Scènes de la saison

There aren't many apples on the trees around the hamlet and vineyard this year, but there are a few. Maybe I should pick these before they fall and get lost in the high grasses and weeds. That's part of the vineyard in the background, with our house on the right. The harvesting of grapes is ongoing, by the way.

Yesterday was a foretaste of winter. We expected rain, but all we got was a fine mist that turned into a soft drizzle every now and then. This morning it's 10 degrees F warmer than it has been for the past week or so at this hour.

Here's a closer shot of the house seen through the weeds around the pond out back. The image above is a close-up of the plant I was looking through when I took the photo below. You can also see the garden shed and back gate, below.

And finally, tall artichokes. Obviously, we haven't had a lot of wind lately or they would have blown over. All that fluff would have blown away. Those are apple trees and a hazelnut hedge behind them, and then the woods on the north side of the yard.

Yesterday we had teriyaki-glazed parsnips and sausages for lunch. Today it will be chicken creole, using the some of the bell peppers I picked a couple of days ago and some of the tomatoes too. I'm hungry already and it's not even 7 a.m. yet.

Les dernières tomates

I woke up this morning to the sound of radiators popping and cracking as they heated up and expanded. In other words, it's cold outside. Yesterday when I went out in the vineyard there was a fairly heavy frost in places that weren't sheltered by trees. I was wearing two fleece jackets, a hat, and gloves. I should have put on long underwear, but I hadn't thought to.

When I got back home, I decided to go pick the rest of the tomatoes and peppers out in the garden. There were quite a few fully ripe tomatoes to be gathered, and a lot of tomatoes that were just starting to turn pale pink. I picked them all. The pink ones will continue ripening. I also gathered up half a dozen bell peppers that are partly green and partly red..

Now the weather is supposed to turn rainy, and warm up. The kale plants will enjoy that. On dry days, we'll go pull out the tomato plants and get rid of them. Maybe we'll bring in some green tomatoes and see what we can do with them. We'll also gather up the winter squashes and pumpkins and store them somewhere. Let's hope that the rain isn't too constant and that we'll have decent working conditions.

Forbidden fruit

C'est-à-dire « cépages interdits ». According to an article I just read, there are six grapes varietals that are "outlawed" in French wine-making. Apparently, the grapes can be grown but they can't be made into wine. It's not really clear why. The ban dates back to 1935.

One day years ago I was talking to a neighbor who has about 15 acres of vines up behind our house. I don't know if I brought up the subject of outlawed varietals, or if he did. Either way, he told me that one of his fellow vignerons had a row of such grapes planted among his "legal" vines. He treated the news like a big secret, but he told me more or less where the banned grapes were planted.

Walt located them a while back, once they had grapes on them. I'd never noticed them. I see two signs that they are the ones the neighbor told me about. First, they are planted in a short row on the edge of a plot of white-wine grapes, but half the grapes in the row in question are red. Also, the white grapes in the forbidden row are different from the white grapes planted next to them, and they haven't yet been harvested, while the grapes in the rest of the parcel have been.

Why are these varietals — clinton, noah, jacquez, herbemont, othello, isabelle — unfit to be turned into wine? People whisper that the wine made from them would drive people crazy, the way it was rumored that absinthe did. Others says wine made from them just wouldn't taste good. There is some evidence that the ban might date back to the 19th-century importation of vines from North America that brought the phylloxera scourge to French vineyards and nearly killed the wine-making business here.

I don't know what the grapes in my photos here are, but they are the ones. I've tasted a grape of each color and I don't feel any crazier than I did before. Here's a link to the article (in French) that I read this morning.

Left behind

Harvesting continues in the vineyard. Les vendanges continuent. Now the Renaudie guys seem to be working not just mornings but also afternoons to bring the rest of the grapes in. The weather is supposed to turn rainy in a day or two, and the rains will continue next week. That's normal for the second half of October.

