Spring, but early spring

Yesterday I said that spring had sprung, and I still think it's true. But it's early spring, and the mornings are still chilly. Look at the frosty picture below, which I took just outside the back gate yesterday morning.

Frost on a plant yesterday...

It's such a treat to see the sun rise in the morning that I don't really mind the chilly temperatures that come with clear skies. When it stays cloudy overnight, it's much less cold in the morning, but it's gloomy.

...but a brilliant sunrise in the vineyard

I noticed the fungus below growing on an old tree stump. Champignons are a sure sign of impending spring.

A tree stump being consumed by mushrooms

I'm still having a mild allergic reaction to pollen in the air, but it's nothing like the severe attack I had day before yesterday. One of the reasons I chose to come live in northern France was because my pollen allergies are less of a problem here. California was not a good environment for me — there are too many cypress trees along the coast there.

Callie on the walk yesterday. It had rained overnight.

Finally, looking at the picture above and especially the one below, you can see the reddish color of the vines now. They are getting ready to bud out for the new season.

The vineyard is coming back to life now.

There are different pruning styles for different grape varieties. The ones that get pruned the least severely are Sauvignon Blanc grapes. And those are the ones that are the most colorful right now.

How I know...

Yes, it is spring. Early spring, but not wintery any more. How do I know?

For one thing, the forsythia is starting to bloom.

Bulbs are coming up all around the house and yard.

These spring onions are starting to send up green leaves.

Cyclamens and snowdrops are producing
more and more flowers.

The willow stumps out by the pond are
sending out a profusion of yellow canes.

And finally, I had a severe allergy attack yesterday. A wet weather system moved in, bringing steady wind from the south. The south is where the pollen that sets off my allergies comes from. Today, skies are blue, the winds have calmed, and I'm already feeling a lot better.

Une battue dimanche matin

Battue is one of the many French words that are hard to translate into American English. It's an organized hunt — “an organized shooting party” during which hunters beat the bushes to flush out game animals, as one dictionary says.

Battu is the past participle of the French word for “to beat” — battre. It becomes a feminine noun, une battue, in the usage I'm talking about. The term battue isn't in the American Heritage Dictionary, so I guess it's not used in the U.S. The British use it, apparently.

Our hamlet on a February morning

Maybe battue is used in America and I just don't know about it. I've never been a hunter. I just looked at the entry on battue on wiktionary.org and I see that somebody thinks the English term is derived from Portuguese batuda or Italian battuta. That's funny, since battue is obviously the French word.

Hunters waiting with guns at the ready

Okay, I've gotten carried away with the linguistics of it all. There was an organized hunt of the kind called a battue out in the vineyard Sunday morning. Except for such events, for which signs and guards are posted along the roads to warn motorists that large game animals might suddenly jump out in front of their cars, the winter hunting season is over in our area.

I saw at least one woman hunter out there Sunday morning.

I didn't see any evidence that the hunters actually bagged anything. I don't know if the hunt was for foxes, which are considered a pest around Saint-Aignan (and other places) or deer (also a pest). Populations have to be kept under control, they say, because these animals no longer have any natural predators. We see deer frequently, and we've seen foxes a few times.

There are woods all around the vineyard.

I don't know if badgers are hunted, but I know there are some around here. A neighbor told us recently that she often sees a big badger crossing the road down below us when she is driving to work in the morning. I've seen badgers on my morning walks out in the vineyard. And there are hares too — Callie and I see them regularly.

Hunters, dogs, and, in the distance, some hikers coming
through the vineyard Sunday morning

There were a lot of hunters out there beating the bushes, or waiting with guns at the ready at the ends of rows of vines, but there were no animals that I could see — dead or alive. A couple of weeks ago, we were out driving in the forest south of Saint-Aignan, on our way to Preuilly-sur-Claise on a Sunday morning, when suddenly eight or ten deer, including a large buck, came out of the woods and crossed the road right in front of us.

I had to slow down to let them finish crossing. There was a battue in progress that morning, in that area. Like here, on Sunday. This time, I stayed inside and just took some pictures from the upstairs windows.

Sauteed potatoes — hold the salt

A couple of years ago, my friend CHM and I went to see some old friends of his who live about halfway between Saint-Aignan and Paris. They are a couple, P. and M., and the woman, M., made an informal lunch for us.

