News of the neighborhood

It's so dark! Here it is nearly 8:00 in the morning and there's just the faintest gray color in the little bit of sky I can see. And it's cold too — around 5ºC, which is 41ºF. It's going to be much colder next week, according to this morning's weather report.

The off-camera people seem to have returned to work on France 2's Télématin show. France 2 is the flagship public TV channel here. You can see it in the sets and "production values." I'm not sure what the situation is with public transport in the cities, but the strikes are definitely winding down.

View from the back gate yesterday afternoon, when
there was enough light for picture-taking

It's about time for me to go out for the morning walk with the dog. I might need to take a flashlight with me! And I might have to put on my long underwear. Later today, I think I'd better start bringing some more potted plants in. Some might be killed if we have a frosty morning.

October vineyard views

Others, the annuals, will need to be pulled out and put on the compost pile. It's still not too late to hope for an été de la Saint-Martin, what we call an Indian Summer, but that doesn't come every year. Saint-Martin's day is November 11. November can be very cold... or not.

A new winery near La Renaudière, where we live

On my walk yesterday afternoon, I actually did take the camera out. Callie and I took a long walk, down through the woods, then back up by a different road, and on the paved Route Touristique through the vineyards a ways.

Monsieur Ledys has some work to do to get his place fixed up.

I noticed that an old farmhouse complex that had been for sale has been taken over by an artisan vigneron — a grape-grower/winemaker — and he's put out his sign. He's using the name of the hamlet just east of ours, La Chotinière, for his winery. I guess that's where his vines are planted. Ledys [luh-DEE] is a common family name here in the Saint-Aignan area.

Uneventful

Our drive over to Tours and back yesterday was uneventful. Good, in other words. If anything, there was less traffic on the roads than we might have expected. The weather was beautiful. And the shopping was good. We got most of the things we needed.

Meanwhile, the consensus in the French press this morning is that more people than ever turned out to protest the government's plan to raise the retirement age. Some organizers claim that 3.5 million people participated in marches and demonstrations.

The rightist Sarkozy/Fillon government says that the Socialist party did everything it could to get a lot of students to take part, in effect "instrumentalizing" them, or using them in a cynical effort to jack up the number of demonstrators.

Politics, eh?

The strike actions continue this morning. You can always tell when there's a strike by turning on France 2's Télématin news and information TV show in the morning. The sound is a little tinny, the sets are minimalistic, the weather reports show only static maps, and the hosts' and guests' make-up looks slightly amateurish. All the support and technical people stayed home, but the show must go on.

If you turn on France Inter radio, you get music only, with no hosts and no news features. No talk shows. It's not dead air, but when you've been through it before it's obviously a strike day.

Refinery workers are on strike. There may be gas and diesel fuel shortages in a few days. Only one in three TGV trains is running, and only two out of five TER regional trains. Looks like it's still raining down on the Mediterranean coast, by the way.

It's a good time to stay home and work in the garden. Here in central France, the weather is dry and starting to feel chilly. The house is cooling down. That means cooking good comfort foods for lunch. Staying home and conserving fuel by not driving.

But for us, that sounds pretty normal, actually.

Bacon, and bringing it home

Two subjects today: silicone baking mats and national strikes by French workers.

First, the cooking situation. We have two silicone baking mats or pads that we use all the time, for cooking all kinds of things — tomates confites, oven-dried tomatoes, bacon, meats, vegetables, cookies, biscuits, other breads, and on and on. The nice thing about these mats is that they are non-porous and non-stick. Really, nothing sticks to them. Besides, they are easy to wash with dish-washing liquid in hot water. Then you dry them between two towels, roll them up, and store them in a drawer.

Bacon (fines tranches de poitrine fumée de porc)

Thin-sliced bacon (American-style) is the latest product we've found easy to cook on the baking mats. It browns and crisps up really nicely on a silicone mat on a baking sheet in the oven. It's a lot less messy, and you don't have to watch it so closely if you cook it at a fairly low temperature (150ºC/300ºF). The bacon cooks evenly and doesn't burn. We've been eating a lot of BLTs over the past few weeks, since the tomato crop came in.

No mess, no fuss — no burning, no sticking

One of the mats we use is a Fiberlux product that we've had for at least 8 or 9 years. I know because I remember that we used it in San Francisco before we moved to Saint-Aignan in 2003. Fiberlux mats are available at this store in St. Louis, for example. Amazon.com sells baking mats too. One of the best-known brands is Silpat. The second baking mat we use is one I bought in a chain store in North Carolina a year or two ago.

