Red leaves

Another Sunday already. The days, weeks, months, and years go by faster and faster. In two days, it will be 10 years since I wrote and published my first post on this blog. Dix ans ! I started the blog about 2½ years after moving to Saint-Aignan in 2003. Walt started his blog a few days before mine. He discovered blogging first.

So much has changed around here, but then again everything seems to be about the same. (Isn't that some kind of French proverb?) In our hamlet, six people have died since 2005 — four of them were well into their nineties when the time came. There are at least six of us still living full-time in the hamlet, including a new family a few houses down. There might be as many as five people living in that house, with at least one cat and one dog, but I don't know any of them yet. At this point, they keep to themselves.

I don't do much touring around any more. I enjoy driving less and less. I've seen all the big châteaux. I don't go to the outdoor markets much any more either. I enjoy my trips to the supermarkets and hardware stores, where people seem to recognize me. Nobody ever comments now about my American accent, or looks at me like an alien, or asks me why I would ever have thought to leave California to come live out here in the French countryside. I think I've become part of the landscape. Out there walking with the dog...

Renovations and repairs

The hamlet we live in, two miles outside the town of Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher in the Loire Valley region, consists of nine houses. Three of them, including ours, are about 50 years old. The other six are much older (but I'm not sure how old they are). We are located on high ground above the Cher river valley, less than a mile from the river itself, surrounded by vineyards, ravines, and woods.

The old stucco (enduit, crépi) has been stripped off this stone house, exposing the stones.

I think most of the old houses were basically ruins 50 years ago. They were bought by people who set about fixing them up and making them into comfortable places to live. In other words, a new community of people was formed here in the 1960s and 1970s. Still, two of the houses were occupied only seasonally when we moved here 12 years ago, and now two others are just used from time to time, by people who live in the Paris area most of the year.

Old roof tiles are not replaced, but cleaned and put back into place on new wood slats.

As we all know, houses are always works in progress, just as towns, villages, hamlets, and châteaux are. Even the old houses around here have had wings and rooms added on over the years. I doubt that many of them of them look the way they used to.

The exposed stone will be hidden by stucco again, like this end wall, when the work is finished.

One of them would be hard to identify as an old farm house, so much has it been fixed up. One carries the name La Ruine, but it is far from being dilapidated nowadays. It's about the biggest and nicest house in the hamlet. It and another one might be counted among the nicest houses in the Saint-Aignan area.

Nearly all of the old houses have had their former greniers (haylofts)/attics converted into modern living space. Only our house had changed hands over the past dozen years — we bought it in 2002 — until recently, when newcomers to the hamlet bought a house three doors down from ours.

Here are some photos of ongoing renovations around the hamlet. Mostly they consist of minor repairs and improvements. By the way, the difference between a hamlet and a village in France is that a village has a church in it and a hamlet does not.

Cold weather produce

There's not much left of the vegetable garden these days. It's time to go and pull out the wilted and rotting squash vines. That means gathering a dozen or more winter squashes and putting them in cold storage. We'll enjoy them until next summer. Walt has already made one "pumpkin" pie this fall.

We have a lot of acorn squashes, a good number of what they call potimarrons (the little orange pumpkins) in France, and a few butternut squashes. We also have half a dozen gigantic zucchinis, which our British friends call "marrows". They are good stuffed and baked, but we have eaten our fill of them since summer, so these will just go into the compost.

It's pretty cold this morning. In theory, the cold temperatures are good for the squashes, and for my collard greens (above), bringing out their natural sweetness. I'll see when I go out with the dog in an hour of so whether there is actually any frost on the ground. Today, a slight warming trend is supposed to set in, with temperatures in the high 50s and low 60s next week.

The photo above shows a sedum plant that I've had in a big planter box for 10 years now. It sits out by the garden shed. It doesn't start flowering until September, but when it finally does it looks pretty nice. Its French name seems to be sédum remarquable, and the English name "showy stonecrop" (Hylotelephium spectabile).

The last of the grapes

I don't know about where you are, but here in Saint-Aignan it has turned cold. Cold for October, anyway. We haven't had frost yet, but our high temperature today is supposed to be in the upper 40s ºF — just 9ºC. We keep thinking we should go out and clean up the rest of the garden, but we are waiting and hoping for a warm-up before we do it.

Here are some photos showing the state of the vines around us right now. I took the pictures a couple of afternoons ago. Only stray grapes remain on the vines at this stage. You can see a small bunch above, but in most of the vineyard plots the scene below is more typical. Most of the grapes have been stripped off, leaving just the skeletons of the bunches on the vines.

Often at the end of a row you see a few more grapes hanging on than farther into the vineyard plot. Depending on the plot, and the grape variety occupying it, the colors are different.

