L'Église du Dôme

This is one of the best-known landmarks in Paris. My mind is still on Paris because I'm planning to go spend a few days there at the end of the month. This building is in the neighborhood where I'll be staying (at my friend CHM's apartment). You recognize the dome, don't you? (And no, it's not San Francisco City Hall, but the two buildings do resemble each other.)

For some reason, I have an old Michelin Green Guide in English (1976 edition). Here's what it says about the "Dome Church": It is one of the masterpieces of the age of Louis XIV (who was the king of France for nearly 75 years in the 17th and early 18th centuries). It was with this building that architects perfected the French Classical style. Work on the church began in 1677 and was completed only in 1735. It is the finest example of 17th century religious architecture, just as the Palace of Versailles is the finest example of the era's civil architecture.

The Dome Church "captures the imagination both by its sweeping lines and its dignity," the Michelin Guide continues. "It has a beauty all its own whether standing out against a clear summer sky, or rising, almost invisibly, against the darkness of the night." I don't know if the church was illuminated back in the 1970s the way it is now. It's been nearly 40 years. The Dome Church is anything but invisible these days. And it is most famous now for being the final resting place of the emperor Napoleon.

My two blurry pictures (c'est le flou artistique) were taken more than 10 years ago, in February 2003. Here's a link to some more recent summertime photos of the same building.

Preparing a chicken for the barbecue

When I was in North Carolina in April — or more precisely, on the verge of returning to France — a cousin of mine gave me a little packet of dried, powdered chili peppers that she had made. She and her son grow a big crop of hot peppers every summer, and she has a dehydrator she used to to dry them. Ginger's mother is my mother's "baby" sister.

Don't open the bag until you get home, she said, and open a window first. They might think you are a terrorist in the airport or on the plane if you open it where people can smell the hot pepper and feel the effects in their eyes and nose. It's really hot. And she was right: it is. Walt and I seasoned a chicken with the pepper powder along with some powdered allspice (piment de la Jamaïque in French), black pepper, and salt. We were planning to cook it on the barbecue grill.

Walt got a chicken at the outdoor market in Saint-Aignan Saturday morning. The poultry vendor prepares the bird you choose by cutting off the head and the feet, gutting the bird, and burning off any pinfeathers that remain stuck to the skin. Singeing the skin supposedly helps kill any stray bacteria, too, they say. Notice how they leave the "knees" on the chicken. That's so the leg meat won't shrink up as it cooks and the drumstick will be more attractive.

Since we wanted to cook the chicken on the grill, and because a whole chicken is a lot to eat for just the two of us, I decided to cut the bird in half. Half went onto the grill and half went into the freezer for later. All the extra parts — the back, neck, wing tips, heart, liver, gizzard, and pieces of skin and fat — went into a pot of hot water on the stove to make broth. Callie gets to eat the boiled meat and giblets.

The first step in preparing a chicken this way is to remove the back by cutting along the spine from the "pope's nose" up to the neck with some sturdy kitchen or poultry shears. I guess you could use a big knife but I think scissors work better, with less danger of cutting yourself. Cut down one side of the spine and then the other, and lift the whole spine and neck out.

With the bird lying breast-side down, use a big knife to cut through the breast bone. I like to use the big serrated knife in the picture above. Once I've cut part way through the sternum, I can use the other knife to complete sever the bone and bird in half. It's pretty easy, really. You end up with two nice halves and all the "noble" parts of the fowl to cook.

We seasoned the half-chicken on the outside and on the cut side with the hot pepper, allspice, and salt and pepper. Walt cooked the chicken half slowly for about 45 minutes on the grill, browning it first and then moving farther from the flame to let it cook all the way through. I like chicken well-done.

And that hot pepper spice was amazing — not just hot and spicy, but very flavorful. We have a good quantity of it left, given that you use very little to get a lot of flavor, and we'll be enjoying it all summer. It's true, too, than when you just sprinkle some onto whatever you're cooking, you have to quickly leave the kitchen to make sure you don't have a sneezing attack and burning eyes. (Sorry, no pictures of the cooked chicken half. We were too busy eating it to mess with a camera.)

Bertie 2 — Callie 1

Don't worry, it's not a score.

There's no competition between the cat and the collie.

It's just the number of photos I'm posting today.

Que faites-vous là-dedans ? Je peux rentrer ?

Attention : je vous ai à l'oeil.

On m'a donné un bain hier. Ça se voit, non ?

Three photos from yesterday morning

I was out with Callie and the camera yesterday morning. Here are three things I saw.

The first thing I noticed, as I headed out the back door, was the cuckoo. It was cuckooing loudly, and it was perched in one of its favorite spots in the area — at the top of the tallest tree around, which happens to be in our yard. People say you hear the cuckoo all the time in spring, but that you seldom if ever see one. I see this one fairly often, but from afar.