The main thing M. cooked that day was some potatoes. They were thin-sliced, yellow-fleshed potatoes. She said they were charlottes, and she said she uses that variety for nearly every potato dish she makes. Charlottes are firm, semi-waxy potatoes, and they are especially good fried or sauteed, but also boiled or steamed and cut up into a salad.

Raw slices of potato go into a hot pan with
melted butter, oil, or a combination of the two.

M. put the thin rounds of potato in a hot frying pan with melted butter in it. She let them cook until the bottom layer was golden brown, and then she started tossing them around. The slices ended up browning on both sides — not all of them, but enough so that, overall, the potatoes were both crispy — croustillantes — and tender — moelleuses — at the same time.

After a few minutes of cooking and tossing...

We feasted on them. They were not only delicious, but they were beautifully golden in color. M. had succeeded in making potatoes by a method that I had tried before but never really to my satisfaction. Her sauteed sliced potatoes were much better and prettier than mine had ever been.

...I added a cut-up slice of jambon de Paris (boiled ham)
that I happened to have left over.

Now I know the secret. I learned it by reading French master chef and restaurateur Joël Robuchon's book called Le Meilleur et le plus simple de la pomme de terre (1994). The book contains 100 recipes, and the one that clued me in was for pommes sautées à cru — sauteed potatoes using raw potatoes (as opposed to sauteed potatoes made with pre-cooked, blanched, or parboiled potatoes).

Here's the recipe, translated:

Pommes sautées à cru

Serves 4 or 5

• 1 kg (2¼ lbs.) medium potatoes (charlottes)
• 3 oz. of butter or goose fat
• sea salt

Use nice, unblemished potatoes. Peel them and cut
them into slices 1/8" (3 mm) thick. Rinse the
slices and dry them in a kitchen towel.

In a frying pan, melt the butter or goose fat and sauté
the potato slices for 15 minutes. They should be
golden brown on all sides. Salt them, and
pour off any excess fat.

Put them on a platter and serve them.

Now that sounds simple enough, doesn't it? But just try it. You obviously have to toss the potatoes around (les faire sauter, or "make them jump") to get the slices to brown on both sides. when you toss them or turn them with a spatula, however, they start to break up, and they don't look as nice as you want them to look. These are not supposed to be hash browns.

The potato slices break up if, that is, you salt them too early. In the notes accompanying Robuchon's recipe, which take up half the page the recipe is on, he gives this crucial piece of advice, buried deep in a long paragraph: « Ne salez pas avant la fin de la cuisson, cela fait ramollir les pommes de terre. » — Don't add any salt until the end of the cooking time; otherwise, the potatoes will get soft.

I think that's the mistake I had been making for years. I would just automatically salt the potatoes when I put them in the pan, and then they would go soft and start to break apart. Now I sauté them without salt, and they come out much better.

Good breakfast yesterday, with a couple of poached eggs

This time, I didn't even have any charlotte potatoes. I had some bintje potatoes, however, so that's what I used. They are a mealier (more floury) variety that make, according to Robuchon, good French fries and good mashed potatoes. Now I can tell you that they also make good sauteed potatoes using this method.

Here's a very detailed recipe in French with a lot of photos. It's interesting that salt is never mentioned.

For the potatoes I made, I used a combination of butter and canola oil. Next time, I'll use duck fat (but I'm afraid it may be too salty). By the way, goose or duck fat is much easier to come by in France than in the U.S. You can buy it in jars or tins a the supermarket.

I don't find any evidence on Amazon.com that Robuchon's book of potato recipes has been translated into English. Here's what he says about sauteeing raw potatoes, in my translation:

“Potatoes can be sauteed in oil, in a mixture of oil and butter, or — the height of refinement — in clarified butter. I myself prefer them sauteed in goose or duck fat. Whether you use oil, butter, or fat, put it in a cold pan and set it on the heat. When the pan is good and hot, put in the sliced potatoes and sear them on one side without shaking the pan or stirring them. Don't turn them over before they are well browned on one side. Turn the heat down once the potatoes are seared. Don't add any salt before the end of the cooking; otherwise the potatoes will go soft. You can add a little chopped garlic at the end of the cooking, but don't let the garlic burn. Just let it brown lightly. You can also toss the potatoes in a little fresh melted butter at the end of the cooking to add extra flavor and give them a nice sheen. Also, serve them with a little chopped Italian flat parsley, added at the very last minute.

