Good news and bad news...

...on the firewood front. First, the good news: we finally got some. Delivery had been expected in August, but it was obviously delayed. Now we have to stack it and then Walt will start cutting it. It rained a good part of the day yesterday, so we put the stacking job off until today.

Cinq stères (5 cubic meters), or about 1.4 cords of oak logs, partially covered because of yesterday's rain

Then the bad news: our wood supplier is getting out of the business. This will be his last delivery. He's a man named Jean-Claude who we've known for at least ten years — he used to do yard work for our neighbors. I guess it's retirement time for him too. Now I can start the firewood saga.

Dental woes and joys (part 6, the finale)

With the shortage of dentists in our region, sometimes it feels like the good practitioners have more patients than they can handle, as I said yesterday. That it is the less talented dentists who are still taking new patients would follow. I'm not sure that is true, however.

After the woman on the phone at the dental office in Meusnes said she wouldn't give us appointments, I went to the yellow pages. Well, pagesjaunes.fr, actually. (I recently noticed that the most recent telephone directory we have dates back to 2012. They must have stopped printing them now.) I figured I'd start with the Montrichard area, which is only a 15 minute drive down the river from us. There's a nice open-air market there, and there are two good supermarkets.

I found four dentists over there. I just picked one pretty much at random and called his office. His name is Klotz. Now if you pronounce it in French, it sounds more like "klutz" than like "clots." I couldn't resist a name like that, after buying my car from the Garage Danger in Saint-Aignan and getting my hair cuts from Madame Barbier for years. Walt's dentist in San Francisco was Dr. Hack, and he was a good one.

When we drove over the Montrichard last Friday, this is what we found. It's the building Dr. Klotz has his dental office in:

My first thought was: it's the Addams Family's house. I hope Dr. Klotz is not the dentist who treats Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, and Lurch! That fear was reinforced when we saw the dentist's plaque, on the corner of the house, directing us down the gravel pathway on the right in the photo toward the back of the building. We didn't even get to enter through the front door.

My fears were allayed when we rang the bell and pushed the door open. There was a hallway and reception desk, all painted in a very clean white, and a white tile floor — all kind of sterile. The receptionist/dental assistant was charming, as she had been on the telephone when I called for the appointments. She gave us a form to fill out so that Dr. Klotz would have a record of our visit and know the name of our médecin traitant, what medications we take, and our contact information.

We sat down in the waiting room — just the two of us, since it was 8:30 a.m. — and not 10 minutes went by before I was called in to see the dentist. He was dressed all in white, as was his assistant, who came into the room with me. We chatted for a minute and I told Dr. Klotz, a 50-year-old man with a pleasant demeanor, that I was American, that I spoke French after a fashion (à ma façon), and that I'd spent a lot of my life living in France.

He first took a full set of x-rays and he announced to me that he didn't see any problems. My teeth are healthy and everything is in good condition. He then did the cleaning that I asked for, and he was thorough and careful. He gave me a tiny brush — sort of like a bottle brush — and said it would be better than dental floss when it came to cleaning between my teeth. I was so happy, and so relieved to have found a good dentist, finally, to replace the one in Saint-Aignan who retired two or three years ago.

The whole visit took less than half an hour. I thanked Dr. Klotz and went back to the waiting room to give Walt the thumbs up. He's great, I told Walt. And while he was getting his teeth x-rayed and cleaned, I went to the Netto supermarket down the street and bought a fresh supply of groceries. We were back at home by 10:30, just in time to get our daily bread from the bread lady.

— FIN —

Dental woes and joys (part 5)

I'm happy to say I don't have a phobia about dentists and dentistry, despite the horrifying Marathon Man incident I wrote about yesterday. That story had a happy outcome, as this one will.

In fact, a few years later, when I lived in Washington DC, I had to have, or decided to have, an oral surgery procedure done to correct the problem that had caused my tooth pain and gum swelling in Paris in 1980. I found a very good dental surgeon in DC, just steps from the apartment that Walt and I lived in, and the operation was a success. I've never had a problem with that molar again.

