August? Ha!

Okay, Walt built a fire in the wood stove yesterday afternoon. On August 10! We are not exactly having a heat wave. I guess this is a summer for the history books. The non-summer summer.

I read about all of you people on the East Coast sweltering in temperatures approaching or even exceeding 100ºF. Our high temperature yesterday was 17.2ºC — that's 63ºF. We've had only three days so far in August when the temperature reached 75ºF. Those days felt hot because it got up to 80º, and one day it hit 85º. But that just makes all the other days seem that much colder.

One garden success this year has been the artichokes.
There are three of them on this plant.

People are complaining about the weather, but the optimists point out that we often have une belle arrière saison here in Saint-Aignan — that means nice warm weather in September and October, the "back season." I'm afraid the only summer we might have this year will have to be an Indian Summer.

We have also had close to an inch of rain this week. Luckily, artichokes like cool, gray weather — that's why so many of them are grown in Brittany and along the northern California coast. Ours are one of the few bright spots in our garden this summer. If we can figure out how to protect the plants from freezing this winter, we might have a decent crop of artichokes next year.

Yesterday I actually picked half a dozen little red tomatoes out in the garden. They don't look very healthy, but we'll try to eat them today to see if they are any good at all. We are getting zucchinis and cucumbers, and there are a lot of pumpkins out in the pumpkin patch. We are also getting some nice haricots verts from the few plants that survived the damp chilly weather in June and July.

Sushi master at work

Yesterday Walt made some more sushi rolls for lunch. We had a ripe avocado left, and another cucumber from the garden. We had some shrimp in the freezer, and there was sushi rice left over from a couple of days before. And we have plenty of nori sheets — that's the seaweed you wrap the rice rolls in. Walt is becoming an ace at sushi making, which is supposed to be hard to master.

Just as we sat down to lunch, somebody rang the front bell. It was Gisèle stopping by just to say hi before she went to the neighbors' for lunch. We showed her the sushi rolls. I'm not sure she had ever seen them before or knew what they were, but she said she was against the idea of eating raw fish. We told her we made our with cooked shrimp this time.

Some recipe said to put a sheet of plastic wrap between the sushi mat
and the nori sheet, but the plastic just got in the way.
It's better to roll up the susi directly on the mat.

"You bought these, right?" she said. "Vous ne les avez pas faits..." You didn't make them yourselves. Yes we did, we told her. They are rice, cucumber, avocado, and shrimp wrapped in algae sheets. Seaweed? I showed her the nori sheets in their package. She didn't look too enthusiastic. I guess we should have a sushi party for our local friends. I'm sure they would like it if they tried it.

These were the first rolls Walt made. He said he used too much
rice and not enough cucumber, avocado, and shrimp in these.
I thought they were delicious.

Next time, I'm going to buy fish. I'll ask the fish monger at the Saturday market in Saint-Aignan for some sushi-grade salmon or tuna. That's what a fellow blogger (Amy H.'s blog topic about it is here) who lives over on the other side of Tours did. The fish stand in Saint-Aignan has high-quality fish and shellfish, and I'm sure the woman who runs it will sell us good fish that can be eaten uncooked.