Domfront — buildings and businesses

After going to Domfront for the first time in May 2005, we returned in June 2006, when we were on our way from Saint-Aignan to the Mont-Saint-Michel with our friend Sue from California. We took a long walk around the town and then spent a night in the hotel-restaurant below before continuing on to the Mont.

Domfront — paysages

The middle of May in 2005 in the southern part of Normandy around the town of Domfront. Green, green, green. This is an area where a lot of pears are grown and made into pear cider (poiré in French).

Wood fires for the winter

I'll get back to Domfront tomorrow. For today, I'm posting about firewood. We had 5 cubic meters (nearly a cord and a half) of the stuff delivered Friday morning. In this first picture, on the right, we had already stacked about half of it, so the disorganized pile on the right is about half of the delivery.

My small contribution is the little pile under a garage window on the east side of the house. We stack the wood under the front terrace, where it stays dry for the winter. Today I hope to get the small pile about twice as big as it is right now — up to the window ledge.

Walt has been working on a much larger woodpile, as you can see on the right. He builds wood towers that hold the woodpile up on either end. If we don't finish today, we'll be able to cover what remains of the disorganized pile with a tarp and wait for the rain predicted for tomorrow to be over with before we stack the last little bit of wood.

And where does all this wood go to be burned? It goes into this little wood stove that we had installed in our living room fireplace back in 2006. It's a nice supplement to the heat we get from our oil-fired boiler and our cast iron radiators, and wood is almost free (not quite, of course) compared to the cost of fuel oil.

Some Domfront history

The text in this post is my translation/adaptation of a sign posted for visitors at the site of the ruins of the Château de Domfront in Normandy. The sign is hard to read because the text is in all caps, there are no accents on letters, and there are no spaces after punctuation marks. As usual, you can enlarge the image for a better view.

In about the year 1010, at the far western edge of his territories, Guillaume de Bellême built a wooden fort on top of a rocky outcropping on the southern edge of Normandy. Nothing remains of that structure. Made Lord of Domfront in 1092, then king of England (in 1100) and duke of Normandy (in 1106), Henri I Beauclerc, the third son of William the Conqueror, had a fortified stone tower built on this site, along with the St. Symphorien chapel, a priory affilated with the abbey at nearby Lonlay. This was one of the most formidable fortresses in France at that time.

The château served as a residence for the Anglo-Norman kings in the 12th century and was used as such by king Henri II Plantagenêt and queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, as well as by Richard the Lion-Hearted and John Lackland.

In August 1161 at Domfront, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter known as Eleanor of England, who was probably baptised in the chapel at the Domfront château. She would later give birth to the French queen Blanche de Castille (wife of Louis VIII) and the grandmother of French king Louis IX, who was known as Saint-Louis. In August 1169 in Domfront, Henri II Plantagenêt met with emissaries sent there by the Pope to try to work out a reconciliation between him and Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury.

When the French king Philippe-Auguste conquered Normandy in the year 1204, ownership of Domfront and its château was granted to various members of the French royal family over the course of the 13th and subsequent centuries.

During the Hundred Years’ War, the château was occupied by the English from 1336 until 1366, and again from 1414 (after a nine-month siege) until 1450. It was one of the last towns in Normandy that the French crown succeeded in taking back from the English after that long war.

In the late 15th century, the château was “modernized” to accommodate artillery weapons. In 1574, during the French Wars of Religion, the Protestant leader Gabriel de Mongomery was forced to surrender himself and Domfront to the Catholic commander of the Royal army, the Maréchal de Matignon, after a long siege.

Declared obsolete, the château was demolished in 1608 by order of the French king Henri IV and Sully, his powerful minister. The first restoration work on the site dates back to the 1860s when it was turned into a park that replaced vegetable gardens the townspeople had planted on the property. The old fortifications were excavated and restored beginning in the 1980s.

La ville de Domfront en Normandie

The town of Domfront (pop. 4,500) in lower Normandy is about three hours west of Paris by car, and about an hour east of the famous Mont-Saint-Michel. I don't think I had ever heard of it — despite having spent a year in Rouen in upper Normandy 50 years ago — before Walt and I moved to Saint-Aignan 20 years ago. I remember being excited reading about it in the Michelin Guide back then. We first went there in 2005, I think, and we weren't disappointed. Domfront was described in the Michelin Guide as a hilltop city. We went back in 2006. The town has existed for at least a thousand years.

