Notre idée : une serre adossée

All these days of lousy weather are making us think very seriously about having a real greenhouse put in. The experience with the fairly flimsy-seeming greenhouse tent we bought and set up a month or two ago has been encouraging.

What would work best for us would be what's called une serre adossée — one that you attach to the side of a building. A lean-to greenhouse, in other words. The one above is nice except that it's a little too industrial-looking, I think

The one above has more pleasing lines. It comes in several sizes and colors.
I like the green, but the silver one below isn't bad either.

It's an aluminum structure fitted with safety glass, and the best size
for our purposes would be 6 feet by 12, or about 7 m².

I think this one is the same as the two above but smaller (maybe 5 m²).

This is another one that looks functional but not very attractive.

This one is definitely a candidate too. It might be too big, though.

We probably should have had a greenhouse put in years ago. Better late than never. I found all these using Google Images.

Tristes journées

Sad days. All the way around. The state of the world, the state of the weather.

A hard rain fell again for most of the night. I lay awake listening to it slap against the roof tiles.

Look what all our rain is doing to the local flowers.

These are recent photos of peonies and roses in our yard and a neighbor's.

Snow peas and shrimp in a stir-fry

Since it's like this in France this week...

...I'll just have to post about food, meaning yesterday's lunch. Walt planted snow peas — green ones and purple ones — out in the garden a few weeks ago. A couple of days ago, he harvested some. So the garden this year won't have been a total bust, no matter what the future holds.

We drove up to Blois a few weeks ago to shop at the Asian grocery, mostly for shrimp. (Maybe you call them prawns.) They stock good frozen shrimp — frozen raw, and headed — rather than the cooked shrimp you get almost everywhere else in France. And I went to the open-air market and bought some nice mushrooms from the woman who grows them and sells them there — she's a neighbor of ours.

I found a recipe on the web — an idea, really. Where else nowadays? Here it is. Oh, I used less shrimp than called for and added some calamari that we also had in the freezer. I also made shrimp broth by cooking the shrimp shells in boiling water and used that instead of chicken broth.

Stir-fry of shrimp, mushrooms, and snow peas

125 ml (½ cup U.S.) shrimp or chicken broth
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1 tsp. cornstarch
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
250 g (½ lb.) sliced mushrooms
250 g (½ lb.) snow peas, strings removed
500 g (1 lb.) medium or large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 small onion, peeled and sliced
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
Salt and pepper, optional
Cooked rice or rice noodles for serving, optional

In a small bowl, mix together the broth, soy sauce, ginger and cornstarch.

Warm oil in a large nonstick skillet or wok over medium-high heat until shimmering. Cook mushrooms, stirring, until their liquid has evaporated and they have browned, 6 to 10 minutes.

Add snow peas, garlic, and onion; stir-fry until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Toss in shrimp and cook, stirring, until pink, 3 or 4 minutes.

Stir broth mixture; pour into pan. Stir-fry until shrimp are opaque and sauce has thickened slightly, approximately one minute.

Season with salt and pepper and serve over rice or rice noodles, if desired.

Duck with herbs and vegetables in the slow-cooker

By six o'clock yesterday morning, I had lunch cooking slowly in the crockpot. I had cut up some onions and carrots the night before, and trimmed and washed some mushrooms. The main course was going to be duck leg & thigh pieces.

I had noticed the duck pieces at SuperU over in Romorantin on Friday, when we drove over there (an 80 km or 50 mi. round-trip) to have a look around in a new Home Depot-type store called E. Leclerc Brico. We have a couple of home improvement projects in the works and wanted to look at a few things there.

Anyway, there was the duck. We're lucky to be able to buy duck when we want, either whole birds or parts. And it's not expensive. These leg and thigh sections cost about eight euros per kilogram, which is about $4.00/lb. There is no reason to pass that up. One way to prepare it is as confit — slow-cooked in duck fat — but this time I wanted to cook it with vegetables and wine.