“Be aware that sauteed raw potatoes won't wait for you. You must put them on to cook at just the right time so that they can be served when the have attained the ideal degree of doneness. If they wait, they turn soft immediately.”

Robuchon says to leave the potatoes unpeeled if they are very fresh. The peel gives the potatoes « un goût particulièrement intéressant », he writes.

Sliding into spring

Okay, it rained yesterday. And this morning it is so foggy that you can hardly see the vineyard at all when you look out the back windows of the house. But that's fine — we actually need some rain. It's supposed to rain overnight tonight but be sunny, or at least only partly cloudy, tomorrow afternoon. Temperatures remain very mild for the season.

Yesterday, Walt got some leaves raked up and carried them out to the vegetable garden plots. We are still spreading leaves out there, because springtime is coming and that's when the really deep-rooted weeds grow. Here in northern France, we can't plant our summer crops before about May 15, so there's still plenty of time for hardy weeds to take over the space.

A February morning in the Renaudière vineyard

We won't grow potatoes this year. Instead, we plan to put in salad greens and cabbages early. One of the summer crops we'll try to grow again this year, after taking a year off, is green beans — haricots verts. Those were very successful a couple of years ago. We plan to try to grow fewer tomatoes — we usually end up with too many — but a lot of sweet corn and eggplants, as well as a good crop of sweet red bell peppers.

Hills planted in vines out back

We don't need to grow hot red peppers, because last year we had a bumper crop of cayennes, jalapeños, and banana peppers. I'd like to be able to grow okra, but I think it's just not hot enough here in the Cher river valley for the plants. Maybe it's time to start thinking seriously of having a greenhouse put in.

Western skies in February

This has been one of those weeks when the only outdoor adventures we've had have been walks with the dog and a little yard work. I did go out Tuesday to get a haircut and run an errand or two, but that was the last time. We haven't had any company either. It's just been the two of us — or the four of us, counting Callie the Collie and Bert the Black Cat.

Today we're invited over for lunch chez some friends who live just five or six kilometers down the road. That will be a nice outing. It's supposed to be cloudy but dry, with temperatures in the mid-50s F. Our friends are going to cook lunch on the grill, I think. That's always good food.

Callie planning out the route for her morning walk

Retirement. I'm still getting used to it. I regularly have long, complicated dreams about work situations. Sometimes the people in them are the people I worked with in Washington DC, San Francisco, or Silicon Valley. Sometimes the most unlikely combinations of people from these different eras of my life turn up in the most unlikely situations.

February sunrise at about 8:30 a.m.

Mostly I dream about problems I can't solve because I don't have all the information or tools I need. Something has been lost along the way, or become hopelessly confused. I feel like I personally need to find the solution but it's impossible. And then it's time for me to go home again, but I have to spend hours in traffic to get there. It goes on and on.

The trees mark a stream bed.

And here I am in the French countryside, hardly ever going anywhere in the car. And when I do there's no traffic. All the problems I face seem to have solutions and, besides, there's nobody breathing down my neck. Things get done when they get done. Or they don't get done. Only the seasons seem to impose deadlines and dictate the tasks that need to be tackled. But seasons are flexible, and more predictable than people.

Spring cleaning in the kitchen means
moving the cookstove and dishwasher.

My general rule over the past eight years has become: try to do one thing a day. Pick up some leaves. Till up a garden plot. Cook something good to eat. Take some pictures. Of course, there is also the routine, the stuff I do every day. Walk the dog. Read. Laundry. Wash dishes. Watch a movie on TV if there's a good one on, and watch the news. And blog.

Roulades de poulet farcies

The other day we cooked food in a way we never had done before. Plastic wrap (cling film or film étirable) was involved. The French chefs and cooks who have shows on Cuisine.tv seem to use film pretty liberally.

We had bought a couple of chickens. Walt wanted the legs and thighs to make a Filipino recipe, Chicken Adobo, that he had seen on a blog. The recipe came from the New York Times. We put the wings — les ailes — in the freezer to use the next time we cook chicken wings. That left the chicken breasts, les blancs.

