Yesterday's Lumix ZS1 photos

When I went out to walk the dog yesterday morning, I took my old Panasonic Lumix ZS1 camera with me. I wanted to see what kind of photos it would take now, after not having been used in quite a while. It's a camera I bought in 2010 — fourteen years ago. Here are some samples of the photos I took with it yesterday.

I bought the Lumix ZS1 in 2010 (not sure what month) and I took 7,750 pictures with it that year. In 2011 I took 8,366 photos with it, and in 2012 I took 4,800 — I had bought another new camera by then.

Aprils past

These are some photos I took on this date in 2011 using the oldest digital camera I still own: a Panasonic Lumix ZS1. It was good for macro shots (close-ups) and has a 12x optical zoom. I bought it in 2010. I'm not even sure why I've kept it all these years.

Looking at these photos, I realize how different early April in 2011 was from early April 2025. Everything having to do with flowering plants is happening later this year. That's despite the fact that the high temperature yesterday, under hazy skies, was about 70ºF. Today it's supposed to be closer to 75ºF.

Yesterday I went to see our American friends who live about five miles upriver on the Cher from us. We talked about the state of our springtime and commiserated. They are great gardeners, but this year they've hardly been able to start yet. The ground is too mushy to till or to mow over there, just as it is here. We've had an invasion of moles, so you have to be careful where you step when you go outdoors or you might break a leg... or your neck.

This past week with very little rain (but still some) is helping to dry everything out a little bit. Maybe I should take my Lumix ZS1 compact camera out on my walk with Tasha this morning and take some pictures with it. For old times' sake...

Veau bourguignon

Veal Burgundy modeled on Beef Burgundy is an idea I came up with a few days ago. When I searched the internet I of course found several recipes for it. There's nothing new under the internet sun, you might say. I had bought a kilogram of what is called veau pour blanquette because it looked good and was on sale at a good price. But I didn't want to make a blanquette. I had made one about a month ago. Here's a link (scroll down if you follow it).

Beef Burgundy had been on my mind for a few months; I kept saying we needed to make one but other dishes kept becoming a bigger priority. Here's a link to a 2009 post about bœuf bourguignon that I made using meatballs.

So here it is: veau au vin rouge. I used a full-bodied local côt/malbec red wine to make it. Looking at these pictures, you might not recognize the meat as veal. It looks like beef because the red wine turned the veal brown. It cooked for about three hours yesterday and the veal became very tender. Other ingredients are flour to thicken the sauce and smoked pork lardons, mushrooms, shallots, and carrots for flavor. Bon appétit !

25 years' worth of cameras

These aren't all the digital cameras I've owned and used since I got my first one in 1999 — over the years I've given one to my late friend Charles-Henry; one to my sister; one to my mother; and one to a charity shop; and one to an old friend in California. I was never much interested in photography before digital cameras became available at reasonable prices. I regret that. I'd love to have some photos of the years and months I spent in Paris; Rouen (Normandy); Aix-en-Provence; and Grenoble back in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. Also in California, after Walt and I moved out there in 1986. Anyway, there's nothing I can do about all that now.

Starting in the late '90s, I had a series of Kodak digital cameras that I really liked. And several Canon models too. In the early 2000s, thanks to a friend in Paris who had one, I bought and used a series of Panasonic Lumix cameras. As you can see in the recent photo above, I still have four Lumix models. The last digital camera I bought was a Sony that I still have. I kept taking photos with Lumix cameras and the Sony until a new gadget came along. I mean the Samsung smart phone I bought nearly six months ago. I use it for taking pictures now, pretty much exclusively.

What is wonder is: what can I do with all these cameras that I still have and that are in very good condition and still take good photos. Is there any market for them? Does anybody really want a compact digital camera these days?

Sopa de albóndigas for dinner

Yesterday, for our mid-day meal, I made a big pot of albóndigas soup. Albóndigas means "meatballs" in Mexican Spanish (and maybe in other varieties of Spanish too — I don't know). Besides beef-and-pork meatballs, the ingredients for the soup are a lot of vegetables. Carrots, tomatoes, onions, garlic, green beans, bell peppers, and zucchini. I had a couple of turnips, so I diced those up and put them in too. The broth is flavored with chipotle peppers and chili powder.

The first time I ever ate albóndigas soup was about 25 years ago, when Walt and I used to drive from San Francisco down to Salton City in far southern California to see our friends Charles-Henry and Frank. It was what we had for lunch one day at Brownie's restaurant in Brawley, Calif., very close to the Mexican border. Here's a link to a post I published about albóndigas soup in 2007.

Chow main en trois photos

On Saturday morning, Walt went to the open-air market down in Saint-Aignan (just two miles from our house). He wanted to get some nems (Vietnamese fried eggrolls) from an Asian products stand there. When he got home after a successful shopping trip, he opened the packages he had been given and discovered that they contained not just nems and some samosas (another deep-fried Asian specialty) he had bought, but also a small container of cooked noodles with vegetables that he hadn't asked for. We assumed they were some kind of promotional sample that the vendors were giving out, and we enjoyed them as a light supper that evening.

We were inspired by that windfall to make Asian noodles, chow main, for our lunch on Sunday. We had some noodles in the pantry and we had all the other ingredients in the refrigerator: mushrooms, carrots, celery, shallots, garlic, baby corn, soy and other Asian sauces, and even some chicken meat that I had picked off a carcass I had boiled to make broth a couple of days earlier. Above is a photo of the mise en place, along with the nems Walt had bought.

And there, above, is a photo of the chow main as it looked after it was "wokked"; I use that term because one French recipe for chow main I found on the internet used the verb woker to describe the process of stir-frying the vegetables and noodles.