What you do is melt just a tablespoon or two of duck fat in the bottom of the crockpot (or substitute vegetable oil, butter, or other fat) at high temperature. When the crock is hot, lay the duck legs skin side down on the bottom. Scatter sliced onions, cut-up carrots, and sliced mushrooms over all. Season with salt, pepper, bay leaves, and some allspice or cloves. Add some herbs like thyme, oregano, or parsley, either fresh or dried. Put the lid on the crockpot and let it cook on high temperature for an hour or so.

At that point, lift the lid and pour in about half a cup of white wine. (You could use red wine.) Push the mushrooms and other vegetables down into the cooking juices and wine so they will cook slowly that way. Put the lid back on and leave the duck to cook for at least another two hours. Then turn the heat down to low or even the "keep warm" setting and leave it until you are ready to serve and eat the duck and vegetables.

I thought it was delicious. You can do the same thing with chicken or turkey legs/thighs, or even with thick pork chops. I guess it's a classic French cooking method — wine with aromatic vegetables, herbs, and poultry or other meat, with some potatoes, sweet potato, or rice. And it's perfect food to enjoy on a cloudy, rainy, fairly chilly day. Yesterday, we had frequent rain squalls and hard downpours all day long, and a high temperature of about 67ºF.

La collégiale de Saint-Aignan

We had a thunderstorm last night and an hour or so of very hard rain. Yes, rain, but it will be good for the garden, which is (finally) all planted now, nearly a month late because of all the rain we had earlier. Kale, tomatoes, haricots verts, pumpkins, aubergines, bell peppers, courgettes... Let's hope it all grows.

Today I'm cooking duck.The weather has turned a little chilly again, so a couple of duck drumsticks and thighs slow-cooked in the mijoteuse (crockpot) with onions, carrots, and mushrooms will be comforting. Maybe I'll post about that tomorrow. We are lucky to get duck as a standard item, including duck pieces you can cook the way you want to.

Anyway, here are some photos of the church in Saint-Aignan. It's an église collégiale, which means it's not a cathedral but is an important church to which is (or was) attached a "college" of "canons" (chanoines). In English, that's a "collegiate" church. You can see it on the left in the first photo I posted yesterday — the wide shot I took of the church and château while standing on the bridge.

Wikipedia says: "In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons; a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, which may be presided over by a dean or provost.

"In its governance and religious observance a collegiate church is similar to a cathedral, although a collegiate church is not the seat of a bishop and has no diocesan responsibilities. Collegiate churches were often supported by extensive lands held by the church, or by tithe income from appropriated benefices. They commonly provide distinct spaces for congregational worship and for the choir offices of their clerical community."

Over the years, I've posted many photos showing the church and other scenes in Saint-Aignan in different seasons and lighting conditions, including these. Tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of the first night we ever spent in the house we have lived in here, just outside Saint-Aignan, since 2003.

More Saint-Aignan château photos

Here's another view of what you see when you arrive at Saint-Aignan on the route de Blois, coming in from the north. More and more tourists are doing just that these days, because the big Beauval zoo, with its giant pandas, is on the south side of the town. The zoo claims to be one of the world's top ten.

We live about two miles west of the château, on the same side of the Cher river. When we came here in 2003, we'd never really heard of Saint-Aignan. It was a real estate agent who introduced us to the place. It's about a 30-minute drive from all sorts of famous places with Loire Valley châteaux — Amboise, Chambord, Chenonceaux, Chaumont, Valençay, Loches, and Cheverny.

The original château at Saint-Aignan was built in the 9th and 10th centuries. It was a hilltop fortress, and just a small part of it remains today. That part is a stone tower and wall, with a gateway into the main courtyard of the complex.

The main building — the château itself — was built as a fine residence for a noble family in the French Renaissance, 500 years after the construction of the original fortress. France had emerged from the 100 years war with the English, and the kingdom was expanding. The French king and his court had adopted the Loire Valley — especially Loches, Amboise, and Blois — as its special domain, because of the area's relatively mild climate.