I went out with the dog yesterday morning and I was admiring the grapes all around us as we walked. Walt went out in the afternoon and said two big plots just on the north side of our yard have now been stripped of their fruit.

I took these photos farther out in the vineyard, about half a mile (nearly a kilometer) from our house. I don't know what this thing is called that is left behind when the grapes are harvested by machine. I heard or read the word last week, but now I can't remember it and I don't know where I saw or heard it.

One thing I read about machine-harvesting as compared to hand-harvesting is that when bunches of grapes are cut by hand, the woody structure at the center of a bunch goes with the grapes. It can impart a flavor to the grape juice and resulting wine that is not necessarily desirable. So chalk one up for machine-harvesting.

Hunters, grapes, and leaves

Yesterday afternoon I took Callie out for our walk at about 5:30. It was Sunday, and at this time of year, that means there were hunters out there. I could hear gunshots off in the distance. As we went out the back gate and started down the hill, I saw a little brown dog, a terrier of some kind, just disappearing between two rows of vines. I told Callie to stay close to me.

Our relatively new neighbors have a little brown dog like that, and I figured he was out there, maybe having escaped from their fenced-in yard. And then I saw a hunter. He was dressed in camouflage — a real costume, right out of central casting. He was carrying a rifle and it was not "broken" — not open but, I assume, loaded and cocked. Most hunters don't carry guns around like that when they're in the vineyard. With this hunter was a little boy, maybe 10 years old.

I was close enough to the man and the boy to shout a big Bonjour! to them. The hunter looked at me and almost scowled. That's never happened out there before. Most hunters flash and smile and return the greeting. They chat, and they are curious about Callie. What kind of dog is she? A hunting dog? No? And so on. This surly hunter just turned and walked away. I didn't enjoy the encounter. It's strange having unfriendly people carry and even fire guns just a hundred yards of so from our house.

Meanwhile, the vines in a lot of vineyard plots and rows all around us are still heavy with big bunches of purple grapes. This is the latest harvest we've seen since we came to live here in 2003. The grapes are beautiful, and you really are tempted to pick some and take them home. Of course you don't do that. But you can pinch one here and there and taste the differences between different varieties. At this point, they are all sweet and juicy.

Today's weather report

This morning, as best I can determine after watching CNN reports and looking at maps, videos, and articles on several weather sites on the internet, what's left of Hurricane Matthew is sitting very close to, or even right on top of, Morehead City, my home town in North Carolina. But it has weakened, and the major winds and rains seem to be north of the eye of the storm, up the coast near or even in the state of Virginia.

It's funny to see the names they put on these maps. Emerald Isle is resort town on the barrier island across from Morehead City, with a small year-round population but a lot of rental properties and what in French are called résidences secondaires ("cottages" and "condos"). The only road and bridge to the place now called Emerald Isle have been built in my lifetime. It's especially curious to see the name Portsmouth on the map. It's a ghost town — the last people who lived there passed away many years ago. There's a big town called Portsmouth up in Virginia. Maybe that's what confused whoever put the place names on the map.

Most of the heavy weather is in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey,
even though the eye of the storm is over coastal North Carolina.

Oh well. Still now, sustained winds in Matthew are at 75 mph (120 kph), with gusts up to 90 mph (150 kph). That's nothing to sneeze at. I won't know until later today how my family, friends, and home town have fared. I do know that there is major flooding in N.C. inland, with roads washed out and trees down. There apparently have been numerous rescues of residents and drivers by emergency services over a wide area. I hope the people that I know have been smart enough just to stay at home over the past 24 hours.

Hurricane Matthew rides up the SE U.S. coast

I'm of course still preoccupied with the bad weather along the U.S. southeast coast. All I can do is look at weather sites on the internet (accuweather.com, weather.com, etc.) and try to understand what is happening and what might happen next. My home town, Morehead City (pop. 8,000) in North Carolina, is at the northern end of Matthew's path, they are saying, and therefore is less at risk than other cities and towns. Right now, it's about 1 a.m. over there.