Here's the chow main as we served and ate it, with both sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds.

Times change

We changed our clocks early this morning. I was very groggy when I got out of bed and forgot to do a blog post. Oh well. Tomorrow, I guess. A+.

Julienned collard greens, pork belly slices, and smoked chicken

This was yesterday's lunch at our house — collards; slices of poitrine de porc fumée (smoked pork breast or "belly"; and smoked chicken. The little yellow logs are cornmeal dumplings. The julienned collard greens are slightly messy to work with, but even shredded this way they definitely have the flavor of collard greens. This is not haute cuisine, but substitute spinach, sauerkraut, sprouts, or cabbage for the collards, and it's very French.

Curry with meatballs, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts

Yesterday morning we made a batch of Swedish-meatball-style meatballs using 600 grams of ground beef and 350 grams of ground pork. That made about 40 small meatballs. It turns out that the Swedish meatball recipe I followed (Alton Brown's) doesn't have anything particularly Swedish about it. We had made a batch of these meatballs a while back and had ended up eating some of them with spaghetti and tomato sauce. Delicious. This time, I decided to make meatballs in a curry sauce. I found recipes on the internet called Pakistani-style curried meatballs. Delicious too, as it turned out, with Brussels sprouts and potatoes.

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I steamed the Brussels sprouts and put them pre-cooked into the curry sauce, which I made with coconut milk using curry paste that we had in the freezer. The nice thing about these meatballs is that they are plump and juicy. They dont fall apart when you cook them. We cooked them and some small potatoes in our air-fryer and put them pre-cooked into the curry sauce too. Why do these meatballs not fall apart when you cook them? First, we put two eggs as a binder, along with a couple of sliced of bread that we cut up and soaked in a little bit of milk. Then we put the ground meat mixture into a stand mixer and mixed it for about five minutes to make it into a smooth paste.

Here's the result after we let the pre-cooked sprouts, meaballs, and potatoes in the curry sauce and let them simmer for about 10 minutes to make sure everything was hot and completely cooked.

Caldo verde, anyone?

This week our local SuperU is having its annual (or semi-annual?) Portuguese days. Products imported from Portugal are featured, including sausages, hams, beans (black-eyed peas, pinto beans, and black beans, as well as — here's the kicker — collard greens. I went to the store yesterday and bought out the few packages of collards they had on display. They were frozen greens cut into julienne (tiny shreds). I bought five of packages — about a kilogram in all.

I've never seen collard greens prepared and sold this way. I'm looking forward to trying them. I think I'll use some of them in recipes that call for spinach. We'll see what that's like. Apparently, people in Portugal use julienned collard greens in a soup that's called Caldo verde ("green soup or chowder), which also includes potatoes.

You might not know that France, at least central France, has a large Portuguese population. Collard greens are a variety of cabbage that is enjoyed by the Portuguese as well as by Americans, especially in the southern states. Collards are called by various names in France, where they are not widely available. Some of the names are chou cavalier, chou perpétuel, and chou fourrager. They are very similar to kale. By the way, I haven't been seeing as many vendors in local markets selling kale as I used to see, say five or six years ago. That's too bad.

Endives, jambon, et sauce Mornay

I've posted about this dish, called gratin d'endives au jambon, many times. It's braised Belgian endives wrapped in slices of jambon de Paris (boiled ham), and baked in a sauce Mornay, which is a cheese sauce (a Béchamel sauce with cheese melted in it). Here's a link to a post about it (or two actually, parts 1 and 2) that I did years ago. I'll just post these recent pictures today...

Quick and easy lunch (or dinner)

Yesterday or the day before an e-mail from the Food section of the New York Times landed in my Gmail account. It was about beans, and what a good and easy product they are to use — especially out of a can. It gave a lot of ideas for dressing up the idiomatic "pot of beans" to make them more appetizing.

I took inspiration from that article and opened up a can of white beans (often called cannelini in the U.S. or lingots in France). I decided to flavor them with dried herbs — oregano, chives, etc. — that I soaked in warm water for a few minutes before adding them and the soaking water to the beans. I also put in some diced shallot, garlic, and bell peppers that I sweated in olive oil, and a couple of bay leaves. We enjoyed them with some smoked chicken that I bought at the supermarket.

Beans that are sold in cans are already cooked. You don't have to soak or cook them at all, unless you want to add some aromatic ingredients the way I did. The flavor and texture of beans (except haricots verts) don't seem to be altered by the canning process, so they taste the same as dried beans that you soak and cook yourself. Actually, the ingredients listed on the label of the canned beans I buy are just eau (water), haricots blancs secs trempés (dried white beans, soaked), sel (salt), and arôme naturel d'ail (natural garlic flavoring). (I wonder what that last ingredient is all about.)

It's almost funny....

These were yesterday morning's weather maps showing the forecast for the day — morning and afternoon. And it all came true. If it weren't so miserable, it would almost be funny. Joking about it helps a little. Should we build an arc?

Yesterday, our neighbors from Blois, whose maison de campagne is the house across the road from ours, had a birthday party there for a member of the family. They had invited 25 people. It rained off and on all day. I went over there to say bonjour at noontime.

I talked to one gentleman that I don't remember meeting before. He appeared to be about my age, maybe older. He said he has had a bad cold for two months now. Congestion, coughing, teary itchy eyes, aches and pains. So have I, I told him. We compared notes and commiserated. The eldest of the clan, a woman who is nearly 90 years old now, said hello to me but wouldn't faire la bise or even stand close enough to me for us to be able to talk. She was too afraid of catching what I've got.