got just a short walk in the morning. She doesn't really like going out in the rain, especially when the wind is strong. We went a couple of hundred yards out into the vineyard, and then she turned and looked at me inquisitively. "Do you want to go back home?" I asked her. She ran and jumped up on me, and then took off flying down the dirt road toward the house.

Dead leaves were blowing around all through the vineyard.
I like how they gather in the puddles and pot holes
along the gravel road.

At Intermarché, the parking lot and the aisles were full of people wearing rain gear. I was glad I'd decided to wear my hooded raincoat for the excursion. The reason for the trip was that there were a few things we really needed, and then there were some things on special that we didn't want to miss out on.

One thing we bought was a coq — a big rooster — that weighs just over 6 lbs. Coqs were on sale for 3.75 euros a kilo — that's 1.70 euros/lb. What I bought says « coq à braiser » on the label — it needs braising rather than just roasting. My reason for buying it is that we haven't had coq au vin for quite a while, and it's nice once in a while to make the dish using a real coq and not just a regular chicken. The texture of the meat is entirely different. Into the freezer it will go and we won't cook it until January.

Walt put up some Christmas lights a couple of days ago.

Another thing we got was a one-kilo piece of boneless veal shoulder. Walt said he really wanted to have blanquette de veau, which is one of the classics of French cooking. I like to make blanquette with veal shoulder, which is less fatty than the pieces of breast and neck that often go into the dish. Rolled and tied boneless veal shoulder roasts were on sale at 9.90 euros per kilo, or 4.50 euros/lb. I'm going to cook that this morning. We've eaten fish every day since last Saturday, so we are ready for a change of diet.

Here's the weather forecaster delivering the bad news
for the afternoon. « Grésil » is sleet or ice pellets.

The hard rain stopped falling while we were in the supermarket, but by the time we got through the checkout line we saw and heard that it had started up again. The supermarkets and other outlying stores here have uninsulated sheet-metal rooftops with skylights, and big heavy raindrops make a real racket falling on them. We laughed and told the cashier we gotten wet on the way into the store and would be getting wet again on the way out. Such was your destiny today, she said with a smile.

So far the house is weathering the storms just fine.

The weather report says we'll get more than an inch of rain with winds over 60 mph tomorrow night and Friday morning. Something to look forward to...

Easy spinach soufflé

2011-12-13T06:55:00.000+01:00

I'm writing this post Monday afternoon, Paris time, because the French national weather service, MétéoFrance — as well as other weather forecasting organizations — are predicting that we will have 60 to 70 mph (100 to 115 kph) winds overnight. Who knows if we will have electricity and Internet access on Tuesday morning, which is when the worst of the storm is supposed to pass through. If we do, I'll leave a comment or something.

Several months ago, I re-read Jacques Pépin's autobiography, which contains a collection of recipes. One that I've made several times is Pépin's mother's easy egg and cheese soufflé. Sometimes I add chunks of bacon — lardons fumés — to it. The nice thing about this rustic soufflé is that you don't have to separate the eggs. You don't have to beat the egg whites. You just make it with whole beaten eggs.

Béchamel sauce with cooked spinach

Yesterday (day before yesterday as you read this) I decided to make the Pépin soufflé with spinach. The recipe is very simple. First you make a béchamel sauce: Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a pan. Cook one small onion, finely diced, in the butter if you want to. Then toss in 4 tablespoons of flour. Stir that around until the flour is all mixed with the hot butter and let it cook for two or three minutes.

The spinach, béchamel, cheese, and eggs in a
buttered ramequin, ready to cook

At that point, pour in, all at once, 325 milliliters of milk (or a mixture of cream and milk, or U.S. half-and-half) and stir it over a hot flame until the sauce starts to thicken. Meanwhile, cook a pound of spinach (or a package of frozen spinach — 10 or 12 oz. or about 350 grams) in a pan or in the microwave. Add the cooked spinach to the béchamel sauce. Take it off the heat and let it cool for 10 or 15 minutes.

Here are the four little soufflés in the oven.

While waiting, grate cheese — cheddar or parmesan or Swiss — so that you have about a cup (half a pint). Break 4 eggs into a bowl and beat them lightly. When the sauce is cool enough, pour in the beaten eggs and the grated cheese. Season with salt, pepper, and a good pinch of grated nutmeg. Stir all that together.

An easy spinach soufflé

Butter a baking dish or some individual ramequins and pour the egg mixture into them. Bake the mixture for 30 to 40 minutes in a 180ºC/350ºF oven until it puffs up and browns on top (several smaller dishes will get done faster than one larger dish).

Serve immediately, as with any other soufflé. If you let the cooked mixture cool, it will fall. But it will still be excellent. Serves 4 as an appetizer or two as a main course.

P.S. Up late (for me) — 11:05 p.m. The wind is picking up and I can't sleep. It just occurred to me that this post about a soufflé is weirdly appropriate since the French verb for the wind blowing is souffler — le vent souffle. We've got all our shutters closed and we're hoping no roof tiles blow off and no trees blow over.

P.P.S. 6:55 a.m. The wind has been roaring all night but it hasn't been as bad as some of the weather forecasting services said it might be. It's still dark outside so I don't know if any trees or limbs are down. I'll see in about an hour when I take the dog out.

Hazy views...

2011-12-12T07:46:00.004+01:00

...through steamed-up windows. Yesterday was a chilly day outside, with much mist. We stayed in, except for my morning walk and Walt's afternoon walk with the dog. Later in the day, we had a hot fire in the wood-burner.

Locked in... well, not really

In the morning, I didn't walk all the way out to the end of the gravel road. Callie and I ambled around the edge of the vineyard, even though it was sloppy wet and slippery. When we got about half way out, I heard loud gunshots not far away, so we retreated. Winter Sundays are hunt days.

Green but gray at the same time

Our cooking projects were bagels, using new techniques that were very successful. More about that later. We had some smoked trout in the fridge, and some fromage à tartiner, a.k.a. cream cheese. Making bagels involves boiling the dough before you bake it, so all the old windows in the house fogged up. As I said, it was chilly outside.

The neighbors' house is shuttered for the winter.

To go with the bagels and cream cheese, I made little spinach soufflés. Well, faux soufflés — more like timbales. No beating of egg whites required. Spinach, béchamel sauce, cheddar cheese (English cheddar, from SuperU, very good), and eggs.

Another December Sunday.

Magret de canard

2011-12-11T08:16:00.000+01:00

A duck breast filet is what we at with our potatoes cooked in chicken broth the other day. We're lucky to be able to buy affordable duck legs and breast filets here in Saint-Aignan. This particular piece of lean duck cost me 11.50 euros/kilo, which is about 5.25 euros/pound. It weighed about three-quarters of a pound (360 grams).

A pan-roasted duck breast filet, with a spicy rub

I call this a magret de canard, but on the package it was labeled as a filet de canard. The word magret comes from the same root as the French word maigre, meaning lean instead of fat. Officially, I've read, the term magret applies only to the breast meat of a fattened duck — un canard gras — that has been raised and force-fed to produce foie gras. The word filet is used for the breast meat of other ducks.

Score the skin side deeply before applying the spice rub...

...to both sides of the filet.

Whatever the word, the duck breast is delicious meat. It's more like a nice piece of beefsteak that it is like chicken, turkey, or even guinea fowl. The meat is red and you eat it cooked fairly rare rather than well done like other poultry. The best way to cook it is broiling, grilling, or pan-roasting, and it cooks pretty fast.

Start cooking the duck filet in a hot pan
with the skin side down.

Before cooking the duck filet, it's a good idea to score the skin side of the meat deeply in a cross-hatch pattern, using a good sharp knife. If you don't score the fatty skin, the breast filet will curl up as it cooks. And you don't want to remove the fat, because that's where much of the flavor is. Don't add any fat to the pan if you are pan-grilling the breast — just start it cooking skin-side down and it will make its own cooking fat.

Here's the pan-roasted duck breast after
it has rested for 20 minutes.

You don't have to marinate duck breast before cooking it, but I like to apply a dry spice rub. The spices and herbs I used this time were dried thyme, crushed red pepper, smoked paprika, black pepper, and allspice (Jamaican pepper). I rubbed both sides of the meat with the spices and let it rest for an hour or two before I cooked it.

Serve it rare or medium-rare so that it doesn't get tough.

The cooking doesn't take long at all. The important thing is to sear the meat on both sides and then let it rest for a while so that the heat can distribute itself through the lean center. This time, I set the skillet in a medium hot oven, turned off, with the door ajar, for about 20 minutes after searing the duck on top of the stove. Another way to let the meat rest is to transfer it to a hot serving dish, covering it with aluminum foil and a kitchen towel to hold in the residual heat.

Pan-roasted duck breast with a generous portion of
potatoes « boulangère » and some green garden peas.

You can see that the duck breast meat really is red, and it is served rare or medium-rare — in French, it's rosé. Again, it's more like eating beef than poultry. The duck fat and the spice rub give it a fine, rich taste. It's good with the pommes boulangère, and since we had some leftover green peas, we had some of those with it too.

Duck breast is much more expensive than duck leg & thigh sections — the last of those that I bought were only 2.90 euros/kilo, or 1.32 euros/lb. — but the texture of the meat and the appropriate cooking method are totally different. It's like having two entirely different kinds of meat, in fact. Both are excellent.

