Pork and beans

This might not be what you think of when you hear the name "pork and beans." As I said yesterday, I made pulled pork over the weekend. On Saturday, I cooked a very lean 2.5 lb. pork shoulder roast for 8 hours in the slow cooker, with a lot of spices and about half a cup of vinegar. When the meat was tender, I took it out of the cooker and let it cool overnight. I warmed it up just slightly yesterday morning and pulled or shredded it. In French, this is called un rôti de porc effiloché. You could do the same thing with turkey legs, discarding the bones, cartilege, and skin. Just below, you can see what the pulled pork looked like.

I had found some haricots plats (Romano green beans) at the supermarket for the first time in a while. They are a variety of haricots verts (green or string beans) and I like them a lot. You could substitute other green beans or even a different green vegetable.

After trimming the beans and blanching (par-boiling) them, I melted some duck fat (you could use butter, vegetable oil, or some other fat) in a frying pan and heated up the beans and some pulled pork in it.

To round out the meal, instead of cooking pasta or potatoes, for example, we decided to make a pan of corn pone to have with the pork and beans. That's a style of corn bread. It all went together very well, I think.

No, I haven't stopped...

I haven't stopped what? Cooking. I still cook almost every day (on other days we have leftovers). Yesterday for example, I made two things. Or we did. Walt made pie crust and I made a quiche filling for it. And while the crust was resting I made a big dish of pulled pork with a pork shoulder roast that I bought at the supermarket (a kilogram for just four euros).

Une quiche aux champignons avec oignons et lardons. We ate this much of it for lunch yesterday.

These are the makings for pulled pork. I'll "pull" it this morning.
Above is what it looked like when it came out of the slow cooker.

Ussé... another château!

After lunch in Langeais, we drove on west and crossed the Loire. We wanted to go see the Château d' Ussé,which the guidebooks call a fairytail castle. We just parked for a few minute. Their were many cars in the parking lot and many parents heading toward the château with their children. I had been there 10 years earlier and posted about the Château d'Ussé as recently as 2022, with pictures of the interior. Here's a link.

Encore un château : Langeais

Just about 20 minutes by car downriver from Luynes is another, even better-known château, the Château de Langeais. I've been there several times. Charles-Henry had lunch at a sidewalk café Langeais on the July 2010 day when we spent some time in Luynes. We didn't spend much time in Langeais or around the château there because the purpose of our stop was mainly having lunch there. I think CHM had been there before also.

I'm pretty sure that's a church in Langeais in the photo just above, on the left. The monument on the right above is called Cinq-Mars-la-Pile. It's just outside Langeais. Nobody really knows what purpose it served. Was it a lighthouse for boats plying the waters of the Loire? Was it a mausoleum for a rich 2nd century merchant? Anyway, it's Gallo-Roman and stands 100 meters (about 100 feet) tall.

Wandering around in Luynes

Half-timbered houses, and old stone steps leading up to the château

That's CHM in the middle of the picture above.

The covered market hall in Luynes dates back to the 15th century.

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P.S. I finished my week of prednisone a couple of days ago. I'm sort of waiting to see what happens next. So far, I feel a few twinges of pain in my wrists and elsewhere, but it's manageable pain. I'll go back and talk to the doctor next week, after I've spent a few more days on ibuprofen if needed. I don't know if there is any other treatment that will make things better. Anyway, I can type again, and use the mouse. That's progress.

Carved wood figures in the town of Luynes

There are several maisons à pans de bois or maisons à colombages down in the town of Luynes, below the château. The half-timbered house on the main square (photos above and below), near the old market hall, is decorated with these carved wood figures. The house dates back to the 15th century.

Inside the old walls at Luynes

As I (or my sources of information) pointed out in yesterday's post, the forbidding fortress at Luynes was transformed into a comfortable residence (by the standards of the time) in the late 1500s. It was then acquired by new owners in 1619 and further improvements were undertaken. My photos here show what Luynes looked like int 2010, when I went there with my late friend CHM on one of our numerous day trips around the Loire Valley.

 

The same family has owned the Château de Luynes since 1619, if I can believe what I've read in guidebooks. The duke of Luynes lives there, and he is the 12th duke to do so since the early 17th century.

The Michelin Green guidebook for the Châteaux de la Loire says that in fact, only three families have owned and occupied the Château de Luynes since the 11th century. The Wikipédia article about it says it has not been open to the public since 2016.

All around the Château de Luynes

"The sturdy grey stone towers of the Château de Luynes, high on the hillside above the little terraced town, make it look like a real stone fortress" — thus sayeth the Thomas Cook Publishing's Loire Valley guidebook. "In fact, it was tranformed from a castle to a home 600 years ago."

Cadogan's Loire guidebook chimes in: "Standing guard high above the Loire [...] west of Tours on the river's right bank, the formidable medieval Château de Luynes [...] dates back to the 13th century..."

On the left just above is a view of the terraced town of Luynes as seen from the château.

Driving into Luynes

The town called Luynes, pop. 5,000, is about 10 miles west of the city of Tours on the Loire river. CHM and I went there in July 2010. I don't know if he had ever been there before, but I know I hadn't. Luynes includes a medieval fortified château built on high ground on the right bank of the Loire. We didn't go inside because it required a guided tour, which neither I nor CHM of us particularly enjoy(ed). I myself would rather read about and then see, or see and then read about such places while looking at photos I've taken. Actually, the one just below is a photo CHM took when we went to Luynes back then. I was driving.

I'll post more photos of the Château de Luynes over the next few days.

And then Tasha says...

I'm sure I heard somebody say "ride in the car" — Are you ready? Let's get going!

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P.S. Day four on steroids: I'm feeling pretty good this morning. And our weather is supposed to improve greatly over the next three or four days.

Day three

Today will be my third day on the seven-day prednisone / prednisolone regime prescribed by my doctor here in Saint-Aignan as a trial run to see if my wrist inflammation (arthritis) starts to get better as a result. I feel some improvement already, but I'm a skeptic because the swelling and the pain levels vary so much from day to day. This morning I have little to no swelling and only very mild twinges of pain. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

More later... 

More September plants

We won't know until next spring whether it will survive, come back, or need to be cut down. On the right are some cascading petunias that we planted in June. They didn't fill out and and look great, for some reason, despite frequent watering and a feeding or two. Maybe the weather was just too hot for them. We had extreme heat waves in June, July, and August.

Above left is a sedum (stonecrop) that I planted in a jardinière back in 2003. It lives in the planter outdoors 12 months a year and so far has never failed to push up new leaves in spring and bloom in early autumn. On the right are some pyracantha berries I noticed glowing in a neighbor's hedge along our road.

In our own back yard

Yesterday I found a solution to my phone/camera security problem. I looked through my collection of half a dozen digital cameras, all of which have wrist straps. And I found a strap that will work with the phone. So I strapped it to my wrist yesterday morning and went outdoors to take a few pictures around the back yard.

The hot dry weather we had from mid-June until mid-September got the best of our artichoke plants. The first photo above is a long shot and the second one is a closer view. No worries. We'll cut the tall stalks down to ground level and the plants will come back from the roots next spring.

I don't remember having so many Queen Anne's lace (carotte sauvage) plants in our back yard in past years. They came up spontaneously in August.

We seem to be seeing more and more cyclamen plants like these in the back yard. These are the early ones that come up and bloom in the early autumn. There's another variety of cyclamens that come up in the yard in early February. Something to look forward to...