Citroën cars, a greenhouse, and two wood piles

These are the last of my sunshine pictures. It was sunny for one day: last Thursday. On the next three days it was damp, misty, foggy, and cloudy. Today's predictions: more of the same miserable weather in northern France, including Saint-Aignan, for the rest of the week.

The top three cars sold until recently in France have been (1) Renaults, (2) Peugeots, and (3) Citroëns. Now German cars like Audis, VWs, and Mercedes are getting more popular, especially among younger people. French cars used to have a bad reputation for reliability. Well, I'm still driving a 24-year-old Peugeot that runs great and is fun to drive. And I also drive a 2007 Citroën, which looks like a new car and is very comfortable. I see so many Citroëns on the road these days. And they don't look or ride like the old 2CV cars.

(Above) three Citroëns, ours on the right under the carport (we also have a garage where we park our other car); one greenhouse that needs to be emptied out and re-organized (when the weather gets warmer and drier); two piles of oak logs that gradually get fed into our wood-burning stove (we also have central heat — a boiler and radiators).

It's wood-burning season. We ordered and stacked a truckload of firewood a month or two ago (Walt did most of the stacking). We had a scare with the wood-burning stove around that time, but we found a company that could send us the replacement part we needed. It took them a month to get it to us, but it only cost 50 euros and fit perfectly. Having a wood fire nearly every day as a heating supplement is very nice and atmospheric. Besides, wood is much less expensive than the fuel oil we have to buy to run the boiler.

Other news: the dollar is soaring. Right now the U.S. dollar will get you 96 eurocents. That means $1,000 U.S.will get you €960.00 (euros). That's almost parity. The dollar hasn't been this strong in 20 years. Also, let me say that according to a French weather site I track, we have had about 28 hours of sunshine this month. That would be about 4 days with sunshine out of 31. Tomorrow I'll post some pictures I've taken on our foggy days.

Winter around the house and yard

   Sunny wintertime pictures. Some of what you see: our wisteria plant needs a good pruning. A lot of raking or leaf-blowing needs to be done too. It's just been too wet and/or too cold. Maybe in spring we'll be able to get some plants potted up... At least the inside of the house is warm and comfortable.

Hamlet houses (1)

These are just a few more sunshine pictures that I took last week. The first three show our house out in the country near Saint-Aignan (just two miles away). We bought the house in 2002 and moved to France in 2003. In the third picture above is our dog Natasha, a Shetland sheepdog that we've had since 2017. We've had only one bright sunny day this December. Early in the month, we had a lot of rain. Since before Christmas we've had thick fog most days. It's been dreary for a while now. For almost a year, really.

There are nine houses in the little settlement where we live. Five of them, including ours, are lived in year-round. The two in the pictures above are the two that are closest to ours. They are not lived in by the people who own them and who come here from the big towns of Blois (less than an hour north) and Nevers (about three hours east) only once in a while to spend a weekend or a few days in the hamlet.

Du soleil en décembre ? C'est inouï !

On the day after Christmas here in Saint-Aignan, the sun suddenly broke through the fog and clouds. It was unbelievable. I went out with the dog and my camera in the afternoon. I had forgotten how low in the sky the sun could be at that hour. It was blinding if I looked west. If I looked toward the east I and the camera could see, and you can see in the photo above how long a shadow I cast. You can also see how much mud and muck there is where old vines have been ripped out of the ground and either burned or hauled away. Overall the vineyard that used to feel like a beautiful park now feels like a construction zone (un chantier in French).

Not only have people been digging things up around here, but some animal or animals are digging up our neighbors' yards. We suspect wild boars (des sangliers) because Walt saw a small herd (un troupeau or une compagnie) of boars out in the vineyard a week or two ago. He said there were eight or ten of them, some adults and some just young'uns. There's not much difference between wild boars and feral pigs (I mean pigs that have been released or have escaped from farms). We've cooked and eaten both, and the meat tastes about the same. I read the other day that a pig that has returned to the wild will grow tusks pretty quickly and become aggressive. Pigs and boars eat small animals, bigger animals that have been wounded, and animal carcasses, as well as frogs, lizards, snakes, and insects. Maybe they are digging up our neighbors' land searching for food like moles or voles.