And then the French political situation: Today is another big strike day in France. The RER line that takes passengers from central Paris out to Roissy/CDG airport has only 20% of the normal number of trains running on it. Other lines, including the Paris metro and the railways across the France, are also running on significantly reduced schedules. Unless people who aren't on strike take the day off and stay home, that means heavy traffic on the highways, especially around Paris and other big cities.

Other sectors are affected by the strikes too. On the news they're saying that 50% of the flights out of Orly airport have been cancelled and 30% of the flights out of Roissy/CDG. Workers are blocking the ports around the country, and some teachers will be on strike.

Reports yesterday said about two-thirds of people polled in France think the strikes are justified and support the workers. There will be mass demonstrations and marches in Paris and other big cities today, and the unions will claim that millions turned out to protest while police officials will assess the numbers much lower.

The labor unions are trying to show how unhappy working people are about government policies. The weather is beautiful right now, so a lot of people will take to the streets today, I'm sure. And the strikes this time are reconductible — of indefinite length — for the first time in a while. Usually labor leaders call for a 24- or 36- or 48-hour strike to make their point. This time, unions member will vote daily to decide whether or not to go back to work the next day.

The issue is the Sarkozy government's changes to the public retirement system. At this point both the French National Assembly and the French Senate have approved a plan to raise the earliest retirement age from 60 to 62 years old, and from 65 to 67 for full benefits. Polls put President Sarkozy's approval rating at 31%, a record low. The number of people who think the Prime Minister is doing a good job is just slightly higher at 37%.

Rumors are that Prime Minister François Fillon will leave the government later this fall. And President Sarkozy will most likely stand for re-election in May 2012. Whether these strikes will have any real effect on the retirement plan reforms or national leaders' re-election chances remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Walt and I are going to drive over to Tours this morning to do some shopping that we've been putting off for a while. We need a few pieces of furniture to make the downstairs living room and guest room more functional. We're having company over the next few weeks, including houseguests. And of course we need some kitchen things. I'll let you know tomorrow whether we see any evidence of today's strikes while we are out an about in the big city of Tours.

Cooking with olives

Yesterday I made meatballs. Not just any kind, but with veal and olives. The idea was a recipe I posted about before, a Corsican specialty called Veau aux olives — veal cooked with olives. In a tomato sauce. I don't know if people cook with olives in the U.S., but they do in France. Duck with olives, for example, is a classic.

I felt like making meatballs. I had bought a veal shoulder roast, boneless, all rolled and and bardé (wrapped in strips of pork fat) and tied up with string. I buy those whenever they go on sale at the supermarket, which is two or three times a year.

A meatball mixture using ground veal,
smoked pork, and chopped green olives

This time, I cut away the string, cut the veal into cubes, and included the bardes de lard gras, the strips of fat. I also added 200 grams of smoked pork lardons and Walt put all that meat through the grinder together while I chopped the onions and olives.

You can see the olive mince in the meat mixture.

The Corsican recipe calls for veal for stew plus lardons, so I was using all the right ingredients while changing the presentation and the method. And then it occurred to me that instead of following the recipe and putting both whole green and whole black olives into the tomato sauce (with garlic, onions, thyme, and rosemary) that the meatballs would cook in, I could chop up the pitted green olives I had in the refrigerator and add the olive mince to the meatball mixture.

The meatballs ready to go in the oven for browning

That's what I did, adding some chopped onion, mashed garlic, black pepper, hot red pepper flakes, and egg yolks too. Oh, and some cooked rice I happened to have in the fridge, and a small handful of dry breadcrumbs (we make breadcrumbs with the "dead bread" we always seem to have around — odd pieces of dried-out baguettes).

The result — save the fat but don't put it in the tomato sauce

We are really into roasting things in the oven these days. Like the meatballs, for instance. Place them on a silicone pad on a baking sheet, drizzle some olive oil over them, and put them in a hot oven. There they will brown, and you hardly have to watch them at all — much less worry about turning them over and over in a frying pan, spattering the whole kitchen with grease, and ending up with meatball crumbs. As they roast, the meatballs will release most of the fat they contain.

Here's a recipe for the Boulettes de veau et lardons aux olives that you see in the pictures here. I know this recipe would be good made with ground turkey, which is easy to get in America but not so easy in France.

Veal and smoked pork meatballs with olives

For the meatballs:
1¾ lbs. ground veal
6 oz. smoked pork lardons (bacon)
1 small onion, diced hot red pepper flakes (to taste)
breadcrumbs abd/or cooked rice (1 cup total)
¼ lb. pitted green olives, minced (½ to ¾ cup)
3 egg yolks (or 2 whole eggs)
black pepper

For the sauce:
1 small onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
4 or 5 ripe tomatoes
3 sprigs of thyme
3 sprigs of rosemary
2 Tbsp. olive oil
½ cup white wine
12 dried shitake (or other) mushrooms
salt and pepper
¼ lb. black olives (¾ cup)

Make the meatballs by combining all the ingredients and mixing them together well. If you are grinding the meat yourself, run the smoked pork through the grinder with the veal. Otherwise, dice it up finely with a knife. It goes in raw.

