Météorologie

We've been "enjoying" — not! — skies like the one above for a while now. Below is today's weather map for France. The northwest (Bretagne et Normandie) are getting the damp weather right now. The whole system is moving toward the southeast and will be over Paris, Tours, and Saint-Aignan this afternoon. By the end of the week it's supposed to turn dry and warmer.

Choucroute garnie

This is salt-cured, uncooked sauerkraut as it looks in the container it's sold in. The tub holds five kilograms (11 lbs.) of cured cabbage. It needs a thorough rinsing (or several rinsings) to get rid of the salt, it's cured in. Optionally depending on how old or recent the sauerkraut is, you can also give it a good blanching, which means to put in into a big pots of boiling water for five minutes or more. After the blanching you can eat the sauerkraut raw (in a salad, for example) or you can cook it slow and low for three hours on the stove. It has a sweet taste andd is very delicate and tender.

These are some of the meats you can cook to eat with the sauerkraut. I personally like to have a smoked chicken with it. The sausages are saucisses de Montbéliard from eastern France, along with saucisses de Strasbourg (the largest city in Alsace) or de Francfort ("frankfurters" from Germany).

The sauerkraut itself is cooked with carrots, potatoes, juniper berries, bay leaves, black pepper, allspice berries, cloves (girofle), and a small amount of salt

This is a hot-smoked chicken that I buy at the supermarket and cook for an hour or more in the pan with the sauerkraut. It's beechwood smoked and gives good flavor to the kraut. I cook the slices of smoked pork belly with the sauerkraut as well.

Here it all is on the plate at the table. We bought some Alsatian wines (Riesling, Sylvaner, Pinot gris, etc.) wines to have with it as we eat more of the sauerkraut and trimmings over the next weeks and months.

The choucroute glut

So as I said I drove over to Intermarché, one of our three local supermarkets, a week ago yesterday (on a Friday). I went to the charcuterie counter in the store and asked the clerk if she had any choucroute crue (uncooked sauerkraut). Oh, she said, I'm sorry but we don't sell that product any more. But, she added, I can order you some and you can come pick it up on Monday. How much do you want? One kilo, I told her. She said that would be fine. The supplier will deliver it to us early Monday morning.

I can't remember if it was that Friday afternoon or maybe Saturday morning, the clerk with the choucroute called us on the phone. I'm sorry, she said, but I won't be able to get the choucroute you ordered for Monday morning. If you still want it, you can come pick it up on Tuesday. That was okay, I told her. When I went over there Tuesday morning, the young clerk wasn't there, but her supervisor was. She apologized profusely. Maybe we'll get the delivery tomorrow morning, but I can't guarantee that we will. You can call me if you don't want to drive over here again tomorrow.

Wednesday morning, Walt said he wanted to go over to Intermarché to pick up a few things he had seen in the store's weekly flyer, which had come in the mail on Monday. Good, I said. Can you pick up the sauerkraut I ordered the other day? Sure, he said.

When he came back from the store, he had bad news. The young clerk had told him that the sauerkraut still hadn't been delivered to Intermarché by the supplier that morning. The clerk said she didn't know if it would ever be delivered. We could check back during the week either by coming to the store or by calling her on the phone. Oh well, I said to Walt, I think I'll go over to Intermarché tomorrow (Thursday) and see if the kraut has arrived. If not, I'll buy a head of cabbage and make a potée (a "hot pot" of pork and cabbage) instead of choucroute garniefor lunch tomorrow.

I had already bought all of the cuts of meat the we would have had with sauerkraut, and the same meats go into a potée — smoked sausages, frankfurters, slices of cured pork belly, and my personal favorite, a smoked chicken. Besides the sauerkraut, vegetables like carrots, turnips, parsnips, and steamed or boiled potatoes can be cooked as part of either a choucroute garnie or a potée.

The next day (Thursday) I drove back over to Intermarché one more time. The charcutier counter supervisor was there. She saw me coming and seemed surprised and worried. I greeted her with a big Bonjour Madame, Il y a de la choucroute ce matin? Oui, she said with a smile of relief. I was just getting ready to call you. It finally came. Meanwhile he was busy wiping down the glass countertop where she puts the products people want to buy. She said a man had bought some ham, and when he moved the package liquid leaked out of it all over the place. The man kept moving and spilling more more liquid until she begged him to stop because he was leaking liquid on everything.

