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.

Seven years ago in the vines

Seven years ago, in 2008, this is what the vineyard looked like on 18 october. This year (2025), all the grapes were harvested weeks ago. I guess the hot weather we had in June, July, and August ripened the grapes much earlier than in previous years. It's too bad, I think, because the grapes in late October 2008 were so beautiful.

Meanwhile, the weatherman on Télématin this morning says we should expect significant rain starting tomorrow. MétéoCiel says to expect some light rain starting at 5 p.m. tomorrow, lasting until noon on Monday. Accuweather says rain will start at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow, but will only last for an hour. On ne sait pas sur quel pied danser...

Late sunrise

Here in Saint-Aignan, the sun doesn't rise until about 8:15 at this time of the year. Still, I go for a walk every other morning, and I take my phone with me. That's in case I fall down and can't get up. I could always call Walt on his phone and he would come find and rescue me. But the phone has a built-in camera, so I'm always tempted to take a few pictures. They come in pretty dark, and I have to tweak them to make them presentable. That's what I've done to these. I took them yesterday morning.

Colors and signs of the season

Above left, the northwest corner of our back yard, with my (red) plum tree and our (yellow) fig tree.
On the right, a grape vine just outside our back gate.

Above left, blood red grape leaves on the northern edge of the vineyard.
Right, grape vines outside our back gate, with our neighbors' houses in the distance.

Above left, a hydrangea in mid-October. Right, firewood waiting to be burned when winter comes.