Despite what you might think looking at the bright sunlight in the photos here, we had a little bit of rain yesterday afternoon. It might rain again today. The Télématin weather report just told me that our temperatures right now would be more typical of late November or early December. It's snowing in the mountains in France, and it snowed in parts of Germany yesterday. We got our chimney swept and our boiler up and running just in time.

Pommes de l'air — par terre

Pommes de l'air are fruits as opposed to vegetables like pommes de terre  (potatoes). Other famous pommes are la pomme d'Adam, la pomme de Newton, la pomme de Guillaume Tell, la pomme d'amour (tomato), la pomme de pin (pine cone), la pomme de douche (shower head), and then, last but not least, ma pomme (my face).

I'm not really talking about all those others here.

There are almost as many kinds of pommes as there are pommes in our back yard right now — even though a lot of them blew down in a wind storm a few weeks ago, and even though Walt has raked up and picked up thousands of them over the past few months.

And that's without even mentioning Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Fuji, Reinette, or Gala. Pomme à cidre (cider apples). Pomme à couteau (eating apples). Pomme à cuire (cooking apples). French Wikipedia article lists a hundred or more apple varieties, including probably 25 different kinds of reinettes. And that's just for France.

La Danse des coques

Saturday morning, Walt went to the outdoor market in Saint-Aignan and bought a kilogram of cockles, called coques in France. He wanted to cook eat them with linguine, garlic, white wine, and olive oil. You can do the same with clams (palourdes or praires), but cockles are less expensive (in France, anyway) and just as good.

We kept the little cockles in the refrigerator for more than 24 hours. I assume they had been out of the water for at least 24 hours before Walt brought them home. The people who run the fish stand at the market drive to Saint-Aignan every Saturday morning from a town on the Atlantic coast, four hours distant, between La Rochelle and Bordeaux. Part of preparing cockles or clams is purging them in clean salted water so that they will expel any sand they contain. Here's a one-minute video showing what happened when I put them in the water bath.

I read on the Internet that ocean water contains 35 grams of salt per liter, so that's the mixture I made up to wash and purge the cockles in. They went wild, if cockles can do such a thing, sticking their feet out of their shells, "dancing" around in the water, and releasing a lot of air bubbles as well as a certain quantity of sand. I added a tablespoon of semolina to the water to give them something to feed on.

And they were delicious cooked in olive oil with garlic and white wine. There's no need to salt them, but a good amount of black pepper and hot red pepper flakes is called for. Cook the cockles first, covering the pan so that they will steam through. As soon as the shells open up, the cockles are done.

Put some linguine or spaghetti on to cook before you put the cockles in the pan, and as soon as the coques are opened use a pasta server to transfer the slightly al dente pasta into the pan with the cockles. Stir it around and the pasta will start absorbing the cooking liquid and become flavorful. Add a lump of butter to the pan if you want, for richness, and some chopped fresh herbs like parsley or basil. Most of the cockles will fall out of their shells, and you can eat the ones that don't with your fingers.

Ces figues

I declare the preserved figs a success. Here's what I got. The figs are tender and moist and not really like candy. And they are sweet but not much sweeter than they were before I cooked them and let them macerate in sugar. The sugar syrup is of course, really sweet. (Jump to this post to see how the figs were processed.)

Now I have to figure out how to keep the figs. According to the method I followed, there are two choices: put them up like gelée or confiture in jars with the sugar syrup, or just put the preserved figs in a hermetically sealed jar. But it seems to me they might keep well in the freezer. I'll have to decide today.

I cut one of the "candied" figs in half this morning to see what the inside looked like. Also, because after I cut it in half I then cut each half in half and ate two three pieces! For breakfast, you might say. That's how I know how sweet the preserved figs are. With foie gras, I think a few drops of balsamic or other vinegar would be good on them.

I took a third of the figs we were given and preserved them in sugar as figues confites. Walt took another third — the ripest ones — and made a tart, which we finished eating yesterday. The last third I turned into a compote.

For about a pound of ripe figs, each of which I cut into six pieces, I added two generous tablespoons of honey and a couple of drops of vanilla extract. I also put in a splash or two of water and then I let the figs cook down on medium heat until they had the thick consistency I wanted.

We'll eat the compote mostly with yogurt or French fromage blanc (a similar dairy product). I'm just going to keep the fig compote in a jar in the fridge until it is gone rather than trying to put it up the way you would jelly or jam. I don't think it is going to last all that long.

Reflections and clouds

The pond outside our back gate is town property. We get to enjoy it and the birds it attracts, and the frogs and toads that spawn and live in it, but we don't have to maintain it. The town does that, and the mayor (who lives in a house in our hamlet) sent out a crew recently.