Pommes de terre « boulangère »

2011-12-10T09:14:00.000+01:00

Having an oven at home to bake and roast food in has only "recently" become a widespread luxury. In France, the U.S., and everywhere, people used to have to cook their food in a fireplace. Baking was not easy. All that changed over the course of the 20th century, as people got electricity and modern cooking stoves equipped with ovens.

In France, many villages had at least two ovens that people cook use for baking cakes, roasting meats, and slow-cooking vegetable casseroles (gratins). Many villages had what was called « le four banal » — the community oven — and residents of the village could take their dishes there and bake them along with everybody else's. Friends of ours have a house just across the street from their village's old four banal.

Pommes de terre à la boulangère, cooked with
onions in seasoned chicken broth

The other oven in the village was the one the local boulanger baked breads, brioches, and pastries in. When the baker had finished his day's work, the oven was still hot. His family, friends, and neighbors could then bring over their dishes that needed baking and put them in to cook as as the hot oven started to cool down.

A tradition of calling dishes baked in those ovens [whatever] « à la boulangère » — "in the style of the baker's wife" — developed. Some of the best-known recipes of the genre feature fish (colin à la boulangère), lamb (gigot or épaule d'agneau à la boulangère), other roasted meats (rôti de porc à la boulangère), and of course potatoes and various vegetables.

Dishes prepared and cooked à la boulangère are the kind of food that country people in France traditionally cook and enjoy. They're rustic, not sophisticated. Often, meats are roasted on a bed of sliced potatoes, for example, with onions, garlic, and whatever herbs are available. The potatoes bathe in the cooking juices of the meat or poultry cooking over them.

These potatoes have been "scalloped" — thinly sliced — on a
mandolin. You might slice them using a food processor.

From there, it isn't a huge leap to imagine that you could cook potatoes by themselves in pretty much the same way. Instead of meat juices, you can use broth. You can add some fat you've saved from cooking poultry or meat in a pan in a hot fireplace. You wouldn't leave out the onions, herbs, and garlic either, right?

So one of the classic "baker's wife" dishes is called « Pommes de terre à la boulangère ». Or « Pommes boulangère », the « de terre » and « à la » parts being understood. "Potatoes the way the baker's wife would cook them" are scalloped potatoes cooked in broth with onions, garlic, and herbs. "Scalloped" means thinly sliced. The term doesn't have too much to do with the shellfish called a scallop, except that the meat, vegetable, or fish that is scalloped is cut as thin as the scallop's shell. Think escalope de veau milanaise in French, or veal scallopini.

To make pommes boulangère, thinly slice a couple of pounds of waxy potatoes (red, Yukon gold, or boiling potatoes). Arrange the thin slices in layers in a baking dish along with a couple of layers of sliced or diced onion that you have cooked slowly in butter, oil, or fat so that they are tender and translucent. Optionally, add fresh garlic, sliced or diced, with the onions, and some fresh or dried thyme and bay leaves.

Pour on enough seasoned chicken broth to just
cover the layers of potato and onion.

Once those ingredients are layered in the dish, pour on enough hot, well-seasoned chicken broth to barely cover the potatoes. That should be two or three cups for about two pounds of potatoes, depending on the shape of your baking dish. If you want to give the cooking a head start before you put it in the (conventional) onion, cover it with a lid or plastic wrap and heat it up on high in the microwave for 10 or 15 minutes to get it boiling.

Finally, set the dish of potatoes in the oven at 180ºC (350ºF) for an hour or so, until most of the broth has evaporated or been absorbed and the top layer has browned nicely. Adjust the oven temperature and cooking time as necessary. Jacques Pépin says pommes boulangère are better if they are prepared ahead of time, left to cool, and then re-heated just before serving.

Hodgepodge

2011-12-09T07:35:00.010+01:00

The plumber was here ALL DAY yesterday. Sigh. It took that long to get the shower repaired and to empty and clean out the water heater. I think Walt is going to write about it all. The bill is going to be salé, as they say in France — "salty", meaning "excessive" like a dish you've put too much salt in.

And it's not over yet. The plumber, Monsieur Rougemont ("Mr. Redmountain") will come back Monday to finish the job. He has to replace some pipes around the water heater. When he unhooked everything yesterday and installed a new pressure regulator, he noticed that there are some old cast iron pipes that are nearly filled up with corrosion and lime deposits. We're also having new faucets installed on our bathroom sink and the little "hand-washing" sink in the WC room.

Rain. That's the forecast again this weekend. Temperatures are very mild, and yesterday was actually a pretty day. I had a good walk with Callie in the afternoon, and she didn't try to run away.

Touraine is right next to the left shoulder of the weatherman,
Laurent Romejko, who is a neighbor of CHM's in Paris.

By the way, Monsieur Rougemont said he had done some plumbing work for the neighbors across the street about three weeks ago. What made him mention it was that Bertie the black cat came into the utility room while Rougemont was working on the water heater. Is that your cat? he asked. Yes, I told him. Well your neighbors hate him, he said, and when I was over there I got an earful.

Afternoon temperatures around 12ºC (mid-50s F)

He said he wasn't likely to accept any more work from those neighbors of ours, because they are too hard to please. They want everything to happen immediately, they complain about the prices, and then they take forever to settle up. None of that surprises me. I'm detecting a pattern.

Leftovers for lunch a couple of days ago...

Big decision of the day? Gratin dauphinois or pommes de terre à la boulangère for lunch? The two potato dishes are similar, but dauphinois is cooked with garlic, cream, and milk, where boulangère is cooked with onions, herbs, and broth. Both are thinly sliced (a.k.a. scalloped) potatoes cooked in the oven.

I'm leaning toward the broth version, because we're having a grilled duck breast with it, and I'm not sure duck and cream are such a happy combination. And I have some good chicken broth in the freezer. I think I'll take some pictures as I go. Spending the morning in the kitchen will be a good way to occupy myself as December rain blows in from up Normandy way.

Pas d'omelette ? Si.

2011-12-08T07:56:00.014+01:00

« On ne fait pas d'omelette
sans casser des œufs. »

————
You can't make an omelet
without breaking a few eggs.

I don't know if this proverb first showed up in French or in English. But what it means is that when you make big changes, there are inevitably risks and sacrifices involved. And as somebody said, whether or not you're happy about the changes depends on whose eggs get broken and who gets to eat the omelet.

I tend to think the proverb originated in French, because that's obviously where the word omelette comes from. ("Omelet" without the final -te is chiefly an American form.) And France is the place where the best omelettes are made, in my humble opinion.

Une omelette aux épinards

What makes a good omelette? First, the egg whites and yolks need to be mixed together quickly with a fork, not a whisk. The eggs shouldn't really be rougnly beaten, in other words — that's too violent. And then the omelette needs to be cooked just enough to hold together. It should be very tender, not browned on the outside, and slightly runny inside.

In France, that's called an omelette baveuse — one that "drools." I don't think I've ever had une omelette baveuse outside France (unless I cooked it at home). Maybe things have changed...

The first omelette made in the new pan

Some say that how well a cook can roast a chicken — just a plain chicken cooked in the oven — is the ultimate test of cooking skill and talent. You might say the same thing about making an omelette.

The Larousse Gastonomique says this about it:

Making an omelet looks harder than it really is. You will succeed every time if you follow these rules:
Cook the omelette over a very hot fire;
Use a rigorously clean pan that is used only for cooking omelettes;
Beat the eggs only moderately, and only at the last moment before putting them in the pan;
Don't put too much butter (or other fat) in the pan;
And finally, "have confidence in yourself."

Here's the French:

La difficulté de préparation de l'omelette est plus apparente que réelle. On la réussira toujours si l'on observe les points suivants :
Avoir un feu très ardent ;
Opérer avec une poêle rigoureusement propre et ne servant qu'à cet usage ;
Battre modérément les œufs, et seulement au moment de faire l'omelette ;
Ne pas mettre trop de beurre (ou de graisse) dans la poêle ;
Enfin, « avoir confiance en soi ».

In other words, nobody can really tell you how to make a good omelette. You can make a good bœuf bourguignon or coq au vin if you just follow the recipe. For an omelette, you have to have faith in yourself and just figure it out.

I'm certainly not an expert. But I've been thinking about omelettes a lot lately, because we just got a new non-stick frying pan. If you know any good tricks, I'll be glad to hear them.

Cornbread, fried

2011-12-07T09:16:00.001+01:00

We get fresh bread delivered to our front gate four times a week here on the outskirts of Saint-Aignan. It's a great service organized by our village baker as a way to supply bread to people who might not drive or own a car and who live too far from the village center to walk there. For us, it's a convenience and an environmentally sound scheme, since we don't have to start the car every day and drive 6 or 7 kilometers just to get a baguette or a croissant.

But as I said, we get bread delivered only on four days. The other three days, we eat French bread that we've bought in advance and stored in plastic bags in the freezer, or we make our own breads. We make pizzas regularly, foccacia or fougasses once in a while, and we've made U.S.-style "Parker House rolls" and pita-type breads that are called fouées in French. Sometimes I make the Southern U.S. quick bread we call "biscuits."

These are a kind of fried cornbread called "hushpuppies,"
which we made last week. They're a U.S. Southern specialty.
There's a recipe with cooking instructions in this 2008 post.

