January 20th sunrise

Yesterday the morning was cloudy and even a little foggy, but a brisk wind was blowing all the clouds away by the time I went out with the dog for the morning walk.

Sunrise over the vineyard on 20 January 2008

It turns out that that was very nice weather, though chilly. Compared to today, that is — a light misty rain is now falling, and the temperature is barely above freezing. It looks like we'll have a gray day today.

Like many Americans, we spent a good part of the day watching the Inauguration ceremonies and events on TV. We get CNN International on our satellite system, and the news network's international service gave us a live feed from the U.S. all day long. Usually, the programming is European, without a lot of U.S. news.

So my morning walk was the only time I stuck my nose outdoors. Walt did the afternoon walk, and he went out early so that he would be back in time to watch and hear President Obama's inaugural address. With the six-hour time difference, we saw the speech just after 6:00 p.m. in France.

Don't think that the photo of that spectacular sunrise means we had a dreary day. Far from it.

The tourist road and vineyards at sunrise

After I took the picture looking toward the sun, I turned 90º to the right and snapped the shot just above. As I said, the clouds had almost entirely blown away, and a beautiful day was dawning.

Pause and think

It's Inauguration Day in Washington DC, and not just any Inauguration Day. This is a momentous occasion, and for the United States it is a great leap forward. Welcome to the 21st century.

As a Southerner, I know what I am talking about. I was young, but I remember what the South was like in the 1950s and 1960s — horrible racial segregation, which short-changed a large segment of the American population. And it wasn't just in the South — it was just more obvious there. It was the same all over the country.

Just think how many talented, intelligent individuals never had a chance to get a good education, to succeed in life, to contribute to bettering our society, because of the bone-headed attitudes of the people who held economic and political power for so long. That era is now officially over.

So today I'll just listen and watch from afar. I wish I were there with friends Evelyn and Lewis, out in the freezing cold on the National Mall in Washington. I am there through them and all the others.

No matter whether President Obama solves or doesn't solve all the problems that have been handed to him, nothing can ever diminish his accomplishment and the decisive step into the future that this Inauguration represents. We can all be proud... yes we can.

Mushroom caves near Saint-Aignan

I just did a search on the word "mushroom" to see if I had ever posted a topic about nearby mushroom caves. I was surprised to see that I hadn't. I don't know if you ever use the search feature on the blogs you read, but it is pretty handy. Just time the word or expression you want to look for in the search field at the top left of the Blogger screen, and you can see all the topics where that term appears.

Mushrooms growing in the caves at Bourré

The other thing that surprised me is how many topics I've written and posted that contain the word "mushroom." I found posts about wild ones and cultivated ones. I use mushrooms a lot in cooking, I realized. We put them in quiches and omelets, on pizzas, and in all kinds of stews. Many of the French classics from bœuf bourguignon to coq au vin and blanquette de veau wouldn't be authentic without mushrooms.

That's our friend Cheryl in front of the billboard in 2003.

Anyway, I started blogging in October 2005, and we had already lived here for 2½ years by then. We first visited the mushroom caves in the nearby village of Bourré back in September 2003, when he first arrived in Saint-Aignan. I'm finally posting some pictures I took that day. I think we went back to the mushroom caves in 2004, but I haven't found those pictures yet.

Bourré is a village on the Cher River where there are big limestone cliffs along the riverbanks. It's next door to Montrichard and about 12 km from Saint-Aignan. A lot of the stone used in the contruction of the Loire Valley châteaux was quarried there. Bourré limestone is reputed to be the whitest and purest in the region. As a result, there are literally a couple of hundred kilometers of caves, or tunnels, called galeries in French, carved into the cliffs and hillsides at Bourré.

One good use for such caves in growing mushrooms, because the temperature and humidity in the tunnels stays constant year-round. The temperature is about 14ºC — that's in the mid-50s F. It's cold and dark in there — at least it feels cold in summertime when it's 25 or 30 degrees warmer outside.