The second thing I noticed was weird clouds in the northern sky. They looked like they could have been condensation trails left by jets flying over, but I don't really think that's what they were. They blew away fairly quickly, because it was a windy morning.

And finally, I saw a new view of the vineyard. Usually I see the vines spread out ahead of me like a carpet or blanket. But this time I noticed a hole in the woods that grow along a water course in a low area. Through the hole, I could see a patch of vines that are turning greener and greener with each passing day.

Rôti de porc au miel et aux épices

Yesterday I cooked a pork roast. It was a boned shoulder roast that had been rolled and tied. I wanted to cook the roast on the rotisserie in our oven. We might not have this oven very much longer and we haven't been able to find a new kitchen stove that has all the features we would like to have, including a rotisserie, so we may have to give it up in some kind of trade-off.

You have to get the roast or fowl position correctly on the skewer to make sure the drippings fall into the pan of water during the cooking.

Anyway, my idea was to baste the pork with a honey-based, spicy sauce before it went into the oven and a couple of times during the cooking process. The ingredients in the basting sauce — sorry, no real recipe, because I was winging it — were 100 grams of thyme-flower honey; a little olive oil; splashes of white wine, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and soy sauce; a pinch of ground cloves and a tablespoon of crushed red pepper flakes; good quantities of minced ginger and minced garlic; and finally, salt and black pepper. I cooked the sauce for a couple of minutes to blend all the flavors and melt the honey, and then I let it cool before spooning some over the roast.

Thanks to friends for bringing us a few little jars of different kinds of honey from Paris.

Getting the meat you want to roast onto the rotisserie is always a trial-and-error process. It's not hard to clamp it on, but it's not easy to judge exactly where you need to position the roast on the skewer. That means putting it on and then putting the whole thing in the oven a couple of times, before you turn the oven on, to see if it's centered properly. It took me three or four tries. That done, I was ready to baste the roast with the marinade and get it on to cook.

The marinade was just slightly syrupy — not too thick and sticky.

I always put a pan of water directly under the roast or chicken that I'm cooking on the rotisserie. The drippings from the meat, including the basting sauce, then fall into the water and don't burn in the bottom of a dry oven pan — you don't want to create a lot of smoke and the process is much cleaner that way. You can always boil down some of the cooking liquid at the end, while the roast rests, to make a dipping sauce if you want one. This pork roast, which weighed about 2½ lbs., or just over a kilogram, and it cooked for two hours at 350ºF (180ºC). I let it rest in a warm oven for 45 minutes before taking it off the skewer and carving it.

Paris streets at nightfall

My mind is in Paris this morning. My old friend CHM is supposed to arrive there this morning for a three-month stay, and other friends will be there on vacation toward the end of May. I myself plan to go spend two or three days dans la capitale toward the end of the month.

These are some photos I took early on a February evening several years ago. I don't think I've ever posted them before. As you can see, the natural light was fading but interior lighting gave the shops a nice glow.

The neighborhood is more or less the one where CHM has his apartment. He grew up there. I've gotten to know it better over the past 20 years. Maybe you recognize the street. It's a famous shopping area.

I'm seriously considering renting a car for my upcoming trip to Paris, rather than taking the train. CHM plans to come back to Saint-Aignan with me when I return, and having a car would make the traveling a lot easier for both of us. It will be a holiday weekend, and if we plan it right we'll get into and out of Paris without hitting all the holiday traffic jams.

Parking in the city — in this neighborhood, anyway — should be easy on a weekend when many Parisians have four days off work or school and will have left town for the coast or the countryside. It's never inexpensive to park a car in Paris, but the main thing is to be able to find a parking space near where you are staying.

J'ai faim ! Pas vous ?

It's a rainy premier mai — France's first May holiday. And here I am, sitting here dreading going out for a wet walk with the dog, and realizing I'm hungry. Maybe these old photos of mine with make you hungry too, and make you dream of a nice lunch in France. (Remember, you can click or tap on the images to enlarge them and make yourself even hungrier.)

Un choix d'entrées...

...un plat principal...

...et, bien sûr, un dessert.

Today's going to be a day to stay in, do some organizing and cleaning in the house and on the computer, and make a nice lunch. We'll be having a pasta dish with smoked salmon and vegetables.

Le Grand-Pressigny: seven photos

There was some discussion on Days on the Claise last week about the new Musée de la Préhistoire building at Le Grand-Pressigny. Some said it looked like a bunker or blockhouse in one of the photos posted there. All seemed to agree that the interior of the new museum building was very nice, even if the exterior put some off.

Above is a photo I took a year or two ago that shows the museum building from a different angle. I'm standing north of the château complex, looking back toward the town. The château was in ruins long before the new museum building was added.