But another style of bread we make, mostly because of my Southern U.S. background, is corn bread — "corn" meaning maize or maïs. Corn breads can be baked or fried. They are leavened with baking powder (levure chimique or poudre à lever) as opposed to baker's yeast (levure de boulanger), or just with baking soda (bicarbonate, bicarbonate de soude). You can buy bicarbonate alimentaire in the supermarkets in France, and you can buy little packets of levure chimique.

The prerequisite to making corn breads, of course, is having access to a supply of corn meal or corn flour (I don't mean what we call "cornstarch" in the U.S., which is mainly used to thicken sauces or puddings). Corn meal comes in yellow or in white; it can be water-ground or stone-ground; and it can be coarsely or finely milled.

Another kind of fried corn bread doesn't require deep-frying.
You cook these in a pan like pancakes, in butter or oil.
There's a recipe in this 2010 post — scroll down to find it.

Coarsely milled corn meal is also known as polenta. You can make baked corn breads with it, but it's better if you used it mixed with all-purposed wheat flour (farine de froment). For fried corn breads, finely milled meal is a requirement. You don't need to mix wheat flour with it, so the breads are gluten-free (good for those who are allergic to gluten).

My mother used to make fried corn breads all the time when I was growing up. And baked corn breads too. They are truly delicious — very rich, slightly sweet, and crunchy.

Near Saint-Aignan, we have found finely ground corn meal at the Planète Verte shop in Montrichard — it's a local product — also, imported from Italy, at the Paris Store Asian and imported foods shops in Blois and in Tours. You might find it in your local supermarket — you certainly will in the U.S. For several years I was "importing" my own corn meal by bringing it back from North Carolina or asking friends to bring me some. It's a heavy load, though, and now I don't have to do that any more.

Chicken “pot pie”

2011-12-06T07:03:00.010+01:00

So what is a "pot pie" in French? Une tourte? Un croustillant? Here's a take on it that I found on a blog called Croque-Camille. Camille is right: the Anglo-Saxon "pot pie" or "meat pie" is made up of classically French components: a flour roux, a pâte brisée, and a velouté sauce.

On Sunday we made a poule au pot — a "chicken in a pot" — inspired by Jacques Pépin and Julia Child (see Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home). That's a one-pot meal — a kind of boiled (or poached) dinner. It's a chicken cooked in broth with white wine, carrots, turnips, celery, potatoes, leeks, onions, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, and spices that can include cloves, allspice berries, and black peppercorns. The result is a dish of moist, succulent chicken and vegetables, and several quarts of good chicken broth for making soups and sauces.

Chicken pot pie (inspired by Jacques Pépin)

The next day, the chicken broth can serve as the base for a velouté sauce, which is a white sauce made not with butter, flour, and water, and not with butter, flour, and milk (that's a béchamel), but with butter (or chicken fat), flour, and chicken broth. Enriched with cream, of course. Hey, Normandy is not that far north of Touraine. And the addition of cream makes it into what can be called a sauce suprême.

The pot pie is less photogenic, but more delicious,
after you cut into it.

Walt makes the crust — butter, flour, salt, and a little water. That's all. Sounds simple, but to me it's not. I make the velouté. It's a division of labor. And then somebody has to dice up all the leftover chicken and vegetables. You just put the diced matter into a baking dish, pour the saucy matter over it, and then lay on the pastry matter. Bake it in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes, and don't burn the inside of your mouth when you eat it.

One of my cookbooks (The Dictionary of American Food and Drink) says:

Potpie. Also "pot pie." A crusted pie made with poultry or meat and, usually, chopped vegetables. The term, which first appeared in American print in 1792, probably refers to the deep pie pans or pots used to bake the pies in, and it has remained primarily an Americanism.

I think a true American pot pie has both a lower crust and upper crust. We just do the upper. That's rich enough.

Maison à vendre

2011-12-05T10:01:00.001+01:00

It looks like one of the houses in our hamlet will soon be going on the market. It's the first one on the right when you come up the hill through the woods. Like ours, the house has a name. Ours is Les Bouleaux, and the one that will soon be put up for sale is called Bella Vista. One other house in the hamlet has a name; the other six are anonymous.

Bella Vista was evidently built by a couple who moved here from Corsica several decades ago. The house must be about between 40 and 50 years old, like ours. It's been a rental property for at least the last ten years, and the most recent tenants were a group of young people who worked part-time or temporarily at the Beauval zoo just south of Saint-Aignan.

« Bella Vista », a little house near Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher

I know the house will soon be on the market because I've talked to the owner a few times over the past 10 days. He's been at the house cleaning up the yard and working inside as well. The first time or two I saw him he said bonjour to me a Callie, but that was all. After a little while, he asked me what breed of dog Callie was and the conversation started from there.

When you come up this road from down in the river valley...

We had seen the tenants moving out in November. I think they'd been there for a year — or was it two? They kept chickens in a pen in the back yard, and one day the chickens were gone. We had gotten used to hearing them squawking and crowing. Then we saw people packing up cars with boxes and bags. One day, Walt said he saw a guy putting cats in cages in the back of a station wagon, getting ready to drive away.

...the first house you see is Bella Vista. There's room in the
front yard for a nice vegetable garden.

When I talked to the owner last week, I asked him if he had new tenants getting ready to move in. No, he said, adding that he is tired of being a landlord. He said he's 77 years old now. He bought the house about ten years ago. It was occupied by an older couple at the time. They stayed on as tenants until both of them died, in their nineties, a few years ago. We didn't know them because they seldom came out of the house, though we would see them out taking a walk on the road once or twice a year.

The front view of what is called un pavillon sur sous-sol
in French— a bungalow with a basement

The group of young tenants made a lot of noise. Bella Vista is three houses down from us, and we got used to hearing loud music and even fireworks on some warm summer nights. Parties would go on until three or four in the morning. It didn't bother us much, but the disturbance did bother the people who live next door to Bella Vista. They're a retired couple in their 60s or early 70s who live when the weather's nice but return to the Paris area for the winter.

The back yard ends in a point.

According to the owner, the group of young tenants didn't do anything to improve the place, and they didn't take care of the yard the way he thought they should have. He didn't say whether or not they paid their rent, but he told me that they didn't pay the water bill. The water company is requiring the landlord to pay it, and the arrears amount to 420 euros. We ourselves pay about 600 euros annually for water and sewerage services.

At the back there's a big patio with a roll-out awning.

"Young people can be very wasteful," the man said. "They used a lot of water. They didn't take care of the house or yard. I can't face renting it out again, so I'm selling it." The house is small, and it sits on an odd-shaped triangular lot that must be about a quarter of an acre. There are neighbors on one side, pretty close, but the other side is all woods and vineyard.

This morning's sunrise at La Renaudière

This wouldn't be a dream house for many people, but it might make a good retirement place or résidence secondaire. I've never seen the interior, but you can be sure that it will need some "freshening up" or even significant renovation. We have sewer mains, town water, broadband Internet access, and garbage pickup in the hamlet. I see a satellite dish on the chimney of the house.

I'll be curious to see what the asking price is. It might be a bargain.

Pumpkin cannelloni

2011-12-04T08:06:00.004+01:00

Cannelloni are pasta tubes that are filled with various ingredients and then baked in the oven with a sauce to keep them moist and tender. Walt made these yesterday, stuffing them with the cooked pulp of a winter squash.

Pumpkin cannelloni with goat cheese, sage, and walnuts

You can roll out your own pasta or you can use fresh or soaked and softened lasagne noodles from the supermarket. You can probably buy cannelloni tubes in dried form, too, like other pasta shapes. In this version, the stuffing is made with:

500 g (just over a pound) of cooked winter squash pulp, mashed
150 g (5 oz. by weight) of soft goat cheese
1 finely chopped shallot
pinches of spices including cumin, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg
2 Tbsp. finely chopped fresh sage leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Other spices and herbs might be just as good. Curry powder, for example, or Moroccan raz el hanout. Ricotta could replace the goat cheese. Basil would be good in the place of sage. Mix the pumpkin filling up and let it sit for 30 to 60 minutes so that the flavors will blend. Then put a log of it on each cannelloni or softened lasagne noodle and roll them up.

Arrange the stuffed cannelloni in a pan and pour in chicken or vegetable broth so that it comes half-way up the sides of the cannelloni. Drizzle some olive or vegetable oil over the tops of the cannelloni. Bake in a medium oven, covered, for about 20 minutes.

One possibility for a sauce to serve with the filled canneloni is melted butter with a little cream, some more sage or other herbs, and some coarsely chopped walnut meats. Pecans or hazel nuts would also be good. Serve some grated parmesan at the table.

French franc notes

2011-12-03T08:07:00.002+01:00

Otherwise known as "folding money" — not just coins. Higher denominations. Paper money. Bank notes. Bills. Billets de banque. Cash. People who collect paper money in France can be called billetophiles.

I'm not a collector — I've never had enough — but I do have a few French franc notes left over from the earlier days when I lived in Paris. Or when I lived in California and came to France every year on vacation. They are just souvenirs.

One bill that I saved is a five-franc note. It was in circulation from 1966 until 1970, the year I spent a semester in Aix-en-Provence as a student. I turned 21 there. And talk about a starving student; I was. Somehow I managed to get back to the U.S. that summer with a five-franc note — the equivalent of one U.S. dollar.

