Snow? No — fog.

When you look at the photo below, which I took from an upstairs window yesterday morning, you might think it had snowed. It had not. You can see that when you look at the ground in our back yard and, especially, the green trimmed top of our laurel hedge. The little white truck parked next to the maison de vigneron belongs to a man named Roland who lives in the village and was out hunting yesterday afternoon.

January 1, 2017 — just before noon in the Renaudière vineyard outside Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher

The frosty vineyard and woods are all white because it's been foggy for three or four days, with temperatures below freezing for much of that time. Until yesterday afternoon, that is. Around 3 p.m. a little westerly breeze came up and all the frost started melting. By the time I went out with the dog at 4:30, the white was nearly all gone and water was dripping out of all the trees around the edge of the vineyard. The weather report on Télématin says there's snow, changing over to freezing rain, north of the Loire Valley, including in Normandy and the Paris area, this morning.

Cuisses de canard confites, slow-cooked and packed by the Jean Larnaudie company in Figeac (southwestern France)

Meanwhile, yesterday I mentioned the confit de canard we would be having for lunch with our New Year's Day black-eyed peas. It came out of a large tin (6 inches in diameter and 3½ inches tall). I thought the four duck leg-and-thigh pieces were beautiful, and then they were delicious at lunchtime. Earlier, I had opened the can and warmed it up in the oven for a few minutes so that I could get the duck pieces out unbroken.