15 February 2025

The shutters, the house, the yard, the neighborhood...

We enjoyed a rare sunny day yesterday, with an afternoon high temperature of about 50ºF. As a result, there was no cloud cover overnight, and this morning the temperature outside is just below freezing. The good news is that we're supposed to have another sunny day.

Above are a couple of shots of our house and some of our new shutters. They are solar-powered roll-down shutters. Push-button shutters are great.The black strip on the top left corner of each window is the photovoltaic converter that sends power to the shutters. On the right just above is a shot of our back yard, with its linden tree, two apple trees, and a garden shed that is slowly being taken over by ivy. I took the photo yesterday afternoon. No fog for a change...

Above left is a shot of the north side of our house, with its small window into the loft space over the living room (with the big window) and with, now, a new solar-powered shutter upstairs.

This is a photo of our Blois neighbors' house-in-the-country. It's just across the street from our place. The neighbors are supposed to be here this weekend but so far no sign of them. I hope everything is okay.

14 February 2025

Le nouveau volet, et des poivrons rôtis

Here's what the new volet roulant in the kitchen looks like. By the way, un volet roulant (a roll-down shutter) is also called un store. In the first photo, the store is closed but the sheer curtains are open. In the second, the sheer curtains are closed.

While the five new shutters were being installed, I was in the kitchen roasting peppers that I bought at the supermarket the day before. I roasted them in the air fryer. Five of them fit perfectly in the fryer drawer. They came out looking beautiful. Now all I have to do is peel them (in theory, the skin just falls or slips off) and then de-seed them (also a fairly easy job but messy). The roasted flesh of the peppers will be good in salads or eaten on crackers or toast with some goat cheese (fromage de chèvre) or cream cheese (fromage à tartiner) and a little glass of wine.

13 February 2025

La fenêtre de la cuisine, et les nouveaux volets

This is the window in our kitchen. It faces east, so it gets morning sun. It's cooler and shadier in the hottest part of the day, which is the afternoon. The window opening measures approximately 50 inches in width and 50 inches in height. It's a sliding, double-glazed PVC window that we had installed when we first came to live here, replacing an old French window that was single glazed.

French windows and doors traditionally open into the room they are installed in. In the case of this kitchen window, and in the case of similar windows in two small bedrooms in the house, that meant that as the the windows opened the glass panels pretty much swept across the entire room. One day, the woman who sold us the house in 2003 told me that one negative feature of the house (which her husband and his first wife had had built in about 1970) was something like les fenêtres sont trop grandes pour les pièces.

It took me a while to figure out what she meant. I think that was it. Sliding glass windows made a lot more sense, given the way the house was built. The window installer who put ours in told me later that he had been skeptical. He was pretty sure that we were going to hate the sliders. We didn't. It's what we had in San Francisco. I think they're great. Only the shutter (le volet roulant) on the kitchen window is a pain. First of all, it seems to take longer and longer to crank it up manually in the morning and down, again manually, at nightfall, as it ages. And it's dark when seen from inside the house as above.

Back in 2004, we had three windows on the back side of the house replaced with sliders. The old ones were leaking not just air but water. They faces west. We kept the old metal shutters for a few years but in 2018 had those windows fitted with roll-down shutters that are electric-powered. All you have to do is press a button and the shutter goes up or down. You can stop it when it's down or up far enough by pressing the button again. These shutters are solar powered, actually. You don't have to worry about power outages. And the sensor that re-charges the battery is powered even by dim daylight, not just sunlight. In other words, if we have a week or two of gray fog and rain, it doesn't matter. The shutters work just fine despite gloomy weather. They've been reliable for 6 or 7 years now. It's nice to be able to open an close the shutters without having to open the windows and let either hot or cold into the house.