Add very little salt to the mixture, if any, because the olives and bacon will be salty enough. Form 1-inch meatballs. Brown them in a pan on top of the stove, or on a silicone pad (or parchment paper) in a hot oven.

Make the sauce by sautéing onion and garlic in olive oil until it just starts to brown. Then cut up the tomatoes and add them and their juice to the pan with the herbs, white wine, mushrooms, and salt (sparingly) and pepper. Cook the sauce at medium heat while the meatballs are browning. Add water as needed.

Add the browned meatballs to the sauce and cook on low heat for 30 to 60 minutes. Ten minutes before you plan to serve and eat the meatballs, add the black olives to the sauce. They will plump up and add saltiness to the finished dish.

Serve with pasta and a green salad dressed with vinaigrette.

Here's a link to a similar Veau aux olives recipe I made about
18 months ago.

101010

Today is 101010. That's 10/10/10, or October 10, 2010. I save all my photos in folders on my computer named by date, using that first convention — Year Month Day. Tomorrow will be 101011.

I once "counted" all the photos stored on my hard disk. Well, I let the computer count them. I just searched for all the files on the computer that have a .jpg extension. I think the total was about 125,000. And that doesn't count the files with .bmp and other image extensions.

Autumn leaves here in Saint-Aignan are grape leaves.

You can click on the photos to see them at a larger size.

I got my first digital camera in 1998 and started taking pictures. Before that, I never enjoyed photography. I'm on my sixth camera now. Two Kodaks, two Canons, and now two Panasonics. By the way, my current cameras are nearly totally automatic, and pretty small. No fiddling with complicated settings. And I admit I use Adobe Photoshop a lot.

The local woods in autumn

That many photos is kind of overwhelming to think about. I'm a mitrailleur with the camera, they would say in French — in other words, I use it like a machine gun. Snap snap snap. That's a gruesome image, but vivid. So far, however, I don't think I've actually hurt anybody with it. But why take one picture when you can take ten?

More grape leaves in autumn

Because all the photos are stored by date and not by any kind of subject-matter scheme, it's nearly impossible to find any particular one when you want it. All you can do is go back and look at a particular day, month, or year. And pretty soon you're tired out, because there are so many of them.

Rows of vines

By the way, I actually have all the photos on two redundant hard disks, so that if one of the disks gives up the ghost, I'll still have the other one. I also have them all on CDs and DVDs — I do a monthly backup. If both of my hard disks die, I'll still be overwhelmed with photos.

A dahlia

I guess it's kind of obsessive. Aren't we all? Anyway, today's photos are ones I took the week of 051010 to 051017. Four cameras ago. I don't have the cameras any more, but I've been careful to save the pictures. I started this blog later that month, nearly five years ago already.

Eggplant “pizzas”

We are lucky enough to still be getting aubergines from the vegetable garden. And tomatoes too, but I've probably worn you all out with the subject of tomates.

The vegetable garden is in decline, of course, at this season, but I picked nearly a dozen eggplants of various sizes a couple of days ago. In talking about how we would cook them, Walt remembered something our friend Peter Hertzmann made for us on one of his recent visits.

Dice up some tomatoes and score the eggplant halves

It's called Aubergines en pizza, and it's a French recipe Peter says he originally got from Elle à table. I haven't been successful in finding it there, but here's Peter's recipe on his A la Carte site.

Drizzle some olive oil onto the scored eggplant havles

Also, Walt blogged about eggplant "pizzas" back when Peter cooked these for us here in Saint-Aignan. Here's Walt's post.

Spread the diced tomato and chopped-up basil leaves
over the eggplant halves

We modified the recipe to use the ingredients we had on hand. Instead of emmental or some other Alpine cheese, we used mozzarella. We used basil instead of oregano. We didn't have anchovies, so we added salt to the recipe. And so on.

Top with mozzarella or some other cheese

Here's the recipe we came up with. It's a keeper:

Aubergines en « pizza »

4 medium eggplants
2 large tomatoes, finely diced
2 little mozzarella cheeses, sliced
12 fresh basil leaves, minced
salt and pepper
olive oil
grated parmesan cheese (at the table)

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350ºF.

Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise, including the stem. With a small knife, make a series of cuts in a crisscross fashion, spaced about a centimeter apart, into the eggplant flesh but without piercing the skin.

