Blog travails give way to reason, or rationalization, and fine food

I hate it when the work of producing the blog becomes a hindrance to focusing what they came to call "the content" back at Claris/Apple. At the time, about 10 years ago already, "content" was the new buzzword in software companies. It had been "discovered" by the people who ran the company. As a writer and editor, I found that to be pretty amusing.

In the software industry circa 1997, just producing software tools — word processing, database, graphics, and spreadsheet applications — was no longer a sufficient raison d'être. Thanks to the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, "content" was the new differentiator. A company was better than its competitors if it produced better "content."

This is the kind of content I like.
Appropriate labels: apples, pie, food, healthy.

Well, now I better understand the value of that distinction. I've been bogged down in the details of "labeling" my blog topics — indexing them — for the past 24 hours. And I wonder if anybody really cares whether the blog has an index or not. I don't want to go overboard and end up with a list of umpteen million "labels", or index entries. But a list of just 10 or 12 labels might not be very useful either.

So I have to keep telling myself: don't let anything get in the way of the important things in life. Blogging is not work. It's essentially a way to pass the time and stay in touch with friends. Content is the point.

Label this: beef, broccoli, oyster sauce, recent lunch

For me, the things that matter are food, photos, Loire Valley sights and history, and interesting glimpses of local life. The blog isn't a reference document. It's just a durn' diary.

If you ever want to find something in it that you remember reading, you can use the full-text search feature that the software provides. Type a word in the little white box at the top of the blog screen and click Search This Blog. Usually it works fine.

Walt is the one who knows how to make theses, from crust to finished product. Label this recent creation "beautiful, delicious."

I've done some preliminary indexing, and I will surely do some more. Going forward, it will be easier. It's the part that involves going back over 284 topics to label them, using fairly primitive tools, that is so time-consuming. And I keep telling myself, too, that not every topic I've written merits an index tag. Some of them, if not most, are throw-aways.

Meanwhile, yesterday's lunch at La Renaudière was a Southern & French fusion meal. Garden-grown collard greens from our freezer, along with black-eyed peas imported from Portugal, the frozen leftovers from New Year's Day. Plus a smoked saucisson à l'ail that I bought at Intermarché. And a chunk of pork roast that was left over from making the pâté lorrain last weekend.

A lunch of beans 'n' greens, with embellishments

I wonder if I am the only person in France who grows collard greens in his jardin potager? When I worked in Washington DC back in the 1980s, one of the other translators on my team was a woman from Reims, in Champagne, who had lived in Canada and the U.S. for many years. She told me that she had taken her father some packets of collard seeds and that he was growing greens in his garden on the outskirts of town. He loved them, she said. I had visions of candle-light dinners featuring collards and fine champagne!

I happen to know that this gentleman has now passed on, so it is very possible I am the old collard-grower in the Hexagon (that means France) now. If you know of any others, tell me about them.

Sometimes I can't resist buying prepared food that looks really good and that I have never made myself. If I like something I've bought, I can try to make it myself later, and I'll know what it's supposed to look and taste like. One of the advantages of living in France is that such tempting delicacies are widely available.

Bouchée à la reine, haricots verts, purée de potimarron

For example, there is something called a bouchée à la reine -- a morsel fit for a queen. It's a puff-pastry shell filled with veal sweetbreads (ris de veau) and mushrooms cooked in a cream sauce. It's kind of a pot-pie taken to an extremely refined level. I remember eating such things once in a while back in the 1970s, when I lived in Paris, but I've never tried to make them myself.

One recent Saturday, I noticed some bouchées on display in a charcuterie stand at the market in Saint-Aignan. All I had to do was re-heat them slowly in the oven and prepare some vegetable accompaniments. A fast-food meal the way I like them.