Limping home

There I was 40 miles from home in gusty, rainy weather, unable to park the car chez Ikea, and with the prospect of being unable to drive it home. I don't have a cell phone so I'd need to find a pay phone or a service station where I could call my insurance company for towing back to Saint-Aignan. Walt doesn't have a car to come and fetch me with in an emergency.

CHM, I think you are right —
that must be my reflection in the grapes.

Every time I turned a corner in the parking garage and on the road out to the Ikea exit, around that car-clogged traffic circle, I heard a grinding, rattling sound from under the hood. My first thought was that I wanted to get out of Tours and back to Saint-Aignan ASAP. My second was that it might be the water pump going kaput, so I'd better watch my engine temperature. The car has nearly 90,000 miles on it (141,000 km).

I got out on the road and started driving east, away from the center of Tours. Everything was going along just fine. I breathed a sigh of relief as I left the suburbs behind and got closer to Bléré, which seems like home compared to the hustling and bustling big city.

Autumn leaves collecting in puddles

At Bléré, the road turns south to cross the Cher and make a big loop around the town. As I turned south, heading directly into a strong wind, the car engine suddenly emitted a bluh-bluh-luh-luh sound like a half-inflated balloon on the spokes of some kid's bicycle wheel. "Here we go," I thought, slowing down. "Where is there a turnout?" I didn't want to stop on the Bléré bypass with my left wheels on the edge of the pavement. A car from Paris flashed his headlights behind me and then roared past, probably muttering profanities about the country bumpkins on the road down here. I could almost read his lips:
« Magne-toi le cul, pépé ! Et que ça grouille ! »

But the booming, flapping noise stopped and I just kept driving, slowly. Twenty miles to go. Ten. Five. I turned off the highway at Pouillé and followed the little road over to Mareuil. I urgently needed to make a pit stop, and I also needed to buy some wine. It had occurred to me that the next day was a holiday, le 11 novembre, Armistice Day. No wonder Ikea had been under siege. A lot of people take the Monday before a Tuesday holiday off work, "bridging" the holiday into a long weekend. (The Beaver, I'm sure you got that exactly right. What had I been thinking?)

Fortunately, I had some entertainment on the way home. On France Inter radio, they were running a segment about what they called (my French spelling) les guiques. The interviewer said she imagined them as pimply-faced teenagers or young men with thick-lensed eyeglasses and few social skills who spend all their time in front of their computer monitor. The guest named, for example, George Lucas and even Steven Spielberg as now-famous guiques, and said guiques were no longer the object of scorn and derision. They are "cool" now. Sometimes the people on the radio pronounced the final -s of the word guiques, making it sound foreign, but mostly they treated it as a French word, where the final -s is silent.

Over the past three weeks we've had about 5 inches of rain...

It had occurred to me as well that my mechanic's garage and a lot of other stores would be closed that day, Monday, and the next, the real holiday. When I got there, I stopped on the main square in Mareuil, where there's a new public toilet. And then I walked over to the village grocery store, a.k.a. la supérette, to get some wine. It was closed. Merde. My plan had been to buy the wine, get the car home if I could, and then hang tight until Wednesday, when businesses would be open again.

The car started up normally, and I drove the last two miles toward home. I turned in at the Domaine de la Renaudie, our neighbors' winery, figuring maybe Patricia would be there and open for business. Bruno was just leaving in the LWV (little white van) that sports the winery's logo, and he gave a friendly wave.

Patricia came out of her kitchen into the wine-tasting room and I blurted out my story about Ikea and not finding parking and hearing weird noises under the hood of my car. She just walked up to me with a big smile, turned her cheek, and, on tiptoes because I'm a lot taller than she is, initiated la bise, the French cheek-kisses greeting. I was taken by surprise.

...and mushrooms are growing everywhere

We've known Patricia and Bruno for more than five years, but until now Patricia's greeting had always been a business-like handshake. A few months ago — last spring — Bruno and I started saying tu to each other rather than vous, marking a change toward a more relaxed friendliness in our relationship. It was his decision. But Patricia had continued saying vous to me and shaking my hand in greeting. So her bises were especially significant.

Hearing my tale of woe about Ikea, she just shook her head with a look of resignation. Then she broke into that big smile again. « Mais c'est Obama qui a gagné ! » she said. It was like, "What else could matter? Obama won the election!" I think that's why I got the warmer greeting. Maybe Americans can now expect a friendlier reception. We are interesting and sympathiques again. Thank you, Barack Obama, and all the people who voted for you.

I continued my route home with a 10-liter bag-in-box of wine in the car and a smile on my face.

* * *

The problem with the car turns out to be some kind of splash or mud guard that has come loose under the motor. It's supposed to cover the bottom of the engine compartment. I probably scraped it loose the last time I drove on the rutted gravel road through the vineyard.