Here's what the kitchen window looks like when the glass panels are closed or open and the old crank-operated shutter is closed. The wand and the crank mechanism are on the left. The new shutter that we're having installed today, along with new shutters on four smaller windows in the house, will be made of white PVC (vinyl). Two new shutters will also go on south-facing windows that really heat up when the sun shines brightly in summertime, making the house very hot. Two other new shutters will go on small, old, French-style windows that are single-glazed and drafty. They're up in the loft where we watch TV where we sleep. It will be nice to be able to "black out" the room in the daytime, and to be able to reduce evening and nighttime draftiness and noise.

Here's the kitchen window with the brown shutter and the curtains closed. Too dark, basically.

12 February 2025

"The Endive Show"

I'm naming this post after one of Julia Child's many shows about French cooking. I found it in her book titled The French Chef Cookbook (30th aniversary edition). She cooks endives in several different ways, including my favorite way, which she calls Endives et Jambon, Mornay. It required first making Endives Braisées à la Flamande. As you can see in the photo above, I wrapped my braised endives in streaky bacon instead of sandwich ham (jambon de Paris).Here is a link to a video of Mme Child's endive show. The segment about ham-wrapped braised endives starts at minute 21:53.

The smaller pictures just above and below show the endives I made at four stages of cooking, the first three in butter, a squeeze of lemon, a glug of white wine, and four cloves of garlic. The picture on the right below shows the bacon-wrapped braised endives covered in cheese sauce and melted cheese after cooking in the oven.

This last photo shows the leftover endives in that cheese sauce and the boiled potatoes I cooked to accompany them and sauce. I've blogged about gratin d'endives au jambon many times in the past. Type "endives" and hit Enter in the Blogger search field to find the posts.

11 February 2025

"Pulled" turkey "barbecue"

This how to make "pulled" turkey "barbecue (you can do the same with pork or chicken). In my case, I bought two leg-and-thigh sections of turkey. I seasoned them with spices including salt, pepper, paprika, etc. (to taste). Then I cooked them for about an hour in the air-fryer at medium temperature.


I took the pieces of turkey out of the fryer and let them cool so I wouldn't burn my fingers.The next step is to pull the cooked skin off the turkey meat and then pull the cooked turkey meat off the bones. Discard the bones. Wash your hands. Brown the chunks of turkey meat a little more in the oven or in a frying pan if you like it with more color and texture.

Take the chunks of meat that fell or got pulled off the bones and pull then into smaller pieces. Taste for seasoning and add what you like (BBG sauce, vinegar, spices, wine, a little duck fat (the turkey meat is very lean), and so on. It's is good on a sandwich bun with cole slaw; wrapped up in a burrito, enchilada, or taco; or in a kind of shepherd's pie (un hachis parmentier) made with mashed potatoes. It's all in how you season things.

09 February 2025

Wok de porc aigre-doux

It all started with two ingredient ideas: pineapple and bell peppers. It finished as yesterday's lunch.

It turned out to be Asian sweet-and-sour-pork. You marinate and then stir-fry some small chunks of pork (or chicken) with onions and garlic. You make a sweet-and-sour sauce using tomato paste (or ketchup), some spicy red paprika (or some sriracha pepper sauce), some pineapple juice (out of a can), and then add some cubes of pineapple and strips of bell pepper to the stir-fry pan. Here's a link to a good recipe.

07 February 2025

Rah-rah-rah raclette


I went out to the supermarket the other day — it had been a while — and bought quite a few packages of what in the U.S. we call "cold cuts" — salt-cured and smoked pork and poultry. The meats were not for sandwiches, but for the melted cheese dish called raclette. In the photo on the right above, you can see how the raclette cheese gets melted: in little trays that sit under an electric heating element.

We had potatoes we could boil, Brussels sprout we could thaw and sauté, and mushrooms we could cook, along with everything else, on the griddle that sits on top of the raclette appliance so that everything is served hot. Melted cheese went well with all of that.

It's kind of a do-it-yourself lunch or dinner that you make when the weather is cold and you've been out it in. It warms you up.

06 February 2025

A dog, a cold, and the flu

On my afternoon walk with Tasha yesterday, I ran into one of our neighbors (Philippe is his name) out at our back gate. He was out walking his tiny dog — a chihuahua, I think. Tasha and Philippe's dog have always gotten along together without any aggression or hostilities.

