Le château de Pouzieux

In November 2004, I was driving south from Saint-Aignan down toward the town called Le Blanc. Just outside Châtillon-sur-Indre, about 25 miles south of Saint-Aignan, I noticed what looked like a château off on the left side of the highway.

Pouzieux seen from above, thanks to www.geoportail.fr.
The château is at the top of the big square courtyard in the middle of the picture.

I stopped and took a picture, but we were headed to more picturesque places, including Angles-sur-l'Anglin and St-Savin-sur-Gartempe, so we didn't have time to do more.

The château de Pouzieux, seen from the highway south of Châtillon-sur-Indre (36)

Last July, I mentioned this little château to my friend CHM who was visiting, and he was interested in seeing it. We decided to drive down to Châtillon one afternoon and explore a little.

I like the way the rusty sheet-metal is the same color as the château's roof tiles

Looking at the www.geoportail.fr site for detailed maps and aerial photos of France, I have just identified the building we saw as a place called le château de Pouzieux.

A close up of Pouzieux's towers and roof tiles

It appears it was built beginning in the 13th century but dates mainly from the 15th. It is privately owned and the château is actually part of a farming operation.

Inside Pouzieux's courtyard there was this old Citroën 2CV van.
Parked behind it is a much newer Citroën model. Did you know that
Citroën, now owned by Peugeot, still makes a full line of automobiles?

When CHM and I visited, there wasn't a soul in sight. We drove up to the building, parked the car, and nosed around a little. There were signs saying the courtyard was private property, so we didn't risk going beyond the gates. We took a lot of pictures though.

Speaking of roof tiles, look at this stash

stored next to a building near the château.

There must be thousands of 500-year-old buildings like this all over France. They are used for all kinds of purposes and many are never open for public viewing.

La danse des canards

It's duck season. I'm glad I'm finally awake (I slept "on both ears" last night, as we say in French, for about 10 hours). Today the supermarket ads came in the mail. Intermarché sent a Marché frais — fresh products — flyer, and it's full of good seasonal food. A lot of it is duck.

A whole fattened duck — canard gras — for a good price

The whole duck, eviscerated and without the liver, costs €2.60 per kilo — that's about $1.50 per pound. Of course, there's a lot of waste. The head for example. What can you do with that, besides maybe make stock?

Duck fat — graisse de canard — in plastic tubs

A whole duck produces an amazing amount of fat when you cook it. The fat is very good for frying or sautéing potatoes, for example, or flavoring beans, greens, or other vegetables. If you don't have enough, you can buy some for just €3.00 per kilo, or about $1.75 per pound. A pound of duck fat goes a long way, unless you are very extravagant. It's cheaper than butter and, evidently, a lot better for you.

Goose fat and peppercorns at good prices too

If you don't relish the thought of eating duck fat, what about some goose grease? It'll cost you about 50% more, at $2.69 a pound. But you can make up for the high price by buying a few pounds of black peppercorns at just $2.99 a kilo, or $1.75 a pound. Do you realize how many peppercorns it takes to make a pound? A kilo of peppercorns lasts us at least a couple of years. What do peppercorns cost in those little jars they sell at Safeway or Food Lion in the U.S.?

That reminds me of bay leaves. We have a bush in the back yard that produces thousands of the good, fragrant, aromatic European bay leaves every year. In the U.S., those little tiny vials containing 10 or 12 leaves that they sell in the spice aisle at the supermarket cost five or six dollars. Maybe we should go into business, since they are free here. And they are so good. I use them in all the sauces, stews, and soups that I make.

Finally, if you want duck foie gras — the enlarged liver of a fattened duck — there are two grades, ordinary (tout venant) and extra.

Ordinary duck foie gras, the liver of a fattened duck

Extra-fine duck foie gras

The little note at the bottom of the last picture says Suggestions de présentation. In other words, what you buy in the store might not look exactly like the picture shown. It certainly won't be decorated with those little red berries.

Saturday rain

Jet lag: I went to bed at 10:30 last night but had to get up again about midnight. I just couldn't sleep. I watched a Paris talk show until about 2:00 a.m. and then went to bed. I slept some.

Culture shock: In my early morning grogginess, I thought to myself: When I go to the market this morning to get some garlic, onions, and shallots, and some bread, I'll stop in the maison de la presse — the newsstand — right on the market square and get a big fat Sunday paper to read. I had in mind the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Raleigh News & Observer, or the Chicago Tribune, all papers I read on my Sundays in the U.S. last month.

Once I was wide awake and ready to drive over to the market, I thought about it again. There is no Sunday paper in France comparable to the American Sunday newspapers. Oh well. No big deal. There's always the Internet, where I can read all the American papers. Meet the Press is on CNBC on our satellite TV system later this afternoon.