Above is a map I grabbed off weather.com a few minutes ago. You can see the storm sitting off the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, between the beautiful old cities of Savannah (metro pop. 375,000) and Charleston (metro pop. 740,000). I hope a lot of people have left those areas and moved westward to get out of the way. For scale, the distance from Savannah to Morehead City is about 400 miles (650 km) — a 6½ hour journey by car.

This is a very low coastline of mudflats, salt marshes, sandy beaches, and wide estuaries. It's called "the low country" in South Carolina. If the winds push water up against it, as they will likely do, the flooding from the storm surge might be disastrous. And that's especially true if the worst of the storm's winds arrive at high tide. Much of Charleston, for example, is at sea level, and the highest points in the town are only 20 feet above sea level. Morehead City is even lower — 0 to 16 feet (5 m) of elevation.

Look at the rainfall totals! Five to fifteen inches of rain (between 125 mm and 400) will fall in just a few hours. Right along the coast, the rain might not be a big problem, but 50 miles inland, where there are hills and valleys and a lot of small and larger rivers, flooding can be catastrophic. Eastern N.C. has already had significant rain and some flooding over the past few weeks.

October sunrise

I'm kind of preoccupied with Hurricane Matthew right now. I have friends and relatives on the east coast of Florida — I think of commenter Notes from Abroad who just moved to Jacksonville — and my home town, Morehead City in North Carolina, is vulnerable to the storm too. For right now, the forecast is for Matthew to turn out to sea before it reaches the central N.C. coast, but that can change. My mother, sister, and many relatives and friends still live in Morehead.

Meanwhile, the weather here in Saint-Aignan is kind of surreal. We're still in this long dry spell. There are very few windy days. Skies are crystal clear much of the time. Temperatures at sunrise are in the low 40s in ºF — around 5ºC — which feels really cold.

Clear skies are to blame for the frigid-feeling mornings. Yesterday I went out for the walk with the dog and I regretted that I hadn't put on gloves and a hat. I cut the walk short because it was uncomfortable. I'm not sure I'm ready for winter weather. It seems like it was summer just a few days ago.

La potée à ma façon

So it's back to wintertime food. It's cold this morning, and the weather, while clear and sunny, stays chilly until mid-afternoon. Since our main meal is lunch, hearty foods are back in the meal plans.

This is what is called a potée, and in France each region — probably each cook — has a slightly different recipe. The French-English dictionary says it's called a "hotpot" in English, but I've never used that term. I think "hodgepodge" is a related word. I think I'd call the potée a boiled dinner. In France, the ingredients are pork, cabbage, and potatoes, with other vegetables as available. Made with beef it would be a pot au feu, and with chicken a poule au pot. I first learned to make potées from a woman who ran a charcuterie (pork butcher/deli) on the rue Montorgueil in Paris more than 30 years ago. She seemed to enjoy telling me what to make with, and how to cook, the products she sold.

I made my latest potée with Tuscan "dinosaur" kale instead of cabbage. I cooked the kale with onions and carrots in chicken broth seasoned with bay leaves, black pepper, and allspice. When the kale and carrots were tender (after 60 to 90 minutes of cooking), I added chunks of potato, turnip, and rutabaga to the pot and let that cook for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile, in a separate pan I poached a couple of sausages (one smoked Montbéliard, and one plain Toulouse) and two slices of smoked pork belly (poitrine fumée). When all the vegetables were cooked, I added the meats and some of their poaching liquid (fat skimmed off) to the pot for extra flavor. We enjoyed the potée. Now I can make soup with the leftover broth and vegetables.

Vendanges à la machine

I went out yesterday morning with my camera, hoping to see a group of people hand-picking grapes. No luck. I did see a big blue harvesting machine running up and down the rows of a vineyard plot planted in white-wine grapes (probably Sauvignon Blanc).