Philippe had rescued the chihuahua (whose name I don't know) more than a few years ago — I can't remember how long ago it was. One day, I was just getting home from a walk with with Tasha when Philippe pulled up in his car at our front gate and asked me if I recognized the dog that was in the car with him that. No, I told him. Well, I just found him about a mile back, out in the vineyard, and he seemed to be abandoned. I told P. that just the day before a man I didn't recognize had walked by while I was out with Tasha. He was walking with a small dog. I couldn't remember exactly what his dog looked like.

The stranger and I had talked for a few minutes, and he told me he had just moved into a house at the bottom of the hill we live on. It's the first house on the left when you turn left off the main road down the hill, he had said. I told Philippe about that encounter. Well, I'll just ride down and see if he's at home, P. said. A few minutes later P. drove back up the hill and said the man was there, with his dog, out in the yard. His dog wasn't the one that had been abandoned or that had run away.

I think P. asked me if I'd be interested in adopting the unclaimed dog. I said, no I couldn't, I had my hands full dog-wise already. Well, I guess I'll just keep him then, unless somebody shows up to claim him. I'll take him on afternoon walks, P. said. Maybe somebody will see us and recognize him.

As I said above, that was many years ago. Yesterday out at the back gate Philippe asked me how I was doing. I've got a bad cold, I told him. "You too?" was his answer. I said yes, I've been coughing and sneezing for three weeks. Me too, he said. I asked him if he had he been to see a doctor. Yes, he said. The doctor just prescribed some cough medicine which from my point of view is worthless. I told him I had had had the same experience. Have you had a fever, I asked him. No, no fever, P. said, but very achey joints. Me too, I said. We wished each other Meilleure Santé and went on our merry says, him down the hill with his dog and me out into the vineyard with Tasha.

The saddest thing he told me yesterday was that an old friend of his had caught the flu (la grippe), which has also been going around the Saint-Aignan area. My friend came down with flu and a fever last weekend, Philippe said, and he died early this morning.

04 February 2025

Beef-barley soup for lunch

Yesterday I made a big batch of beef-and-barley soup for lunch. We had about a cup-and-a-half of organic pearl barley on hand, and there were a couple of small beefsteaks in the freezer. The other ingredients we had on hand were carrots, potatoes, onions, thyme, oregano, white wine, mushrooms, bay leaves, escarole, and beef broth. Such a soup was nourishing, even fortifying, given the cold weather we've been having. Morning temperatures are down around freezing. Afternoon temperatures are milder, and we're getting some sunshine — well, we were until yesterday, when a thick fog lasted all day long.

03 February 2025

Une galette bretonne

This is also known as a crêpe au blé noir or au sarrasin. Sarrasin and blé noir are The same thing, and it's what we call buckwheat in English.

The crêpe itself is made with buckwheat, milk or water, an egg, and some salt and pepper. This is not the prettiest one we've ever made, but it tasted good. Inside or on the crêpe is a slice of jambon de Paris, a slice of cheese, some pre-cooked mushrooms, and an egg.

Here, in a photo I took in Feb. 2012, is what we hoped yesterday's crêpe au sarrasin would look like, but you don't succeed every time. At least it tasted good.

02 February 2025

La Chandeleur...

 Today is February 2, the date upon which falls the Catholic holiday called La Chandeleur. It is traditional to make crêpes on Feb. 2, and that's what we will be doing at noon time.

Today is also the first anniversary of our late friend Charles-Henry's death. He was 99 years old and had lived in the U.S. since 1969. He also owned an apartment in Paris, which had belonged to his parents for many decades. I stayed there with him many times after Walt and I moved to France from California in 2003. He and I traveled all around northern France during those years.

31 January 2025

Nothing but trouble

My trouble for the day is trying to leave comments on my own blog. I just don't know why it works one time and not the next. I appreciate all your good comments. If I don't respond, it's because Blogger won't let me. I have no idea what to do to force its hand. One day it works fine, the next it just limps along, and the third day it won't work at all. I'm not yet sure what kind of day this one is... or will be.