Stuffed chicken breast with winter vegetables

I liked the idea of making stuffed chicken breast of some sort. I made a stuffing of sausage meat, mushrooms, onion, dried chervil, and garlic, with nutmeg and some hot red pepper flakes, and a beaten egg to bind it all together. Into the stuffing went any little chunks of chicken that came off the carcass after I had cut the blancs off the bone.

My idea was to flatten the breast meat to make thin escalopes — scalloppini —that could be wrapped around the stuffing and tied up into a sausage shape with butcher's string. Everything was going along just fine until we realized that the flattened chicken breasts were not evenly shaped enough to contain the right amount of stuffing.

As served at the table

If we had been planning to cook the chicken in the oven, or even fry it, leaving places where the sausage stuffing was exposed might not have been a problem, and tying the rolls up with string could have been fine. But we wanted to poach the roulades, and we were afraid the stuffing would squirt out and the whole roulade would come apart in the poaching liquid.

Vegetables for the poaching liquid

Walt said: "Use plastic wrap. They do it on TV all the time." Cooking in plastic wrap seems like a no-no after all we've heard about not using it in contact with the food you're cooking — in the microwave, for example. But hey, dozens of French cooks can't be wrong, right?

So we spread a sheet of plastic out on the work surface, set the stuffed chicken breast on it, and rolled it up into a log shape. We made two, and since I had made too much stuffing, we rolled up two "sausages" of that in plastic wrap too, sans poulet. We tied off the ends of the little boudins (sausages) with string.

The roulades all wrapped and tied off

The poaching liquid was chicken broth that I made with the carcass of the chicken as we were doing all the other work. Into the broth went some bay leaves, black peppercorns and allspice berries, a big carrot, a big onion, about 6 stalks of celery, some leek tops, and half a cabbage cut into wedges. We placed the roulades on top of the vegetables — we didn't want the plastic to come into contact with the bottom of the pot, fearing that it might melt.

The extra stuffing mix made two nice little sausages.

Anyway, it worked out perfectly. The broth with the meats and vegetables cooking in it was amazingly aromatic. We joked that it was the film étirable (that means "stretchable") that smelled so good.

And when we started eating lunch, Walt said "wow, it really tastes like good plastic!" But it didn't. It was delicious. I'll do it again, with turkey or fish or veal and different kinds of stuffings.

In which I declare it over

I've gone from having no outdoor photos to post, for what felt like a couple of months there, to now having so many I don't know what to do with them all. In other words, winter is over. I boldly declare it over. I know, I'm tempting fate. We may end up having a snowy March.

However, even if cold weather comes back, the hours of daylight are so long already, nearly two months after the winter solstice, that I think we won't feel plunged back into darkness. The sky can't go dull gray on us again, for weeks on end. Can it?

Afternoon sun highlights balls of mistletoe in an apple tree.

I was at the pharmacy the other day. There's a woman who works there who always inquires about our health and happiness. She's married to a Scotsman, so she understands what it's like to be a stranger in a strange land. I told her we've been trying not to get too bored and down in the mouth, despite the weather.

Yes, she said, it's been awful this winter, and it started early. November was damp and dark, and then December was frigid and dark. Everybody felt like we had had our two months of winter by the time 2011 rolled around, and then we still had January, February, and March to get through.

Sunset on Tuesday

She asked whether Walt and I have a vegetable garden. Yes, I told her, and we plan to start early this year. Digging in the dirt and planting some early spring greens of different kinds will at least get us outdoors. And you'll have the pleasure of having healthy food to eat, the pharmacist said.

When we moved to Saint-Aignan in 2003, we happened to arrive during a very warm, sunny cycle in the local weather. Summer of 2003 was the Grande Canicule, the "great dog-days" or heat wave. The summers of 2004, 2005, and 2006 were sunny and warm, with enough hot weather to make us feel like we were having a real summer every year.

The Renaudière vineyard in February, with our house
and hamlet in the distance

More importantly, in winter — it seems to me, looking back — the days were often sunny, even if they were cold. Winter didn't start too early, and spring didn't start too late. In 2007, that cycle ended. Even the summer was gray, cool, and wet. The vegetable garden was basically a failure that year, and the winter started early and cold.

I think this year has been the turning point in weather cycles, like the 2003 heat wave. In other words, we were in the deep freeze in December and part of January. It was the first time we had snow so early and often. And there was little sunlight.