A couple of hours later, before lunch, I snapped a photo of the tractor that was working in tandem with the harvester (Fr. vendangeuse) as it drove by our kitchen window on its way back down to the winery to deliver a trailer-load of grapes.

It was followed closely by the vendangeuse itself. I wonder what one of those machines sells for. It must represent a huge investment by the winery owners.

Above is the machine à vendanger working out in the vines earlier in the day. The Domaine de la Renaudie has about 60 acres planted in grapes and produces about 230,000 bottles of wine annually, including more than 20,000 bottles under the new Touraine-Chenonceaux appellation. It's a big operation, but family-owned.

It seems to me that nearly all the red-wine grapes — mostly Gamay, Cabernet Franc, and Côt (or what is now being called Côt/Malbec on labels) — are still hanging on the vines. I'll be interested to see how many of those are harvested by pickers and how many by machine. The grapes above are just outside our back gate.

Late, chilly mornings

Here in Saint-Aignan, the sun doesn't come up until about 8 a.m. at this time of year. That's an hour later than in places like coastal North Carolina and the U.S. west coast, where I used to live. And even after it's up, it is low in the sky now. That makes it hard to take pictures on the morning walk.

Yesterday I tried to get a good photo of Walt and Callie coming back from their walk. It was 8:20 a.m. Obviously, it's not a crisp and clear image — the light wasn't bright enough. Oh well. Today it's my turn to go out there with the dog. It'll be chilly, but pretty. Here are some of the flowers of the season, growing outside our guest bedroom window.

Yesterday Walt said there were crews of workers picking grapes by hand in several plots along the mile-long dirt road that runs through the Renaudière vineyard. A lot more manual harvesting seems to be going on this year than in the past.

I imagine the new local wine appellation, Touraine-Chenonceaux, has something to do with that. Our wines and wineries are going upscale, and I think that's got to be a good thing. I'll take my camera with me this morning and see if I can document the changes. The photos might look like the one above, however. In it, you can barely see Walt walking along the road toward home.

Our house and garden

We got a little bit of rain over the weekend. Now the mornings are not just chilly but cold — only about 8ºC, or upper 40s ºF, right now. Walt adjusted the thermostat yesterday so that the heat won't come on just yet. The afternoons are still warmish. Before long, though, it will be winter again. You can feel it in the air.

Above is a photo of the house we've lived in for the past 13 years, outside Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher in the Loire Valley. It's hard to believe it's been so long. We worked and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 17+ years before coming to live here. We spent nearly all our vacations in France from 1988 until 2003, and then decided to make it our permanent residence. Walt and I are both retired, and we both speak good French. I've been blogging since October 2005.

One of the things that attracted us to this house was its yard, which at half an acre is big enough and flat enough that we can have a nice vegetable garden every summer. We arrived here in June 2003, and in 2004 we planted our garden for the first time. We grow tomatoes, peppers, green beans, eggplant, and greens including chard, collards, and kale.

We live up on a hill at the edge of a large vineyard, and at the end of the paved road. We have a dog, Callie, and we can go on long walks through the vines every day without having to put a leash on her. The little neighborhood or hamlet we live in is made up of nine houses, but only 5 of them are occupied year-round. We have all the advantages of being out in the country, but we're only a couple of miles from town, and there are two big supermarkets and many other businesses within 5 miles of the house.

Poivrons rouges rôtis au four

We got quite a few red bell peppers from the garden this summer, but not very many of them were without blemishes or insect damage of one kind or another. We had to cut them up and trim then before we could cook them into ratatouille or poulet basquaise — to name two examples.

Yesterday I noticed three nice, bright red poivrons that had been ripening out on the terrace among a couple of dozen tomatoes. They looked like good candidates for oven-roasting. I haven't cut them open and de-seeded them yet, so I don't know how thick the flesh will be. Some peppers seem to be all skin with little "meat".