With big machinery they scraped out the pond, digging out an invasive aquatic weed that was taking over, and scraping the sides of the pond clean. I hope there are some fish and frogs left in there, because they feed on mosquito larvae. Here's what the pond looked like last summer.

That's our falling-down back gate — have to get around to doing something about it soon — and the top of our garden shed in the photo above, as well as the big conifers and other trees in our yard reflected in the pond's still waters.

Below are some morning scenes from my walks with the dog out in the vineyard this past week. The weather is turning cold now. Low temperatures are predicted to fall into the low 30s ºF this coming week, with afternoon highs in the high 50s and low 60s.

The fireplace chimney was swept on Thursday, and we've already had a couple of fires in the woodstove since then. The house warms up fairly fast because it's not all that cold outside yet. Tomorrow, a technician from the company that services our boiler will come to get it going for the winter, so our radiators will be hot by Tuesday morning.

We're starting to bring potted plants inside. I have a table under a Velux skylight window up in the loft set in place to accommodate two or three big house plants, which have spent the summer outdoors. Others will go into the little sun porch at our front door. I remember fondly not needing to bring plants indoors when we lived in San Francisco, because we almost never had freezing temperatures there. Here's where we've been living for the past 12 years. San Francisco it ain't. But it certainly has it charms.

I'll get back to the figues confites tomorrow, after they've had their final cooking later today. See yesterday's post for details...

Figues confites au sucre

I guess the translation of the title — which means "figs slow-cooked and preserved in sugar" — would be candied figs. I hope they don't end up really tasting like candy, though. I want to eat them as a garnish with goat cheese, blue cheese, foie gras, or pâté. I'm thinking of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve.

Here's the recipe (or method) I found on the web:

Figues confites

En conserve ou séchées

Ingrédients

• Des figues

• Leur poids en sucre

Mettre les figues dans le fond d’une casserole et les couvrir de sucre. Laisser cuire 10 minutes.

Éteindre le feu, laisser les figues dans le sirop et couvrir la casserole. Réserver 24 heures et refaire

cuire 10 minutes le lendemain. Réserver 24 heures de plus dans la casserole couverte puis cuire 10

minutes une dernière fois.

Dès la fin de la cuisson, placer les figues dans des bocaux stérilisés et recouvrir de sirop. Fermer et

retourner les bocaux pour que le vide se fasse.

Ou bien, laisser les figues confites s'égoutter sur une grille et les ranger dans une boîte hermétique.

Yesterday, I used as many figs as would fit in one layer in a big, low-sided sauté pan. That turned out to be 24 figs. I weighed those and they came to 500 grams, or just over a pound. So I weighed out 500 grams of sugar and poured it over the figs.

Then I cooked the figs and sugar for 10 minutes on medium-high heat. The sugar turned into a syrup. The pan of figs in syrup spent the night down in our cold pantry, which is about the equivalent of putting it in the refrigerator overnight.

Today, I'll cook the figs a second time, as the recipe says to do. This is risky to blog about, because I don't know how it's going to come out. Hope it works — I'll let you know. Tomorrow I'll find out. I'm thinking I'll try to dry at least half the figs on a rack and put them away as directed. The other half I will put up in a jar or two in the syrup. (Jump to this post to see how the preserved figs came out.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Yesterday I also picked another "mess" of collards to cook for lunch. I cut 24 large leaves (there are six plants), washed them well, and then cut out the thick central rib of each. At that point I weighed them — I had 1.4 kg, which is the equivalent of 3 lbs. That means each trimmed leaf weighed 2 oz. (24 leaves for 48 oz.). I took about six leaves at a time, stacked and rolled them up, and cut them into strips.

This is about a quarter of the collards I harvested and cut into wide strips.

With the collards, which
I cooked for at least 2 hours
in a mixture of
chicken broth (about a liter),
duck fat (4 Tbsp.), and
white wine (one cup),
we had a grilled duck breast. This is the time of year when ducks are slaughtered in France, so it's easy to find whole ducks and parts for really good prices. This breast weighed nearly a pound
(400 g).

Figues, fromage, bœuf, carottes, Ebly, courgettes, et ail

Yesterday we had a nice surprise. A friend who lives down the road a few miles called and said she wanted to bring us some figs. The tree in her yard produced a bumper crop this summer, and she thought we might like them. She is right.

I plan to make figues confites — slow-cooked, candied figs — with most of them, but I've got to get busy before the figs get too ripe. They'll be good served with goat cheese, Roquefort, or foie gras. Meanwhile, Walt said he'd make a fig tart today. More photos to come.

