Inspecting the Peugeot

It's time for the Peugeot's dreaded contrôle technique — again. It's been two years already. The contrôle technique is a thorough inspection designed to make sure your car is road-worthy. The checklist on the web lists about 125 things that need to be inspected and OKed.

Last summer I decided to stop having service on the car done by the dealer where I bought it. I thought the garage in the village might be less expensive.

Fact is, the mechanic at the dealer's had rubbed me the wrong way back in the spring. He treated me like an idiot, I thought, because I hadn't had the air conditioning serviced since the summer of 2003. In my opinion, servicing the A/C when it needed servicing was his responsibility, because I took the car to him faithfully every six months. Doesn't he have a manufacturer's service schedule he adheres to? Why yell at me?

Besides, if I took the car to the village garage, I realized, I could walk back home instead of sitting there waiting for the service or repairs to be done. Then I could walk back down and get the car later in the day, or even the next day.

However, now I have the impression that the village mechanic charges as much or more for things like oil changes as the Peugeot dealer in town does. The bread lady told me he has the reputation of charging premium prices for the work he does.

When I had the village mechanic do an oil change and a permutation des roues (tire rotation) back in August, he said I would need to have my brake disks replaced in December before my next contrôle technique. That sounds like a job costing big euros to me. The car's brakes work just fine, by the way, so how do I know he's not just trying to make some extra fric (moolah)?

Last week I got a letter from the dealer saying it was time for the next contrôle technique and he would be glad to take care of it for me. So I thought maybe I'd go back to see him. Maybe he wouldn't want to do the brake work and I'd save some argent. With the U.S. dollar being basically worthless these days (merci, W.), that would make me happy.

Then I got a letter from a contrôle technique station over by Intermarché, on the other side of the river, saying I should call them for a rendez-vous (that sounds more exciting than it really is — it's just an appointment). I didn't even know you could take your own car to the inspection station without working through a dealer or a repair shop. I've learned something.

So now I think I'll take the car directly to the contrôle technique station. Why not eliminate the middle man? Maybe the car will sail right through the inspection (comme une lettre à la poste, I think you'd say in French).

My other worry about the car inspection is the tires. I bought four new ones about 18 months ago, but they weren't exactly the tires I was supposed to put on this particular car model. My Peugeot officially requires tires rated H, which means they are guaranteed to be safe at speeds up to 130.5 mph (210 kph).

Needless to say, and despite some opinions to the contrary, I don't drive at such speeds. Not to mention the fact that the only tires the shop had in stock the day I went in were rated T, or safe up to 118 mph (190 kph). Since the highest speed limit in France is 78 mph (120kph), I figured the T tires should do nicely. We'll see if the inspectors agree with me.

Tomorrow I have to call and see how long the inspection takes. I'll have to sit around and wait for them to do it, since I don't have transportation home. There is no local bus service out here in the country, and it's too far to walk. More next week, after the inspection.

History of Palluau-sur-Indre

One of the places I've visited in 2006 that really sticks in my mind is the little town of Palluau-sur-Indre, about 25 miles, or 40 km, south of Saint-Aignan. I don't know what it is about the place that makes me keep thinking about it.

A satellite photo of the village of Palluau-sur-Indre

Maybe it's that I had never heard of it before last June 15, when we went there on an outing. We were just exploring. Here's what I blogged about Palluau then. That day, I discovered that it was the home town of a man named Frontenac who played a key role in the establishment of the city and province of Québec, in Canada. The big château/hotel in Quebec City is named for him. I stayed there many years ago, when I was in Quebec City for a conference.

Yesterday I found a web site in French that gives a nice historical overview of Palluau-sur-Indre. The author says that not much is known about the area before the year 1000. But according to legend, the Romans built fortifications there in the first century of our era. It was on the Roman road that led from Orléans to the city of Poitiers, to the southwest.

The château at Palluau dominates the village and the river valley.

One early period that is documented is the arrival of Vikings in the year 902. They pillaged Palluau and the nearby abbey at Saint-Genou, founded in 828. The area around Palluau was under Viking domination for about 35 years, and then the Vikings were pushed out of the Loire region.