As I've said, growing mushrooms here in the Loire and Cher river valleys is not a big business the way it used to be, but some are still grown for the local market at least. You see signs for mushroom caves here and there, and often you can stop in and buy fresh mushrooms.

At Bourré, site of Les Caves Champignonnières des Roches, you often see a tour bus or two parked out front. It's a tourist attraction on the Loire Valley circuit now. There's a guided tour that takes an hour or two, and there's a shop selling fresh mushrooms of several varieties, as well as mushrooms and mushroom soups in jars and tins. There's even an "underground village" carved into the cave walls, but I've never seen that part.

As a growing medium for the champignons, the guide told us, they use sterilized horse manure packed in black plastic sacks. They punch holes in the sacks and introduce spores for the kind of mushroom they want to grow. I remember there were oyster mushrooms, shitakes, something called le pied bleu or blewit, and of course button mushrooms. It was much cleaner in there than you might think it would be.

This gives you an idea what it is like in the mushroom caves.

It's not easy to take pictures in dark caves, but I tried. You can judge the results for yourself. Some of the mushrooms were beautiful.

The mushroom lady

At the Saint-Aignan market on Saturday mornings, there are pork butcher/deli stands, fruit and vedge sellers, a big seafood stall, a great cheese vendor, two poultry merchants, a beef butcher's truck, and even a horse butcher. And there's the mushroom lady.

Mushrooms from the mushroom lady in Saint-Aignan

The mushroom lady works alone. She doesn't have a fancy truck like the butchers do. Those vehicles are a little like the trucks we used to call "roach coaches" out of which sandwiches, cakes, cookies, and soft drinks were sold in the parking lots around office complexes in Silicon Valley. They are fitted out with refrigerated cabinets for meats and other perishables.

No, the mushroom lady just has a folding table. She has big baskets full of mushrooms of different varieties, depending on the week. Yesterday, she had small and enormous white button mushrooms (champignons blancs), brown button mushrooms (champignons blonds), oyster mushrooms (pleurotes), and big shitake mushrooms (called shitakes in French too).

English peas and button mushrooms are a good combination.

These are not wild mushrooms gathered in the forest. They are cultivated varieties. The blancs and blonds button mushrooms sell for 3.60€ a kilogram. The mushroom lady sells them in 100-gram increments, and she'll sell you a pound of button mushrooms for 1.80€ — no surcharge for the smaller quantity.

Trim them up and wash them quickly
in a stream of running water.

The mushroom lady must be in her late 50s or 60s. She has short, thick gray hair and is unfailingly friendly and smiling. Sometimes there's a line of customers waiting, but yesterday there was nobody there when I arrived. She was in the process of setting up a big umbrella over her little stand, because an icy cold rain was starting to fall.

One of the occupational hazards of being the mushroom lady is dirty hands. She has to handle those mushrooms all morning, and they haven't been washed. The bottoms of the stems — les bouts terreux — haven't even been cut off. You get the impression that these mushrooms were gathered earlier the same morning. You have to trim and wash or brush them yourself.

The mushroom lady at the market in Saint-Aignan

Growing mushrooms used to be big business in the Loire Valley, but it has faded away with the advent of mushroom farming on an industrial scale in places like Holland and Poland.

They say the mushroom lady grows her own. Apparently, she works out of a cave carved into a chalky hillside in our village. There were rumors a few months ago that she was going to retire, and that we would no longer get fresh local champignons in Saint-Aignan. And for a few weeks a younger woman actually took her place on Saturday mornings.

Champignons blancs sliced and ready to cook

But now the mushroom lady is back. I always buy some mushrooms from her when I go to the market, whether I have specific plans for them or not. They are more attractive, fresher-looking, and less expensive than the artificially clean-looking mushroom you see at the supermarket.

Did you know you can keep fresh button mushrooms (called champignons de Paris in French) for a long time in a paper bag in the refrigerator and they won't go bad? They might dry out and shrivel up a little, but if you rehydrate them the way you rehydrate any dried mushrooms, by soaking them in water for 30 minutes, they will be very good still. In fact, some say the flavor only improves with age. (Thanks to Chrissoup for this tip.)