This paper note was replaced by a 5 FF coin about 40 years ago.

I've had that five-franc note ever since. The man on it is Louis Pasteur, and the building is the Institut Pasteur in Paris. I have a friend whose apartment is very near there. There's also a Pasteur museum there, which I only recently heard of for the first time.

Another franc note I saved somewhere along the way is a billet worth 100 FF. It was the equivalent of our $20 bill in the U.S. I always liked the fact that French bank notes were different sizes — they got larger as their denomination went up. The 100 FF note is a lot bigger than the 5 FF note was, or the 10 FF note.

A Corneille/Rouen-themed French franc note from the 1970s

Sometime in the 1990s I was in a café in Paris with Walt and I pulled this bill out to pay for what we had consumed. I had found it in a drawer at home in San Francisco. The waiter looked at it wide-eyed. He was a young guy, and he said he didn't think he'd ever seen this particular bill before. In other words, it had gone out of circulation 20 years earlier. The waiter called it « un monument historique ». I don't know how it was that I ended up saving it all those years.

The man on the 100 FF note is the 17th century playwright Pierre Corneille. He was born and lived in Rouen in Normandy, where I lived for a year in 1972-73. I actually taught at the Lycée Corneille as an assistant d'anglais. The other images on the bill show the Rouen cathedral, the Seine river, and some other buildings.

December sunrise

2011-12-02T08:05:00.001+01:00

One big raison d'être for this blog is that I take so many photos and really enjoy taking them. I take photos both outdoors on my walks with the dog, and indoors, mostly in the kitchen.

This time of year it's nearly dark when I go out with the dog either at about 8 a.m. or about 6 p.m., depending on the day. Right now in Saint-Aignan, the sun comes up at 8:22 and goes down at 5:06. That makes for a pretty short day.

Sunrise over the vines on December 1

Often, the sunrise is very beautiful. Now we're going into a rainy weekend, but temperatures are still mild. They say we've had the warmest autumn ever. We still have flowers growing in planters and window boxes outside. It's amazing, when you think that we are actually located at a more northerly latitude than Montreal or Minneapolis, for example.

Le canapé est arrivé

2011-12-01T07:56:00.003+01:00

Back in October, when we again started spending a lot of time at home — and indoors — we realized that a year without having a sofa downstairs in our main living area was long enough. After we had the loft space finished last year and moved our old living ~~roof~~ (oops!) room furniture up there, we just put four armchairs in the sitting area of the living room.

They were nice chairs, and when we had people in it worked out pretty well as a sitting area. But something was missing. That arrangement made the area seem more like a waiting room than a cozy corner. Almost on the spur of the moment, we decided to invest in a new sofa.

The living room avant...

Rather than driving up to Blois or over to Tours to look around in furniture store showrooms, we decided to do the 21st century thing: we surfed the web. Our first thought was Ikea. Then I thought of a French mail-order company — I guess Internet store is the new term — called La Redoute. That's where we ended up finding a sofa that looked like the one for our space, and the price was good. We were lucky to find just the kind of sofa we needed when it was marked down by 30%. Shipping was very also very reasonable at 25 euros.

...et après

La Redoute is a company that specializes in la vente à distance, which used to be called la vente par correspondance. The company was founded in the 19th century by a family in the city of Roubaix in the north of France. They named their business after the street where they first set up shop, la rue de la Redoute. Nowadays, the company is an e-vendor, with something like 700,000 visitors a day coming to its web site. It still sends out a paper catalog, but I wonder how long that will last. La Redoute operates in at least 15 European countries as well as in Japan, South Korea, Canada, and the United States.

All cleaned up and waiting for the delivery truck

One thing about getting a new piece of furniture, especially a fairly large one, is that it gives you an opportunity to do some spring cleaning. We moved two of our armchairs up to the loft, and then moved the dining room table out of the way. Walt got out the new vacuum cleaner — which we ordered from Amazon in the U.K. a couple of months ago. He gave the rugs a good going-over, and then he wiped down the tile floor around the edges of the room.

In all these pictures you can see evidence of the
nice sunny weather we've been having.

The vacuum cleaner, by the way, is an upright which I think we would call a carpet sweeper. It's the kind of vacuum cleaner we had in California. Such appliances are not easy to find in France and, from what I read, fairly uncommon all across the continent in Europe. Go figure. After eight years of using a little canister model vacuum that we bought at Darty in 2003, I finally went on the Amazon UK site and had a look around.

Here's Walt "hoovering" with the new Hoover
upright vacuum cleaner.

There I found a Hoover model, sans sac, that fit the bill. It also was very reasonably priced — just 99 109 British pounds (about 165 ~~euros~~ U.S. dollars) including VAT and shipping — less than we paid for the Panasonic canister vac eight years earlier. Having it to use has made cleaning so much easier, especially when it comes to vacuuming rugs to get the dog hair off. And we don't have to go driving from store to store here in the region — Tours, Blois, Romorantin, Loches — looking for the right size vacuum cleaner bags. The only explanation I can think of for the lack of such machines in France is that most houses have tile floors.

I guess one point of this post is to say again how much easier it is to live out in the country and enjoy the peace and quiet now that we have high-speed Internet access and a range of e-vendors to choose from. We've come a long way. And this is also for a post for all of you who have visited over the past few years...

The French franc

2011-11-30T08:00:00.002+01:00

The French franc — le franc français — still exists in a couple of ways, even though you don't see the coins and bills any more. If you look at certain currency exchange rate sites on the 'net, you'll see the French franc still listed. I checked this morning, and the U.S. dollar is trading at 4.92 FF today. The currency is designated as obsolete, replaced by the euro. But there it is.

The franc still exists on price tags all around France. So that older people, who had spent many decades buying, selling, earning and counting francs on an everyday basis, wouldn't get confused about prices, merchants have been required to post prices in francs alongside prices in euros for the past 10 years. Euro coins and banknotes became the legal tender in France in January 2002.

An old 20-centime coin, worth about a nickel
back in the 1970s

As for the franc, it became the only legal tender in France in 1795, during the Revolution, and remained so until 1998. At that point it was declared a division of the new euro. The official value of the euro in France is 6.56 francs. It was only on January 1, 2002, that euro coins and banknotes started to be circulated in France and the franc disappeared as legal tender.

During World War II, French coins carried the fascist
slogan "Work, Family, Country", which replaced the
revolutionary « Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité »

My memories don't go back to the 18th century, but I do remember having to learn about francs more than 40 years ago, when I was a student in Aix-en-Provence in the spring of 1970. In those days, I didn't have a lot of francs — or dollars either — so every one counted. The dollar that spring was trading at about 5.50 FF. All through the 70s, until the Carter years in the U.S. late in the decade, the dollar-franc rate stayed approximately the same.

In the late '70s, however, the dollar declined and fell to between 4 and 4.5 francs. Then, a few years later, France elected its first socialist president in many decades — François Mitterrand in 1981 — and he appointed communists to important ministries in his government. International financial and currency markets spooked, and for a while the dollar was worth as much as 10 francs.

Voltaire on a 10 FF coin of the 1990s

The same kind of thing happened when the euro first came into circulation. There was a lot of doubt about its stability and its future. Besides, the U.S. under Bill Clinton had been running budget surpluses and the American economy was "a rising tide lifting all boats" — too bad that didn't last. The dollar was worth more than 1.15 euros for a while there, which meant it was worth between 7.5 and 8.0 FF. It was good to have dollars in those days.

By the time Walt and I moved to Saint-Aignan in June 2003, the U.S. dollar was worth only about 90 to 92 eurocents — that was still more than six francs. The euro started its big move upward, and the dollar moved down because, I guess, budget deficits were so high under the George W. Bush administration in Washington. At its low point five years ago, the dollar was worth only about 62 eurocents, or four francs, as back in the late 1970s.

Several of the franc coins carried this image called La Semeuse —
"the sower". The same figure appears on French euro coins now.

The French franc I'm talking about here is what was called « le nouveau franc » back in the 1970s. That's because the French economy had suffered such high inflation in the 1950s that the old franc became fairly worthless. In1960, newly elected president Charles de Gaulle enacted a reform under which the old franc became a centime, and 100 old francs became one new franc.

General De Gaulle on another 1990s-era 10 FF coin

For several decades, people in France continued to think and talk in terms of old francs. One franc in slang was « cent balles » — 100 "bullets", I guess, coins being made of metal as bullets are, as well as being round like a ball. Ten francs was « mille balles » — mille means a thousand. Early in the decade, a beggar on the sidewalk in Paris would ask you for « 100 balles ». By 1980, more often you'd hear beggars asking for « un franc ».

Ten thousand francs — an astonomical sum for many of us back in the 1970s — was « un million d'anciens francs ». Or « un million de centimes ». Or just « un million », also known as « une brique ». For us Americans, « un million » in francs was about two thousand dollars, and if you could earn that much per month, or if you had that much money in the bank, you were quite prosperous. You could buy a new car for a couple of "bricks".

The 5 FF coin was the closest equivalent of the U.S. dollar

French people have a very different relationship with their money compared to Americans. It's hard to imagine the American population dealing with all this messing around with the national currency. Re-value the dollar so that a dollar is suddenly a cent, a $100 bill is suddenly $1.00, and $1000 is just $10? Or abandon the dollar altogether for some other currency? Can you imagine?