If I'm not mistaken, the new museum building has been added on to this side of an older building on the property, photographed in 2006. It's the Logis Seigneurial constructed in the 16th century and its proportions look pretty classical to me.

The older-still and taller towers framing the museum building date back to the 12th century. The Michelin green guide says there's a very impressive view from the top of the round tower, called the Tour Vironne. I've never been up there. Has anyone reading this seen that view?

Finally, these last four photos are just detail shots of the Grand-Pressigny château complex. All date back to a visit CHM and I enjoyed there in July 2006.

We go to Le Grand-Pressigny from time to time. Next time, I want to try to go up to the top of the Tour Vironne — pictured above — if it's open to the public at all.

Long days, holidays, and ponts

When I went to bed last night, it was just a couple of minutes before 10 p.m. As I lay my head on the pillow, I glanced at the north window, which doesn't have a shade or curtain, and I noticed that it wasn't even dark outside yet.

This morning I woke up at 6 and, again, I noticed that it wasn't at all dark outside. The birds were chirping cheerfully. Another day was dawning.

Yesterday in the vineyard, looking toward our hamlet at 6:30 p.m.

That's the nice thing about this time of year when you live so far north. At more than 47º of latitude, Saint-Aignan is farther north than Montreal, Quebec, Duluth, Fargo, or Billings — it's about the same as Seattle and Spokane. Our sunrise today is at 6:40 a.m. (right now), and sunset will be just after 9 p.m. this evening. All that, and we are still six or seven weeks away from the summer solstice. These long hours of sunlight will be with us until well into August.

It's strawberry season in the Loire Valley. The local gariguette berries are good with scones that Walt makes and some crème fraîche.

Speaking of long hours, the mass of May holidays in France begins this week. This Thursday is May 1, which is a big public holiday here. May 8, the following Thursday, is also a big public holiday, celebrating Victory in Europe, or the end of World War II 69 years ago. Another May holiday, one that always falls on a Thursday, is May 29 and is called L'Ascension. It's a Catholic holiday that marks Christ's return to heaven forty days after his crucifixion and resurrection at Easter.

We've had a few rainy days, and I made a blanquette de veau with rutabagas, celery, carrots, onions, and mushrooms to ward off the chill.

That's three major holidays in May, and because they all fall on a Thursday this year, many French people are preparing to do what is called faire le pont — or "make the bridge" — by taking the Friday after each holiday off work too, giving themselves three four-day weekends in the space of a month. There's another holiday on Monday, June 9, called La Pentecôte — so there's another long weekend.

Puffy clouds in a blue sky over the vines

All we need now is some more nice weather, and we'll be set to go. Soon it will be summer, and les grandes vacances will be upon us.

Old photos of the covered market hall at Richelieu

Last week on the Days on the Claise blog, which I read daily, Susan and Simon did a topic about the old market hall in the town of Richelieu, in southern Touraine. The covered market structure has been renovated over the past couple of years, according to a post I read another local blog, written by Colin and Elizabeth.

All that got me searching back through my own blog to see if I had any photos of the Richelieu market hall, which was built in the 17th century out of chestnut logs. I remembered going there with our friend Cheryl in 2003, and again with our friend CHM in 2006. Actually, as far as the years when we were there, I had to do some searching to pin them down.

Above is a photo of the market structure that I took in 2003. It has been greatly refurbished recently, as Susan wrote. Richelieu itself is interesting as an example of a "new" town that was built from scratch starting in 1631. The Cardinal Richelieu was a powerful political figure of the time and served as the French king's prime minister.

We went back to Richelieu in 2006 and I took the photo above. It was a quick visit. I have a vague memory of little boys on bicycles racing around between the wooden posts that hold up the market hall ceiling. The famous cardinal built himself a magnificent château outside his "new town"  of Richelieu but it was demolished in the 18th and 19th centuries as a symbol of Ancien Régime opulence. Nothing much remains of that, but the market hall is impressive. I need to drive back over there one of these days to see how it has been fixed up.

Lilacs and irises

It must be because we had such a mild winter, and so much rain. The lilac bush that we planted a few years ago has flowers on it, even though this was supposed to be an off-year. It flowered last year, so we didn't expect to see any lilacs in 2014.

The irises are more predictable. They were planted in different spots around the yard when we got here eleven years ago, and they produce a lot of big bluish flowers every spring. Maybe there are more iris blossoms than in past years. Again, the profusion has to be weather-related

The forecast is for light rain all day long today. Yesterday morning, when the bread lady came by, I went out to buy a baguette. I looked up toward the sky. « C'est gris » was all la porteuse de pain had to say about the situation.

Periodic puppy pix ploy

Yes, this the right blog. And this is Callie the border collie, who has lived with us for nearly seven years now. We brought her home at the beginning of May in 2007.