And I didn't end up in the emergency room, as did the woman who cuts my hair these days, after her visit to the dentist in Saint-Aignan. The dentist had drilled so deeply into a tooth that she had damaged the patient's optic nerve, resulting in loss of vision in one eye. It was a temporary condition, and our coiffeuse recovered completely, by the way.

The fact is, however, that as August dawned, I still hadn't found a dentist. I happened to have scheduled an appointment with my médecin traitant (primary care physician) in Saint-Aignan. He examined my injured finger, and I asked him if he could help me find a dentist. He said that three dentists had recently set up a joint practice over in the village of Meusnes. I should call that office.

I had actually called there in July, only to get a recording to say that all the dentists were on vacation for three weeks. Please call back in August, I was told. In mid-August, I was out and about so I drove over to Meunes, just 7 or 8 miles west of Saint-Aignan. Sometimes you have more luck in person than over the phone. (Meusnes a wine village where, I've heard, the famous French tennis player Yannick Noah spent many summers when he was growing up.)

When I got there I drove all around the village until I found the dental office, which is in a modern building on the main road but on the other side of town, on the way to Selles-sur-Cher. There were five or six cars in the parking lot. And there was a big sign on the door saying something like « Les prises de rendez-vous s'effectuent uniquement par téléphone », followed by a phone number. So I had to drive back home and call for a rendez-vous.

Guess what? I got an answering machine again. I left my message, saying I wanted two rendez-vous and gave my name and Walt's. A few minutes later, I got a call back from a woman who said she had been unable to find either of our names in her patient database. I said that was right — we would be first-time patients because our dentist, le docteur Bigot, had recently retired.

She asked me what the purpose of our dental consultation would be. I told her there was nothing really urgent, thinking that would give her some leeway in scheduling the appointments. We could wait a few weeks or even a couple of months. And I told her that we just needed exams and a cleaning for the time being, but would like to be on her patient list.

Je suis désolée, Monsieur, she told me, but we just cannot take on any new patients at this time. And besides, she added, as if it mattered at that point, an initial rendez-vous with one of our dentists never includes a détartrage! It would simply be an informational session, a get-to-know-you meeting, and then we would continue from there. She seemed to be pretty full of herself.

She did, however, share some useful information. There are two or three dentists over in Montrichard, and two or three up in Contres — both of those towns are within 10 or 12 miles of Saint-Aignan — she said. One of them might be able to see you. I thanked her and that was that.

To be continued...

Dental woes and joys (part 4)

To be fair, I have to say that the dentist I wrote about yesterday has a very good reputation. Some English friends who live across the river from us swear by him. They say he will always immediately see a patient who is in an emergency situation, and he does excellent work. You just have to be patient to be his patient.

I mentioned earlier that I had a very bad experience with a dentist in Paris when I was much younger (in 1980 or '81). It's a long, gruesome story, but here are the essentials. I experienced pain and swelling around a tooth that had a crown on it. The gold crown had cost me a fortune 7 or 8 years earlier, at a time when I wasn't rolling in money (I was a grad student in Illinois at the time), and the dentist who did the original work told me there was a slight risk that the tips of the roots of that tooth could one day cause me trouble.

Friends in Paris recommended that I consult their family dentist, who they liked and respected. I made an appointment — it was Christmastime. When I went to the dentist's office near the Pompidou Center, I learned that he had taken time off for the holidays and left his patients in the hands of a young substitute. He was the dentist who saw me.

After listening to my story, he said he was going to pull the tooth with the gold crown on it. I protested. The original dentist had told me that shouldn't be necessary if something did flare up. The substitute dentist then said that it was possible that the pain and swelling was coming from the tooth right in front of the crown. He would work on that one.

He proceeded to drill a hole in the tooth and started to do a root canal (called une dévitalisation in French). He didn't give me any anesthetic before he started drilling and then poking around in the innards of the tooth with a needle of some kind. The pain was excruciating, and again I squawked. (Remember the film Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman and the sadistic dentist?) In my case, the substitute dentist basically called me a sissy and stopped what he was doing.