30 January 2025

Doctor's orders and a case of whiplash — all good news

I went to the local medical center for my appointment with my GP ("primary care physician" or, in French, mon médecin traitant. He and his assistant (or intern) carefully examined my right knee — the one that's been giving me fits for nearly two weeks now. Both doctor and intern pressed and squeezed the knee. They agreed that I had in all likelihood sprained or twisted my knee when I slipped on black ice while out for a walk with Tasha the Sheltie on the morning of January 18. That knee hurt more and more every day for nearly a week, especially every time I was going up or down stairs. And then it stopped hurting. Meanwhile I came down with with a raging cold and cough. All my joints started aching.

The doctor seemed to understand what had happened the same way I did. He said the minor sprain I had suffered because of black ice had basically repaired itself over the nearly two weeks that had passed since the sprain happened and I had come to see him about it and the cold. The right knee is on the mend. I just have to remain prudent and take it easy. He said he saw no need for an x-ray or MRI because it was obvious that nothing was broken. There was no swelling, and all their squeezing and manipulating of the knee didn't cause me any significant pain. All that was good news. The doctor said he would treat the cold symptoms and the coughing, and once all that was under control, the aches and pains I was feeling in all my leg joints and in my upper back would disappear. I hope he's right.

Meanwhile, before we left the house for the medical center a weird thing happened. I felt like I had something in my left eye. A grain of sand or a in-grown eyelash, maybe. I put drops in the eye, and I gently wiped it with a cold-water compress. That's when it happened. I saw a lot of dancing blue points of light with that eye, which is my strong one. Then, suddenly, my vision went blurry, just as if somebody had turned off the sharp, clear vision I had experienced after cataract surgery on that day back in September — the day after the operation. Later that day Walt and I were watching a movie with subtitles, and I couldn't read them. I also couldn't read my laptop computer's screen. Everything was blurry. I was feeling kind of desperate. What if my clear vision didn't come back? Here I was stuck with glasses no longer adapted to my eyesight.

I struggled to read an article on the internet that said the blue-dot thing was something that occurred routinely in some patients who had recently had cataract surgery. It would soon go away and my vision would clear up again pretty quickly. I hoped all that was true, and I went to bed after putting some more drops in the left eye. I hoped that I would wake up with clear vision this morning. And guess what? I did. Right now I can see just fine. What a relief! I can read what I've just typed on the laptop, and the TéléMatin TV screen is perfectly sharp and clear. I feel like I'm suffering from whiplash.

27 January 2025

I have an appointment...

...with my GP (médecin traitant in French) on Wednesday 01/29, in the morning. I imagine the GP will refer me to a specialist or two. We'll see.

25 January 2025

Thanks....

...to all of you for you sending your experiences, ideas, suggestions, etc. I'm not doing better this morning. I will call the doctor's office this morning to ask for an appointment as soon as possiblee. The good news about my knee is that going up and down on the stairs is not a problem. No pain. When I sit for a while, it's hard to get up and my first steps are pretty tentative and shaky. I have to be extremely careful. I'm going to be kind erratic as far as blogging goes for the next few days and weeks.

24 January 2025

Pride goeth before the fall

At 3:30 or so this morning, I found myself on the floor, unable to get up. No, I wasn't sleep-walking. I had gotten up to pee. The little bathroom upstairs in the loft is only about 5 steps from the bed. I don't know what made me fall. I'm pretty sure that my bum knee had something to do with it. I don't think I injured that knee further as I fell.

The problem was that I couldn't get up, even with Walt's assistance. We struggled for 15 or 20 minutesto find a solution, I think, but after trying every move and strategy, I was still on the floor, immobilized. Finally, I was able to pull my upper body up onto the bed, and my legs followed my torso, with Walt's help. I was comfortable enough to be able to sleep until around 6:10 a.m.