At the supermarket the other day I bought a cheese that I don't think I've ever bought before. It's called tomme de Domessin, and Domessin is a village in the Savoie region in the Alps. Tomme de Savoie and tomme de montagne are cheeses in the same category.

I saw a full-size tomme de Domessin at the supermarket. It was a wheel about 12 inches across and two inches or more thick. The cheese I bought is called a tommette — the miniature model. It tastes as good as it looks.

And just to finish yesterday's subject, here's one last photo of the bœuf aux carottes I made yesterday morning. It gave us a copious lunch yesterday, especially with the cheese as a last course. Then we ate some fresh figs.

To go with the beef and carrot stew, I cooked some wheat berries with pan-roasted zucchini and garlic. The wheat berries here are of the Ebly brand, and they are readily available.

You cook the Ebly the same way you cook rice, but it takes only 10 minutes. I used some of the broth from the beef and carrots, thinned with a little water, as the cooking liquid.

Bœuf braisé aux carottes

I am running late this morning. I only have a few minutes to post this before I go out with the dog for her morning walk. It's not that I slept late. No, I was up at 5:30 and I got busy in the kitchen. We want to have beef braised with carrots (and onions, garlic, smoked pork lardons, herbs, and wine) for lunch, and it needs to cook for 4 or 5 hours.

Bœuf braisé aux carottes is a very simple thing to make, even if it is time-consuming. It's a French country classic. The combination of beef (or other meats) and carrots is especially good. One French friend of mine told me once that carrots impart a sweet flavor to meats they are cooked with, and I think it's true.

What I had to do first this morning was sauté the lardons. That would give me the fat I needed to sauté and "sweat" the onions, garlic, and carrots in. With all that out of the pot and set aside, it was time to brown the meat in the same flavorful fat. I did that in two batches, and I seasoned the meat as it cooked with some black pepper, red pepper flakes, and ground cloves.

Then it was just a matter of putting it all together, salting it, and transferring it to the slow-cooker to simmer until lunchtime. I added some thyme and oregano at that point, and enough rosé wine and water (equal quantities) to moisten the meat and vegetables just up to surface level. You can see it in the first picture above, which I took just as the stew was getting ready to simmer.

I think one reason dishes like bœuf braisé aux carottes, coq au vin, or blanquette de veau are so good is, in fact, because they are made with so few ingredients. The flavor of each ingredient gets a chance to shine through. Cooking them in wine doesn't hurt either...

L'avenue de Saxe

There's a really nice open-air market in the 7th arrondissement of Paris on the Avenue de Saxe. You can see the tree-lined avenue toward the bottom left of the image below. In the far lower left corner, you see the Place de Breteuil with its monumental statue of Louis Pasteur.

The building toward in the middle of the image above, and at the very top of the image below, is the Ecole Militaire, the French military college. The big modern structure nearby is the UNESCO headquarters building. The Marché de l'Avenue de Saxe sets up on the avenue running up from the Place de Breteuil toward UNESCO.

Below is a zoomed-in shot of the Pasteur statue in the middle of the Place de Breteuil. On the median that runs down the middle of the Avenue de Saxe, you can see the metal structures and (rolled-up) red and blue tarps that are set up to provide shelter for the market's vendors and customers on Thursdays and Saturdays.

And here's a close-in shot of the Ecole Militaire, with the Champ de Mars parade ground, now a big public park full of people in good weather, that runs up to the Eiffel Tower and the Seine.

I never lived in this part of Paris, but CHM does, so I've spent a lot of time in the area over the past 15 years.

Meanwhile, here in Saint-Aignan we are preparing for winter. A couple of weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to the man who sweeps our fireplace chimney every year, as required by insurance. He didn't answer. Finally yesterday I sent a follow-up message and he did, with an apology saying he hadn't seen the first message. He's coming to clean the wood-burning stove and chimney tomorrow.

Last week Walt called the man who runs the gardening service that takes care of pruning our long tall laurel hedge every autumn. He called back a couple of days later to say we are on his radar and he will give us a couple of days' notice before he sends out his crew.

And finally, I called the company that is supposed to install our new boiler before winter arrives. They said we are getting the manufacturer's latest and greatest model, and it has been a little late shipping from the factory. It should come in by next week. Meantime, they are going to send out a technician to tinker with our old boiler and refill it with water so that we can use it in case the weather turns cold sooner rather than later. We had emptied the boiler and the whole heating system so that we could take down a couple of big radiators this past summer for re-painting.

And as I've said, we've made good progress on cleaning up the summer's vegetable garden. The only plants left out there are winter squashes. So it goes... another season ends in a cloud of dust field of mud.