Pity the aoûtiens ... for now

Les aoûtiens are the people who take their summer vacation in August, which is août in French.

Maybe the vacationers who really went south for the month are not unhappy with the weather. But those many who are in Brittany or Normandy, along the coast, hoping to enjoy the beaches and the water, have to be disappointed. August has come in wet and chilly.

Saturday afternoon down at Les Laurendières,
near Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher

The skies in Touraine this Monday morning are a leaden gray, and a steady rain is falling. Our temperature is 18ºC — that's something like 66ºF. Luckily, the windows are closed — because of the rain — and the temperature in the house is much warmer.

Steak-frites for lunch on Saturday, with oignons
confits (slow-cooked onions) as a kind of chutney

It didn't rain all day yesterday, and we were able to have a meal using vegetables and fruit from our garden for the first time. Zucchinis and an eggplant, for example, along with some onions, garlic, and tomatoes from the market, made a good pasta dish. And some pears from an old pear tree out in the yard went into a good cake, for dessert.

Pasta with tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash,
shrimp, and sausages

Now if the tomatoes would start ripening, and the green beans, we would be in hog heaven. The weather is supposed to get a lot better later this week. We'll have to go into high gear to process those tomatoes and beans for the freezer if the sun comes out and the weather warms up as predicted.

Callie trying to figure out how the pasta dish
got into the computer

Meanwhile, down south, around Marseille as well as in Italy and Spain, people are suffering through a major heat wave, with temperatures in the mid-90s F. The hot weather we had in July has headed south for its own vacation, I think.