Guinea fowl leftovers

We had more of the pintade for lunch yesterday. Here's what it looked like (according to my telepone's camera). I'm not sure about the colors, even though I've adjusted them in Photoshop. We were certainly happy with the bird itself, however. It was better yesterday than it was on Christmas Day. I made a cream gravy for it, but I'm not posting a photo of the bird with the gravy.

I was just reading about pintades on Widipédia. France is apparently Europe's biggest producer of Guineafowl (as Wikipedia spells the word). It might be the world's biggest commercial producer of pintades. I was interested to see that there's no mention of the food qualities of pintades in French Wikipédia. But here's is a paragraph on English-language Wikipedia about the characteristics of Guineafowl meat that reads:

Guineafowl meat is moist, firmer and leaner than chicken meat and has a slight gamey flavour. It has marginally more protein than chicken or turkey, roughly half the fat of chicken and slightly less food energy per gram. Their eggs are substantially richer than those of chickens.

A bread-pudding farce for poultry

The word for "stuffing," as in what you stuff into a chicken or turkey before you bake it, is farce in French. Une farce. Here's the farce we cooked and ate with our Christmas Guinea fowl yesterday. It's a kind of sweet-and-savory bread pudding made with French bread, chicken broth, and as a binder, two or three beaten eggs.

The flavor ingredients include (clockwise from the bottom of the picture above) the liver of the bird you're cooking; mixed vegetables like carrots, beans, turnips, and garden peas; walnuts (or other nuts); bell peppers; mushrooms; onions, shallots, and/or garlic; pork lardons (bacon); celery; raisins and/or dried cranberries (rehydrated); and diced prunes.

The first step in making the farce is to cook the ingredients that need cooking: chopped onions, shallots, and or garlic; celery; mushrooms; bell peppers; lardons, etc. Also add in any herbs (thyme, oregano, parsley, sage...) and spices (cloves, allspice, fennel seeds, black pepper, cayenne pepper...) that you like.

Turn off the heat and stir in the other ingredients (fruits and nuts). Finally, add the cubed bread (French bread, croutons, cornbread...) and stir again. Pour on a cup or two of hot chicken broth and some melted butter, duck fat, or olive oil) and stir everything around until it's all moistened (but not swimming in broth). After the stuffing has cooled down, pour on two or three beaten eggs and stir it all again. It's ready to bake for 30 to 45 minutes.

Un chapon de pintade pour Noël

Here's what our Christmas bird looks like this year. We got it from the poultry vendor who sets up at the Saturday morning outdoor market in Saint-Aignan. It's a chapon de pintade (aka une pintade chaponnée). Pintade is French for "Guinea fowl." It's not that different from chicken as far as the meat is concerned, but it's something special to have for Christmas.

A picture of the oven-ready bird taken using my phone's standard photo mode

A picture of the same bird taking using my phone's food photo mode

Bon Noël 2024 à toutes et à tous

Christmas Eve in Saint-Aignan

It's cheese day here, at least at our house. That means a cheese fondue, made using Alpine cheeses — French cheeses in this case. These cheeses would be called "Swiss cheese" in the U.S., but in fact all four of these are French cheeses. We grate them and then melt them in heated white wine until the mixture is thick and kind of stringy. You eat it by skewering a little cube of crusty French bread (or fresh, raw apple), dipping it into the melted cheese, and then sticking it into your mouth. You have to be careful not to burn your tongue and the roof of your mouth when you eat it.

One of the cheeses in this year's fondue might well be Emmental, which was originally a Swiss cheese but has been produced in France too for many decades, if not centuries. This is the cheese that we Americans think of as Swiss cheese. It has small to big holes in it. Another cheese in the mix will probably be Gruyère. It's another originally Swiss cheese but it doesn't have holes in it. It has also been produced in the French Alps for decades or centuries. Le Gruyère français sometimes has some very small holes in it, but nothing like the holes in Emmental. French Gruyère and Emmental are delicious, melted or not, but they don't carry the AOP (Appellation d'Origine Protégé) authenticity label that the Swiss versions carry because they weren't originally made in France but in Switzerland.