He said I should go away for a week, which would be time enough for the nerve in that tooth to die. I think he stuffed a little piece of gauze into the hole he had drilled, but he didn't otherwise seal it. He said that when I came back a week later, if I wasn't better, he was going to pull the tooth with the gold crown on it. By the way, the dentist was not a Frenchman. He spoke French, and I don't remember his name, but he wasn't French by birth, and I of course don't know where he was trained.

I spent a miserable week. The gauze fell out of the damaged tooth after 24 hours, and every breath of air I took through my mouth, and every cold or hot liquid I drank caused more excruciating pain. The swelling wasn't going down. I obviously wasn't getting better. Toward the end of that horrible week, I made the decision to take the bus out to the American Hospital in Neuilly, west of Paris, and consult a dentist there.

That dentist was French, I might add. I had gone to the American Hospital once before, a few years earlier, to see a dentist, so I knew it was a possible solution. The dentist there examined me, and was shocked to see what condition I had been left in. He gave me a shot of novocaine, finished the root canal, patched up the tooth, and then prescribed antibiotics.

He also said he didn't want to slander a colleague, but that I had been the victim of unethical practices. The substitute dentist had "devitalized" (killed) a perfectly health tooth, and for no good reason. The antibiotics he prescribed would cure the infection that had started the whole episode. And they did. In a few days, I was back to normal.

I went back for the appointment with the substitute dentist and told him I had consulted another dentist, who had repaired the botched job he had inflicted upon me. The substitute threw a fit, almost a tantrum, and told me I had no right to see another dentist when I was in the middle his course of treatment! He said it was the dentist who saved me who had behaved unethically. It was surreal.

To be continued...

Dental woes and joys (part 3)

As I wrote yesterday, there I sat in what I assumed was the dentist's waiting room, along with one other patient. I must have arrived at 11 or shortly thereafter for my 11:30 appointment. We sat in silence, turning the pages of old magazines.

At about 12:15 a woman dressed in a white uniform burst into the room, with a big smile and an upbeat tone of voice. She came directly to me, shook my hand and said « Bonjour monsieur... vous êtes  ? » I introduced myself and said I had the 11:30 appointment. « Malheureusement, nous avons beaucoup de retard ce matin. Comme d'habitude... », she told me.

In other words, she said they were running very late that morning. "As usual," she added, as she looked knowingly at the other man in the waiting room. Then she burst into song — an old Claude François ballad called, precisely, Comme d'habitude — it's the song Frank Sinatra took and had put into English as "I Did It My Way." She exchanged a few words with the other patient and then turned and left the room, saying she'd be back to take one of  us in to see the dentist as soon as she could.

At that point, I started to have my doubts about the whole situation. I asked the other man, who was about my age, when his appointment had been scheduled for. Ten o'clock, he said — he'd been sitting there for nearly three hours. He went on to say that he had had his first appointment two weeks earlier. That time, he arrived for a 4 p.m. rendez-vous and waited for more than four hours.

At 8 p.m., the dentist's assistant had come into the waiting room and told him he might as well go home. The dentist wouldn't be able to see him after all. The man made another appointment for the following week, arrived before 4 for his appointment, and then waited until 8 p.m. That time, the dentist did see him and do whatever he needed done to his teeth. He's a very good dentist, the man said, but he's slow.

The whole time the man talked to me, he held his hand cupped in front of his mouth. It was clear that he was embarrassed for me to see the state of his teeth. It sure didn't make it easy to hear or understand what he was saying, but I got the idea. Then he proceeded to tell me that he was there to have two teeth extracted that day, and that he assumed it would take the dentist a while to do the job — if he ever got in to see the dentist.

I sat there for another 5 or 10 minutes, wondering what to do. I didn't want to wait for the dentist, or even for the assistant to come back to the waiting room. It was 12:30 and I wanted my lunch. I looked at the other patient and asked him if he would mind telling the assistant, when she came to get him for his session, that I couldn't wait and that I had no urgent need to see the dentist. I asked the man to tell her I would call and make an appointment for later. (I never did.)