Didn't get the memo

2011-11-29T07:21:00.003+01:00

Some times there's an individual who refuses to buckle under. To face reality. To go with the flow. It happens with people, and it happens with plants.

This grapevine didn't get the memo,
or forgot to check the calendar.

There aren't many leaves left in the vineyard at this point. But the fact is, it hasn't turned cold yet. I think the weather gods in general forgot we are now at the end of November.

Late November 2010 — so different from 2011

If the weather does suddenly turn cold or snowy — as it did last year at this time — it will come as quite a shock. The plants below will be shocked, for sure.

Renegade leaves and flowers in the 2011 vineyard

All the news right now has to do with the euro crisis. In France, people are saying the euro may not exist in its current form by the end of the year — next month, in other words. Nobody is saying what will replace it. Will my old French francs suddenly become legal tender again? Walt found a little box of franc coins a day or two ago, and I know where the old bank notes are.

All those coins and notes add up to about one day's groceries, by the way. I also have some Irish pounds, Belgian francs, and Italian lire. I bet most people here have some French francs in a drawer or box somewhere in the house.

It was almost exactly ten years ago — January 2002 — that the euro became the currency of the realm. In France, the law required merchants to continue posting prices in francs as well as in euros for the first ten years, so that people would have an idea of how prices were changing. Will the old prices in francs go away next year, or will they move to the top of the labels and price tags? On verra.

The cellier, or cold-storage pantry

2011-11-28T07:25:00.000+01:00

Our relatively modern house (1960s vintage) doesn't have a cellar or basement, but it has a cellier on the ground floor. A cellier is a pantry or larder — a storeroom for food and wine — and this one has a dirt (sand, actually) floor. It's on the north side of the house, so it stays fairly cool in there except in the hottest part of summer. It's not heated, and it's windowless. A cellier can also be called a garde-manger.

Two photos of our cellier or pantry/larder

What we call a cellar in English is called « une cave » in French. It's an underground storage space, usually under a house or other building. It's an ideal place for storing wine or cider, because the temperature in a cave remains constant year-round. I wish we had one under our house, but we don't.

Larder, garde-manger, cellier, pantry, storeroom...

Meanwhile, the cellier or cold-storage pantry/larder will have to do. We of course keep wine down there, but much more besides. Having a good-size pantry sort of makes up for having a small kitchen with only minimal storage space in it. And it means we run up and down the stairs many times every day. That's called "exercise."

The duck confit I made recently is in the big dish on
the right, on top of the deep-fat fryer (la friteuse)
which is full of peanut oil.

Since we buy wine in bulk and bottle it ourselves, we keep a lot of both empty and full wine bottles in the pantry. They drain and dry on the red bottle rack before being put away. We also keep a lot of jars for putting up jams, jellies, etc. — not to mention bags and other containers of spices, condiments, and dried herbs. Sugar, flour, noodles, glasses... un peu de tout, quoi.

Cuisses de canard confites

2011-11-27T10:14:00.004+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was preparing some duck legs and thighs as confit de canard. Then I sort of forgot about them. They've been cooked and are "curing" in the cold pantry off our utility room downstairs.

Duck leg & thigh sections sold in shrink-wrap
vacuum packaging at the supermarket in France

I'm not sure that all the Americans who leave comments on forums and in trip reports about enjoying confit de canard in France know how the duck is prepared. What they know is that it's delicious. The duck legs can be served in several ways, but most often in restaurants you get them browned in the oven until golden and served with fried or sautéed potatoes.

These are the legs and thighs of ducks that have been
fattened for foie gras production.

Personally, I like the slow-cooked duck legs and thighs served other ways. For example, they are very good with turnips cooked with a little of the duck fat. Canard aux navets — duck with turnips — is a classic combination. Of course you have to like turnips. Use young fresh ones that have just a hint of bitterness along with their natural sweetness. Or have the duck with oven-roasted winter root vegetables — turnips plus carrots, rutabagas, parsnips, and potatoes.

This time of year, duck legs are available at very reasonable prices.
Each one weighs a little less than a pound.

Two other good combinations including confit de canard come to mind. Serve the slow-cook duck with beans flavored with duck fat as part of a southwestern French cassoulet, with some good fresh pork sausages (saucisses de Toulouse). Or serve it with sauerkraut along with smoked pork sausages and boiled potatoes. Flavor the sauerkraut, too, with some of the duck fat.

A better idea of what the duck pieces look like unwrapped

I see both of those in our future this winter, since I have several bags of dried beans of different varieties in the pantry, and nearly three kilos of raw sauerkraut in the freezer. I also like the idea of having the confit de canard with some of my home-grown collard and mustard greens. Or what about confit with some Brussels sprouts roasted in duck fat, as seen on The Celiac Husband's blog? Can I say that the possibilities are nearly endless?

I've posted about making confit de canard several times before:

Confit de canard: the brine
Confit de canard: the method

Confit de canard in cassoulet

The duck pieces in their salty marinade

I won't repeat all that. What I will say is that the duck pieces are covered in coarse salt with herbs, onions, garlic, and spices and left to marinate for 24 to 48 hours. Then they are rinsed under cold running water, dried off, and cooked at low heat either on the stovetop or in the oven, in enough duck fat to cover them. Discard the salty marinade. The cooked duck legs should be very tender, with the meat fairly falling off the bone.

Arrange the marinated, rinsed duck legs in a pan like this...

The duck legs, however, will still be pretty salty after cooking. It's best to let them cure for several weeks, or even months, in the duck fat they cooked in. They need to be kept in a cool place, but not necessarily in the refrigerator. If you have a cellar, or a cold pantry like ours, well, that's ideal. Make sure the congealed duck fat completely covers the duck leg-and-thigh sections. Some mysterious chemical reaction between the duck fat and the salt will happen, giving the tender duck meat a mild but rich flavor.

...and cover them with melted duck or goose fat
for cooking in a slow oven.

When you're ready to serve and eat the duck, put the pan or crock they're stored in into a warm oven and wait for the fat to melt again. Take out the pieces you plan to serve, and leave the others in the fat, again stored in a cool place.

This might look like mashed potatoes, but it's the congealed
duck fat covering the duck legs and thighs
that are curing in the cold pantry.

Drain the pieces you've taken out of the melted fat on a rack for a few minutes — put the rack in the warm oven again — so that the fat will drip off. Use the fat to season the vegetables or potatoes you're having with the duck. You can turn up the oven and let the duck legs turn golden brown and kind of crispy if you want them that way. Or you can keep them succulent and tender by just letting them warm through.

Fleurs de novembre

2011-11-26T08:29:00.002+01:00

At first glance, the vineyard looks like the photo below, or worse, in late November. The vines in the photo have already been pruned, so they look neat and well-tended. Other parcels are much scruffier-looking.

The Renaudière vineyard near Saint-Aignan
in late November 2011

If you walk out there every day, the way Walt and I do with Callie, you start seeing things differently. There is color, but it comes in tiny dabs. (You can click the pictures to enlarge them.)

Not all the wildflowers have died, and there are still roses in certain places around the hamlet and along the gravel road that runs a mile through rows of vines.

We haven't had any more fugue episodes with Callie — faire une fugue means to run away. We're lucky, as Evelyn pointed out, that the neighbor saw Callie down at the bottom of the hill. She hadn't made it to the main road, where there's more traffic, moving faster.

Who knows if she was headed that way. As I said, she usually lies down immediately if she sees or hears a car coming. Problem is, sometimes she just lies down in the middle of the road. I've seen her do that several times on the gravel road through the vineyard.

The weather continues completely gray, foggy, and misty. We have been socked in for days now. This morning, there are puddles on the road out front, so I guess it rained overnight. I slept like a log for nearly 10 hours — I was oblivious.

We are reading, eating leftovers, surfing the web, and walking the dog on our normal schedule. I guess we'd better get used to the gray and fog, because it will probably last for a month or more — unless it gets worse by turning colder. It could snow at any time now. Or not.

Meantime, I got a call yesterday to tell me that the new sofa will be delivered next Wednesday. And the euro keeps sliding down. One euro = just $1.32 U.S. this morning.

Callie's big adventure

2011-11-25T08:11:00.000+01:00

It's hard to believe that Callie the Collie is going to be five years old in a few months. We still think of her as a young puppy — at least I do. Maybe I see her that way because she's so completely "bonded" to us. She never lets us out of her sight, for example, when we are out for a walk, even though we never put her on a leash.

Until now. A couple of afternoons ago Callie asserted her independence. Or she let her curiosity about another dog get the better of her. She just disappeared at the end of a walk she was taking with Walt. I was doing something in the kitchen when I heard Walt call me from downstairs: "Hey! Is Callie in the house?" I yelled down that I hadn't seen the dog.

Callie in the back yard — she has chased a bird up a tree!

Callie had evidently disappeared after Walt and the dog walked back up the hill through the woods from down below in the river valley, where there are 10 or 15 houses. She came up the hill, turned into the neighbors' yard across the street from ours, and then just vanished. Walt went in one direction on the road, and I went the other way, both of us calling Callie at the top of our lungs. There was no sign of her.