Two other cheeses that might go into this year's fondue are Abondance and Comté. Abondance has holes in it, as you can see in the photo above. It's made in the French Alps and carries the AOP label. It's made from milk given by local cows and has not been pasteurized. Abondance is the name of the region where it's made and also the name of one of the breeds of cows that give the milk used to produce the cheese. Between three and four thousand tons are produced annually these days.

Comté is another type of "Swiss" cheese that is made in France. It's produced in the mountainous region that borders on Switzerland north of Geneva. Like Abondance, it's made from unpasteurized (raw) milk and it carries the AOP quality label. The Comté I'm using in the fondue has been aged or matured (affiné) for at least four months, and the Abondance has been aged for at least 100 days, according to the labels on the cheeses. One major difference between these two cheeses is the amount of each that is produced annually. Sixty thousand tons of Comté are made every year. It's the AOP cheese that is produced in the largest quantities in France. It's also the Swiss-style cheese that I buy most often these days. I like its taste and the way it melts. There's always some Comté in our refrigerator.

Christmas in Paris

As I said yesterday (or was it the day before?) I've been trying to do some maintenance work on my photo database before the whole thing comes crashing down like a château de cartes. It was at the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic that I started losing control. I happened to notice the photos above, which are much older than that.

I enjoyed seeing them again. They brought back good memories of many Christmases past in Paris, and memories of visits from friends who were among the very first to come to see us here in Saint-Aignan. That was back in Dec. 2004, and we had been here for less than a year at that point. The visitors were our friends Evelyn and Lewis. As I admired the photos, I realized that they weren't ones that I took, but they are some that Evelyn took in Paris that Christmas. I'm trying to remember if that was the first time I ever met E. and L. face to face. I think it was. Over the years we've enjoyed spending time and seeing the sights in Paris several times, in North Carolina, in Alabama, in the Auvergne region, and in Normandy.

This is not it...

Yesterday, for dessert after his birthday dinner of steak au poivre, frites, et salade, Walt made a tarte aux pommes. But this is not it. This is one he made 10 years ago, in Dec. 2014, on his birthday. I don't know if he plans to post a picture of the one he made yesterday.

The 2024 Christmas tree

Here's a photo of this year's sapin de Noël. Many of the ornaments are 40 or even 50 years old. A lot of them were gifts from friends who have now passed away. By the way, today is Walt's birthday — his 65th. Steak au poivre for lunch...

I'm busy doing some much needed maintenence on my photo database. It's sadly neglected. Wish me success.

Blanquette de porc (2)

The blanquette made with pork shoulder turned out to be really good. The pork itself was very tender and tasty. I didn't have to cook it longer than I usually cook veal for a blanquette.

I'm still getting used to taking photos with my mobile phone. They come out very sharp, but I'm not sure about the colors. My Samsung A25 5G camera has a setting for food pictures, but I think that setting produces over-saturated colors. So I use the standard setting and tweak the colors in Photoshop.

Using standard settings, the blanquette sauce looked pale and too white. Using the phone food pictures setting, the sauce looked way too yellow. I tried to find a balance using Photoshop. By the way we served the blanquette with the vegetables that cooked with the meat, with mushrooms that cooked in the cream sauce, and with a side dish of a mixture of red and white rice.

Here's the recipe for blanquette that I like. This is my translation of a recipe in French that I've been using for 30 or more years.

2 to 2½ lbs. veal for stew
1½ cups dry white wine
1 carrot
1 onion
an herb bouquet (thyme, bay leaf, parsley, leek, etc.)
½ lb. mushrooms
½ lb. pearl onions
4 oz. cream
1 egg yolk
1 lemon
2 oz. butter
2 Tbs. flour

Put the veal in a big pot with the carrot (peeled and cut into four pieces), the peeled onion, the herb bouquet, and some pepper and salt. Pour in the wine and then add enough cold water to cover the meat by about an inch. Bring to a boil, skim off the foam that forms, and then let the veal simmer for two hours on low heat. Remove the veal from the pot and put it on a towel or in a strainer to dry.