As I left, a car sat next to mine in the parking lot with the passenger-side window rolled down. A man sitting behind the steering wheel called out: "It's about time! Did he finally finish?" Then he saw and heard me. "Sorry," he said. "I thought you were my wife. She's been in the dentist's chair for a few hours now." I hit the road, direction la maison.

To be continued...

Dental woes and joys (part 2)

The upshot of part one of my dental tales is that I decided not to go see the dentist in Saint-Aignan again. Asking around, we got a lot of negative information about her. Two of our neighbors told Walt that he should find a different dentist at any cost and not return to the one who had cleaned his teeth the last time.

One day, the woman who cuts my hair (now that Madame Barbier is no longer in the business) told me, at length and quite animatedly, a horror story about an experience she had had with that dentist, resulting in a trip to the emergency room at the hospital in Blois. She also said she had made many calls all around the region trying to find a decent dentist who was willing to take new patients, but with no luck. The situation was not looking good.

The one day back in June I happened to run into one of our neighbors at the supermarket. For some reason, she told me she had an appointment to see a dentist that day, because she had broken a tooth. She said the appointment was scheduled for 8: 30 p.m. and asked me if I had ever heard of a dentist keeping such hours.

I said no, I hadn't ever heard of an evening dental appointment, but that I needed to find a dentist myself — not because of any urgent problem but because I needed to be on a good dentist's patient roster. I just needed and exam and a cleaning to start with. (The Saint-Aignan dentist's x-ray all those months ago had showed no sign of a problem with my tingling tooth, and the tingling was only intermittent.)

The neighbor said she would ask her dentist if he would be willing take me on as a patient. I said thanks, and a couple of days later the neighbor stopped by the house and told me I was all set up with an 11:30 a.m. appointment on July 23. She said the man, whose practice is in a little town 12 miles west of here, really was an excellent dentist — she had been going to him for years.

Weeks later, when I showed up for my dental visit, I found no receptionist but just a small waiting room, where a man about my age was sitting. After the perfunctory bonjour, I took a seat and starting reading a magazine. I hoped I was in the right place.

To be continued...

Dental woes and joys (part 1)

For a while now, I've had in mind doing a post about dentists, or the shortage of dentists, here in the French countryside. The problem is that writing about our dental adventures requires a lot of typing, and with my finger brace that's not so easy.

Two or three years ago, the dentist we had been going to since we moved here in 2003 went into retirement. He was very good, and we were sorry to lose him. For me and Walt both, he repaired a couple of broken fillings. Those are the only tooth problems we've had, but Dr. Christian Bigot (his real name; Christian is a common first name in France, and Bigot is a common last name here in the Saint-Aignan area) was also great when it came to regular checkups and cleanings (a cleaning is called a détartrage in French).

There are two other dentists in Saint-Aignan at this point. One is a man who doesn't gladly take new patients, and if you can get an appointment with him it's six months out. The other is a woman, Dr. G, who has a bad reputation, as I've since learned. She is gruff and brusque in both manner and practice. I went to see her at least twice, but it wasn't a pleasant experience either time. Walt felt the same way about her. He said the détartrage she did for him was pretty painful.

I went to see her about a year ago because one of my teeth had become very sensitive, and I periodically felt a tingling sensation coming from that area. It's a tooth with a crown on it. I went to see the fearsome Dr. G. about it. She asked me which tooth was bothering me. I told her I wasn't sure because the tingling and the sensitivity seemed to be happening between two teeth, and I couldn't tell which one was causing it.

"Well if you can't tell which tooth it is," she barked at me, "how do you expect me to know what to do about it?" I looked at her, a little stunned. "I guess I can do an x-ray," she said, exasperated. I told her (this is all in French, of course) that I was kind of hoping she might suggest that. I guess I could have just asked for an x-ray to begin with, but I figured it was the dentist's job to tell me what needed to be done.

I didn't want a small dental problem to turn into a major toothache. I'm happy to have pretty good dental health, but I owe that to several good dentists I've been lucky to find over the past 35 years. I also had a very bad experience with a dentist in Paris back in the early 1980s, and I don't want to go through that again.

