Life in mid-March

Cold mornings, warm afternoons. That's the pattern. We're getting work done in the yard and garden. We'll definitely be doing a lot more grilling — making lunch on the terrace. I'm headed to SuperU to buy some lamb this morning.

The photo above is one I took yesterday morning, looking west. It was still foggy. By afternoon the sun was shining and I spent some time sitting outside listening to the radio. You'll just have to imagine the scene with me in it.

Callie is ecstatic about being able to spend a good part of the day out in the yard again. We're happy about it too. The more she stays outside, the less dog hair we have in the house, especially now that she's starting to shed her thick winter coat.

Springtime scenes from our walks in the vineyard, like this one, only make us realize that soon we won't need to turn the heat on during the day. We'll get the garden going. Walt planted some seeds in little pots yesterday to get seedlings going. Tomatoes, eggplant... summer crops for our 12th summer in Saint-Aignan.

Above, I focused the camera on a water hole out in the vineyard, along the gravel road. The surface of the water was reflecting back the blue sky and the tangle of branches that nearly hide the trou d'eau from view.

Harvesting and cooking the kale

I noticed a couple of days ago that my kale plants were starting to bolt — à monter en graine. They were getting ready to send up flower stalks, and would soon go to seed. It was time to pull them out of the ground. The collard greens planted out there show no signs of bolting yet, so I weeded all around those plants and left them to grow a little more.

Kale on the stem

I got a good crop. I pulled the plants out, roots and all. Then I cut off the root end and washed the leaves well in the downstairs shower. I brought them up to the kitchen and cut each leaf off the stems, and I washed the leaves again.

The leaves cut and thoroughly washed

In all they got three washings. This is curly kale, and a lot of sand can get lodged in the wrinkles of the leaves. In fact, though, these leaves were pretty clean. I guess we've had enough hard rain over the past few months to keep the leaves pretty clean.

Kale cooking in the pot with smoked pork lardons, chicken broth, and white wine

I cooked all the leaves, after throwing out the blemished ones. I seasoned the greens with smoked pork lardons, chicken broth, and white wine, along with hot red pepper flakes, black pepper, and salt. I ended up with more than five pounds of cooked kale greens and "pot liquor." It's all in the freezer for now.

Jasmin d'hiver

Last summer when I went to Paris, CHM had taken some cuttings from a winter jasmine plant that grows in his little back garden. I brought the cuttings back to Saint-Aignan and planted them in a big pot.

When winter came, all the leaves on the stems dropped, and I was afraid they all were dead. I just left the pot out on the terrace for the winter (or what passed for winter this year, which was very wet but not very cold).

Now, however, the stems are sprouting a lot of new leaves, so the plant has survived. It didn't flower over the winter, which it would have normally been expected to do, but maybe we'll get flowers next year.

The winter jasmine, or jasmin d'hiver (Jasminum nudiflorum), usually produces yellow flowers between November and February, making it one of the few plants that flower in winter in this climate.

Spaghetti squash a new way

Yesterday was an incredible spring day, with temperatures as high as 60ºF / 15ºC. The ground, while still too wet to work, is rapidly drying out. The sunny mild weather is supposed to continue for another week.

A whole chicken, cut in half and marinated with onion, garlic, thyme, hot paprika, a little vinegar and some olive oil, and then grilled on the new gas grill

Yesterday, we grilled a chicken on our new gas grill. We decided to have a spaghetti squash with it, because we still have half a dozen of them stored downstairs. Over the past few months, we have made spaghetti squash a variety of ways: with tomato sauce, with pesto, with cream and onions, curried, or with just butter, salt, and pepper.

Spaghetti squash served with peas, carrots, onions, mushrooms, and honey

I find the spaghetti squash flesh to be fairly bland compared to butternut squash or pumpkin, for example. So I wondered how I might spice this one up. We didn't really want a curry flavor. I was looking in the fridge when I realized there was a bowl of leftover peas and carrots in there from a couple of days ago. Actually, it was peas, carrots, onions, and mushrooms cooked in chicken broth with a good amount of butter in it.

The view off the front terrace yesterday afternoon

So I cut the squash in half, roasted it for 30 to 40 minutes cut-side-down in a hot oven, and then scraped the flesh out of the shell and separated it into strands using a fork and a spoon. I reheated the peas in the microwave, and to add flavor to the whole dish, I mixed a big spoonful of honey into the hot liquid. Then I poured the peas and all, with the liquid, over the cooked squash. It turned out to be really good — an idea to remember for the future.