More to come...

Chou-fleur au gratin

One of my favorite cabbage dishes — on the same level with choucroute garnie, but very different — is cauliflower au gratin. Here's how it starts. You cut a fresh cauliflower into fleurettes and steam (or boil) them until they are still slightly under-cooked.

While the cauliflower is steaming, make a sauce béchamel — flour cooked in melted butter with the addition of milk/cream, salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg) until thickened. Turn it into a sauce mornay by added some grated cheese.

Arrange the nearly cooked cauliflower fleurettes in an oven-proof dish. Add some lardons (little pieces of bacon) or some cubes of chicken or turkey.

Spoon or pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower and meat in the baking dish . Sprinkle some grated cheese over the top for extra flavor.

Voilà le résultat. You could make this with broccoli fleurettes or with brussels sprouts if you prefer. Cook it in the oven until the sauce is bubbling and the top of the gratin is browning. Be careful not to burn your tongue when you eat it.

Weather forecasts

Above are two weather maps from Télématin this morning. Today (above left) looks pretty miserable. In fact, according to a weather site I track, we have had 18 minutes of sunshine since November 1 (today is Nov. 7). And between October 25 and Oct. 31, we had a grand total of 2 hours and 48 minutes of sunshine. It's getting old, and according to weather forecasts for the next week of so, it's not about to get much better. Tomorrow might be an exception, and I hope it will be. By the way, Tours is 130 miles southwest of Paris, and Saint-Aignan is 35 miles east of Tours.

Our skies recently have looked like the one above, or worse — we've had dense fog for quite a few days. At least (above right) we've had this view out of our front windows for the past week or two.

Bagnoles-de-L'Orne, a spa town

Bagnoles-de-L'Orne (pop. 2,000) is a spa town located a little less than an hour's drive west of Alençon in lower Normandy. zit's the largest spa in western France, according to the Michelin Green guidebook for Normandy). People go there to "take the waters" for circulatory disorders and as a preventive treatment against varicose veins. Bagnoles is a good place to take a walk and just admire the beautiful landsapes, the lake, and the grand houses all around the town.

According to a local legend, in the Middle Ages a prominent man named Hugues de Tessé, upon arriving in the forest surrounding the town of Bagnoles, realized that his horse was suffering and didn't have long to live. He decided to abandon the horse in the forest, and continued his journey on foot.

]-pA few hours later, the horse caught up with him and seemed to be in much better health than when he was abandoned. The horse, which he called Rapide, guided Hugues to the natural hotspring where he had found water to drink. The cure was like some kind of miracle. Hugues drank from the spring and was likewise rejuvenated. The reputation of the waters at Bagnoles was born.

La Choucroute servie avec poulet et porc

Last week I wrote about having bought a nice cauliflower and also two kilograms of raw sauerkraut over at Intermarché, the supermarket that's closest to us as the corbeau flies. Here's what became of the sauerkraut. We've had two choucroute meals so far, and that's after having cooked just one kilo of raw kraut. The 'kraut itself cooks for three or four hours on low heat. Sauerkraut is cabbage that is cut into strips, salted, and left to ferment for days or even weeks. If you rinse it thoroughly, the salt washes away and the fermented cabbage is tasty — almost sweet — especially if you add a good amount of white wine to the cooking liquid along with carrots, onions, bay leaves, and spices (cloves, juniper berries, allspice berries, black pepper). Served with the cooked sauerkraut are boiled or steamed potatoes with butter and smoked meats.

Usually, the meats are pork, but nothing says they have to be. I like to have a smoked chicken with mine, along with smoked sausages, saucisses de Strasbourg (frankfurters) and thick slices of bacon (pork belly, poitrine fumée). All the meats are to be eaten in moderation of course, and hefty portions of cabbage go with them. Above you can see the smoked chicken, which we can buy already cooked at the supermarket. It just gets partially buried in the sauerkraut toward the end of the cooking, along with the bacon and smoked sausages, for 30 minutes at most.The potatoes are cooked separately and served hot with the choucroute and meats. Don't forget the Dijon mustard.

Lonlay — l'abbaye etc.

Not far west of Alençon...

For some people, pizza is almost a religion...