I'm starting to think that this sort of accident runs in my family. My mother fell as she was getting out of her car and ended up with a broken wrist. She was around 80 at the time, I think; I'll be 76 in a few weeks. My sister, who is about two years younger than me, fell a year or two ago and broke her arm. She was doing volunteer work in a food mission when it happened. I need to be more careful. I don't even know what made me fall, but at least I didn't break any bones.

23 January 2025

La Toux

La Toux is French for "a cough." That's what I've had for a few days now. Walt has it too, and has had it for a few days longer than I have. C'est une toux sèche it's a dry, scratchy cough, and I think my sinuses are causing it. Along with the cough, I have a twisted right knee. I slipped on black ice (du verglas) on the little paved road that runs through our hamlet. The pain is awful, and the danger is that I might fall if my leg gives way when I'm trying to walk and when I put pressure on that knee. I'm taking another day off from blogging.

22 January 2025

La tartiflette — a potato, cheese, and onion casserole with lardons

A tartiflette is what is called un gratin in France. It's made with potatoes, onions, lardons (bacon) and Reblochon (or Reblochon-style) cheeses from the French Alps and is cooked in the oven. I picked up this cheese at the supermarket. It's a soft, washed-rind cheese that is very creamy when it melts. The rind is also good to eat.


I just read on Wikipedia that Reblochon is not currently available in the U.S. but substitutes are available there just as they are in France. One substitute is Raclette cheese. Another is a cheese called Délice du Jura, and a third is the cheese called Morbier — a gratin made with it is sometimes called une morbiflette. That's the one I'm going to try the next time I make a potato and cheese gratin.

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Here's a link to the Wikipedia article about la tartiflette, in English. The idea is to cut the cheese into half-rounds or quarter-rounds. Cut each half- or quarter-round into slices so that each one has a rind side and a rindless side and put them, rind-sides up, on top of a couple of layers of pre-cooked, seasoned potatoes, onions, and lardons (more about that tomorrow) and bake it all in an oven-proof dish for 30 or 40 minutes so that the cheese melts and the rind on top turns golden brown and almost crispy.

Here's how my tartiflette came out yesterday. It was good comfort food on a chilly, gray winter day. By the way, the outdoor temperature this morning is 6.4ºC (43.5ºF) compared to low temperatures of between 27 and 33ºF for the past week or 10 days. It's supposed to rain all day...

21 January 2025

Biftek haché, sauce au vin rouge, poivre noir, et champignons de Paris

For yesterday's lunch, we needed something fortifying, given the lousy weather we've been having. We both have head colds. Walt is coughing a lot.


I decided to make a variation on steak au poivre. I substituted red wine for white in the sauce, and I added mushrooms. I made it with ground beef, the way I used to make it for my friends in Paris. Ground beef is tender and lean. Grass-fed beef, which is what we get in France, can be a little tough, unless you spend a fortune on the very best cuts. A nice Côtes du Rhône Villages red wine (for less than four euros) went well with it all.

To finish the meal, I made a salad of escarole (scarole in French) and beets (betteraves) dressed with vinaigrette. All this is standard French fare — the kind of food you might get in a little neighborhood café or brasserie. It's hearty and tasty served with good French bread and wine. Beets are a classic addition to winter salads made with "bitter greens" like scarole, frisée (curly endive), and endives (Belgian endive).

20 January 2025

It's my turn

I'm taking a sick day today, just like Walt did yesterday. He's still sleeping at this hour, so I don't know what he'll be able to do today. I think he feels a little better, but he'll have to confirm that. I don't have full-blown cold symptoms, but my nose is stopped up and my nasal passages and sinuses are tender and irritated. I don't seem to have any fever, though, and I'm sleeping okay. Temperatures are still near, at, or barely above freezing every day.

The worst thing is that I seem to have twisted my right knee. I think it must have happened when I put my foot down on the road that runs through the hamlet Saturday morning, which was a sheet of invisible black ice. My foot slipped but luckily I didn't fall. I was walking with Tasha, and I've been doing two walks a day with her since Saturday morning, when Walt realized he had come down with a cold.