The first mention in writing of the château at Palluau dates back to 1073, evidently. Palluau was at the southeastern edge of the territory controlled at the time by the Count of Anjou, a certain Geoffroy Plantagenêt. A few decades later, Geoffroy's descendent Henri II would increase his holdings considerably by becoming king of England as well as count of Anjou and duke of Normandy.

So the count of Anjou was a powerful figure and Palluau was a strategic site that was well fortified. Richard the Lionhearted inherited the English throne and the county of Anjou from his father. The Plantagênet's were locked in a struggle against the king of France, Philip Augustus, based of course in Paris.

Palluau and its château changed hands several times, but Philippe Auguste was eventually victorious, after numerous battles and sieges. Palluau became part of the French kingdom by the year 1200 or so.

A view from the south looking across the Indre river valley

A couple of centuries later, during the Hundred Years War, which was fought between the English and the French on what is now French territory, the English took control of Palluau again for about five years. They tore down the château before they were forced by the French king's forces to retreat farther west at the end of the 1300s.

The château de Palluau in its present form was built, then, in the 1400s. The Palluau "skyline" has changed very little since then. In the 1500s, the French Renaissance, the owners of Palluau modernized the château and made it into a pleasant place to live. They were helped by workmen brought to the region from Brittany by the French queen, Anne de Bretagne, who spent a lot of her time in the château at Loches, just a few dozen miles down the Indre river from Palluau.

Le château de Palluau-sur-Indre

In the early 1600s, the château was sold to the Buade de Frontenac family. A member of that family, Louis de Buade de Frontenac, was later named governor of New France (French Canada).

In the 1700s, the château at Palluau became the property of who else but the Duke of Saint-Aignan, a man named Paul de Beauvillier. He was a powerful figure in the court of Louis XIV, and he spent most of his time in Paris and at Versailles. When the French Revolution exploded in the late 1700s, Palluau was used as a prison for a time.

Since 1990, the château at Palluau has been owned by a real estate corporation. The property is managed by an Englishman...

Another anniversary

I realized yesterday that December 10 is the anniversary of the day we found our house in France, the one we live in now. It's been four years already, because the first time we saw the place was in December 2002. We moved here in June 2003.

The back garden at La Renaudière, 10 December 2003, when we first saw the house

We had come over to France from California in December 2002 "just to look around" and verify that the real estate listings we had been seeing on the Internet reflected some kind of reality on the ground. We didn't know that we would end up signing a contract to buy a house, and that we would be living in France just six months later. It all happened very fast.

The house was a real mess back then, but we could see its potential. It had been closed up and unlived-in for several years. Wallpaper needed to be stripped off, and paint needed to be applied everywhere. But we figured we would have time and the energy to do all that work, one way or another. The yard seemed enormous by San Francisco standards, the surroundings were perfect, and the house was structurally solid.

Birds called tits (in French, mésanges) enjoy feeding on
the boules de graisse (suet) we put out for them in winter

Four years later, we have no regrets. We've made a lot of improvements in the house — paint, tile, windows, electrics, a new shower and other plumbing, a wood-burning stove, and so on. We are even connected to the sewer mains now!

The neighbors have been welcoming and respectful of our privacy. We have a really nice vegetable garden in the summer and fall. The bread lady delivers a fresh baguette nearly every morning. The vineyards out back are our playground — or they were, before our dog Collette passed away last spring. We plan to get a new puppy this spring.

Another beautiful sunrise at la Renaudière (11 December 2006)

Anyway, in another 10 days the hours of daylight will begin increasing again. Right now the sun comes up at 8:30 a.m. and goes down at 5:00 p.m. But some mornings the sunrise is beautiful, and we haven't had any really cold weather yet. Friends from California are coming for Christmas.

If you think you don't like cabbage, you should try a French potée

And then there's the food. Yesterday I made what is called a potée for our Sunday dinner. That's cabbage, carrots, turnips, and potatoes cooked in broth with smoked sausages and cuts of pork. Sort of a French boiled dinner. Great comfort food on a winter day.

Locally grown cabbage, carrots, and turnips. Good franceline potatoes.
Sausages made by Doudouille in Blois and bought at the farmers' market
in Saint-Aignan. All cooked in my own home-made vegetable broth.