I am optimistic that another warm cycle is starting up now. Last summer wasn't too bad, even though people complained mightily that the weather wouldn't settle down, that one day was warm and the next cool, and that there was entirely too much wind most of the time.

Our house and yard, on the edge of the vineyard

« Où il y a de la vie, » they say in French, « il y a de l'espoir. » In English, “where there's life there's hope.” We are planning to put in our garden early, and then transition from early spring plantings to the hot weather plantings that we normally put in around the middle of May.

Being retired and having a garden are two facts of life that make you really sensitive to the weather, year-round. If we lived in Paris, we probably wouldn't be as attentive — though like everybody else, we would complain about it.

Mornings can still be foggy.

By the way, I got an e-mail from an American woman who comes from Kentucky but now lives in the Auvergne. She asked me if I had any collard seeds I might be willing to sell her. I've never found collard seeds here, and she said she hasn't either. She wants to grow greens. I'll buy her some seeds when I'm in North Carolina in March and send them to her when I get back.

That's the beauty of a blog. So many people get in touch. Did I tell you that I got an e-mail from the daughter of the people who run the local poultry business? They sell their products at the markets in Montrichard (Fridays) and Saint-Aignan (Saturdays). She said she was surfing the web when a topic on my blog about her parents' business caught her eye.

Look here and you'll find her message and my reply down at the bottom of the comments section. She evidently used Google's translation feature to get the gist of my post and was happy with what she read. That's nice.

The “pulled” meat we call “barbecue”

I'm still experimenting with the pressure cooker as a way to prepare tender, succulent, tasty meats that can be "pulled" or shredded and seasoned with barbecue sauces.

Where would you think you were if you went to a restaurant and were served the plate you see here?

Our lunch a couple of days ago

I'd think I had landed in eastern North Carolina. Goldsboro, say, at Wilber's BBQ restaurant. A waitress has just set in front of me a plate of what they call "barbecue" there, served with coleslaw, French-fried potatoes, and hushpuppies.

That kind of barbecue is pork, traditionally. At Wilber's BBQ restaurant, it the whole hog, slow-roasted over hickory or white oak embers for many hours. Then the meat is "pulled" or shredded and seasoned with a vinegar-and-red-pepper sauce. No tomato, no ketchup, no sugar — just vinegar, crushed red pepper, salt, and some unspecified herbs and spices.

In parts of Kentucky, lamb or mutton is prepared much the same way, and it's delicious too. The meat is not vinegary. It's not pickled, just seasoned. The vinegar brings out the smoky flavor of the pork (or lamb) and counterbalances the richness and gaminess.

"Pulled" meat is shredded after it is thoroughly cooked
and already starting to fall apart.

You don't have to eat this kind of barbecue with coleslaw and fried potatoes, of course. It's good with greens, green beans, or mashed, boiled, or baked potatoes — whatever you want. Beans, like pintos or black-eyed peas. A French baguette or some cornbread, baked or fried.

This kind of barbecue is what I now make in the pressure cooker. I know it's not authentic, but it is really good. I season the meat — say 2 kg/4.5 lbs. of it — with a couple of tablespoons of smoked paprika and a good pinch of crushed hot red pepper. And salt of course. I put a couple of bay leaves and half a cup of vinegar into the inch or so of water in the bottom of the cooker that will steam the meat.

After the meat is done — it needs an hour or so of cooking in the cocotte-minute (pressure cooker) — you can boil down the cooking liquid until you have just enough left to moisten the meat after you've "pulled" it. You can add a little fat if you want that texture — duck, goose, or bacon fat, or even just vegetable oil — but that's optional. Then you can sprinkle on some vinegar and hot pepper sauce at the table, to taste.

Guess who's interested and curious?

So what's so different about this version of pulled meat barbecue? Well, the pressure cooker, of course. But also the meat itself — it's turkey. Yes, turkey, not pork. And it is delicious. Slightly grainier, maybe, than pork, but not dry. Less fatty. I used two turkey leg & thigh pieces and cooked them with the skin on for the moisture it imparts to the meat. I removed the skin and any lumps of fat before shredding and eating the turkey meat.

I think somebody in North Carolina, which produces more turkeys than any other U.S. state, should start barbecuing and serving turkey the way they already barbecue pork and chicken. And it would be good to serve it with, for example, French-fried sweet potatoes. N.C. also produces more sweet potatoes than any other state in the U.S., from what I've read.