I think the building above, part of which is the château stables, is much more recent than the main château (photo yesterday). I read somewhere that the octagonal tower was built in the 1830s. Since the château is privately owned and not open to the public (with the exception of the courtyard), it's not easy to find a lot of information about all the buildings and their history.

Large images of the Château de Saint-Aignan in the Loir-et-Cher

One thing about the recent high waters on the Cher and the localized flooding is positive: it got me back into old Saint-Aignan with my camera again. It had been a few years since I'd played the tourist in my own home town (well, adopted town). First photo: here's what you see when you enter Saint-Aignan from the north, coming from Blois.

Yes, that's the château. It looms over the town and the river. It's not open to the public. As far as I know, the owner, a woman who is an aristocrat — une marquise, actually — still lives there. Her husband the marquis passed away more than a decade ago. She's elderly now, and I don't know what will happen to the château when she passes on. Maybe her heirs will decide to let people like us in to see the place.

Above is a view of a section of the château that I took from the road that runs along the river, near the bridge. I'm posting these images at a pretty large size. Click on them to open them in a new window, and click again when you see the magnifying glass icon with a plus sign in it.

Seen from the back when you arrive from Blois, the Château de Saint-Aignan might look a little eclectic (a hodgepodge of styles). But seen from the front, it's a beautiful Renaissance edifice. You can't go inside, but you can trudge up a gravel path, or a paved tree-lined road, or up a grand staircase from the nearby church, and spend some time on the château terrace to get a good look at the exterior of the buildings, as well as views out over the river valley.

Rainy day activities

What do you do indoors when it rains more or less steadily for a week? Well, you have to entertain yourself, and try to be productive. Computers are good for entertainment, but a lot of them time you spend surfing or searching doesn't really pay off.

Fresh okra pods

Luckily, on one of the recent less rainy days, we drove up to Blois for lunch and to do some shopping. I bought a lot of vegetables: bell peppers of different colors, Italian flat green beans, sweet potatoes, and okra. Okra goes by the name gombo in French, and that's where we get the Louisiana dish called gumbo. It's a seafood stew that is thickened in part by cooked okra. Okra is also good cooked in a rice pilaf, or in Brunswick stew, and many other ways. See these old blog posts of mine.

Stem ends trimmed

Since I bought about three pounds of fresh okra, I had to figure out a way to process it for cooking over the next few weeks and months. You can make pickled okra, or you can freeze the okra pods. I decided on freezing, because our big chest freezer isn't at all full right now. If I could buy fresh or frozen okra in our local Saint-Aignan supermarkets, or at  the weekly outdoor markets around here, I probably wouldn't go to all this trouble. But I can't, so I do.

Blanching in boiling water

The key to freezing vegetables like okra, green beans, Brussels sprounts, and so many others is, of course, blanching them first in boiling water, and then freezing them on trays in the summer so that each pod or bean is frozen separately. That way, you can use as many as you want when you take them out of the freezer to cook them and not have to thaw out a big block of the vegetables that would be more than you need or want at that moment.

Taking a cold bath

Blanch the fresh okra pods for three to five minutes in boiling water, after trimming the stem end off each one. As soon as they're just slightly cooked, scoop them out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon (écumoire) and plunge them into a large quantity of cold water — ice water is good — to cool them down quickly. The photos here show the different stages in the process.

Arranged on trays for the freezer

Arrange the blanched okra pods (or beans or sprouts) on trays that will fit inside your freezer. Try not to let them be in contact with each other. Putting them on a silicon pad or a sheet of parchment paper (papier de cuisson) is a good idea. Set the tray or trays in the freezer and leave them for as long as 24 hours.

Frozen and separate

Once the vegetable pieces are hard-frozen, you can put them in plastic bags or containers, sealed up tight, and store them in the freezer long-term. And you can take out just the quantity you need when you want to cook and eat some. Do the same thing with sliced and blanched bell peppers, zucchini — any vegetable, really. When we have big crops of vegetables from our garden, we often use this method to preserve them.