Read part 2 here.

Mysterious forces of nature

Our long string of fine days just won't quit. We hoped for dry and sunny late-season weather and we sure are getting it. After a mediocre July and the wettest August we've had since we moved to Saint-Aignan in 2003, we've now had the driest September. October has come in like a lamb.

It will be nice to look back on these beautiful days when the dark and gloom close in on us during the short days and long nights of November and December. Yesterday we went to spend the afternoon with friends at their new place, and we whiled away several hours sitting around a table outdoors under big umbrellas, soaking up the warmth — and a certain quantity of food and wine too. Moules et frites were the main course. How much nicer could October ever be?

The weather is a mysterious thing. So are certain animals — especially cats. Our friends have a new kitten, just three months old. She is being trained as an outdoor animal and mouser. She's called Daisy, and she's as cute as can be. She lives in a barn and can easily take shelter there to escape from pesky dogs like Callie.

Throwback Thursday — 1988

The photo here was taken on March 21 in, I think, 1988. Walt and I had moved to California 18 months earlier. We were living in San Francisco, at Gough and Sutter streets near Japantown, but we had driven down to east San José that day to see old friends who lived there. At the time, I was working in SF as managing editor of a computer magazine. I think I had already started teaching evening French classes at SF City College. Walt was an architecture student at UC-Berkeley.

The little girl I'm holding in the photo is the daughter of one of our best friends. At some time in the past, I wrote on the back of the picture that she was 8 years old. She will turn 35 next spring — not quite as old as I was in 1988. How do you like that rainbow? In my memory, rainbows were a rare occurrence in northern California.

Blueberry almond yogurt cake

I just scanned through this nine-year-old blog, which includes a lot of recipes of all kinds, and I didn't find a single recipe for a gâteau au yaourt, or yogurt cake. I'm surprised, because I make such cakes frequently. The gâteau au yaourt is one of the very few French dessert recipes in which all the ingredients are measured out by volume and not by weight.

Making this yogurt cake is child's play, and in France a lot of children learn to make yogurt cakes at a young age. They are taught that they can use the yogurt pot as a measuring cup — the standard pot of plain yogurt here contains half a cup. Since we Americans use measuring cups in our kitchens (rather than kitchen scales), I've translated the yogurt pot measures into 8 fl. oz. cups and 4 fl. oz. half-cups. Use the half-cup pot your yogurt comes in if you prefer.

Gâteau au yaourt
with blueberries and almond powder

½ cup plain yogurt

½ cup vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

1½ cups flour

½ cup almond powder

3 eggs

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 pinch salt

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC). In a big mixing bowl, cream together the yogurt, sugar, flour, almond powder, and vegetable oil. Add the eggs, baking powder, and vanilla and mix well to make a smooth batter. Fold in the blueberries.

Pour the batter into a buttered cake, loaf, or pie pan. Put the pan in the oven for 30 minutes. Test the cake for doneness starting after about 25 minutes by poking it with the point of a knife or skewer. When the point comes out clean and dry, the cake is done.

This bowl that CHM gave us makes a great cake cover.

You can make this cake without the blueberries, or you can substitute other fruit. You can also make it using two cups of flour and omitting the almond powder (but it won't be quite as tender or delicious). I haven't tried it, but I bet the batter would make good blueberry muffins or cupcakes.

Watching the parade

The two guys who are harvesting a big part of the Renaudière vineyard continued their work yesterday, and that despite the fact that we got 6 mm — about a quarter of an inch — of rain in the early morning hours. They are still harvesting white wine grapes: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chenin Blanc. The red grapes are waiting patiently.

We watch them, or their big harvester and the tractor pulling the trailer filled with grapes, as they move up and down the rows of vines and as they parade by our house hauling loads of grapes back down to the winery.

With these machines and methods, two people can harvest all the grapes that would otherwise require bringing in dozens or scores of human grape-pickers, and probably in less time and for less money. Mechanization of the harvest makes it possible for local growers to stay in business and make a decent living. Not to mention good wines for reasonable prices.

