06 February 2015

Assurances - météo - cuisine

Assurances in French is what we call insurance in the U.S. Car insurance, in this case. Today is my day to go down to Saint-Aignan and modify my car insurance policy. I need to add the Citroën, which I'll go pick up on Monday morning, and I need to modify the coverage (le contrat) on the Peugeot. It really doesn't need to be covered tous risques (collision, liability, comprehensive — all that) now. It's not worth much any more.

Here in France you tell the insurance company how many kilometers you think you'll drive in the coming year, and you pay accordingly. If you go over the figure you gave them during the year, you have to go back and have the policy modified. I don't remember ever declaring what my maximum mileage would be when I was in California.

On the left: this seems to be the color of the Citroën. I found it somewhere on the web, with the RGB values specified.



Meanwhile, this is the kind of weather we've been having for a few days now. Low temperatures right around freezing, with a cold wind blowing, have brought us periodic morning snow flurries. The afternoons are slightly warmer. It could be worse.


So it's time for good, hot, comforting food. I've noticed that Berie the black cat is eating much more than he does in warmer weather, and we probably are doing the same. How about this sauté of pork tenderloin (filet mignon) with spices, raisins, chickpeas, and sweet potatoes?


Cut the tenderloin into chunks and rub the chunks with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin, fenugreek, smoked paprika, hot red pepper(piment fort), black pepper, and ginger. Sauté the pork with onions and garlic, and then add some water or broth to the pan to braise the meat with cooked chickpeas and, if you want, some raisins. After 30 minutes, add two or three sliced raw sweet potatoes to the pan. Ten minutes later, when the sweet potato is tender, it's done.

7 comments:

  1. Your landscape is completely green. I love you meal looks tasty

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    1. Can you easily get sweet potatoes where you live?

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  2. We have a thick frost here this morning. Still, it's better than the slithery snow or murky cold dampness that we've also had a lot of!
    Your pork tenderloin dish looks wonderful, perfect for a wintry day. Thanks for the recipe!

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    1. Hello Jean, hope you can get sweet potatoes where you are. If not, you could use wedges or slices of a winter squash, like buttternut.

      This morning, when I stepped out of the insurance company's office in Saint-Aignan, a Citroën C4 exactly like our "new" one drove by. Same color. I thought it looked pretty nice. It wasn't ours, I know, because the license place was different.

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  3. yea here i think we do get a bit better insurance rate if we put fewer miles on the car, also get reduction depending on where u drive...ie, big city with lots of traffic vs small town/country

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    1. I may be wrong about how insurance premiums were set in California. I drove so many miles every year that I might have just been taking the maximum every year. Here, I drive so little that I don't see the point of paying high premiums.

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  4. that pork tenderloin looks so good, cozy and nourishing on a winter's day.

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