In another pot, make a roux with the butter and flour. Pour in two or three cups of the veal broth to make a smooth sauce. Put the veal, the mushrooms (washed and sliced), and the little onions into the sauce and let it simmer for 20 minutes or more, until everything is cooked.

In a small bowl, mix together the cream, the egg yolk, and the juice of a lemon. Pour this mixture into the sauce, but don't let it boil or the egg yolk will scramble. Just let it thicken slightly on very low heat.

Serve the veal, the onions, and the mushrooms in a bowl, with just a little sauce over all. Serve the rest of the sauce in a gravy boat or bowl. Accompany with steamed rice (or pasta or boiled potatoes).

I usually skip the egg yolk thickening and just put a squeeze of lemon juice in the sauce at the end, along with the cream, to perk it up. And if I can't get tiny onions (pearl onions are harder to find here in Saint-Aignan than they were in California), I just cut up a regular onion and add it to the sauce along with the mushrooms.

You can make the same dish with chicken, turkey, or even lamb.

Blanquette de porc

We'll be going into high gear in the kitchen over the next week or so. Saturday will be Walt's birthday, and for that we always cook a French steak au poivre. Then three days later, on Christmas Eve, we'll make a cheese fondue (une fondue savoyarde) for our mid-day meal. On Christmas Day, we'll roast a guinea fowl (une pintade) that has been fattened, maing it into a capon (un chapon) with all the trimmings. More about those as all that unfolds.

Three views of the pork shoulder roast that I bought at Intermarché a few days ago

Meanwhile, for today and Friday, I'm going to make a blanquette de porc. Thats pork shoulder simmered until well-done with carrots, bay leaves, garlic, leeks, and white wine. I'm going to base it on my favorite recipe for blanquette de veau, cooking it a little longer because porc is naturally a little drier and tougher than veal. More about that tomorrow. Above are photos of the pork shoulder roast (un rôti d'épaule de porc) that I bought a few days ago. The pork had been de-boned, rolled, and tied (désossé, roulé, et ficelé by the butcher). I'll post a recipe and some photos of the cooking process tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I was looking through some old blog posts of mine and saw that I once pointed out that blanquette seems often to be something we make in December. This year is no exception. I also came upon the photo above of the church and château in Saint-Aignan, which I took exactly seven years ago today.

Decembers past

December views from and of our kitchen window

2019 (five years ago — that's the neighbors' house across the road)

2014 (ten years ago — this year, the weather has been gray and damp like this for months now)

2009 (fifteen years ago — the kitchen window is under the dormer window)

I ended up making eggplant lasagne

Yesterday I was looking at my recipe for Moroccan eggplant and potato au gratin and wonder what I wanted to do. I decided I wanted melted cheese in the dish, since it was being made with lasagna noodles. I was going to the supermarket anyway, so I bought some shredded mozzarella cheese to add to the tomato sauce, eggplant rounds, and noodles. Here's the process and the result. The first thing to do was make the sauce. I put some ras el-hanout in, but not as much as I had initially planned.

This is the sauce I made. It includes crushed tomatoes, sliced onions, chopped garlic cloves, ground beef, spices, salt, pepper, and herbs (bay leaves and dried oregano).

These photos show the process step-by-step. Make the sauce first and let it simmer for an hour or so. While it cooks, slice the eggplants, brush the slices with olive oil, and bake them in a hot oven on a sheet plan until they are soft. Optionally and separately, soak the lasagne noodles in warm water. That will make them soft and pliable so they are easy to work with.

Pour a layer of sauce into the bottom of a baking dish. Put a layer of noodles over the sauce. Arrange rounds of cooked eggplant over the noodles and top them with a layer of grated cheese. Arrange another layer of noodles over the eggplant rounds and cheese. Spoon sauce over those noodles and put on more grated cheese. I used mozzarella but use whatever cheese you like. I also sprinkled on some grated Parmesan for more flavor.

Bake the dish in the oven until the cheese is melted and is starting to turn golden brown. If the sauce and the eggplant slices are still hot, it won't take long. If you make the dish ahead of time and let it cool down, put it in a medium oven until the ingredients are heated through. Then turn the heat up for a few minutes to brown the top layer just before you take it out of the oven and serve it.