Lay the eggplant halves, cut side up, on a baking sheet. Drizzle some olive oil over them. Spread the diced tomato evenly over the scored surfaces. Sprinkle the minced basil leaves over them and season with salt and pepper. Finally, place the sliced mozzarella over all.

Bake the “pizzas” until the eggplant is tender, about 30 minutes. Serve with olive oil and grated parmesan cheese.

Serve the eggplant pizzas with grated parmesan

I think some garlic mixed in with the diced tomato would be good, and I'll try that next time. And I might try doing the same thing with zucchini/courgettes instead of eggplants/aubergines.

Why we blog...

The weather has turned beautiful again but the sun sure does come up late. Soon we'll change over to standard time again — in France it's called heure d'hiver, winter time — and the sun we come up a little earlier but go down very early.

Because it's pretty dark in the morning when I walk the dog, I'm not taking many pictures. Even the ones I do take come out blurred. I don't want to carry a tripod on my walks with Callie. Yesterday afternoon was warm and sunny, but I didn't take my camera out because we took an abbreviated walk. Walt and I were meeting people down in Saint-Aignan for drinks at 6:30.

Recent skies at sunset

Yesterday I did my annual cleaning of the hedge. That means going around and finding all the blackberry and other vines growing up into the bay laurel hedge and clipping them off as close to the ground as I can. I also cut out some wild rose and holly bushes, along with some ivy. That annual trim, along with the annual pruning, keeps the hedge in good shape.

The grape harvest continues. I still see rows and parcels of vines where the grapes are still hanging. Most now have been taken in, though. Callie doesn't like the harvesting machines and tractors — they scare her — so that also changes the nature of our walks.

Dumping the harvested grapes into the trailer
for transport back to the winery

The people we met for drinks down at Lily's wine bar in Saint-Aignan were Australians who have been visiting this week. They rented a little house on the main square in town, and have been traveling around to châteaux (Chambord, Chenonceau, Valençay) and wineries. We had a warm evening (now that the rains have let up) and we sat outside until just after nine enjoying a good local Sauvignon Blanc.

A neighbor walking her little dog out in the vineyard —
all pictures taken from our back windows

Two English-speaking friends (one English, one German — both of them also speak French) happened along while we were sitting at the café and each joined us for a few minutes and a glass or two. We meet so many nice and interesting people because of our blogs...

French national health insurance

We've been renewed for 2011. We have to send in our renewal application every September, when the income tax bill comes. That's the document that the Caisse Primaire d'Assurance Maladie — the office of the national healthcare system up in Blois — wants to see.

The premium we pay — notre côtisation or contribution to the system — is based on our annual income. I see that the portion of your income that is exempt has now been increased to just over 9,000 €. That's more than $12K U.S. right now. Any revenue you declare over and above the exemption is taxed at 8% for coverage under the national healtcare system — over and above what you pay in income tax.

So if you declare income of, say 20,000 €, you pay on the basis of 11,000 € x 0.08 = 880 € per year for basic medical coverage at 65% to 70% on the cost of doctor visits, prescription drugs, and dental care. For purposes of medical coverage, Walt and I get one exemption of 9,000 euros, not two. In other words, we declare our combined income and our contribution is calculated on that basis — because we live at the same address, and despite the fact that we are not allowed to file a joint tax return either in the U.S. or in France.

I won't go into specifics, but let's just say that we find our contribution to the national health insurance system to be very reasonable for the coverage we get. If we wanted to, we could pay for a private, top-up policy that would bring our coverage up to 100%. I haven't needed to look into that option yet. We make do with the standard coverage. People who have very low incomes can, in fact, qualify for 100% coverage under the public system. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't qualify for that level of coverage.

Remember, too, that the fees doctors and dentists can charge are regulated by the government in France. It costs 22 € to go see your GP. You get about two-thirds of that fee (about 14€) back, so you're out only eight euros. It costs less than 30 € to get your teeth examined and cleaned, and you get two-thirds (20 €) of that back too. It's very reasonable.

The prices the pharmacies can charge for prescription medications are similarly regulated. I pay less for my prescription medications here than I did when I worked in California, and back then I had very good medical insurance, provided by my employer. My co-pays were pretty low, but not as low as in France because the drugs themselves cost so much less here. In France, on the other hand, I think over-the-counter drugs are pretty expensive. But maybe I'm out of touch with prices for such products in the U.S.

One thing that has made it easier for me to get into the French national healthcare system is the fact that I will get a small pension from the French government when I turn 65 — I worked in Paris for a few years when I was younger. I could have taken the pension at 60, but it wasn't worth much at all then. Even at 65, I'll get only about 100 € a month. The fact is, though, that even such a small pension means I'm "in the system" and automatically qualify for healthcare benefits.