Yesterday for the first time I saw a red-breasted nut-hatch feeding on one of our suet balls. That's a sittelle torchepot in French. Watching the birds, the sunrises and sunsets, and the passing weather phenomena isn't such a bad way to spend these quiet December days.

Tempest fugit !

Well, teapots come to mind. That storm front moved through so fast yesterday that it was over almost before it got a good start.

The Chaîne Météo said wind gusts of 104 kph were recorded at Châteauroux, which is about 50 miles SE of us, and gusts of 109 kph were felt at Angers, 100 miles west. We don't have an anemometer, but I estimate we had 50 mph — say 85 or 90 kph — gusts here. The trees were bending and swaying, but no big branches broke off, and nothing was uprooted.

The local newspaper, La Nouvelle République, says winds at the top of the Eiffel Tower were clocked at 137 kph yesterday. That's about 85 mph, but it's also 1000 feet above ground level. Elsewhere in Paris, a man was killed on the Boulevard de Strasbourg (10e) when a big advertising billboard blew down and fell on him.

The neighbor's sawhorses blew over in the storm.

The good thing is that we brought in nearly everything we found outside that could have been carried away by the winds, so we didn't have any damage. And we kept all the storm shutters on the west side of the house, which bore the brunt of it, closed until noon. That's when the winds started dying down. We didn't want anything to come crashing through a window. A tree, for example.

It's nice having storm shutters. Why is it that in the U.S. so few houses have them?

When the winds went calm, our spruce and birch trees were still standing.

Today is market day. I need some mushrooms for today and a cabbage for tomorrow. I'll get something from Mme Doudouille — maybe some of her good smoked sausage to eat with the cabbage tomorrow. I have onions, carrots, potatoes, and bay leaves. Planning meals, as usual...

* * * * *

I don't talk about politics here, French or American, but I'm following along with current events.

It is astounding that the hard-core American establishment, in the form of a commission with respectable, experienced members like James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Alan Simpson, Vernon Jordan, Leon Panetta, Sandra Day O'Connor, Charles Robb, Lawrence Eagleburger, and for God's sake Ed Meese, have had to get involved to try to get control of W's administration and war policies.

George H.W. Bush, the old man, is hovering in the background, officially silent down there in Houston. The Iraq Study Group's report is what might be called an "intervention", don't you think? Almost a coup d'état. This is a very sad and very dangerous situation, with the Democrats about to take over the Congress and confront a stubborn man of limited abilities, wearing blinders, camped in the White House.

In his Washington Post op-ed column yesterday, E.J. Dionne said the Bush administration's rush to war without adequate planning, failure to cultivate a broad group of allies to help rebuild Iraq after the initial invasion, and decision not talk honestly to the American people about the large, if not impossible, task it was foisting off on us were signs of the administration's "reckless arrogance — or, to be more charitable, simple foolishness."

They used to say: "Mistakes were made." Now we can say: "Tremendous damage has been done." To the U.S., to Iraq, and to the world. Sadly, to American ideals and our country's standing internationally.

OK, back to life in Saint-Aignan now.

Tempête !

I guess that's my, or the, word of the day: tempête. Tempest. The Robert dictionary describes it as a violente perturbation atmosphérique. We've been warned. Don't go out today unless you really have to. Take all standard precautions against high winds. Expect heavy rain.

Météo France, the French national weather service, is telling us that we will have winds of 60 or even 70 miles per hour — that's 100 to 110 kilometers per hour — this afternoon. Here's the wind forcast map for 1:00 p.m. today. The figures in white are sustained winds; the numbers in red are gusts. Saint-Aignan is right under the arrow pointing to 65(100).

Vents violents prévus pour cet après-midi

In December 1999 there was a very violent tempête in France that felled millions of trees all across the country, including most of the centuries-old trees on the grounds of the Palais de Versailles, near Paris. I remember traveling to Paris a few weeks after that storm and seeing broken-off tree trunks along the streets in Paris itself.

The radar image for France taken about an hour ago

People are afraid that might happen again. I think there is widespread feeling in France that the weather is really détraqué — crazy — this days. There was the 1999 storm, a very unusual occurrence. And then the heat wave of 2003, when thousands died of exhaustion and dehydration. August 2004 was the rainiest August in nearly 50 years. August 2006 was the coldest August in more than 50 years. Now the autumn of 2006 is the warmest autumn in recorded weather history. And on and on.