Tarte aux fraises

Here's what happened to that load of strawberries that I manage not to crush when I slipped down an old stone staircase at the Château de Saint-Aignan Saturday morning. I had just bought them at the market. That afternoon, Walt made a pie crust, some pastry cream, and an apricot glaze. He baked the crust, let it cool, spooned in the pastry cream, arranged the raw strawberries on top, and brushed them with warm apricot jam.

It has all  been devoured now, but we did succeed in making it last three days. The strawberries are a hybrid called mariguettes, according to the man who grows and sells them. That's a cross between the better-known gariguette strawberries and the variety called mara des bois. They were grown over in the Sologne, in what they call tunnels — plastic covered frames that protect the berries from hot sun (ha ha ha, this year) and heavy rain.

The Cher river near its crest at Saint-Aignan a couple of days ago.

By the way, the sun did come out yesterday shortly before noon, for the first time in I don't know when. The flood waters all around us are only gradually receding, I hear, but I haven't been back out to see. They also say some of the smaller rivers south of Paris, notably the Essonne, are still rising today.

How the vineyard fared

The rain fell heavily and amply, but up here in the vineyard it just ran off. Well, it didn't just run off — it moved a good bit of mud and gravel down toward the edges of the vineyard, which is bordered by what you might call ravines on its north and south sides.

A mostly dry ravine separates two ridges planted in grapevines

On the south side, there's a stream that flows, I believe, year-round. You can't really see it because the ravine is so heavily forested, and I don't think I've ever heard it flowing. I don't plan to climb down there to see. The stream is called la rouère de l'Aulne — you might translate that as "alder creek" in American English. Rouère is a local dialect word, I believe, and must be related to the more standard French term rivière.

The rain knocked all the white flowers off the many locust trees (acacias in French) that grow around the vineyard.

On the north side, there's a ravine that is dry much of the time. A few days ago, however, I noticed that for only the third or fourth time since 2003 you could hear water flowing down there. In fact, it sounded more like a waterfall than a babbling brook. It doesn't have a name, as far as I know.

Mud and gravel flowed down between the rows of vines.

All the water that fell up here, and on the high ground all along the Cher river, ran down into the river itself, swelling it so that it overflowed its banks. The ridges bounded by ravines are good land for grapes because the water runs off pretty fast.

One of the few casualties of the recent storms up on this high ground was a single tree that fell at the edge of a vineyard plot, landing on two or three rows of vines. I don't know why it fell, because we didn't have a lot of wind.

I guess the heavy rain softened the ground the tree was growing in, and the weight of the water on its leaves and branches pulled it down. I wonder if the Renaudie vineyard crew has seen it yet.

A flood cometh before the fall

Yesterday, I went to the market down in Saint-Aignan. We wanted some strawberries. The man we buy them from was there, despite the widespread flooding. He and his son grow the berries over in the sandy soil of the Sologne woods, on the opposite side of the river from where we live. He apologized and said the berries would be sweeter and juicier if the weather weren't so gray and chilly. We think the strawberries are pretty damn good anyway.

June 2016

Above is a photo of the Saint-Aignan bridge that I took yesterday. Below is one that I took in May 2010, which I found on the blog. These images clearly show the difference in the level of the water.

May 2010

I parked near the river, and I had remembered to take my camera with me. The water level wasn't visibly different from what I saw on Thursday afternoon, the last time I went to look. In other words, the flood hasn't subsided but hasn't gotten a lot worse either. All the regular vendors seemed to be present at the market, and while it wasn't what you'd call crowded there were quite a few shoppers out and about.

For now, the road ends here. Those little bushes and trees in the middle of the image are on the normal riverbank.