The noises I was hearing from under the hood were, first, that plastic shield scraping against the tires when I turned the steering wheel, and then the wind catching it and making it flap as I drove home in the storm. It's not a big deal, I think. I have to go get it fixed today or tomorrow — whenever I decide to go out again.

It's approa... no, encroaching

Boy was I stupid yesterday. (No wisecracks please.) I decided to go back to Ikea in Tours. Walt was smart and stayed home.

When I say in my title that it is "encroaching," I mean what passes for civilization in the wider world beyond Saint-Aignan. Shopping. Big-box stores. The Ikea megacenter in Tours is the prime example. A week or two ago when we were in Blois we saw, for another example, that the big Auchan hypermarket there will soon open in even more spacious quarters, which will include a whole new shopping mall, from the looks of the place. On the west and the north, Saint-Aignan is being hemmed in by the 21st century.

A prunus tree in our back garden on November 4

When we were at Ikea last Thursday, however, the store had piles of hundreds — no, thousands — of little 36"x24" cotton throw rugs in different colors and patterns for €1.99 each. We bought three of them, plus a bigger cotton rug that will be perfect in one of our bathrooms.

I had reverse buyer's remorse over the weekend. I wished we had bought half a dozen more of those little cotton rugs. You can never have too many throw rugs on the cold tile floors we have pretty much throughout the house, and especially in the main bathroom in winter. I also wished I had bought another one of the bigger rugs (at €9.99) in green, for our main bathroom as well.

The same prunus on Nov. 10

Since I had another couple of stores I needed to visit over in Tours, and since I needed to go out to the supermarket anyway, I thought I might as well make the drive over to Ikea and get the rugs too. It takes about an hour to drive to Tours from here, along the south bank of the Cher River past Montrichard and Chenonceaux to Bléré, then across the river and along the north bank of the river past St-Martin-le-Beau, La Bourdaisière, La Ville aux Dames, and St-Pierre-des-Corps. It was windy and threatening rain, but the drive was fine and I arrived at the Ikea store at about 10:20.

Now when we were at Ikea last Thursday, which was the first day that schools re-opened after the Toussaint holidays, the store was by our standards a mob scene. But we found parking easily — there must be 5,000 or even 10,000 spaces in the close-in and outlying lots all around the gigantic blue Ikea building — and we managed to looked through the store as we had planned to do. We congratulated ourselves for waiting until schools were back in session, figuring crowds were smaller than they might have been.

November vineyard scenes

We are not used to crowds any more and it was exhausting to have to step around and over so many shoppers in the aisles and display areas of the store. People were huddled in little crowds, blocking passageways, to ooh and aah over the color of this or the price of that. And I noticed couples squabbling with each other over whether it was a good idea to buy this thingamajig or that bobble. It was tense, and Walt and I were starting to get short with each other too. It was time to get out of there, and so we did.

Nothing could have prepared me to the sight I saw upon arrival at Ikea yesterday, though. And I never even made it into the store. Long lines of cars inched their way along two access roads to get to the parking lots. Negotiating the traffic circle at the entrance I chose was taking your life, or at least the fenders of the car, into your own hands.

The Renaudière vineyards in November

I nosed the Peugeot into a long line of creeping cars. Other cars, with drivers as clever and nefarious as French drivers can be, were racing down rows in the outdoor parking lot to get ahead of those of us who were in line on the outer access road and then forcing their way back into the line farther up. Nerve they do not lack.

I finally made it into the covered parking area and drove around it a couple of times, up and down the rows, with no luck. There just weren't any spaces. Besides all the cars racing around desperately seeking parking, there were hundreds of people on foot up and down the rows who had parked in the outer lots and were making the long trek to the store entrance. It was downright hair-raising to see the confrontations between crazed drivers and frantic groups of pedestrians trying to thread their way through it all.

It didn't take long for me to realize it was hopeless. They should have illuminated signs saying: "Abandon hope all ye potential parkers who enter there." Luckily, there was no line at the exits. People were far more determined to have the Ikea experience than I was.

As I left, I noticed that people were parking in the big Carrefour store across the four-lane highway that leads into Tours and then walking the equivalent of a couple of blocks — in the wind and rain, because a strong squall was passing over — to Ikea. Again there were hair-raising scenes of pedestrians trying to run between speeding cars on the highway, their line of sight obscured by their own and each other's umbrellas and hats and hoods.

I thought they must be literally giving things away at Ikea to generate so much enthusiasm and foolhardiness. Prices there are low, but not that low.

Birds over the vineyard, flying south. Smart birds.

Walt says there must be a lot of pent-up shopping energy ready to explode in this part of France. I suppose he's right. I can't even imagine what the inside of the store looked like. I'm sure it was wall-to-wall people shuffling around, pushing and shoving, stepping on each other's feet, and biting each other's heads off.