Are we humans responsible for rapid changes in long-standing weather patterns? Or are these normal weather cycles? Time will tell, I guess.

The European radar at 6:45 a.m. on 08 December 2006

I grew up on the coast of North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1950s we had a series of devastating hurricanes. Hurricane Hazel was the worst, but there were several others — Connie, Diane ... if I remember the names correctly. Frequent hurricanes made for a very exciting childhood.

Then there was Hurricane Donna in 1960, which caused great damage in and around my home town. At that point, the hurricanes stopped coming. For 25 or 30 years there weren't any more. They started up again, in earnest, the 1990s. Now why did that happen? Nobody knows.

Stay tuned (can you tune in to a blog?) for updates about today's tempête in France.

Variable skies

Today is supposed to be windy, rainy, and stormy. Again. Walt says the weather sites show rain moving this way, and we are already feeling strong gusts. It's chilly, but not cold, considering it's December 7. The temperature this morning is about 8.5ºC/47ºF.

Gray skies late on a December afternoon at La Renaudière

On the news earlier this week I heard that the people who keep weather records have changed their assessment of this fall season in northern France. At first, they were saying it was the mildest since 1950. Now they are saying it's the mildest in recorded weather history. That goes back into the 19th century.

December storm clouds gathering outside the kitchen window

But look at the pictures below, which I took this morning. At about 8:00 a.m. we were treated to another one of our area's spectacular sunrise displays. Here's a picture taken from the same spot as the one above, mais quelle différence ! I took this picture with my little Canon PowerShot S70 camera, zoomed all the way out and in portrait orientation. Then I cropped it in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Sunset, wide angle, 07 December 2006 at La Renaudière

Looking at the sunrise, I decided to go and grab my long-lens camera, a Canon PowerShot Pro90IS, for some close-up shots. I've had the Pro90 camera for about five years now. It's big and heavy, which limits its usefulness, but it has a 10x zoom lens that does a great job. In film-camera terms, it's equivalent to a 37 - 370 mm zoom range.

Zoomed in about half way on the center of the sunrise shown above

And here finally is a shot at full zoom of the center of the sunrise. This isn't a crop of the above picture, but a different image. I think it's incredible. Just when you think you've reconciled yourself to enduring a few months of chilly gray weather, nature treats you to this kind of spectacle.

Full zoom on the sunrise at La Renaudière, 07 December 2006

As always, if you click on the pictures in this blog, you'll see a much larger view of the image.

Now, back to the gray, windy rain we're supposed to have all day.

Pheasants, flowers, and a plant

On Sunday morning I was getting out of the shower and enjoying the view of the back yard. Then I spotted a pheasant, a male. Un faisan.


He wandered around the yard feeding for an hour or more, and I was able to take some pretty good pictures.

He came up really close to the house. Sunday is a hunting day, and there were hunters out in the vineyards. I think this is one smart pheasant, because he found a safe place to spend the day.

When I went to the bedroom window and gently pulled back the curtain so I could take a picture, I thought for sure that he would see me and take flight. But he didn't.

A neighbor once told me that farm-raised pheasants are released into the wild at the beginning of hunting season each fall so that the hunters will have something to shoot at. So maybe this guy isn't wild at all. Walt took a video of him and will probably post it in a day or two. Keep an eye on his blog.

Last week I reorganized the little sunporch we have at the front entryway. Here are a couple of the plants I'm trying to save so they can live for another summer. The first one is called a donkey tail, as far as I know. Do you know another name for it?

I brought the donkey tail back from the U.S. as a tiny sprig in April 2005. It seems to like the conditions at La Renaudière.

Our friend Gisèle, who lives on the other side of the village, gave me the plant shown above a year or more ago. It produces really nice pink-and-yellow flowers in the fall.

Cooking shows in France

Both of us like to cook and both of us like to watch cooking shows on TV. They are often on in the background, but sometimes we sit down and really pay attention to them.

One of the nice things about the cooking shows nowadays is that you can often go to the Internet and look up the recipes for dishes you see the cooks and chefs prepare on TV.

