Creative, maybe. Fearless, for sure.

In a comment on this blog yesterday, commenter C. asked me how I came to be so creative in the kitchen. "Creative" is not a word I would use to describe myself, but "fearless" is. I'm always ready to try something new. Yesterday, for example, I looked in the refrigerator and was reminded that we had a good bit of our Thanksgiving lamb roast left in there. I had also bought a kilogram of "flat beans"(aka "romano beans" or haricots plats) at the supermarket. Those needed to be blanched and frozen. Some of them might be good in an Asian-style stir-fry, Walt said. What a good idea. That's what I made for our lunch — I was too busy to take any photos.

This morning I was looking for some pictures to post. I was looking at photos from a range of years that I had taken on November 30, and I came up with the ones in this post. It was a lamb lasagna that I made with leg of lamb leftovers on that date in 2008. I never posted them back then, as far as I can tell. It turned out to be very good. I made it with ricotta cheese, lasagna noodles, and a tomato and vegetable sauce containing chopped and sautéed lamb. It was a successful experiment, just as the 2025 lamb stir-fry was. Here are some photos of that 2008 lamb lasagna. Scroll down to read the rest of my reminiscences.

I owe my fearlessness to several French women that I got to know in France back in the 1970s. They were excellent home cooks. The first one was a woman in Rouen whose son was a student of mine. In 1982-83 I was working as an English language teaching assistant there. It was a part-time job and it didn't pay much, but I was learning a lot of French. I was 23 years old and too cash poor to be able to afford restaurant meals.

I had learned to appreciate French food a few years earlier by eating in inexpensive restaurants when I was spending six months as a student in Aix-en-Provence, including a two-week stay in Paris over our spring break from classes in Aix. My parents, especially my mother, sent me money every week in the form of an American cashier's check that a bank in Aix would cash for me. I saved as much of that money as I could so that I could afford to spend Spring break in Paris.

Back to Rouen (in Normandy): The mother of one of my students there told her son that she'd like to meet me. She invited me to dinner at her house. We hit it off. My French was good enough for me to have good conversations with her and her three children. After a few of the dinners she served, I decided to ask her if she could explain how she made some of the dishes she made that I thought were really good. During that school year, I probably had dinner with her, her children, and sometimes American friends who were visiting the city. I learned a lot of techniques that I could practice in my little kitchen there that year. I couldn't afford many restaurant meals, but I could afford groceries. Even so, I ate a lot of inexpensive Camembert cheese and bread that year.

A few years later, in the late 1970s, I got to know a woman whose granddaughter was a student at the Sorbonne and who took an American history class that I was teaching. The student had her own apartment in Paris, and her divorced mother and widowed grandmother made Sunday dinner for the three of them every week at her mother's apartment. One day, she asked me if I'd like to come have Sunday dinner with them. I of course said yes. Her grandmother did most of the cooking and it was always delicious.

The Sunday dinners became a weekly event. I didn't ask if I could come into her kitchen to watch her work and ask questions about ingredients, methods, and techniques. Her kitchen was tiny. She was in her 80s and had spent her childhood in Burgundy, which is known for its fine cuisine. I learned so much from her, adding to what I had already learned in Rouen. Simone was her name, and as a birthday present that year she gave me a well-known French cookbook called Je sais cuisiner ("I know how to cook") written by a woman named Ginette Mathiot and published in 1970. I still have the book and consult it often for ideas and explanations. I think it has been translated into English now.

A lunch of lamb leftovers

On the right, that's our leftover lamb served at room temperature with home-made mayonnaise as a sauce. The side dishes are boiled potatoes, a salad made with fageolet beans and chopped, cooked chard dressed with vinaigrette — that was the second lamb meal we had.








The lamb was a whole shoulder that the butcher had de-boned, rolled, and tied into the shape of a roast. We served it cut into thick slices.

I made the mayonnaise using one raw egg yolk, a splash of vinegar, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, some salt and pepper, and about a cup of vegetable oil, all at room temperature. Mix together all the ingredients except the oil, and then slowly, in a thin stream, whisk the oil into the egg mixture and watch it thicken up into a spreadable sauce. Here's a link to a post of mine about making your own mayonnaise.

The salad was dressed with vinaigrette made with oil, vinegar, and Dijon mustard.