In theory, any legal resident of France, even temporary residents, qualify for basic medical coverage. But they ask you a lot of questions when you are in that situation. I know, because I answered many questions over a period of several years. The people asking them were always helpful, polite, and informative, but they were being thorough.

Besides documents showing my income, one thing they wanted to see was my passport, to make sure I really was residing in France for more than six months out of the year. They looked at all the stamps in the passport to check up on the length of my visits to the U.S. (or other countries). If you spend more than six months per year outside France, you don't qualify for the government-sponsored medical plan.

Insurance business

Food, taxes, medication. Three things that are inevitable in this life. Well, and insurance too, if you own property. Yesterday I had to deal with all these things.

First, it was time to get our homeowner's insurance up to date. The way such insurance is calculated in France is interesting. It's not based on the size of your house in square meters (or square feet) — at least not entirely. It's not based on the value of the house — what you paid for it, or what you might be able to sell it for. It seems to be based entirely on the number of rooms your house has in it.

Not all the rooms count, however. The kitchen, for example, is ignored. So is the toilet (which is usually a separate room in France), and so is the bathroom. You could have as many WCs and bathrooms as you want, and their existence would have no effect on your homeowner's insurance. The same is true of the utility room, which in our house is a big semi-finished space containing the boiler, a shower stall, a laundry sink, the washer-dryer set, and three big wardrobes full of linens, clothes, and other stuff. It's as big as our living/dining room. All that is ignored, as is the garage. The stairs. The hall. The landing.

The rooms that count are bedrooms, living rooms, and dining rooms. Our house, therefore, was determined to have just three rooms — two bedrooms and the living/dining room. I repeatedly told the women at the MMA insurance agency in Saint-Aignan that we also have a room downstairs that is officially an entryway, but that is at least as big as either of the bedrooms. They weren't interested in that information. Or in my description of it as my home office, where I (used to) have my desk and computer. (Now I've moved upstairs.)

MMA (Mutuelle du Mans Assurances) doesn't care. No matter that the downstairs entryway is the size of a standard room, and besides my desk and computer, at the time I had a day bed for overflow visitors down there, as well as a television set and stereo. A telephone. A filing cabinet. Non of that fazed anyone at MMA. That space did not exist for insurance purposes — even though it is nearly as big as some of the Paris apartments I lived in back in the 1970s and 1980s.

Okay, MMA does say (and our previous insurer, Axa, also said) that our living/dining room has to be counted as two rooms because it is more than 40 square meters (440 square feet) in size. That meant our house insurance premium was based on the house having four rooms. Even so, less than half our total living space is what the homeowner's insurance is based on.

Oh, and did I mention that our policy — covering replacement value, liability, fire, weather and water damage — costs just 239 euros a year? That's $330 U.S. annually, even with today's low dollar. Our homeowner's insurance in San Francisco used to cost four times as much, and that was without earthquake coverage.

The new upstairs space we had finished off this year, the loft or attic that is now a bedroom suite, obviously needed to be figured into MMA's premium calculation. We got permission from the village authorities to have the construction work done, and one of the pieces of paper they handed us at the mairie was a form on which we were supposed to declare that the construction work had been finished in conformance with the initial plan, once it was actually finished. I took that paper to the village hall last week and got it stamped, to make it official. The work is officially done.

I took a copy of the completed document — Achèvement des travaux, it was called — which the woman at the town hall was nice enough to provide, to the MMA office in Saint-Aignan the other day. I don't know what I was thinking the new insurance premium would be. How much would it cost to include the new room? And in fact, it would count as two rooms, because it is also larger than 40 square meters. The new insurance quote would have to be based on six rooms, not four.

The young woman in the MMA office entered the information into a program on her computer that calculates the premium you have to pay. She couldn't get it to come out right, so a more experienced colleague came over and figured it out. I was sitting there thinking that the new premium must be so high that the woman couldn't believe it. Two rooms plus two "double" rooms. Six rooms... Is that too many?

No need to worry though. The new annual premium will be 269 euros ($372 U.S.), the MMA people said. That's a 30-euro annual increase. And since there are eight months left in the coverage year — two-thirds of the year — we were asked to pay two-thirds of the increase, or 20 euros, right now, to be fully covered until next June 1. I guess I can live with that.

Tomorrow: health insurance premiums. In other words, taxes.

All the color is indoors

Oh well, it's raining again this morning. As you'll see from the first photo below, there's not a lot of color in the landscape right now. Well, maybe there are colors, but they all tend toward the gray, the violet — the dull. Do you know Francis Cabrel's song called « Octobre »? So far this October, all the color is indoors.