Another neighbor — the one who says she has had so much trouble with Bertie the Black Cat — had just arrived at home and was getting out of her car. She came out on the road to say bonjour. I told her we were looking for Callie, who had vanished. « Je viens de voir votre chien en bas, sur la route, » the neighbor said — she had just seen Callie at the bottom of the hill, on the road. All the way down at the bottom.

Callie still hopes she'll find a walnut or two under the
little nut tree out by the road. She loves walnuts
and knows how to crack them open.

She said that when she drove by, Callie lay down at the side of the road to let the car pass. Yep, that was Callie all right. She always does that when she see or hears a car coming close. The neighbor said she had thought about trying to get Callie to jump into her car so she could drive her home. She doesn't know how much Callie hates the car.

I told the neighbor Walt had seen a black dog running loose down the hill a few minutes earlier, so I supposed Callie must have gone back down there to check him out. Or maybe he had followed Callie and Walt up the hill and then turned to run back downhill with Callie behind him. It was a mystery.

Then I asked the neighbor how things were going in the local feline community. Was Bertie behaving? « Ça va, » she said, « mais c'est toujours la bagarre. » Things have settled down, but the cats still don't get along and they fight at times.

The neighbor said that, as it happened, one of her cats had disappeared two days earlier. She was going to walk down the road calling him. I saw Walt down that way, at the top of the hill, and I yelled to him, telling him what the neighbor had said about Callie being down the hill along the road. He started trudging down that way.

Usually, Callie comes running like this
when one of us calls her.

The neighbor asked about the group of young zoo workers who were renting the first house on the right as you come up the hill into the hamlet. Have they moved out? Yes, I told her, they're gone. But they had several cats, didn't they? Yes, one day Walt saw one of the tenants putting cats in cages into the back of his car, getting ready to drive away.

The neighbor asked if we knew the landlord's name, and whether we had seen him. I told her I had been seeing the man nearly every afternoon at the house, cleaning the place up and getting the house ready for new tenants, I supposed. But his name... « Je me demande si Shana — the cat's name, I figured, and I'm guessing at the spelling — n'est pas enfermé à l'intérieur de cette maison. » Maybe her cat was shut up in the house. I told her our neighbor the mayor knew the landlord, but she said the mayor is in Paris right now for an annual conference of mayors from all around the country.

Here's Callie's perspective on the vineyard in late November.

I asked her if the missing cat was the pure white one. No, it's the one that's beige, she said. We arrived at the gate in front of the rental house, which the neighbor tried to open. It was locked. Night was falling, but through the gloom I saw Walt trudging back up the hill, with Callie out in front of him. He was yelling for her to stay close, to not run away again. When I saw her, I called her to me and she came running. She didn't turn off into the woods or otherwise try to run away again. It was almost dark at that point.

When Walt got up the hill, we talked about Shana's disappearance. Walt asked if Shana (Chat-Na?) was the pure white cat, and the neighbor said simply "Oui." That was confusing. And that's when Bertie emerged from the woods. Walt scooped him up to carry him home too. Callie noticed, and she came over to try to jump up and nip at Bertie's tail and feet. The neighbor laughed.

It was getting dark and gloomy out there.

So we never found the cat, and I don't know if the neighbor has seen him since. Cats wander off like that for days at a time, and most often they eventually return home. Bertie has done that. He can take care of himself.

Dogs are so different. Callie had disappeared for five minutes and we were in a panic. She has no "street smarts" — at least in our view, she's helpless without us. She doesn't know how to hunt. I guess she would have come back home of her own volition after a few minutes, but who knows?

November stopped by yesterday

2011-11-24T06:35:00.003+01:00

Now it's November. The month arrived more than three weeks late this year. It rolled in under cover of a thick fog and a leaden gray sky.

Pots and planter boxes emptied of their summer
occupants, washed, and left to dry

The day before, we were outside in sunshine cleaning up the last of the potted plants growing just outside the back door. Walt picked up the last of the apples and then ran the lawnmower over the thick grass that had grown high under the big apple tree and around the garden plots. The race to get cleaned up for winter came right down to the wire.

The hedge and house at 8:30 yesterday morning

This is hibernation time in the northern French countryside. I'm sleeping from about 9:30 p.m. many evenings until nearly 7:00 a.m. many mornings now. It's the (absence of) light that does a number on my body, I think. Food and photography keep me going through the so-called daylight hours. At night, the color goes out of everything.

Apples, apples, apples

Right now, only three of the houses in the hamlet — out of nine — have people in them. The Blésois have moved back to Blois, the « Parisiens » have decamped to the région parisienne, and the young people who rented the house three doors down, worked at the zoo, and kept the chickens whose clucking and crowing gave the hamlet an authentic rural ambiance — well, they all moved on to parts unknown, leaving one more dark house on the road, and fewer entertaining barnyard sounds.

One more empty house in the hamlet

It's not cold outside yet, but that won't be long in coming, probably. The temperature this morning is about 50F instead of the 30F we might expect. It's Thanksgiving Day, but that's not a holiday in France, so we're in this weird space where we instinctively feel that life should be put on hold, but we're about the only ones who know it.

The end of the road

Today in Saint-Aignan, the mail gets delivered, and the bread, as usual. The stores are all open (unless of course there's some unpredictable fermeture exceptionnelle just to keep things interesting). It's just another Thursday, like all the others.

View from a rear window

The news points out that Christmas Eve is exactly one month away. That's something to look forward to, and then the days will start getting longer again. Meanwhile, enjoy your turkey, or turducken, and pumpkin pie.

La courge « patidou »

2011-11-23T08:19:00.001+01:00

What's more beautiful than a beautiful vegetable? And what vegetable is more beautiful than a winter squash?

In French, what in America we call a "winter squash" is called
« une courge ». The one in these pictures is called « une patidou ». It's a variety of Cucurbita pepo, as are the zucchini (courgette), pattypan (pâtisson), spaghetti squash (courge spaghetti), acorn squash (courge poivrée or courgeron), and many others.

La courge patidou

It was an acorn squash that I was looking for when I went shopping at SuperU last week. I didn't find one — Walt wanted to get one so we could eat it but also so we could save the seeds and grow some courgerons in next year's garden — but I noticed the patidou in a bin along with many little pumpkins (potimarrons and citrouilles), courges spaghetti, and courges butternut.

The patidou looked to be the closest thing to an acorn squash that I was going to find. It was prettier than an acorn squash. When I went through the checkout line, the cashier had no idea what it was and it wasn't labeled. I was able to explain and she finally found it on her computer. At first she thought I was saying pâtisson.

The patidou turned out to be delicious roasted and mashed with some butter and spices including nutmeg and Caribbean colombo powder, which is a kind of curry powder. The flesh has a distinct flavor of chestnuts and isn't as sweet as some other squashes (at least this one wasn't).

Here's a French-language site with a lot of recipes for cooking patidou squashes. Okay, fine, you say. But what I want to know is what the patidou is called in North America or the British Isles.

A patidou squash cut in half, seeds scooped out,
ready to be roasted in the oven

On one blog I saw the patidou called "sweet dumpling" squash, but I don't know that term. And in fact, some of the sites I find that mention the patidou show pictures of squashes that don't really look like this one. It's a mystery.

The Thanksgiving splurge: gigot d'agneau

2011-11-22T08:27:00.004+01:00

Yesterday we went to the Intermarché store over in Noyers-sur-Cher to see if we could buy our Thanksgiving lamb. We've been having lamb at Thanksgiving for 10 or 12 years now, at least. The Thanksgiving holiday is a good excuse for a splurge — a nice gigot d'agneau.

The butcher we normally buy the Thanksgiving lamb from down in Saint-Aignan is taking his annual holiday right now. Thanksgiving is not a French holiday, so he's getting his time off while he can, before the end-of-year holiday season is upon us. There's another butcher shop in town, but since it was Monday and we had to go out, we thought we'd check for a gigot (leg of lamb) at one butcher shop that is open on Mondays: the meat counter at Intermarché. It's a good one.

A rolled and tied boneless leg of lamb roast

Gigot is the quintessentially classic French dish prepared by home cooks. It's often served as Sunday dinner. It's usually served with the little pale green beans called flageolets, or with potatoes. We're going to have a gratin dauphinois with ours this year. Maybe we'll have beans with the leftovers, because there will be leftovers.

Side view of the rolled leg. It has a layer of fat, probably pork
fat, on top that will baste and enrich the meat as it roasts.

The butcher at Intermarché had legs of lamb in his display case. The price was about 16.50 euros per kilogram. That's a real splurge. But he also had a boned, rolled leg of lamb for just one euro more per kilo — 17.50€ = $23.60 U.S., and if you do the math, that comes to about $10.75 a pound at current exchange rates.

The underside of the boneless leg of lamb

I don't know if that's a high price for lamb in the U.S. — I see rack of lamb at $14.75 in San Francisco on Safeway.com — but the French gigots we normally buy cost between 30 and 40 euros, and this boneless one weighed just under 2 kg/ 4¼ lbs. and cost 34€. If you do the conversion, that's a lot of dollars. We could have bought just half of the rolled roast, but we bought the whole thing. I might cut it into two roasts and put one in the freezer for later.

Lamb would be good with this dish of peas, mushrooms,
onions, and escarole that was yesterday's lunch.