Our back yard and garden path are icy but not slippery. The ground is very treacherous though, since we had an invasion of moles and other burrowing animals out there in the October and November.

My right knee was giving me trouble earlier this winter. I was having to do a kind of two-step to get up the stairs. Left foot on step, then right foot on the same step. Then do it again, 30 times, several times a day. I couldn't do the steps alternately, one foot going up at a time; it was too painful. After three or four days of two-stepping, the pain suddenly went away. What a relief that was!

On Saturday afternoon, I realized that my right knee was bothering me again. This time, it doesn't just hurt when I climb the stairs. This time, it hurts the most when I an walking on flat surfaces. The pain is not excruciating. I just have to be careful. Maybe I need a knee replacement. Or an elevator. Or a new house — one without staircases.

19 January 2025

More of the same, for better or for worse

The weather stays chilly and damp. Yesterday morning about this time I went out with Tasha for a walk. I decided to walk on the paved road because the dirt road was too muddy. When I stepped on the paved road, I realized it was a sheet of ice. It was black ice (verglas) and it was invisible. I had a rendez-vous set up for a meating at our bank in Saint-Aignan. I called and cancelled it, especially sincee Walt had come down with a bad cold.

Here's what the paved road looked like on a dry but gray morning a few weeks ago.

Walt's cold isn't much better this morning, if at all. I haven't developed any alarming symptoms so far, but this morning my sinuses and eyes feel like I'm having an allergy episode. We shall see how things go. Friends of ours from California will be arriving in Paris today or tomorrow for a short stay. We've been planning to meet in Tours (one hour from Paris by TGV, one hour or so by car from Saint-Aignan) for lunch on Wednesday. Walt won't be going. I hope the cold won't prevent me from driving over there. The weather is supposed to turn warmer (around 50F) but a lot rainier over the course of the week. I'll take it.

We're having choucroute for lunch again today. Yesterday we had an escarole and white bean soup. I actually made it with French flageolet beans, which are very good. I posted about the escarole a few days ago. Sorry, no pictures of the soup. It was delicious and hot (temperature-hot), just what the doctor ordered. I've been searching the internet for a gîte to rent in March and I hope the weather will be more spring-like by then. So far I've only found one gîte that looks promising. It's near Limoges.

18 January 2025

La (première) choucroute de 2025... chez nous

I did something different with my raw choucroute this year. I cooked it in apple cider. Normandy cider, of course. It was labeled as cidre doux, meaning "mild" or "sweet" cider. In fact, it wasn't what I'd call "sweet" at all. It was no sweeter than Riesling wine, which is made in Alsace (the home of choucroute, they say), and maybe less acidic. This cider has 2% alcohol in it, which is much less than the alcohol in wine. I'll make it this way again. because it was delicious.

Below, you can see some of the meat we cooked to go with choucroute. They include a piece of palette de porc fumée. That's a pork shoulder blade roast that has been smoked over beech wood. The sliced pork is poitrine de porc, similarly smoked. That's pork breast or "belly" (a.k.a. bacon). I soaked the palette and the poitrine in cold water overnight to reduce their smokiness and their saltiness. The sausages are smoked pork sausage, also beech-wood smoked. The ones we might call hot dogs or wieners are saucisses de Francfort (frankfurters). I didn't soak either of the sausages.

Again below, you can see the choucroute cooked in cider with onions, carrots, and spices. I didn't put in lardons, but I diced up a couple of slices of sandwich ham (jambon de Paris) and put them in. The choucroute cooked that way for about two hours on low heat. Cooking the choucroute and meats took all morning, but most of that time was just waiting as everything simmered slowly on the top of the stove.

Meanwhile, I simmered the palette de porc in a separate pot of fresh water. It kind of fell apart, but I like it that way (it's tender and tasty). I added some of the resulting broth to the choucroute for flavor and let two slices of the poitrine de porc cook for about 45 minutes on top of the sauerkraut. I poached the sausages and boiled the potatoes for about 30 minutes in the palette broth. Both of the sausages were sold pre-cooked, so the just needed to be heated up.