To add injury to insult, the Peugeot started making strange noises as I rode up and down the rows in the Ikea parking garage looking for a space....

More tomorrow.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

Our mayor neighbor has been busy cleaning up our hamlet. She is responding to requests from her neighbors, I believe, and not just making decisions arbitrarily.

The vineyard in November

Our road, at least the paved part, ends just outside our back hedge. It turns into a gravel track out through the vineyard. You can drive on it with regular car if you are careful, but most of the "traffic" out there is little trucks and various kinds of tractors and farm equipment.

The problem is that when you get to the point where the pavement ends, you have the impression that if you turn left you might be able to continue your route. But no, the pavement ends there too, about 50 meters farther on, at the mayor's front gate.

The paved road ends here.

The other house on that little piece of road belongs to Mme J., a woman who is now about 86 years old and who is particularly sensitive to noise. Some of the other neighbors think she is entirely to bothered by the everyday noise of lawnmowers, chainsaws, and grape harvesters — they say she just likes to complain and be disagreeable.

The mayor told us she had been requesting a "dead end" sign on the road for years. Once a car or truck makes that left turn, the driver has no choice but to back out, and that's a noisy proposition. Now Mme J. has her sign.

That sign is fine, I think, but the other one that appeared the other day really seems to shout it's message. There used to be a big pile of compost right outside our back gate. It was where we and some of the neighbors would pile branches and dead leaves and weeds we'd pulled up.

"No dumping, under penalty of fine"

I even remember seeing the mayor dumping things out there once or twice, and once I saw her out there digging out some rich humus to use in her garden. Now the compost pile is gone and the little plot of land is scraped flat. When we first moved here, I once mentioned to a man who does gardening for two of our neighbors that I didn't like have a pile of yard waste right outside my back gate.

At the time, the gardener told me I'd have to talk to the people at the village hall if I wanted the waste pile removed. As it turns out, years later, I've learned that the gardener is a good friend of the mayor's and her husband's. He must have told them of my concerns. Now there's a sign to make sure that spot doesn't turn into a compost pile again.

Potée, suite et fin

A French potée is very similar to the famous poule au pot, which is a chicken simmered in broth with vegetables. It's a boiled dinner for which everything is cooked in the same pot. The version made with beef is called a pot au feu.

A related specialty is New England boiled dinner, made with corned beef. How good these boiled dinners are depends entirely on good ingredients and careful cooking to produce tender meat, vegetables that are not overcooked, and a rich broth.

Sprouts trimmed and potatoes peeled, ready to go into the pot

When you make a potée or other boiled dinner, you usually end up with meat and vegetables for more than just one meal (I always make enough to serve us for two or three days). Then you can make soup out of the broth by dicing up and adding in the leftover meat and vegetables.

Carrots, onions, and herbs are standard ingredients for any of these French recipe. Turnips and cabbage are usual additions, and a lot of people add in white beans. In France, where there are recipes for potée auvergnate, potée lorraine, potée limousine, and potée bretonne — just to name a few — the ingredients vary slightly from region to region.

Half-cooked sprouts ready for sautéeing

The main thing is to start the meat or poultry cooking in cold water, and then to keep it at a low simmer for an hour or more. Don't let it boil hard or the vegetables and meat will start to break down. In a potée, normally there is at least one piece of smoked meat in the pot for flavor.

A good substitute for porc demi-sel would be a brined or salt-cured hamhock. Or a slab of smoked or salt-cured bacon. You can use chicken, duck, or turkey sausages, whether they are smoked or not. Here in France we can buy smoked chickens, but they are sold fully cooked so you wouldn't want to leave one in the broth for too long — it would be overdone.

Here's the improvised « potée », ready for the table.

Our Brussels sprouts are certainly not traditional, but we both like them. I dipped out some of the meat & vegetable broth. I had put in 6 little carrots and 10 little onions, along with parsley stems, a couple of bay leaves, and some peppercorns and allspice berries in with the meat. Then I cooked the sprouts in a separate pot with a couple of ladles of broth.

Walt likes to cook Brussels sprouts partially in water or broth, let them cool just a little, and then cut each sprout in half. Then he sautées the halves in a big skillet with butter and oil, and he sprinkles some flour on them as they start to sizzle so that they get a little crust. That produces a nice contrast in textures.

Bon appétit !

A little bit of butter or olive oil stirred into some of the hot broth and spooned over all makes the vegetables really good. Pass the pepper.

Two of my main ideas about cooking are:

• You have to eat and most people have to cook. It's necessary and a fact of life. If you can make a pleasure out of that necessity, why not?
  
• There are foods we need to eat that we don't always like — this applies mostly to vegetables. So figure out how to prepare them in ways you find appetizing. I feel better both physically and mentally as a result.