She turned away to go back behind the counter and as she walked away she was saying that two other customers had ordered uncooked sauerkraut and theirs' was ready for pickup too. They each ordered a kilo of it, and you ordered a full bucket, right? I wasn't sure I had understood what she said. A bucket in French is a seau, pronounced [SOH]. Did I understand you to say un seau, I asked. Yes was the answer. I said, no, I ordered just a kilo, like the other two customers. I don't think I have enough space in my freezer to put a full bucket in there. Let me go check the orders, the supervisor said.

Non, you ordered un seau de choucroute, she said. That's what the clerk wrote on your ticket. Luckily, When I ordered it, I had thought to ask the clerk for an order ticket with all the details on it and to put the ticket in my pocket as I left home to go to the store nearly a week later. On the ticket, in the clerk's handwriting, it was clearly noted that I wanted one kilogram of uncooked sauerkraut), along with my name (Monsieur Charles in this case) And my phone number. Oh la la, the supervisor said, cette jeune fille qui a pris votre commande ne fait que des bêtises!. She can't do anything right. Now I'm going to have to repack the choucroute and return it to the supplier. Décidément...

She opened the seau (I think we'd call it a tub rather than a bucket) and started to spoon out my kilo of kraut. Attendez, I said. What is the weight of the tub? Five kilos, she said. And the price, I asked. Five euros, she said — one euro a kilo). I'll take it, I said. Are you sure? Yes, I think I can make room in my freezer for it. So I'll take the whole seau.

Yesterday morning, we got all of it into the freezer, one kilo of kraut in each of five plastic   containers and bags. We'll be eating choucroute all winter.Luckily, we both like it. I cooked some for lunch yesterday and it was delicious.

Une abondance de choucroute

I wrote about ordering uncooked sauerkraut (de la choucroute crue) a few days ago. I had ordered some a week ago today from the charcuterie shop at Intermarché. It finally came in yesterday, to our surprise. Tomorrow I'll write about why all this happened and why I ended up with too much sauerkraut.

The sauerkraut I ended up with came in a bucket.

I've been busy rinsing, blanching, and cooking a couple of kilograms of the salt-cured, raw cabbage this morning. More tomorrow. We'll be eating choucroute all winter...

Les feuilles mortes

Well, the weather forecasts were right. It's raining today. Yesterday morning I went out and took some more pictures. The weather was chilly but beautiful — especially the skies, but also the leaves on the ground as well as those that are still on trees or vines. This photo shows a linden tree (called a lime tree in Europe) on the left and two apple trees (on the right) in our back yard.

Relief

I'm running out of colorful vineyard pictures. The leaves are falling

more and more abundantly, with fewer and fewer left on the vines.
I took these pictures more than a week ago.

I don't talk much about politics on this blog. My word of the day is "relieved"
after seeing the election results in the U.S. this morning.

Looking west at sunrise, late October

It's supposed to be sunny and warm here for the next few days.

I'm headed to Intermarché this morning to pick up some raw choucroute (French sauerkraut) that I ordered and plan to cook this week, along with all the meats we enjoy having as part of our choucroute garnie. To my way of thinking, it's a bad sign that raw (uncooked but salt cured) choucroute is now only available if you order it ahead of time. Until now, it was a standard item that was available for purchase at the charcuterie counter at Intermarché at this time of year. I buy a good amount when I buy it. It freezes well.

Our neighbors' summer place out in the country

Yesterday morning we went back over to the neighbors' maison de campagne — we used to call those "summer cottages" in North Carolina — to see if we could find the eggs and soup the neighbor said she had accidentally left behind when she and her mother left the day before to drive back up to Blois, where they live. I don't know how old the house is, but I know that the current neighbor's mother and father bought the place about 50 years ago. They told us that only have the roof still had roof tiles on it; the people who were moving out took the rest of the tiles with them. It also had dirt floors, at least in part. The house sits on some six acres of land, much of it wooded.

The current (part-time) neighbor has now inherited the house. She, her husband, and their their children and grand-children come down here maybe 10 or 12 times a year (more often in summer) and spend a few days here, or even a week or two, at a time. Her father died three or four years ago at the age of 94. Her mother doesn't drive, so since then  has depended on her daughters or grandchildren to drive her down to Saint Aignan. The house has a fairly big bedroom, a big eat-in kitchen, and a decent-sized living dining room on the ground floor. Also, the attic was long ago converted into living space. There's one private bedroom up there, but no plumbing of any kind. Most of the space is a dormitory where visiting friends and relatives can sleep when they come here. In summer, most of the action takes place outdoors. They often have big gatherings of friends and relatives out there, and large catered meals.