Monday morning rain

I was surprised to hear rain beating against the roof and windows when I woke up this morning. We haven't had any rain in so long that it had become an unfamiliar sound. The ground and garden really need the moisture at this point. Here, the weather pattern is feast or famine flood or drought.

The photos above are about a week old. It didn't rain that evening — it just threatened. We could see lightning off toward the west and south.

Late September Sunset

One of the nice things about September is that late summer and early autumn sunsets are so beautiful. These photos show the sunset we had on Friday, 26 September, 2014.

7:45 p.m.

7:47 p.m.

7:59 p.m.

8:00 p.m.

8:01 p.m.

We are lucky enough to be able to see both sunrise and sunset every day from our house. I especially enjoy watching and taking pictures of nice sunsets from the Velux roof windows in our upstairs family room, which overlook the Renaudière vineyard.

Loches : L'Hôtel de Ville

The Michelin Green Guide « Châteaux de la Loire » says that Loches — like nearby Chinon — is a town where, once you are in it, you won't see any modern buildings at all. The whole place seems to be frozen in time, and that time is the French Renaissance that blossomed 500 years ago. What Michelin says is not far from true, except for the the shops and boutiques at street level.

These photos show the Porte Picois, "the very image of a late Gothic town gate" (Cadogan « Loire » guide), set in ramparts that were built to protect the lower town. Just to the left of the gate, seen from this angle is the Hôtel de Ville or town hall, which occupies a house built in about 1535.

Loches : La Maison du Centaure

The Centaur House is a 500-year-old building on a pedestrian street near the Hôtel de Ville in Loches, near the city of Tours. "Wandering down through the curving old streets" of the town, as the Cadogan says, "is a real pleasure. The feel is mainly 15th and 16th century." I agree and I'm looking forward to going back to spend more time exploring the neighborhood.

One of the most striking buildings on the rue du Château is definitely the Maison du Centaure. Apparently, it is privately owned and it is not in good repair. The figure holding the bow that you can see in the  photos above is Hercules*, represented by a likeness of François Ier, who was the king of France when the house was built. He has just shot an arrow that you can see sticking through the centaur's torso.

* This site says of the house:

On y voit notamment à l'angle, une colonne engagée à chapiteau finement ciselé, des niches ayant abrité des statues, une belle porte d'entrée donnant sur une courette, surmontée du portrait des propriétaires et surtout un bas-relief ayant donné son nom à la maison: celui-ci qui ornait auparavant le manteau d'une cheminée, a été placé en façade suite au rajout d'un étage au XIX° siècle. Il représente une scène mythologique: Hercule et son épouse Déjanire s'apprêtent à traverser le fleuve Evenos; surgit le centaure Nessus, qui propose à Déjanire de traverser sur son dos. Elle accepte mais, arrivé sur l'autre rive, Nessus essaie d'abuser d'elle et Hercule lui décoche une flèche empoisonnée. La scène est représentée au moment précis où la flèche vient de traverser le torse du centaure, tandis qu'Hercule - sous les traits de François ler - s'apprête à lui en décocher une deuxième.

God, no less

In May 1978, I was a star — for one evening. My role: Dieu. It was a medieval passion play that a literature professor in the French Department at the U of I in Champaign-Urbana decided we would take to the stage (in a church on campus).

I didn't audition for the role; I was drafted. A sort of deus ex machina on the part of Professor Bowen, I suppose. I think she picked me partly because, at 29, I was the senior member of the cast.

The French Department chairman, a philologist specializing in old French and the history of the language, coached the whole cast (God, Adam, Eve, Satan, Jesus Christ, and the other usual suspects) on pronunciation, to make sure the rhymes were true.

Yes, it was in verse. It was decided that we actors would not actually have to learn the lines, but would read them. So it was more recital than true acting.We played, believe it or not, to a full housechurch, even though there were no subtitles.

The photo isn't great. Working with scans of old snapshots makes me realize now much cameras and photography have improved in the digital age.