We used to have two cooking channels on our cable system, Cuisine.TV and another one, the name escapes me, that was run or owned by the famous chef Joël Rebuchon. Rebuchon's channel went off the air a year or so ago. BBC Prime, which is the BBC's entertainment channel for Europe and the Middle East, also shows a few cooking shows every week.

Cuisine.TV shows a dozen or more French cooking shows but also runs a lot of shows from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Canada (Québec, that is). For example, it runs a lot of British cooking star Jamie Oliver's shows.

The first shows of Jamie's that were shown in France were perfectly dubbed in French. That wasn't too bad, even if it took some getting used to. The French actor's voice was actually really well synchronized with Jamie's mouth movements.

Later, the truly dubbed versions were replaced by what I call over-dubbed versions of Jamie Oliver's shows and others. Over-dubbing is surely a less expensive, less time-consuming process that involves laying down a French soundtrack on top of the original English soundtrack to carry the translated script. In other words, rather than hearing Jamie Oliver speak French, what you hear is Jamie speaking English is the background and a slightly louder French narrator reading a translation of the patter in the audio foreground.

Well, that's very annoying. If you didn't speak English much or at all, I suppose it could be okay. If you speak English but not French, it's irritating not to be able to hear the background track, which is Jamie Oliver (or another host) speaking his native language, very clearly. When you speak both English and French, you end up not being able to focus on or hear either soundtrack as well as you'd like to.

Here's a sample. The video isn't very good because I'm shooting pictures of the TV screen with a digital camera, but it gives you the flavor:



One Cuisine.TV show that we (and some special friends of ours in California) really enjoy is called Le Menu d'Eric. It's hosted by a chef named Eric Léautey, assisted by a woman named Anne Allegrini. Anne is Eric's foil. He is teaching her how to cook, more or less, and she represents the target audience of the show, I assume.

Are you watching, John and Candy?

Laurie and the piano at Montrésor

On his blog yesterday, Walt posted a video of our friend Laurie playing the organ in a church in Anniston, Alabama, that we visited back in late October. He mentioned that Laurie had visited us here in Saint-Aignan in February 2005 and played the historic piano at the Château de Montrésor. That brought back a nice memory. I didn't take a video of her playing, but I did take some still pictures.

Here's what I wrote in an e-mail to friends the next day:

The village called Montrésor, one of the prettiest in France

...Laurie and I drove on to Montrésor, which was the highlight of the afternoon. The sun came out, the wind died down, and the rain & snow stopped. Montrésor has the L'un des Plus Beaux Villages de France designation, and it is pretty with its château, church, and old houses.

One of the château towers

Laurie and I parked in the lower town and walked up the hill to the church, which I had visited before and found very interesting. But it was closed — there was a sign on the door that said something like l'église est temporairement fermée à cause de dégradations. I have no idea what the dégradations were, but we couldn't visit the building...

Montrésor's main "watering hole" seen from the château

We walked on from the church along the high road to the entrance of the château. A man came out and called to us in French and then in English, saying we could take the tour en visite libre if we wanted to. Laurie said "Let's do it!" and we did. It was very interesting. Six or seven rooms on two levels were open to visitors, and they were full of 18th and 19th century furniture and lots of paintings.

The piano at Montrésor is a 200-year-old Erard

But the best part was the piano — it is one that came from Paris and had been played by Chopin. The man from the entrance had come up at the end of the tour to show us the trésor or treasure of the Château de Montrésor — a locked room full of gold and silver platters, beer steins, coins, etc. He mentioned the piano, and I told him that Laurie is a musician. He insisted that she play the piano, and she did. It was beautiful -- she's quite accomplished.

Laurie playing the piano that Chopin played and composed music on

The man of the château was genuinely impressed and was very happy to have her play it. Laurie was impressed to find that it had recently been tuned by a professional who had done the work for free, saying it was an honor to work on such a fine instrument.

If you want to see more pictures of the town and château, here's a posting about Montrésor from May 2006.

Baking feats and treats

Walt's been busy baking this week. A couple of days ago, he made an excellent quiche using some yellow summer squash that he put in the freezer last summer.

A pre-baked pastry shell filled with a mixture of sautéed summer squash and onions

To freeze the squash flesh, he grated it finely and packed it uncooked into a sealed plastic bag. After he took it out and thawed it the other day, he squeezed most of the water out of it with his hands. Then he cooked it for a few minutes in a frying pan on low heat with butter and a chopped onion, salt, and pepper.