Lamb, beans, and chard

This is the 3 lb. de-boned, rolled, and tied lamb shoulder that the butcher in Saint-Aignan prepared for us.
It was expensive at 50 euros but it was delicious and worth the price. The meat was very tender.

As you can see, the roast just barely fit in our air-fryer. I was glad it did, because it cooked much faster
than it would have in the oven, and the clean-up was easier. I seasoned the roast with thyme, garlic powder,
smoked paprika, worcester sauce, and a little bit of liquid smoke. You can see above how it looked
after cooking in the fryer at 60ºC for about 90 minutes.

We ate the lamb with Swiss chard and flageolet beans. Both are popular side dishes in France.
It wasn't a fancy meal but it was tasty. We didn't have company to enjoy it with us.
We have lots of leftovers for meals this weekend. More to blog about that way.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For today, a Thanksgiving season photo from 2012. More tomorrow of the 2025 lamb roast we ordered from the butcher in Saint-Aignan. I picked it up yesterday without a hitch. It's beautiful.

15 years ago today...

... it snowed at la Renaudière, the hamlet outside Saint-Aignan in central France where we live.

It's below freezing this morning according to Accuweather — our outdoor thermometer reads +2C right now but it's in a protected location. Accuweather goes on to predict rain tonight and tomorrow, so I guess our cold spell is ending.

I'll be in the Peugeot heading down the hill to the the butcher's shop in Saint-Aignan in a few minutes. I'm picking up the lamb roast we ordered for our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

Forgetting

I forgot to blog this morning. I was in the middle of my current blog maintenance chores, and I also needed to go to the supermarket to get some things for today and tomorrow. It seems like there's always too much going on around here. Where have my multitasking skills gone? Forgetfulness is my current way of life. I don't know why. I'll be back tomorrow.

Bringing in the vulnerable ones

Over the last week or two we have brought into the house a half-dozen or more cold-sensitive potted plants so they can over-winter without fear of freezing temperatures. That included our big jade bonsai which we've been growing for many years now. That's when we noticed that the jade has quite a few flower buds on it this year. It's not the first time, but I think there are more flowers on it than ever before. It spent the summer out on our front terrace.

The plant itself stands about three feet tall, and the trunk measures three inches across at root-ball level. We keep the plant in the living room for the winter because we don't want to risk taking it upstairs to the loft or downstairs to other parts of the house. It is pretty heavy.

Omelette ? Frittata ? Quiche sans pâte ?

For lunch yesterday, I made an eggy dish that doesn't really have a set name. The batter contained beaten eggs, cream, grated cheese, and flour. That combination makes me think of how a une quiche sans pâte is made, except that it would be cooked in the oven the way a quiche with a crust is. You could call it une omelette, but it has flour added to the batter, while an omelet doesn't. Or it could be called una frittata, but also with flour added to the batter.

By the way, our late friend Frank, who was CHM's partner, called that una vritta one day when I made one for lunch for all of us — Frank's parents or grandparents had immigrated from Italy to the U.S. decades earlier.

I used four eggs, a half-cup of cream (or a little more), and maybe three tablespoons each of flour and cheese to make the batter. I whisked those ingredients together with some salt and pepper and poured the batter over mushrooms, prosciutto(ham) and chicken tenders that I had cut into small pieces and sauteed in melted butter. When you cook an egg batter like that with cream and flour in it, the flour sinks to the bottom of the mixture and forms a kind of bread crust.

After the batter cooked in a pan on the stove for five to ten minutes (don't let it burn), I set the pan under the upper heating element (broiler or grill) in the oven for a few minutes and let it brown lightly on top. It was delicious.

Our hamlet... and the dog

These are not photos from yesterday but from the day before. They are two views of parts of the hamlet we live. A hamlet (un hameau in French) is a (usually) small settlement that doesn't have a church in it and usually doesn't have any businesses or shops in it. It's just residential, and it's officially part of the territory of a village, which is a municipality, or of a ville (also a municipality). I guess a hamlet could be called a neighborhood in American English.