Peppers roasted in a 400ºF (200ºC) oven for about 30 minutes sort of shrivel up and collapse. I poke some holes in them before putting them in to roast because I don't want them to burst when the air inside them expands. The peppers' skin starts to darken and blister.

When they come out of the oven, they need to be cooled in a paper bag or in a covered dish so that steaming from their residual heat will loosen the skins even more. I just put them in a dish and cover it tightly with plastic wrap. When they're cool they are ready to be skinned and seeded. Then they are delicious just dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper, and maybe a few drops of vinegar. Balsamic is especially good.

Two men and their machines

When I went out for the morning walk yesterday, I came upon a group of people picking grapes way out in the upper part of the vineyard. I recognized one man because I've seen him out there many times, tending the vines. Another, younger man noticed me and asked him if he recognized me. "Oh sure, he said, he walks his dog out here all the time. Look, there's the dog now! Sometimes the pooch will come over and greet me." I guess we are local color now.

All day we waited for rain to start falling, but it didn't come until after dark in the evening. The mechanical harvest continues at its leisurely pace. The photo above shows two men from the Domaine de la Renaudie winery, with their harvester and tractor-trailer. The man in the blue tractor is the owner, and the one standing works out in the vines year-round. Right now, his main job seems to be driving the harvester. I took the photo from a window up in the loft.

Poulet basquaise

That would be poulet à la basquaise, or à la mode basquaise — Basque-style. A friend who lives a few miles up the river from us grew piments d'Espelette, a Basque specialty, in her garden this year. Generous as she is, she brought us some a day or two ago. The piments are hot red peppers, which came originally from South America but were brought to Basque country centuries ago and became popular there.

The other ingredients in Basque-style chicken are garlic, onion, red or green bell peppers, tomatoes, and chicken. It's a very simple but very tasty way to make braised chicken. I'll post the recipe at the end — scroll down.

The first step is to cut up a chicken, unless you decide to buy chicken parts. I had eight pieces — two drumsticks, two thighs, and four pieces of breast, wings still attached. Make broth with the carcass and trimmings. Brown the serving pieces in a big pan or pot and put them in the oven to stay warm while you make the sauce.

Slice up four onions (half a pound, 250 grams), four garlic cloves, one bell pepper (or more), and some piments d'Espelette or other hot red peppers if you can get them. If not, put in two or three sliced bell peppers and add some cayenne or other hot red pepper powder to spice up the sauce. Sauté the sliced onions, peppers, and garlic cloves in olive oil for a few minutes.

Cut up a kilo of fresh tomatoes — that's about 2 lbs. — into big chunks and add them to the pan. Turn up the heat and stir everything together. (Use good canned tomatoes if you don't have fresh ones.)

Turn the heat down to medium and let it all cook for at least 15, if not 20, minutes, covered. Add some white wine or chicken broth if it needs liquid, and put in three bay leaves and a teaspoon or so of dried thyme, along with salt and black pepper.

Meanwhile, here are the chicken pieces after they've been lightly browned. They've been sitting in a warm oven for 15 or 20 minutes at this point.

And here is the sauce after it's been cooking for a few minutes. It's ready to have the chicken placed on top. Do that, put the lid back on, and let the pan bubble and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes, until the chicken is done the way you like it. Serve with rice.

Here's what the fresh piments d'Espelette look like. Actually, they are the four longer ones in the center of the bowl, and are the ones I used for the Basque dish. I cleaned them and got rid of the ribs and seeds. I'm glad I did, because they were plenty hot without all that. The other peppers are a different variety, called piments de Bresse. We haven't tried them yet.

Poulet basquaise
 
1 chicken (or about 2½ lbs. of chicken parts)
½ lb. (250 grams) onions
4 cloves garlic
1 or 2 bell peppers
2¼ lbs. (1000 grams) tomatoes
4 hot red peppers (Espelettes if you can get them)
white wine or chicken broth as needed
olive oil
salt and pepper
thyme and bay leaves
 

Cut the chicken up into serving pieces. Slice the onions, garlic, and peppers (ribs and seeds removed). Trim and cut up the tomatoes.