The quiche as it came out of the oven, all puffed up, golden, and tasty

The squash-onion mixture went into a pre-cooked pastry shell along with some grated comté cheese — you could used whatever cheese you wanted — and then was covered with a mixture of eggs and cream. It took about 5 eggs and maybe ½ to ¾ cup of cream (or milk). A pinch of nutmeg in the eggs gives good flavor, and some extra cheese sprinkled on top before baking gives the quiche a nice golden color. It spent about 45 minutes in the oven at 375ºF (190ºC).

* * * * *

Later, after a trip to the store to get some ground hazelnuts and other supplies, W. made a batch of Spicy Nut Bread that we had seen a chef on Cuisine TV make a week or so ago. Here's a link to the French recipe, called Gâteau Épicé aux Noix. And here's my translation: Spicy Nut Bread.

The ingredients are the ground hazelnuts, chopped walnuts, raisins, rum, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, sugar, lemon zest, and spices — ginger, allspice, and cinnamon. The French recipe also calls for fromage blanc*, which I think you could substitute yogurt or sour cream for in the states.

Shaping the nut bread dough into loaves

The French recipe doesn't mention kneading the dough, but on the TV show Eric definitely kneaded it for a while, very gently, before he shaped it for baking.

Spicy nutbread loaves cooling on a rack

After the loaves cooled, we sliced them and ate them like that. No complaints.

The cooled loaf sliced

It was obvious that this was actually a recipe for biscotti, however. I've never seen biscotti (which are Italian) in France, though I'm sure you can buy them in Paris and other cities. Walt used to make biscotti at Christmastime when we lived in San Francisco.

Walt cut up the second loaf and put the slices in a slow oven for 30 minutes or so to dry them out. Sure enough, we ended up with biscotti. I think the nut bread is even better this way because the walnuts and ground hazelnuts have a toastier flavor, and the raisins are sort of candied.

Spicy nut ... biscotti

___________________________________________

* Fromage blanc, according to my Larousse Les Fromages book, is a product obtained by slow coagulation of whole cow's milk with rennet at 15ºC for 24 hours. It can be eaten with sugar (for breakfast or dessert) or flavored with herbs and spices (as a dip, for example). It's always available in French supermarkets, and I paid one euro for a litre at SuperU the other day. Plain fromage blanc has a slightly sour taste and the texture of yogurt or sour cream.

Already December 1

Can you believe it? I can't. I guess the fact that we spent the month of October in the U.S. has something to do with it.

Sunrise, 8:00 a.m., 01 December 2006, at La Renaudière

The weather is a factor too — northern France is having its warmest autumn since 1950, according a report I heard on the radio the other day. It was much colder at this time last year, that's for sure. Though the low this morning was about 38ºF, so the cold weather is coming. But we are supposed to have a mild weekend, with more rain.

A November puddle on the rue de la Renaudière

Back in the 1970s when I lived in Paris, they used to say that landlords would turn on the heat in apartment buildings on October 15, whether you needed heat or not. Mostly you did. And then they would turn the heat off on April 15, whether you still needed it or not. And often you did.

A blackbird sitting in the top of our bay laurel tree, with fall colors

Earlier this week I took all my succulents and houseplants outdoors and cleaned up our little sun porch for the winter. I will eventually need to bring in all the outdoor plants that can't take frost, and I needed to make room for them. But this week I left even the houseplants outdoors for about 48 hours, hoping it would rain and water them for me. It just sprinkled a little and the temperature didn't go down below 45ºF.

Houseplants getting some fresh air on a late-November afternoon

We've been turning our heat on in the morning and leaving it for two or at most three hours. But then the house is almost too warm, so we turn the heat off. Late in the afternoon, if it's a little chilly, we either turn the boiler on again for an hour or two to get the radiators warm for the evening, or Walt builds a fire in our new wood stove. The wood stove is going to be really nice this winter, and wood is much less expensive than fuel oil.

Recent view out our bedroom window past the neighbor's yard to the vineyards

I see on CNN this morning that a big snowstorm blew across the U.S. Plains States and the Middle West overnight. I wonder when we will get our first snowflakes this year. I do need to get the geraniums in this weekend.