A few months ago, the family threw one such party (100 or so guests) to celebrate their mother's/grandmother's 90th birthday. We were invited, and when I was talking to the honoree she told me that this little house in Saint-Aignan is the one she and her late husband could really call their own, because they didn't inherit it but picked it out themselves and had it fixed it up back in the 1970s.

Just above is a Google Maps view of the family house where the grandmother lives up in Blois. She and her husband inherited it when his father died. It's right on the street but has a big back yard. The house itself is big — they raised half a dozen children there.

Our hamlet in autumn

Our hamlet is made up of 9 houses occupied by about a dozen full-time residents. Six of those people are older couples, including us. The others who live here are a young couple with one young child and a single woman who has two children. The other houses in the hamlet are occupied part-time by people whose primary residences are in big towns like Blois, Nevers, and the Paris suburbs. You can see three of the houses I'm describing, including ours, in the photo below It's next to a big lone conifer that grows in our back yard.

Our neighbor who I ran into yesterday out in the vineyard, when I was out walking the dog, left the hamlet yesterday with her ninety-year-old mother to return to Blois. In the afternoon, Walt got a text message from her saying that in their rush to hit the road, they had left a carton of eggs on their kitchen table, along with a container of soup they had bought at the supermarket. She said they had also accidentally left an electric radiator on somewhere in the house (she didn't say where).

Would we go get the eggs and soup the and keep them for ourselves, she asked, and would we see about the radiators? Of course we would. We went over there late yesterday but we couldn't find any eggs or soup. We forgot to feel the radiators to see if any of them were warm. So we'll have to walk back over there today and look around some more. It's just across the road and we've had their keys for 20 years now.

Maples

The weather yesterday was warm-ish and skies were blue. It was a nice afternoon for a walk with Tasha. And for sitting a spell out on the terrace and just relaxing. I snapped this photo of our maple trees while I was out there. It's supposed to rain all day today. After all, we need the rain, the weather forecasters tell us. Welcome to November.

I ran into the neighbor out in the vineyard this morning. She was walking her dog. I asked about the mower that's en panne. She said it was just a broken belt, so no big deal. The only problem is that it's a mower part that has to be ordered, and it might take a month for it to get here.

One vineyard picture a day

I got my flu and Covid vaccinations yesterday afternoon. Then I had a really bad night trying to get some sleep. Now my inflamed wrist is acting up again. I wonder if that could be related to getting the shots. Time will tell, I suppose. I'll go see the doctor again next week and see what he says and/or prescribes. 

Pictures and news

Every time I go out walking with the dog I take my smartphone with me. That's in case I fall down and need help getting up off the ground. I can call Walt to come help me get back home again. Or I can call the rescue squad to come rescue me. And every time I go out I see colors and shapes and scenes that inspire me to take a few pictures. Here's one:

We got two pieces of bad news yesterday. First, a good friend in the U.S. as tested positive for Covid. I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet. With the time difference and the end of daylight saving time in France but not yet in the U.S., it gets confusing and it's hard to stay in touch.

The other bad news was something we witnessed yesterday. Our across-the-street neighbor was out on his riding mower cutting the grass on his very big property for, I assume, the last time this year, before the heavy rains really set in. Then suddenly, his mower's motor stopped running right outside our front gate. Several other people came out of his house to see what was happening, and they spent 10 or 15 minutes trying to get the mower going again. Finally, they gave up and three or four of them pushed the machine back onto their property toward the garage where they keep it in storage over the winter.

This is a big deal for him, because now he has to find somebody to come get the mower, push or pull it up a ramp onto the back of a truck or a trailer, and drive it to who-knows-where to have it repaired. And then it has to be brought back. Last year this happened, and they were without a mower for nearly a year. They are the neighbors who live in Blois and have inherited their elderly parents' house in the country. They were having major renovation work done at their house in Blois when all this happened last year. I don't know if that work ever got finished.

Une omelette avec beaucoup d'épinards

If you like spinach, you'll like this omelet. It was our lunch yesterday. The other ingredients are eggs, cheese, diced onion and garlic, salt and pepper. Sauté the onions and garlic lightly in butter or oil in a non-stick frying pan. Then sauté the spinach leaves in the pan and stir the garlic and onions into them until everything is tender. Don't forget the salt and pepper.

Take the spinach out of the frying pan and set it aside, keeping it warm in a microwave or other oven. Beat four eggs in a bowl with a tablespoon or two of water and pour them into the frying pan. Put some grated or thinly sliced cheese on top of the beaten egg. Keep the heat low and cover the pan so that the egg cooks through and the cheese melts.