Les vendanges

The two men who work year-round tending the Domaine de la Renaudie's vines have started their vendanges — the grape harvest. Most of the harvesting around here is done by machine. Only a few special parcels of vines are harvested by hand.

Day before yesterday one of the first vineyard parcels harvested consisted of several long rows of Chardonnay grapes that grow just down the hill from our house, on the north side. Then the harvest of the more extensive parcels of Sauvignon Blanc grapes all around the Renaudière vineyard got under way. The weather remains pretty dry, and the red grapes will stay on the vines a while longer.

C'est le soleil

This morning the sky is all pink, but yesterday it was gray — almost white. You might think the heavenly body in the photos below is the moon, but it isn't.

Late in the morning, the fog and haze mostly burned off, but temperatures remained chilly. Welcome to autumn.

Looking up

When we arrived in Loches, we parked on a main street that carries a lot of traffic into and out of the town. We were lucky to find a free parking space. We walked up this little street and it turned out that the restauarant where we were to have lunch was right across the street from the house with the blue door, with its outdoor seating area under that canopy of green you can see overflowing the walls on the left.

The old town, la cité médiévale, is on the high promontory you can see here. I was looking up toward it, admiring the rooftops and the tower of the Eglise Saint-Ours. The "new" or lower town was our destination this day. We'd never before had a meal in the restaurant called La Gerbe d'Or but had heard good reports. We were a few minutes early and it wasn't raining in Loches as it had rained between Orbigny and Genillé a few minutes earlier. We had time to walk around for a few minutes before meeting our friends.

Good to go

As you can see, the cafés and restaurants on this pedestrian street in central Loches — la Grande Rue — were all ready for the lunch crowd. Outdoor and indoor tables were set up and waiting.

Click or tap on the image to see it at a larger size.

Problem was, skies were gray, thunder grumbled in the distance, and rain threatened. Maybe there were diners inside, but there weren't many outside. Of course, it was just before noon, which is a little early for lunch. For those who don't have to work in the afternoon, it's just the right time for an apéritif to get the appetite going.

Driving to Loches for lunch

Yesterday we drove 40 minutes over to Loches, a town of some 7,000 people, to have lunch with friends and acquaintances in a nice restaurant. Before meeting up with the others, Walt and I walked through some of the pedestrian streets and took pictures. Loches (sounds like "lush" if you speak American English) is a picturesque place.

On the way to Loches, we drove through quite an impressive thunderstorm, with a deluge of rain, several impressive lightning bolts very close to the road we were on, and even a few hailstones. Weather patterns are changing now that we are in the second half of September.

Bœuf braisé aux carottes dans la mijoteuse

We've used the new "slow cooker" or « mijoteuse » three times since it was delivered on Tuesday. Wednesday morning, I got up early and prepared about 4 lbs. (1.75 kilos) of beef to be slowly stewed with carrots and onions for 4 or 5 hours.

First, I have to say that the Kenwood slow cooker I finally chose is an enormous machine. I didn't imagine that it would be so huge when I ordered it from amazon.fr. Be that as it may, I'll admit that we have filled the 6-quart cooking dish full all three times we've cooked in it. I think it's going to work for us.

Back to the beef — I bought two slabs of what is called « basse-côte » in French. It looks and cooks like a chuck roast to me, and I like it. Walt and I grew up eating oven-roasted and pot-stewed beef chuck with vegetables.

I cut the meat into big cubes and browned it in the oven. I thought that would be less messy than browning it in a skillet on the stovetop. I put it on a tray under the broiler, and I didn't even turn the pieces of meat over. Browning them on one side was enough.

All the other ingredients — chopped carrots and onions, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, and about 10 oz. (300 grams) of smoked bacon — went in raw, with 3 cups dry white wine and 1½ cups of water. At 7:00 a.m. I put it on to cook at the cooker's high setting.

Late in the cooking process, around 11 a.m., I added 1 lb. of mushrooms and a dozen small new potatoes to the pot. The stew was simmering slowly — the liquid was bubbling around the edges but not actually boiling in the middle. I guess that's the way it should work.