The neighbors' birch trees on Thanksgiving weekend 2006

I just looked at weather.com to see what's going on in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. That's the last place we stayed in the U.S., early in November. Well, our friends there didn't get the worst of the big snowstorm, it appears. Still,they are supposed to get two to four inches of snow before noon on Friday, and the winds are supposed to be howling. Then the temperature will drop to -8ºC by Saturday morning — that's 18ºF, very cold compared to what we are used to here in the Loire Valley.

How much of me does my blog own?

18.75 %

My weblog owns 18.75 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

I guess I'm doing OK. More than 80% of my life still belongs to me and not to my blog.

Shepherd's pie & potato varieties

Along with escarole & beet salad, I made shepherd's pie — hachis parmentier in French — this past weekend, using leftover lamb, some tiny lardons cut from good poitrine fumée (a.k.a. lard) that I bought chez Doudouille at the Saint-Aignan market, and lots of aromatic vegetables.

The light brown squares on the cutting board are the rind of the pork
bacon, the couenne. Cook it with the meat and vegetables because
it gives gelatine and flavor to the mixture. Then remove it, along with
any bay leaves you used, before you put the mixture in the baking pan(s).

I spent a lot of time cutting up the vegetables and the meat. I used carrots, onions, garlic, celery, mushrooms, and herbs. I diced all those up very finely. Except the garlic, which I grated. I also chopped up the lamb into very small pieces. That's how I spent my Sunday morning. Sometimes I think I'm crazy (bite your tongue!), but the ends justify the means, I guess. Or the time spent.

L. to r., lamb, garlic, mushrooms, rosemary, parsley, lardons, carrots, celery,
& onions. In the little white pitcher, the cooking juices from the leg of lamb.

Whenever I start thinking I ought to be able to find something more valuable to do with my time, I stop myself and say "no, food is about the most important thing there is." For your health, no less. And then I have always thought it was a good idea to make a pleasure out of something that is absolutely a necessity. Enjoy cooking. Enjoy eating. Try to exercise self-control at eating time. Eat a little bit of everything.

After cooking all the meat and vegetables, moistened with the lamb drippings,
you put that mixture into pans and spread mashed potatoes over the top.
Then you bake it all in a hot oven.

Also, in the back of my mind, is the old saw that says "Waste not, want not." I can't stand to throw food out. I had not only the leftover lamb (and its jus) but celery and carrots in the refrigerator that needed to be used. Another old saw: Use it or lose it. Cook it or toss it.

I also had an overabundance of onions, because I bought a big bag of them the other day. And I had too many heads of garlic, because I bought three heads a week or 10 days ago, and then I forgot so I bought two more later in the week.

Hot, golden-brown hachis parmentier ready to serve

I went out and bought mushrooms and potatoes and lard (what we would call smoked slab bacon). Buying the lard was really just an excuse to go to the market and talk to Mme Doudouille for a few minutes. I hadn't seen her since before our U.S. trip, back in September.

Speaking of potatoes, on the cooking shows we watch on Cuisine TV, a French channel, the various chefs and home cooking experts always talk about a potato variety called bintje (pronounced beentch). I've been feeling deprived for about 3 years now, because I have never been able to find bintje potatoes in our Loire Valley markets or supermarkets.

Here's the meat-and-potato pie alongside some beets

I finally did a Google search on the word bintje. It turns out that the variety of potatoes I do find in all our markets, agata, is the same thing. The bintje potato was developed in the Netherlands in the early 20th century, and I think it is grown in Belgium and in northern France. It's good for making frites, purées, and potages (soups) because its flesh is mealy or farineuse.

The agata potato was also developed in the Netherlands, but later, and Wikipedia's article on potatoes in French says it closely resembles the bintje. I used agatas to make the mashed potatoes for the shepherd's pie. The waxy red franceline potatoes that I already had wouldn't have made a good purée at all. I tried mashing them once and ended up with a pot of what could only be called glue (un pot de colle !).

It's interesting and culturally or culinarily significant, I think, that Wikipedia's English-language article on potatoes doesn't include any information about different varieties at all. The French article lists and describes thirty-seven, if I counted right.