Yesterday morning's view out a back window

And that's only because I picked more tomatoes yesterday morning, as the rain began to fall. The tomatoes just keep coming, and even the constant dampness of the past week or two hasn't yet spoiled them. With this very mild and wet weather, the remaining tomatoes are ripe — ha ha — for an attack of mildew and mold. If the rain lets up for a while today, I'll have to go out and pick some more.

Tomatoes ready for oven-drying

Meanwhile, having the oven on all day is enjoyable. It gives us just a little bit of heat, letting us avoid turning on the central heating system or even building a fire in the wood-burner. Drying tomatoes in the oven requires only a little heat — but it takes some time. Like maybe 8 hours at a temperature around 200ºF/90ºC. Below the boiling temperature, because you don't want the moisture in the tomato wedges and halves to boil, just to evaporate slowly.

Red and yellow tomatoes, ready
for the oven or the freezer

Drying them is probably the most space-efficient way of preserving fresh ripe tomatoes. Freezing them whole takes a lot of room you might otherwise use for other things in the freezer. Making sauce and freezing or canning it is better, but still... Drying tomatoes reduces their volume exponentially, and dozens of tomatoes end up fitting into a single medium-size jar.

Besides, the aroma is incredible. You find yourself going back to the oven all during the day and opening the door just to smell the tomato aroma being released. And the dried result — the tomatoes are still moelleux when you take them out of the oven — that's leathery and flexible, not exactly soft but not dried until hard or crispy — is delicious.

Oven-dried tomatoes sealed in a sterilized jar

Yesterday at the end of the process, after having gradually removed the tomato pieces that seemed sufficiently dried as the afternoon progressed, leaving the softer, juicier pieces to dry some more, I did this: I put all the tomato wedges and pieces back in the oven, along with the jar I planned to store them in and its lid. I turned the temperature up to 120ºC/250ºF and left everything to get hot for about five minutes.

Then I put the hot tomato pieces into the hot jar and, using a kitchen towel so as not to burn my hands, I screwed the lid on tightly. When the jar and its contents cooled down, the lid sealed the way it would have if you had poured boiling hot jelly or jam into it. And it was not only sealed but sterilized. I hope those oven-dried tomatoes will keep all through the winter, down in the cool, dark cellar.

I ran out of room in the oven, so I took another pan of raw tomato wedges and halves and set it in the top of the freezer downstairs. A few hours later, after the pieces had frozen hard, I put them all in a plastic bag and stored that in the freezer. The pieces will come out separately and can be added to soups and sauces all winter.

Dicing fresh tomatoes for salsa fresca

And what about eating some of these ripe tomatoes while they are fresh? What about some Mexican-style salsa? Salsa fresca. Finely dice the ripest tomatoes, and then finely chop some onions or shallots. Mince up a big clove of garlic and a hot red pepper. Mix it all together with a dish of hot pepper vinegar or the juice of a lime — or both. Add a dash of salt, a grind of black pepper, and some chopped fresh herbs — cilantro (a.k.a. coriander or Chinese parsley), Italian parsley, basil, or oregano.

Mix in diced onion, shallot, and garlic

It's good on fish or chicken, with chicken or beef fajitas, with tortilla chips. Or quesadillas (cheese melted inside a Mexican tortilla). Actually, the salsa fresca is good with just about anything. Beans, for example. It's a good idea to make a lot of it, and it will keep for a few days in the refrigerator.

Unnaturally humid

It was supposed to rain overnight. The room felt stuffy when we went to bed, so I opened the north side window for some ventilation — temperatures are very mild. But then I woke up at 2 a.m. to the sound of a mosquito buzzing in my ear.

I realized I had been bitten twice on the forearm. It itched like crazy. I went to turn on the electric fan because mosquitoes can't fly as well in an air current. Of course the fan was in the back of a deep closet so I had to fumble around, muttering to myself, as I looked for it, tried to get it plugged in, and then find the power button to turn it on. I stumbled back to bed.

Slow-roasted yellow tomatoes on baguette slices
with cream cheese — a recent lunch...

I finally got the fan going and that did take care of the mosquito. When Walt got up this morning he said he had two bites on his forehead and one on the end of his nose. He also reported that he had killed not one but two mosquitoes that he saw sitting on the wall over the bed before he came downstairs.

We hardly ever have mosquitoes here. Flies, some. Moths, a lot. Bees. Bats. Birds. But few mosquitoes. It's just that the weather has been rainy and unseasonably warm for a few days.

...with Bill and Sharon on Saturday

This morning, I took the dog out earlier than usual, because it hadn't really started raining at that point but the radar weather site we look at (MétéoX) showed a storm moving toward Saint-Aignan from the south. Callie and I just had time to get in a good walk between 7:30 and 8:15 before a steady rain started falling.