Our hamlet, called La Renaudière, consists of nine houses and about as many residents. It is just over a mile from the center of a small village with a church and with a mayor (who lives in our hamlet but is mayor of the whole village, pop. 1,200)). Our hamlet is also just over a mile from the middle of Saint-Aignan (a town with a church and a château). Saint-Aignan has a population of nearly three thousand). Our dog, an eight-year-old Shelty, is visible in both of the photos in today's post.

Saint-Aignan sunset, 19 November 2025

I've got a busy morning ahead of me today. I want to go to the supermarket (Intermarché) to get some ingredients for the choucroute garnie I'm making our next few meals and to get a few bottles of the 2025 Beaujolais Nouveau red wines, which were released for sale yesterday. Then I need to go to one of the local butcher shops to order a lamb shoulder roast that we plan to cook and eat next week for Thanksgiving. Finally, I have to go to the pharmacy. I'll take the Peugeot.

It's cold this morning — just below freezing. I'll have to be careful driving in case there's black ice. There's talk of snow, by the way, in places like Orléans (50 mi. north of us) and Le Blanc (75 mi. south of us). We ourselves are under a yellow warning for ice and snow flurries.

Yesterday's sunset, and a Peugeot report

Yesterday morning, when we went to get the Peugeot back, rain was pouring down and winds were howling. We drove over to the garage in the Citroën around 8:30, after getting a phone call late Tuesday afternoon from the woman who runs the front office telling us the car was ready whenever we wanted to come get it. It was her husband who greeted us yesterday and explained what he and his crew had found when they gave the Peugeot its once-over. 

Nothing, or nearly nothing, was the answer. We had one parking light on the front of the car that needed replacing. The tires have about eight thousand kilometers of life ahead of them. The brakes and brake pads are fine and won't need replacing for another few years. Anyway, it was all good news.  I took a short test drive with Tasha in the driving rain. Walt went to the supermarket in the other car.

Sunset yesterday afternoon — the house is a résidence secondaire owned by a woman who inherited it a few years when her husband passed away.

The bill for the oil change and general inspection came to 145 euros. I'll probably take the Citroën in for a similar inspection and oil change in January. Then both cars will have their official inspection by a government-licensed inspector sometime toward the end of 2026. I'd rather keep these two cars in good running order rather than have to go looking for another one to buy.

Collected rocks and other projects

Last summer when I started the process of emptying out our little greenhouse of plants, pots, and other things that had accumulated in there, I found several pots of all different sizes that were full of rocks. They are rocks that I've picked up out in the vineyard over the years. I always thought that they were picturesque and that one day I'd find a use for them. In the meantime, I figured I could take them out of the greenhouse and put them all on the utility room window ledge, out of the way of the continuing greenhouse clean-up. Here they are:

The ground around here is very rocky. The greenhouse clean-up got put off when I suddenly came down with the aches and pains of arthritis (arthrose in French). My swollen and painful right wrist prevented me from moving heavy potted plants around. Now I realize that we really need to have a new window put in here next year. The old one doesn't latch the way it should. It's not double glazed and does not have a shutter over it. The window ledge needs scraping and re-painting. Projects, projects, projects.

Looking north

I was standing near our back gate when I took this photo, and looking toward the north. Most of the big weather systems that bring us rain and wind sweep over us from north to south — or northwest to southeast. The Atlantic ocean and the British Isles send us a lot of weather.

Today I'm taking my 25-year-old Peugeot to the mechanic's shop for an oil change and a general going-over — brakes, tires, fluids, lightbulbs, shock absorbers. windshield wipers, etc. I'm just being cautious. The car is running great. And I don't have to have it inspected until a year from now. We never drive it farther than about 15 miles from home. It's odometer shows that the car has nearly 150,000 kilometers on it now — that's 93,000 miles.

When I made the appointment at the garage on Friday, the woman who runs the front office and interfaces with the public at the garage looked up my vehicle on her computer, where she keeps records of all the jobs and repairs they've done on their customers' vehicles. I told her I thought it had been quite a while since I'd had an oil change done on the Peugeot. Looking at the file, she said yes, you're right, it's been quite a while. Your Peugeot's last oil change dates back to 2002! I was stunned. Could that be true?

I made the appointment for today and let the matter drop. It wasn't until I got home that this dawned on me: I didn't buy the Peugeot until 2003! And I didn't start taking it to her and her husband's shop until about 2006. Something is obviously wrong with the garage's record-keeping.