We turned off the cooker at about 12:30 and had lunch. As you can see, it was delicious. The beef was tender and juicy, and the pieces of smoked pork were starting to fall apart. The carrots were cooked through but not disintegrating into the liquid. Success...

The other two times we used the cooker was to make more tomato sauce using about the last of the tomatoes from the garden. Walt trimmed them all up and filled the 6-qt. cooking dish, seasoning the tomatoes with salt only. That batch cooked on high for 4 hours. Then he filled up the cooker again and let it cook on low temperature overnight — for at least eight hours. Both batches of sauce (11 pints in all) were perfect.

Throwback Thursday — May 1979

Yes, this was me in May 1979. I was 30 years old, and I was living in Urbana, Illinois, where I was a teaching and research assistant in the French Department at the University of Illinois. In September of that year, I would leave for a year in France, which would turn into three years. In 1981, I would meet Walt there, and the rest is history.

Look at that hair! It was the end of the 1970s, after all. This was the look of people like James Taylor and Francis Cabrel, two of my favorite singers in those days. Long hair was partly a political statement back then, and it was partly a budget issue — I told myself I couldn't really afford frequent haircuts. I do remember going to get my hair cut in the spring of 1980 or '81 near where I was living at Les Halles (rue Montorgueil) in Paris and deciding, on the spur of the moment, to get it all cut off. That was the end of that period in my life.

Stuffed, cooked cucumbers

I can't imagine that anybody who doesn't grow cucumbers in a vegetable garden, and who doesn't have the benefit of a bumper crop, would ever make this. Nevertheless, it's surprisingly good. Okay, the skins were a little tough, but they were easy to peel off of each little piece of cucumber as you ate. The cooked cucumber flesh itself was sweet and delicious.

The stuffing I made was cooked rice, onions, garlic, and minced pork. The little extras were some some hot red pepper flakes and fennel seeds cooked with the rice, and, cooked with the meat, about a quarter cup of Ricard, the anise-flavored drink that people in the south of France love to sip when the weather turns hot. That gave the stuffing a summery, Mediterranean flavor.

The hollowed-out cucumbers get parboiled for ten minutes and then left to drain and cool on a rack. Then they get the stuffing put in. Everything is already cooked, so the cuke boats just need to be reheated and slightly browned in the oven.

We had a basketful of cherry tomatoes from the garden. I quickly braised some sliced onion and garlic in olive oil and then tossed in the tomatoes, which I had cut in half. Don't cook them; just heat them up slightly in the oil to release their juice and flavor. Salt and pepper them to your taste.

Slice up a few fresh basil leaves and put them in to infuse with the warm tomatoes for a couple of minutes.

Spoon a little of the juice from the tomatoes over the stuffed cucumbers. The tomatoes make a kind of warm salsa to have with the cucumber and stuffing.

Cooked, stuffed cucumbers like these are based on an old French recipe. I blogged about them back in 2007.

Quick oven-browned zucchini with parmesan cheese

A few weeks back, I posted a recipe for zucchini spears roasted in the oven with olive oil, herbs, and parmesan cheese. Yesterday, I had a couple of zucchinis to cook — they are still coming — but I was in a hurry and decided to do something more rustic and less fussy with them, on the same theme.

Just out of the oven and ready to serve

First I cut the zukes into spears. Then I just cut the spears into chunks — you could do slices — and tossed them in a big bowl with enough olive oil to coat them, and then with some salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and dried thyme.

Ready for the oven

I spooned them out on a rack in a baking pan, so that they would cook on all sides and not be bathing in oil. I sprinkled a liberal amount — probably half a cup — of grated parmesan cheese over the zucchini chunks and set the pan in a hot oven. (Note to self: this would be good with a grated, very dry, hard goat cheese.)

After 20 to 30 minutes, the zucchini was cooked to a golden brown color. I was glad to see that the pieces didn't stick to the baking rack. They were delicious alongside half a small chicken grilled with a dry chili-powder rub. I served the roasted zucchini pieces in the same bowl in which I had tossed them with the oil before cooking them.