Today's weather forecast for France — right after I took this picture
the satellite dish lost the signal and the screen went blank.
That's how thick the clouds and rain are.

One of the first things I noticed when I went out was that the leaves on the vines right out behind our back gate have suddenly changed colors. They were still green a couple of days ago, but this morning many of them had turned a bright yellow color. It happened all of a sudden. Wonder if it has to do with the fact that those grapes were harvested Saturday afternoon.

Callie and I walked down the hill on the north side of the house, where there are two parcels of vines (Pineau d'Aunis up higher, and then Chardonnay on the lower section). We were just ambling along and suddenly Callie took off running on down the hill, around a corner where I couldn't see what she was doing. She had seen some animal or another, I was sure.

We also had duck rillettes (potted, shredded duck).

I started calling her and following her down the slope. At least I thought that was where she had gone. There are more vines down there — red grapes that haven't been harvested yet. I was looking into the gloom for Callie when suddenly a little brown head popped out from between two rows of vines.

It was a fawn and it was startled. It took off running up the row, with a kind of clopping sound. I had time to get a good look at it before it disappeared. It wasn't any bigger than Callie. That made it one of the smallest fawns I've ever seen around here. And then Callie appeared. I assume she had chased a different fawn down the hill, but she obviously didn't catch it. I'm not sure what she would do if she did catch one.

Yesterday I cooked sauerkraut (recipe), which we ate with
a smoked chicken and some Montbéliard sausages.

I picked another big basketful of tomatoes as I came back into the garden at 8:15. The rain was starting and I wanted at least to go get those tomatoes in. There are plenty more out there, but with the rain coming down and a full basket, I had to call it a morning. Now I need to go trim up and process those tomatoes.

It's a rainy Monday and we don't have to go anywhere. We have onion tart left for lunch (see Walt's blog post yesterday) and, obviously, plenty of tomatoes. Tomorrow I'll have to go out with the car to run errands. Maybe the rain will be over by then.

Waiting and watching

Yesterday morning we kept telling Callie, our border collie, that we were having visitors in the afternoon. She knew something was up, because we were busy in the kitchen — cooking — and all around the house — picking up, straightening up, and cleaning up — in unusual ways.

Callie just decided to wait. Something out of the ordinary was obviously happening. She sat out on the front deck, over in the corner closest to the road, watching and listening. If a car drove up the hill to our hamlet, she'd be ready. There were several false alarms — the cars didn't stop at our door. Anticipation made her excitement level skyrocket.

Keeping an eye out

But the wait was long. Callie didn't know, of course, what time the visitors were expected to arrive. She stayed at her lookout post for a couple of hours, and finally got bored. Or frustrated, or tired. We kept talking to her, but she saw no evidence of cars or people arriving. I'm not sure she believed us.

Listening for clues

Then when Bill and Sharon arrived, Callie was overjoyed. Luckily, Bill and Sharon love dogs. And luckily for us all, the weather turned off very nice — warm enough for us to sit out on the terrace for three hours and get acquainted. And to enjoy some food and drink too.

Wondering if the time would ever come

Sharon took Callie out into the yard three or four times during the afternoon to throw the ball and explore the garden. Before we sat down to eat, we all went to see the grapes on the vines just outside our back gate one last time, and to watch the big yellow harvester taking in the 2010 crop. What a nice afternoon.

Hoping for summer, preparing for winter

Just a picture today: it's busy here. We have people coming to spend the afternoon. Bill is a guy I've "known" on an Internet forum for years, but we've never met before in person. He and his wife Sharon are spending a week or so in the Loire Valley and we get to meet them.

The weather is still gray and damp, but Saint-Aignan seems to be on the northern limit of some good sunny weather. In other words, the rain is north of us and moving away, I hope. I'd love for us to be able to sit out on the front terrace for a couple of hours this afternoon. We'll see if it's warm enough.

Stained glass in the church at Péronne in the Somme

Click on the image to enlarge it, and then click on it again...

Meanwhile, the heating contractor's crew came back yesterday for the last time. They hooked up all the radiators, bled the air out of them, and turned on the boiler to see if everything was in working order. The good news is that there were no apparent leaks and all the radiators got warm. So we are good to go for the winter.

The Rancourt memorial in the Somme

When I went with CHM to Péronne last July, we stayed in a hotel in the village of Rancourt. It's very small, with fewer than 200 inhabitants.

The Chapelle du Souvenir near the village of Rancourt (Somme)

Rancourt was a key site during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Many died, and there are French, German, British, and South African military cemeteries all around the village. The largest French military cemetery anywhere is the WWI memorial there, with 8,566 graves.