Plusieurs choses ce matin

First, a follow-up to the post about the drawing by CHM's grandfather. CHM says he's pretty sure that the little étude he gave me represents the page (le page, masculine) in the painting called La Remise de l'Etendard that hangs at the château in Blois.

CHM sent me a scan (or photo) of another study of the page boy. Here it is:

CHM has recently donated this piece to the museum in the city of Péronne, north of Paris.

~ ~ ~ ~

We not only have cyclamens — I looked up the word and most, but not all, dictionaries seem to say the plural of cyclemen is cyclamens — in our yard, but also a lot of primroses (primevères in French). I took pictures of some of them day before yesterday, and here they are:

The pictures aren't great — they are un peu floues, not very sharp — and that's why I didn't post them earlier. The primroses are just starting to come up, and there will be a lot more of them out in the yard over the next few weeks.

~ ~ ~ ~

I went and got my hair cut yesterday. The woman who runs the hair salon, le salon de coiffure, in our village is named Madame Barbier. It's not a joke. She is married to Monsieur Barbier. Her name is just a funny coincidence, given her métier.

Now there's another one. At our neighbors' little party a week ago, the discussion turned to firewood. We said we have had trouble finding people who sell firewood and will deliver it to the house. A neighbor told us that she knows two people we can call.

One of them is Monsieur Dubois. In other words, « l'homme qui vend du bois » — the man who sells wood — well, you get it. The next time we need firewood, we'll call Monsieur Dubois. He lives in the village of Orbigny, just a few miles south of us, and we probably won't forget his name.

Another person with a funny name here is Monsieur Danger, who owns and operates the Peugeot dealership in Saint-Aignan. It's called the Garage Danger, and it's where I bought my car 7½ years ago.

~ ~ ~ ~

I had one other topic but I'll save it for tomorrow.

Hints of springtime

We have had two gorgeous days in a row! Yesterday the weather service that I track on my computer said the high temperature was 16ºC in Saint-Aignan. That's the low 60s F. And it's March or even April weather.

Our own thermometer said it was only about 11ºC, just over 50ºF. It was one of those days when sunny spots felt very warm but shady spots were still pretty chilly. It was noticeably warmer out on the sunny western edge of the back yard than it was on the shady north side of the house where the thermometer is located. Whatever — we'll take it. Maybe spring has come early, the way winter did.

We have a good colony of cyclamens sauvages that
come up and flower in the yard in late winter.

I have memories of Paris this time of year. On the first warm days of the year, it would feel almost hot out on the streets where the sun was bright. But then you'd walk into a shady courtyard and feel like you were going into a walk-in freezer. After a few days of warm sunshine, the temperatures would even out.

Speaking of out, it was time to get outside and do things. Walt went out and pruned back all the rosebushes around the house. He wanted to pick up some leaves but they were still too wet to work with.

A long tilled plot for planting lettuces
under a garden tunnel

I got the rototiller out of the garden shed and went to work on two of our six garden plots. In the really long, narrow plot you see in the picture above, we plan to plant some lettuces — frisée, scarole, romaine, etc. — starting around March 1.

Snowdrops are coming up all around the hamlet.

Our normal planting date here in northern France for crops like squash, tomatoes, beans, and eggplants is May 15. For early crops, we have a couple of cold frames and a cloth garden tunnel that we can use to protect the plants from the cold and frost.

This will be my cabbage patch this spring.
It feels good to be working the soil again.

In the smaller plot out in the back corner of the yard, where I planted potatoes last year, this year I plan to grow cabbages. Probably collard greens, mostly. Maybe some mustard greens. Maybe I'll plant some turnips or parsnips.

This morning on TV they are lamenting the lack of fresh snow in the Alps. Ski vacations start next week, and the old snow is melting. Tant pis, eh ?

An original drawing by CHM's grandfather

A few days ago CHM asked me if I had ever had an original drawing by his grandfather mounted and put in a frame. The answer is no. I've conserved it preciously, but I haven't had it framed. Here it is, digitized on a flatbed scanner.


One question I have about framing it is whether I ought to cut the paper the drawing was done on or leave it whole. Below is a photo of the whole page.

Advice, anyone? CHM? By the way, I've posted photos of some of Charles-Henri Michel's artwork here, here, and here over the past few years.