After I went to the market, where I got not only three little tubs of strawberries but also a bunch of local white asparagus and a pound of local mushrooms, I decided I should walk up to the château grounds and take a few photos of the river from up there. In the image below, you can see that the park on the island across from Saint-Aignan is almost completely submerged.

Several other people had the same idea but for a few minutes I had the château terrace all to myself. From up there you have a panoramic view toward the north, taking in the Cher river and a body of water that's called Le Lac des Trois Provinces, on the upper right. The old Sologne (in the Orléanais), Berry, and Touraine provinces meet here at Saint-Aignan.

As I was walking back down to the car, I made a bad move. I decided to take a shortcut that involved walking down the little old stone staircase you see in the image just below. I knew it was dangerous and I was being as careful as I could be. There is no hand rail. I was carrying my camera in one hand (on a wrist strap) and my shopping basket with the other.

The first two steps down were fine. But when I put my foot on the third step — the first that is so worn down by centuries of use — my shoe found no grip at all.

I hadn't realized the damp stone would be so slippery. My right foot slid right out from under me and down I went on my gluteus maximus... bump bump bump... all the way to the bottom.

I guess I'm lucky I didn't hit my head on one of the steps as I slid down on my backside. I was busy trying not to crush the strawberries or break my camera. I didn't do either. I'm a little bruised, but not really injured. And feeling stupid.

A difficult weekend for many in the Cher Valley

The Loire Valley flooding crisis is far from over. I didn't go out yesterday — we are all being asked to stay home if we can. The photos here are some more that I took Thursday afternoon.

The Cher at Saint-Aignan looks more like a lake than a river right now.

My planned trip to Paris by train tomorrow has had to be canceled. With the current strikes affecting train schedules and the flooding in areas from here all the way to Paris, it wouldn't be wise to try to make the trip. It talked to CHM about it on the phone yesterday, and he thought it better to postpone for now.

The Sur le Pont restaurant's kitchen and outdoor seating area are at river level and are obviously flooded.

Evidently, flooding along the Cher River, from east of Saint-Aignan all the way to Tours, 40 miles west, will continue all through the weekend. Below is a translation of an article I read in the regional newspaper, La Nouvelle République, this morning.

These houses at the foot of the château in Saint-Aignan are protected from rising waters by a stone wall.

In the Cher Valley, the biggest problems are yet to come. The river crested at Vierzon [35 miles east of Saint-Aignan] on Friday afternoon. It will take another 24 hours for the crest to reach Montrichard [10 miles west of Saint-Aignan], and 48 hours for it to travel from Vierzon to Tours [130 kilometers, or 80 miles, in all].

It probably wasn't a great idea to build a house with a basement-level garage like this.

Conditions will continue to deteriorate all along the river and will not soon improve because the crest is a kind of "plateau" and the water level will stay high for two or three more days. "In the Cher Valley, conditions won't get back to normal before Tuesday," warn authorities in Blois, the administrative capital of the Loir-et-Cher "department" [county]. People are being asked to limit their travels to a strict minimum, to respect all warnings, and to exercise great care.

The east-west A85 autoroute crosses the Cher valley on a long viaduct. Normally these are fields, not water.

The article also says that the A10 autoroute remains closed to traffic between Orléans and Paris, but is open from Orléans to Blois and on to Tours, apparently. Here's a link to the full article about the situation, in French.

Here's one of the lock-keeper's houses on the Cher across from the village of Mareuil. It and the fields on both sides of the river are flooded.

And here's a link to an accompanying article about the disastrous effects the flooding is having on on agriculture in the area. Many farm animals have drowned, spring crops have been destroyed, and seeds sown for the summer and fall harvests have been washed away all along the Cher river valley.

This looks like a lake but it's actually a field along the river that's planted in corn in summertime.

I do have to go out this morning. I'm going to SuperU, which like our house is up on high ground, but getting there means driving down into the river valley. If the gravel road through the vineyard hadn't been so damaged by the heavy rains, with gullies and ruts everywhere, I could go that way, but today I don't want to risk it.