The French military cemetery at Rancourt

The memorial was founded and built at the initiative of a woman from New Orleans whose son had died in the battle for Rancourt. She formed a committee right after the war and organized the construction of a Chapelle du Souvenir — a Remembrance Chapel — in honor of her son and his comrades in arms.

Views at dusk from my hotel room window at Rancourt

The hotel we stayed in was just a mile or so up the road from the memorial. One of the things I liked about it was the view of sheep and goats out of the window of my room.

Hinges

Yesterday I finally got my "new" furniture finished. The two pieces are shipping crates that were in our attic when we moved into this house in 2003. They were full of old papers — mostly French tax forms and form letters left here by the woman who owned the house previously. She was retired from the French tax administration.

The papers had no value. We'll burn them in the wood stove this winter. But when we cleaned up last spring, in anticipation of the attic conversion, I thought the crates were things I wanted to save. There are three of them. The man who had this house built about 45 years ago was employed by the French aeronautics and space agency. He spent a few years on assignment in Kourou, French Guyana, where French satellites are launched. That's in South America.

You can see the new hinges on the side of the crate.

When Monsieur Kientzy moved back to France, he and his wife apparently packed up some of their belongings and had them shipped back to Mareuil-sur-Cher, a village adjacent to Saint-Aignan, along the banks of the Cher River. Mr. Kientzy's first wife was a native of Mareuil, and they had this house built here.

This all happened 35 to 40 years ago. You can see the addresses on the lid of one of the crates. Les Bagneux is a hamlet in Mareuil.

Here's the door open so you can see inside. I plan to put in a shelf later.

I took two of the crates outdoors and scrubbed them with soap and a stiff brush. That was when the weather was hot, and I let the wooden crates dry in the hot sun. Then I varnished them, inside and out, several coats. I decided to use them as little tables, or plant stands, and to store things in them. I put feet on the bottom (the side, actually), and I put hinges on the lids to make them into doors. I attached one of those little magnet clips to each box to hold the doors shut.

This is the second crate. The third one isn't done yet.

And now I've finished that part of the job and I'm using the two crates in the loft, as you can see in the pictures here. For the moment, I have put printer paper in one, and in the other I'm storing a ton of CDs and DVDs that are in notebooks in plastic sleeves. Those items are heavy and give the boxes some heft and stability. They are ballast, I guess.

Sunset from the loft window on 26 September 2010.

I've become handy and resourceful in my old age. Well, I've always been resourceful, I think, on some level. When I worked in Paris, people — employers, colleagues — told me I was très débrouillard. La débrouillardise is resourcefulness. It means the ability to make things happen, to figure out creative solutions to everyday problems.

Foies de volaille à la crème moutardée

The other day I noticed a container of fresh chicken livers in the fresh poultry section of the supermarket. The label on the container said foies de poulet, so they really were chicken and not turkey. Often what you find is "poultry livers" — foies de volaille. And that's okay too — turkey livers are as good as chicken livers. Duck livers might be even better.

Foies de poulet...

...poêlés au beurre

It had been a long time since I'd cooked chicken livers. Duck gizzards, yes — they're good in salads. So are chicken livers, but with the cool damp weather we're having right now, and given the number of tomato salads we've eaten over the past month, I decided I wanted to eat the chicken livers hot, in a sauce.

Here's the recipe I came up with:

Sautéed Chicken Livers
in a Creamy Mustard Sauce

1 lb. fresh chicken livers
2 shallots (or 1 small onion)
6 fl. oz. (¾ cup) heavy cream
2 Tbsp. Dijon-style mustard
1 Tbsp. butter
Salt and pepper
Parsley

Wash and trim the livers, cutting them into smaller pieces if they are very large. Sauté them in butter with the chopped shallot or onion.

Mix the mustard into the cream (crème fraîche if you can get it) in a bowl. When the livers are lightly browned, pour the cream sauce over them, pepper them generously, and let them cook for a few minutes on medium heat so that the mustard cream sauce thicken. Add salt to taste.

Serve the chicken livers and sauce with plain steamed rice, or with mashed, fried, or sautéed potatoes. Sprinkle chopped parsley over all.

The livers I bought seemed awfully large to be chicken livers, but I didn't mind. I cut them into bite-size pieces before I sautéed them. The package weighed only about ¾ lb., actually, so I reduced the other quantities proportionally.

Use good Dijon mustard.

A small portion of such a rich dish is sufficient, by the way, and it's very satisfying. We had ours with French fries, because we grew so many potatoes this summer. A dish with a cream sauce like this one needs to be followed by a good green salad in a tart vinaigrette dressing.