Sauté the chicken pieces, skin side down to start with, in olive oil until they are lightly browned. Turn them over several times as they cook and season them with salt and pepper. Put them on a plate or platter and keep them in a warm oven while the sauce is cooking.

Sauté the sliced onion, garlic, and peppers in olive oil for about 5 minutes. Then add the chopped tomato to the pan and stir well. Add the thyme and bay leaves, and some salt and pepper. Cover the pan and let the tomatoes cook for 15 or 20 minutes. Add white wine or chicken broth if the sauce needs liquid.

Lay the chicken pieces over the sauce, pushing them in so they're partially covered. Put the lid back on the pan and let it cook for 30 to 45 minutes, until the chicken is done to your taste. Serve with rice.

Here is the recipe in French. Some recipes I've seen add mushrooms, olives (green and black), or chunks of smoked ham (or lardons) to the sauce, but I wanted to keep it simple.

Into the sunset

I'm not riding off into the sunset, but I am looking that way. That's because the sunsets are so beautiful right now. "Riding off into the sunset" describes what's happening to the beautiful 2016 crop of wine grapes, however.

Sunset at La Renaudière, 28 September 2016

I haven't been out to get any up-close photos of the grape harvesting, but that's partly because it's going at such a leisurely pace. With this steady warm, sunny weather, there's no rush. Il n'y a pas de panique. The two guys who work at the Domaine de la Renaudie come out and take in the grapes from one parcel of vines, and then later in the day they come back and harvest another parcel. The only grapes being "picked" right now are "white" grapes — the ones that are made into white wines.

Driving the big yellow grape harvester

Yesterday morning when I was walking with Callie the two Renaudie guys were out there with their machinery. I didn't have my camera with me — I don't always take it on the walks. Sometimes I don't want to be slowed down by framing shots and adjusting camera settings. I just want to walk. Callie is a little nervous around the harvesting machines, anyway, so she doesn't want to get close to them. I missed the photo op.

Waiting for the next load of grapes

We had a false alarm this week. The man who is going to build and set up our greenhouse called and said he'd like to come work on it this Saturday. Would we go to the building supply store and buy some sand and cement? So we did that yesterday — 140 kilos de sable et un sac de ciment. A few minutes after we got home, the guy showed up at our front gate and said he wouldn't be able to work on the greenhouse until the end of October. Would that be okay? We said yes. The good news is that he announced he was ready to start the big job of trimming all our hedges. He and two other guys worked yesterday afternoon and the job is already half done. Check that off for another year.

Pumpkins called courges musquées

Years ago, when Walt and I decided to leave San Francisco and move to the country, one of our criteria was to find a place where we could have a good vegetable garden. When we saw this house outside Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, we knew we had found it. This is our 13th year of gardening and, despite some rainy cool summers, the garden has always been successful.

Above is a green pumpkin that is growing out there right now. It's about 18 inches (45 cm) across. It's a courge musquée « Muscade » and should eventually turn pale orange. Our seed packet doesn't say so, but the Muscade is also called the Courge musquée de Provence. It's a variety of Cucurbita moschata.

The one above, growing just a few feet from the green one, has already changed color. It's also a Muscade, but it's ripe. The seed packet says the Muscade squashes weigh in at between 4 and 8 kilograms (10 to 20 lbs.) Muscade is the French word for nutmeg (noix muscade) so the flavor is like that. It's good in sweet cakes and pies and also in savory soups and purées.

Finally, here's a view of the garden at the end of September. There are still tomatoes ripening on the vine, and we don't even know how many squashes (including a number of Sucrines du Berry, similar to butternuts) are hiding under all those big leaves. We are also growing Swiss chard and two kinds of kale this year.