Callie's domaine is the Renaudière vineyard. She explores it twice a day, sniffing all around for traces of deer and other wild animals. And once in a while she gets to chase a deer. A chase from time to time keeps her alert and hopeful.

Plums this year?

Maybe the rain we've had overnight — it's still falling — will plump them up. I planted the tree three or four years ago, and this year is the first time I've seen so many plums growing on it.

The plum tree grows at the back corner of our yard, just on the edge of the vineyard.

I planted the tree — two trees, really, that are growing together — as an experiment. And I planted them as much for their white springtime flowers and dark red foliage as for any fruit I might get. I grew them from pits that came from our neighbors' plum tree, but the plums are completely different from the ones on their tree.

One skinny plum...

Right now, for example, the plums on their tree are still green. The ones on my tree are dark red, as you can see. As I said, maybe some rain and then some sun will plump them up and ripen them this spring. Over the years, the crop has always been scant.

...among many

They are wild plums, I guess. That means the trees are hardy, and the plums are small. Another neighbor of ours has a huge tree of the same kind in his yard. I haven't yet walked over to see if it is also full of little red plums this year.

Grape flowers already

Just a couple of vineyard photos today. There's nothing very exciting going on around here.

Out in the vineyard, the vines are starting to produce flowers. I'm not sure if this is early, but it seems early to me. The weather has been very mild for months now — since early December — and it's been warm for about a month already.

I took these photos yesterday morning. The weather was obviously nice, and the light was pretty. Today it's foggy outside. I think we're going into a rainy period. I've been back in Saint-Aignan for a week now, and I'm just starting to feel like doing some work in the yard and the garden. In about three weeks, it will be time to start planting tomatoes, eggplants, and other summer crops.

Le pappus du pissenlit

« Un pappus, ou une aigrette, est une petite touffe ou un faisceau de poils ou de soies qui équipent certains akènes afin de permettre une dispersion optimale par le vent. » [Source : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pappus_%28botanique%29]

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pappus_%28flower_structure%29, I see: “The pappus is the modified calyx, the part of an individual disk, ray or ligule floret surrounding the base of the corolla, in flower heads of the plant family Asteraceae. The pappus may be composed of bristles (sometimes feathery), awns, scales, or may be absent. In some species, the pappus is too small to see without magnification. In some species, such as Dandelion or Eupatorium, feathery bristles of the pappus function as a "parachute" which enables the seed to be carried by the wind. The name derives from the Ancient Greek word pappos, Latin pappus, meaning “old man”, so used for a plant (assumed to be an Erigeron species) having bristles and also for the woolly, hairy seed of certain plants.”

Getting the right eyes on

It rained all day yesterday. Not a hard rain, but a steady one. Today, I don't know what to expect. This morning, I've been sitting here enjoying looking at photos that I took in North Carolina last week. It's pure escapism. I'm glad to be back in France but I miss home just a little.

I don't know about you, but when I travel back to a familiar place, it takes a while for my eyes to adjust. At first, nothing I see corresponds to the vision of the place that I have stored in my mind. The roads are wider, for example, and flatter, and less scenic. There are too many traffic lights and electrical wires. The houses look more fragile, and less well maintained than I remember. Everything looks almost shabby at first.

That's how I felt when I arrived in Morehead City on April 1. It's the town where I was born and where I spent the first 20 years of my life. Most of my family still lives there. I go visit every year. I love the place, but I can't imagine ever living there again.

When I return to a place, it always takes me a few days to start noticing the beauty instead of the flaws. It's got to be more than just a trick of the light.

The eye-adjustment thing used to happen to me during the years when I lived in San Francisco and would come spend one, two, or three weeks on vacation in France. That was when I realized what was going on. Riding home in the taxi from SFO airport, I'd look around and be surprised by what I saw. Wide highways with too many cars on them. Ticky-tacky wood-frame houses perched on hillsides, about to slide down, and painted in funny colors, looking very temporary. Way too many utility poles and wires everywhere. It didn't look pretty — though everybody knows how beautiful San Francisco is.

I think the same thing used to happen when I'd return to Paris after months or years in the States. The city would look dirty, and the buildings run-down. Everybody was dressed in dark colors and had greasy hair. I'd have to wait several days for my eyes to adjust. "I don't have my Paris eyes on yet," I'd think, when I found myself wondering what I had ever found attractive and charming about the place. The lesson is: don't rush to judge a place. Give it time.

I don't feel the same way about the neighborhood where we live now. I guess it's because it's not in a big town or city, and because it's mostly green — especially at this time of year. I realize here that I've already had my Saint-Aignan eyes on for a good week. Looking back at my photos, I can enjoy seeing what my North Carolina eyes were focused on not so many days ago.