We ended up not going to the market in Saint-Aignan yesterday after all. It was raining, and the main purposes for going were to say hello to Mme Doudouille and some of the other vendors, enjoy the market atmosphere, and buy a chicken and a head of lettuce. Rain pretty much spoils the atmosphere, and chickens and lettuce are available at the indoor supermarkets. I'll say hello to Mme Doudouille next Saturday.

Fall colors in the back yard

With the chicken we made a Rick Bayless recipe for Pollo Adobado — Mexican-style marinated chicken — for lunch today. The marinade is a loose purée of roasted red bell peppers, home-pickled cayenne peppers, cumin, ground cloves, salt, pepper, sugar, and hot-pepper vinegar. The marinade turns into a basting sauce and a glaze for the roasted chicken, which is split down the back and "flattened" before going into the oven.

Red beans, fried cheese grits, and pollo adobado for Sunday dinner

As a side dish, I opened a can of red kidney beans and heated them up with some sauteed garlic and onions. I added some of the chicken marinade to the beans too. The other side dish was some squares of leftover cheese grits I had made for breakfast earlier in the week. We had put the grits in the refrigerator and let them set up. Walt cut the squares and pan-fried them until they were turning golden brown. It all worked together pretty well.

Baguettes de maïs from the boulangerie in Noyers-sur-Cher

And at the market this morning I bought some bread I had seen in a boulangerie but not tried before. The baker calls his loaves baguettes de maïs — corn baguettes. They aren't really cornbread, it turns out, but there is a lot of corn meal in the flour. Not bad at all, and good with the Mexican food.

I'm getting my French eyes back. Yesterday it was gray and rainy, but the landscape was all green and lush. Everything here is old-looking and weathered. There isn't nearly as much asphalt or concrete as there was everywhere we went in the U.S. The streets are much narrower, and the cars are much smaller. Traffic is sparse.

We had to drive over to Selles-sur-Cher, 10 miles east of St-Aignan, because Walt needed to go to the pharmacy. He needed a refill of a prescribed medication. The only pharmacy open nearby was in Selles, because yesterday was le 11 novembre — Armistice Day, a.k.a. Veterans' Day — which is a holiday in France. Only the food stores were open, and those, even the supermarkets, closed at noon. More culture shock. In the U.S., we could have gone to a drive-through Walgreen's at any hour of the day or night. French people just don't get the whole work-all-day commercial thing. They have lives outside work, I guess. Business comes second.

Coming out of the fog

Yesterday I managed to stay awake all day. Then I went to bed at 9:30 p.m. and slept until 6:30 a.m. this morning. I think I'm getting back on schedule.

Yesterday was also a day of errands and yard work. I needed to go to the post office in our village to buy a box to ship some things in. The people at the village post office are all new. The government is threatening to phase our PO out, so we try to go there for our postal needs rather than going into the PO in Saint-Aignan, which is always more crowded. Anyway, the man at the counter was very efficient and perfectly polite. I do miss the old crew, though, because they knew me and always greeted me with big smiles and friendly chat.

While I was in the village, I stopped in the boulangerie/pâtisserie to say hello to Sylvie, the boulangère. "You're back! Has it been a month already?" she said. While I was there, I thought I might as well pick up a couple of pastries for our dessert at lunchtime. I got a Paris-Brest and a mille-feuilles. Roselyne the bread lady had already stopped by the house before I left to run errands, so we had bought our baguette for the day from her.

A Paris-Brest and a mille-feuilles

Then I took our recycling — bottles, cans, plastic, and cardboard — to the bins provided for that purpose in the village. We don't have curbside recycling, even though we do have weekly garbage pick up.

On the way home, I stopped in at Le Domaine de la Renaudie to buy some wine. Our stocks were pretty much depleted. Patricia, the owner, was having a busy morning, so things moved along briskly and we didn't spend much time chit-chatting. I bought 10 litres of Chenin Blanc white and 10 litres of Gamay red. That's the equivalent of just over 26 bottles in all, and the price was 36 €. That comes out to about 1.40 € a bottle.

Walt went out to trim some trees yesterday morning, taking advantage of the dry, sunny weather. Out back we had a tamarisk tree growing right in front of our big bay laurel (laurier sauce) bush. Most of the year, the tamarisk tree was pretty scraggly looking, and its placement bothered me. I wanted a clear view of the shapely bay laurel bush.

Walt after he had partially trimmed the bay laurel bush
and lopped the top off the old tamarisk tree. You can see the
burnt-orange leaves of the grape vines out beyond the hedge.

So Walt started trimming the tamarisk but then decided to cut it all the way down, as I had talked about doing. I'll miss it in the spring, because it was pretty for about two weeks when it bloomed. But the neighbor has one, and I'll just look at that one instead. Now we have a cleaner view out the bedroom window.

View of the back yard out the bedroom window late on a November afternoon.
I wonder if there's a pot of gold at the end of that sunbeam.

Today is market day in Saint-Aignan. We need some lettuce and mushrooms and a chicken for tomorrow's lunch. It's also supposed to rain today — if fact it's already started, so we'd better get a move on.