Finally, spread the cooked, warm spinach over half of the cooked eggs.Let the egg brown slightly, and then pull the other half of the cooked egg mixture up over the spinach. Slide the omelette out of the pan (or use a spatula) onto a serving platter with some french-fried or sautéed potatoes. It easily serves two or three, or even four.

Who's that lurking in the vineyard?

Look closely...

I'm taking a day off. I haven't written much about my inflamed wrist joint. That's because it's not really bothering me much right now. Not to say that all the pain is gone, but the debilitating pain is gone. I still have to go see the doctor again this week or next.

Walking out into the vineyard

I took this picture yesterday morning on my walk with Natasha the Sheltie.

Cooking with olives

Earlier this week, I bought a pork tenderloin roast over at Intermarché. It was for sale at a good price. I brought it home not knowing what I was going to do with it. I thought about cooking it in a cream sauce with mushrooms and onions as a kind of blanquette de porc, but we had made and enjoyed eating a blanquette de veau the week before, and we have leftovers from that in the freezer. Looking through my blog, I came upon a recipe for veal in tomato sauce cooked with onions and olives. I decided to make that.

I wanted a lighter tomato sauce, so I used a couple of fresh tomatoes (with a squirt of tomato paste) along with some chicken broth for the sauce. It kind of resembled a stir-fry, so we decided to eat it with steamed white rice — round rice in English, I think, and riz rond in French. The pork, onions, and sauce cooked together for about 90 minutes. I added some pitted black olives about 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time. Green olives would be good too — or maybe some of both.

Here's a photo of the veau aux olives I made back and 2009 and based this porc aux olives on.
And here's a link to that post.

Waiting and watching

They are doing it again. TéléMatin is saying that today is the next-to-last time that we will have to re-set our clocks in Spring and in Fall. Winter time and Summer time will be just a memory. Problem is, they've been saying that for about 10 years now. We shall see.

Above is a photo I took in October 2015 — ten years ago.

This coming week we'll be getting our influenza and covid 19 shots. One in one arm, the other in the other arm. I hope I don't get the flu. Back in California, for three years in a row I got a flu shot and, each time, not long afterward, I came down with the flu. So I stopped getting them. I haven't ever had the shot or the flu again since then. We'll see this time.

October storm clouds over Saint-Aignan

We have had a lot of unsettled weather this past week. I took these pictures of our October skies three days ago. Since then, we've had rain and a lot of fierce wind. We're waiting for the weather to settle down and for the landscaping contractors crew to show up and start trimming our long, tall, and wide cherry laurel hedge before winter sets in. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying watching and taking pictures of puffy white clouds against a bright blue sky.

Re-planted vineyard parcels

The noise of stormy winds and heavy rain kept me awake for a while last night. I've been sitting here in front of my laptop for nearly two hours now, and the winds are still fast and and furious. The worst weather is along the coast though, so in a way we're being spared. Did you know that a tornado touched down just north of Paris (10 miles from Notre-Dame cathedral) a few days ago?

Here are some recent photos of new stakes and wires that will support newly planted grape vines next year. The newly planted parcel of vines is less than half a mile from our back gate.

Yesterday's afternoon walk

The tree on the left above is my plum tree. I planted it in 2010. I had grown it by potting up pits from plums growing on a neighbor's tree. A few weeks ago, its leaves were a deep purple color. Now they've turned a brighter shade of red. Above right is a snowball bush growing in that same neighbor's yard. It's looking good this year.

There aren't many Queen Anne's lace plants this late in the season, but I noticed a pretty one yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday Tasha and I had an encounter with two border collies when we were out walking. One of them, a female, was friendly and curious to see Tasha. The other one, a male pictured above, was more aggressive. The woman who keeps them came running over to get them back in her yard. Somebody had left her front gate open, she said. This is the same woman whose billy goat attacked Walt after escaping from her yard last winter. She seems like a nice person, but she needs to pay more attention to her animals, I'd say.

Yesterday morning's sunrise

I took this picture out in the back yard at 9:15 yesterday morning. It was not a brilliant start for the day.
In fact, we had alternating sunny spells and rainshowers all day long.

More old vineyard photos

These are some photos I took in the Renaudière vineyard back in October 2018.
I was using a Panasonic Lumix-TZ3 compact digital camera back then.

By the way, today is the 20th anniversary of my blog. I posted for the first time on October 20, 2005. About what? About food, of course. The ED market featured in that post closed down many years ago...

Yesterday's pink sunrise

I can't decide whether I'm having trouble getting the colors right on this photo, or whether this is

what sunrise really looked like yesterday morning. The sun rose at about 8:17.