I'm obviously looking forward to cooking and eating the Thanksgiving lamb and the gratin dauphinois potatoes. We'll have turkey or something similar — maybe a capon or even a guinea fowl capon — at Christmas. We are very lucky to have such good food products available, and to be able to afford them once in a while. Retirement, you know...

* * *

Some people call this food porn...

P.S. I decided to cut the lamb roast into two pieces, and the meat looks so delicious that I had to take another photo. Now we'll have a second roast we can cook in December or January.

November in the garden

2011-11-21T07:25:00.003+01:00

Stories on the French news broadcasts have been saying that the major airports around Paris and the national government are ready... for snow! They've got contingency plans. They've got equipment at the ready. There will be no repeat of the chaos last year's November and Decembers snowstorms caused for French drivers and international travelers. Everybody is enjoying the irony of it all.

That's because we are still having spring-like weather in northern France, including the Loire Valley, and here it is November 20. Thanksgiving — which is not a holiday in France, of course — is this Thursday (as you U.S. readers know). This kind of Thanksgiving week reminds me of Novembers on the North Carolina coast or in the San Francisco Bay Area — both are places where I spent many years of my (younger) life.

It's almost strange to see the path out to the back gate
not covered in rotting apples.

We were out working in the garden — I'm using that in the British sense (= yard) — yesterday morning and afternoon like it was September or May. What a strange weather year this has been for us. It was unnaturally warm and dry from March through June. Then it was unnaturally rainy and damp in July and August. Now the weather has been fine (again, British English, meaning not just "okay" but "beautiful") for all of September, October, and November.

This is some kind of sage bush that we brought back from the
mild and temperate Ile d'Oléron 3½ years ago, wondering
whether it would thrive in Saint-Aignan. It has.

What did we do in the garden yesterday? Well, as usual, we picked up 1.13 million apples (I counted) that were lying on the gravel path and under some tall grass that has grown up under the big apple tree. This was a year of abundance for that old tree, which at the same time appears to be in decline because of advanced age. A huge branch fell off back in June, when the weight of all the apples got to be too much for it. Next year we won't get much more than 1.13 dozen apples from it.

Callie likes the mowed grass. It makes it easier for her
to find her tennis ball when we throw it out there.

I packed up all the dahlia tubers that I had dug up last week, putting them in crumpled newspaper in a big cardboard box. They'll spend the winter in the cool, dry garage. Next year we will plant a new bed of dahlias somewhere in the yard — if the tubers don't rot or get completely dessicated.

The spruced-up rosemary bushes

Walt trimmed the lavender plants just outside the back door and we started thinking about whether we might move them to a better spot too. I trimmed the two big rosemary bushes that we planted along the south wall of the house five or six years ago. They are quite happy in that spot, and have grown big and, well, bushy. We pledged to start using more rosemary in our cooking, and I tied up bunches of the rosemary clippings to hang head-down in the utility room for drying. That way we won't have to go out in the cold and rain or snow this winter to cut fresh rosemary for all the good things we might cook with it.

Anticipation is growing as we await delivery of a new sofa
that we ordered in October for our downstairs living room.

If it ever rains, that is. I'm sure it will, one day. There are entire winters during which we don't get any snow at all, but we always get rain. I hope I don't have to take that statement back next April.

About prepositions and balconies

2011-11-20T07:50:00.004+01:00

I'm fine with the French word « terrasse » as the name for the deck/porch/balcony on the front of our house. It's the English word "terrace" that sounds pretentious to me. But I've been reading the dictionary. Here's what the American Heritage says about "terrace":

1.a. A porch or walkway bordered by colonnades. b. A platform extending outdoors from a floor of a house or an apartment building. 2. An open, often paved area adjacent to a house serving as an outdoor living space; a patio.

I guess the main difference between a porch and a terrace is that a porch is at street level (or very slightly above it). A terrace is the size of a porch (compared to a balcony, which is smaller) but it's well above ground (apartment buildings have terraces). A terrace is a large, spacious balcony, except that a balcony protrudes beyond the walls of the building, whereas a terrace doesn't stick out so much as it fits in.

You can see how our terrace extends out
beyond the walls of the house.

Our terrace sticks out just a little. I have a feeling it was originally designed to be narrower, but then somebody decided to make it wider during construction of the house so that the terrace would be spacious enough to accommodate outdoor furniture. That's why it extends out just enough beyond the roof line that rain falls on the edge of the terrace. When the slope was wrong, the water formed a puddle in front of the door that separates the outdoor from the indoor space.

The roof doesn't completely protect the terrace from rain.

Okay, enough of that. I'm going to get used to calling it a terrace in English and I'm trying to stop feeling that "terrace" is a snooty-sounding term. By the way, a patio, to me, is always on the ground level.

As for « à la terrasse » vs. « sur la terrasse » in French, it seems to me that when you take an outdoor table at a café in Paris, you are « à la terrasse d'un café ». The waiter or host might tell you there's a table available « en terrasse ». At home, when we are sitting outside, we are « sur la terrasse ». But I'm not Parisian or French, so don't count on me for the definitive answer.

Here's how we cleaned the deck in pre-Kärcher days.

In a comment, I introduced two other constructions — « à Paris » and « sur Paris » — for comparison. I was joking. Even so, I hear such expression with « sur », which means "on", more and more often. I think that « sur Paris » or « sur Chartres », for example, means "in the Paris area" or "in the Chartres area." For Paris, it's always possible to say instead, for example, « je travaille en région parisienne » instead of « sur Paris ». But for Chartres, what are the possibilities? « Je travaille sur Chartres », meaning in and around the town, seems useful to me.

This balcony-like part of the terrace on
the north side of the house is pretty useless.

Be careful though, because purists will tell you that the preposition « sur » used with the name of a city or town is simply an error — une faute de français.

Isn't it fun learning a second language? Most native speakers of French never think much about questions like the ones above.

Mowing in mid-November

Did I mention how nice the weather still is here en région saint-aignanaise ? Walt actually got out the lawn mower and cleaned up the yard a little bit yesterday, after lunch. We are doing our best to take advantage of these unseasonably sunny days.

Maintenance

2011-11-19T09:25:00.002+01:00

I hope you didn't think I meant blog maintenance. No, I'm not doing that, even though I sometimes think I ought to close the blog down for a few days and work on my index. I stopped updating the index a couple or three years ago. But I'm afraid the shutdown might have to last weeks for me to finish that project, and, well, I'm just not much of an indexer.

No, my title has to do with house maintenance. It has to be done. The chimney has to be swept annually, for insurance purposes. No Certificat de Ramonage, no coverage. And then the roof has to be looked at. We have a persistent leak right over the kitchen. It seems that that part of the roof needs to be re-configured. We've asked for an estimate from a couvreur — a roofer. We'll see, next spring.

The terrace on the front of our house is a maintenance hog.

Right now, it's the terrace that we've been working on. Terrace. Deck. Balcony. What we have is larger than a balcony, maybe. And it's not a deck because it's concrete and tile, not boards and nails. So I guess it's a terrace, but that word bothers me somehow. The term seems more grand than what we actually have. But I don't have another name for it.

Getting the terrace tiled was one of the first improvements we made when we moved into this 1960s French house in 2003. It had been covered with — of all things — "Astroturf," that green plastic horror from the '60s and '70s. Outdoor carpeting. And it hadn't been maintained, so the Astroturf had absorbed a lot of rainwater and grown a lot of algae and moss. It was gross — not to put too fine a point on it.

For some reason, the terrace was built to wrap around the north
side of the house, where it's too narrow to be of much use.

The new tile was a fine improvement, but we had to have a large section of the tiling ripped up and re-done in 2008, because the slope was wrong and a big puddle of water would collect right in front of the French doors whenever it rained hard. You stepped out the door onto the tiled surface from the living room and you were wading in water half an inch deep. That was a bad thing if you happened to be wearing bedroom slippers. We found a tile contractor who managed to fix the slope of the deck and lay new tile. Houses settle — elles « travaillent » — over the years, and they develop unwanted slopes and low spots and cracks.

The way the terrace is designed is strange. There's no provision for drainage if water gets on the surface. It just has to run off the edges. And since the house faces east, the edges don't get any afternoon sun. Shade + moisture in this part of the world means one thing: moss. So moss grows profusely along the edge of the balcony, especially in winter.

I didn't take any "before" pictures, but
you might remember this one.

Add to that the fact that water gets on the terrace tiles with regularity because — guess what — the roof overhang doesn't completely cover the tiled surface. The terrace sticks out farther than the roof does. When any rain falls, it falls on the edge of the terrace and then runs down any slope it finds to run down. I don't know who had the bright idea to build it so that it wasn't all covered by the roof. Maybe they decided to enlarge the terrace after the original plans were done.

Yesterday we blasted it off with a Kärcher* that friends Jean and Nick loaned us to use while we were figuring out with model of this famous brand of power-washers we want to acquire. It was sort of fun, really, on a mild, almost warm sunny morning. We are now certain that we want to invest in a Kärcher for future projects. A couple of days ago, Walt cleaned the terrace tiles with it and it works great.

Does this edge really need to be painted? Eventually,
all traces of white paint on it will have chipped and washed away.

As a bonus, we have another decision to make. Should be paint the edge of the terrace or leave it "natural"? We had it painted in 2003, when we first had the deck tiled. Since then, we haven't repainted it. It seems like a lot of trouble, and it really ought to be repainted every spring. That's what some of our neighbors do. It looks pretty, but still, is it really worth the trouble and expense?