On Sunday, I consulted my own files concerning the Peugeot. I keep copies of all the printed reports about the car and its repairs and maintenance. I found one paper showing I had an oil change done in 2011. Then I found another one showing an oil change in 2018. And finally, I found one documenting an oil change on the Peugeot in 2022. I'm going to break all that to her gently. I think I need to tell her, because maybe some kind of computer glitch has corrupted her records. Or maybe there was just a typo on the page showing that the Peugeot's last oil change was done 23 years ago...

Coucher de soleil (2)

Coucher de soleil

Saint-Aignan — Saturday, 15 November 2025

My view from five to nine (or so)

I start the day at this vantage point most mornings nowadays. I sit facing my laptop computer, which is on the coffee table in the living room, with a mug of tea in my hand as I sort through pictures and try to come up with something interesting to put on this blog. Blogging has turned into a way of life for me. In my photo, that's the kitchen on the left (yellow walls) and the landing at the top of the stairs that we climb to go outdoors (or just into the utility room, garage, or greenhouse in winter).

More Morehead City photos from 2015

I'm spending my blogging time in North Carolina right now, even though I'm sitting here in a tiny town in France's Loire Valley. I grew up in a small town in coastal N.C. I took these photos there in November 2010. The lighthouse in the big photo down below stands at Cape Lookout in Carteret County, N.C. — about 12 miles from where I was standing when I took the picture.

 
When I was born in Morehead City, NC, the population of Carteret County, of which it was the biggest town, was about 20 thousand. That was in 1949. When I left there to go to college in 1967 at age 18, the population had increased to about 30 thousand. Nowadays, it's about 70 thousand. You can imagine how much the area has changed over the years. Some neighborhoods in Morehead City remain mostly unchanged, but hundreds of new houses, apartment buildings, and hotels have been built west and north of the town.

Carteret County is one of the largest counties in North Carolina, with an area of 1,300 square miles. But don't be tricked. The fact is that more than 800 of those square miles are water, leaving just 500 square miles of (relatively) dry land for people to live on. In other words, 62% of Carteret Co. is under water. Wake County, 150 miles to the northwest — where N.C.'s capital city, Raleigh, is located — has an area of about 850 sq. mi., and a population of about 1.25 million. That's a different world.

 
What you see in the two pictures just above is the deep-water port at Morehead City. The town was founded in the middle of the 19th century because of the potential of the area to become a port accommodating ocean-going ships. It's one of the deepest ports on the East Coast of the United States.

Rose hips at sunrise

A week ago I published a photo of the colorful leaves on our back-yard linden tree and on the ground under and around it. I took the picture through what remains of a rose bush, which is leafless branches and the plant's seed pods, called "rose hips" in English and faux fruits in French. They They are red and there are rose seeds inside them, from what I've read. They are also called "rosehips" written as one word, "rose haws," and "rose heps." My sister left a comment asking about a rose hip she noticed in the middle of the photo on the left above, and I can't remember if I answered her comment. On the right above, you can see a closeup of a rose and some rose hips that I took that same morning.

Tasha on one of her morning walks

I'm doing some much needed blog maintenance this morning. I hope to be able to post again tomorrow.

A day at the beach with seabirds

These are photos I took in North Carolina 10 years ago today, on November 11,2015. I was visiting my mother, sister, cousins, and friends back there. It's where I grew up. It's about four thousand miles from Saint-Aignan. I've lived here longer than anywhere else in my life, even though I spent years each in Illinois, Paris, Washington DC, Durham NC, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley in California. I've lived in Saint Aignan for more than 20 years now.

I really miss my annual visits to North Carolina between 2005 and 2019. I don't go back there any more because the trip is just too hard for me. I loved spending time on North Carolina's beaches and taking pictures there. Maybe I'll end up going back there one more time in my life.

My mother told me in 2005 that she wouldn't be making the trip to France any more. She was 75 years old at the time, and passed away at the age of 88. I'm going to turn 77 next March. I miss seeing my sister, nieces, cousins, and friends on the North Carolina coast. I miss the seabirds there, and the mostly mild weather, even though I would have a hard time coping with the hot, humid summers there, and the annual autumn hurricanes. I don't foresee ever going back there to live. I'd miss France too much.

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.

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.