So there you go. This post is about what a 1960s French house looks like. What features it has. And flaws. What maintenance tasks it imposes on its owners.

* Kärcher, a German-brand high-pressure washer, became especially famous when in 2005 French president Nicolas Sarkozy said of the housing projects in the Paris suburbs that somebody needed to take a Kärcher in there and clean out the "scum" that live in the projects. It was not one of Sarkozy's more felicitous phrases.

Sauerkraut, an autumn event

2011-11-18T09:10:00.000+01:00

I'm posting here a lot of photos and a brief description of the process of preparing and cooking raw sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is a German word, of course. Some say that sauerkraut is not German, originally, but Alsatian — Alsace being the old province that sits at the eastern edge of France, up against Germany.

The Alsatians have their own language (or dialect), which is Germanic, and they of course speak French as well. Alsace was under German control from 1870 until 1918, but France took it over again at the end of the World War I. In the Alsatian language, sauerkraut is called sürkrüt, and that's where the French word comes from. Choucroute is a French transliteration of sürkrüt, according to what I've read. So choucroute literally means "cabbage cabbage." Never mind.

1.4 kilos/3 lbs. of raw sauerkraut from Chez Doudouille
at the market in Saint-Aignan

Contrary to what you might think if you've eaten sauerkraut in the U.S., choucroute is not vinegary. It is shredded cabbage that has been salt-cured in a brine including juniper berries. It's not vinegary, but it can be salty. To make it palatable, it needs to be rinsed thoroughly in fresh water, and then it needs to be blanched in fresh, unsalted water too. Finally, in Alsace and all over France, choucroute is cooked in white wine. The best wine to use is a dry but fruity wine, like a good Chardonnay or, especially, and Alsatian white wine like Riesling or Sylvaner.

Aromatic vegetables and smoked pork lardons (bacon)
enhance the flavor of raw choucroute

According to the Larousse Gastronomique, the process of curing cabbage in salt to make sauerkraut removes some of the vegetable's natural nutrients, but it also makes the cabbage much easier to digest. The fermentation that takes place neutralizes the chemicals in fresh cabbage that cause intestinal distress, and cause the formation of soothing lactic acid in the intestine.

Here's the sauerkraut after about an hour
of cooking on top of the stove

It also seems to me to take away that cabbage taste and smell that so many people find unpleasant. Properly rinsed, blanched, and then cooked with carrots, onions, bacon (lardons in French), juniper and allspice berries (or cloves), and white wine, choucroute is mild and flavorful at the same time.

In the U.S., we eat sauerkraut as a condiment with frankfurter sausages, while in France the frankfurter is sort a condiment — a flavor added — to be eaten with choucroute. In fact, there are two similar sausages that can go with choucroute — German saucisses de Francfort or Alsatian saucisses de Strasbourg. Another usual accompaniment is smoked sausage, in the form of either saucisses de Montbéliard or saucisses de Morteau. Both are made in the mountains on the southern edge of Alsace.

Choucroute garnie with smoked chicken

In his book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Harold McGee calls sauerkraut "a refreshing side dish for rich meats" and describes its aroma as "remarkable, almost flowery."

A lot of foie gras is made in Alsace, so other meats people there might serve with sauerkraut are confit d'oie or confit de canard. I've discovered that it's also very good with smoked chicken, which is always available in the supermarkets here in the form of whole chicken smoked with beechwood. Having chicken instead of cuts of cured or smoked pork with choucroute at least gives you the impression that you've lightened up the dish.

Beechwood-smoked chicken from the supermarket
in France

If you can't get raw sauerkraut where you live, I'd recommend rinsing and re-cooking any pre-cooked sauerkraut that you buy. Instead of cooking it for three or four hours the way I do, you could reduce the cooking time to less than an hour. Don't omit the white wine. I think that would improve the pre-cooked product, and you've be sure it wouldn't be too salty, vinegary, or "cabbage-y."

Potatoes for boiling or steaming — they're a must
with Alsatian choucroute garnie

That said, one day a few years ago a French friend of mine served sauerkraut for about eight people, including me, my mother, and others. It was delicious — the choucroute itself was sweet and tender, and the accompanying meats were beautiful and delicious. I asked my friend how long she had to cook the sauerkraut to make it so good. She looked surprised and told me she just opened the tins, heated it up for 15 minutes, and served it. I don't know if she added any white wine. So it all depends on the quality of the pre-cooked sauerkraut you can get.

Add some thick-sliced poitrine fumée (smoked bacon)...

The other way to go is to make your own sauerkraut from scratch. I've never done it (no need to here in France) but I know people who have, and they've told me it's not difficult. It just takes time. You have to shred several pounds of fresh cabbage and then salt it down and let it ferment and cure for three or four weeks in a big plastic or ceramic container. Here's a link to an example and to a post about the result.

...and then cook this, covered, in a slow oven for 90 minutes.

I'm not posting a recipe here because I've posted about cooking raw sauerkraut before. It was two posts, Part 1 and Part 2. I've also posted before about serving smoked chicken as part of a choucroute garnie, here. I also once bought some pre-cooked French choucroute in a jar at the supermarket and compared it to my home-made version. Here's that post.

Les vins nouveaux arrivent aujourd'hui

2011-11-17T07:44:00.002+01:00

Last night we watched a television show on France 3 about the history of French presidential elections since the Fifth Republic was set up by General De Gaulle in the early 1960s. One short segment was about a candidate in 1995 — a sitting prime minister — who didn't win the election.

One of the reasons why he didn't win, the report said, was that he was too distant, almost haughty, and people couldn't relate to him. They didn't like him. As evidence, they showed him attending a campaign event in Burgundy at which wine was served. Somebody poured him a glass of Chablis (a Burgundy Chardonnay wine) and he said, « Non, merci, je n'aime pas le vin de Chablis. »

How about a glass of red Burgundy, then? No, the tactless candidate said, "I don't drink Burgundy. I only like Bordeaux wine." Oops. That's not a good way to win over a crowd in Burgundy, where wine is big business and, especially, the object of a lot of local pride. Most of the movers and shakers in the region are involved in wine in one way or another.

So in France, it's important to know something about wine, and to appreciate wine in general. Don't come to the Loire Valley and tell people you only like Bordeaux. Try a Chinon, a Bourgueil, or a Touraine rouge. And smile and say it's good, no matter whether you think you'd prefer a Burgundy, a Bordeaux, or a Côtes du Rhône. The point is not to compare wines, but to enjoy the local products for what they are.

Touraine Sauvignon and Gamay vins de primeur
are being released to the public today.

By the way, the primeur wines are being released today in Touraine and elsewhere. Those are the 2011 vintage wines, and they have just barely finished their fermentation. They're light and fruity, and need to be consumed right now. They won't benefit from aging — au contraire. They are made to be enjoyed even before all the 2011 leaves are off the vines. They are an antidote to the autumn blahs.

The winemakers of the Beaujolais region turned the vins nouveaux phenomenon into a big event in France and worldwide. The fad seems to have died down slightly now, because people realized that it was overblown and over-marketed. It's still an event in France. The morning news just had a report about a crowd in Lyon waiting until midnight last night for a first taste of the 2011 Beaujolais Nouveau. It's a wine that gives us joie de vivre, one woman said.

The "new wines" are not touted as the finest wines you'll ever taste. But they are light and refreshing, they're interesting as a category, and they give the wine business overall a boost just before the holiday season. Some cynics might say you'll enjoy getting back to your regular wines after tasting a few vins nouveaux.

Guy Lévêque's wines are made from hand-harvested grapes
in Saint-Romain-sur-Cher near Saint-Aignan.

Walt and I got a preview of the 2011 Touraine nouveaux wines yesterday. The ones we bought are not AOC wines but of the vin de pays category — local wines. Maybe it's only the AOC primeur wines that can't be released until today.

The wines we tasted yesterday, from the Domaine de la Reine in Saint-Romain-sur-Cher just across the river, lived up to the name nouveau. The Touraine Sauvignon white was good as an apéritif, and the Gamay red was tasty with our lunch of roast pork shoulder, pommes de terre frites, and salad.

November sunrise, from inside

2011-11-16T06:45:00.001+01:00

These are my morning views. When I get up at about 6:15, it's still completely dark outside. This month and until the end of January, we have the shortest days of the year, and they are very short. Today the sun will rise at 8:00 a.m. and go back down at 5:18 p.m.

Above and below, the view from the front windows at 8 a.m.

Fact is, however, that this November is, so far, the warmest November in France since weather records have been kept. That's what the news and weather people were telling us yesterday. We've had a good amount of rain over the past two weeks, but not even a threat of a freeze, and no frost.

Pull back the curtains for a better look.

Callie's walk schedule makes photography difficult when the days are so short. It's still pretty dark when we go out in the morning, and it's already pretty dark when we go out late in the afternoon. Only once in a while there's an especially sunny morning or afternoon when there's enough light for the camera.

And then take a closeup.

I envy people who are new to France, or just visiting, and who are out and about visiting the sights and sites. Here's an example. They have a lot of pictures to show, and they have all that enthusiasm that overtakes you when you're exploring a new environment, a new country. It's too bad we can't all live like that all year long. But we'd all be exhausted. Our photos would be nice though.