Three photos... such as they are

One of these photos is okay. It resembles the one Walt posted yesterday. I took all the photos. We were in the middle of major canine commotion, however, and most of the photos came out blurry. I wish I had set the camera on video to take a movie, but the thought didn't occur to me at the time.

Here Walt was making friends with our as-yet-unnamed puppy's mama-dog. She was nervous about us being so close to her two pups, which were sleeping in the metal cage you can see in the photo. I wish I could remember this dog's name. She was nervous and protective about these strange humans wanting to get close to her pups, but she was far from aggressive about it, as you can see.

I tried to take photos of the puppy's daddy-dog, or "sire" — I wish we could remember his name. As you see, the photos came out really blurry. Anyway, he is a "tricolor" Sheltie like our puppy — black, white, and orange. I think the mother dog's coloring is what is called "sable." All the dogs, including 5 or 6 adults and about as many puppies (4 or 5 months old) were friendly and very energetic. I'm sure they were very excited to have visitors and get all the attention we showered on them.

Click or tap this link to the photo Walt posted yesterday to see the resemblance between father and daughter.

And I couldn't back off to take photos because the dogs just ran around us in circles the whole time. Something I once read said that as a blogger you should never post a technically deficient photo, but I do it anyway. My photos are not so much examples of photographic mastery as they are depictions of what I saw with my eyes when I was taking them. It helps if you squint... You can click or tap on the images to enlarge them.

Can't decide

I do have photos I took at the Sheltie breeder's place yesterday, but I can't decide whether to post them. See Walt's post today to get an idea of what we saw. And yes, we did decide to get one of the puppies. More later...

We arrived early over in the Chinon area, so we stopped in Azay-le-Rideau and took a good walk around the town. There's a famous château there, but we didn't have time to go see it (we've seen it before) and, besides, serious restoration work is going on there right now. We'll go see it when the work is finished, I'm sure.

Saint-Aignan is on the eastern edge of the old province called La Touraine, and Azay-le-Rideau and Chinon are on the western edge. It's an hour or even a two-hour drive from here to there, depending on whether you take the scenic route or the autoroute. We don't often go on long drives nowadays.

Azay-le-Rideau is a pretty town, and yesterday there were no throngs of tourists to spoil the views. I can't even remember the last time I was over there. Check back here tomorrow for some photos and maybe another photo or two of the dogs we enjoyed seeing yesterday.

Spring springing

Today we will drive over to Chinon to see a woman about a dog. One of our neighbors said, when we told her yesterday, "You will quickly succumb when you see a sweet little puppy." She is probably right, even though this is a big decision.

Meanwhile, the early bloomers in our yard have burst forth with flower. Above, a pink ornamental cherry and a big plum tree seen from the front terrace.

Again above, the patch of primroses and cyclamens that come up spontaneously every spring in our side yard. They were first put there by the woman who sold us the house in 2003.

Below, violettes coming up wild near the front gate, seen from the kitchen window.

And finally, the plum and cherry trees again.

We're expecting good weather for our three-hour round-trip drive over to Chinon this afternoon. We won't be coming back with a puppy, unless the unforeseen happens, since the one we have tentatively picked out won't be weaned until about the end of April.

Silent Sunday

Poulet à la Tetrazzini

I don't know why, but the name Tetrazzini just came to me the other day. What is chicken tetrazzini, exactly, I thought. So I looked it up. My motivation was that we had about half of an oven-roasted capon in the refrigerator, and we had already eaten some it twice with stuffing and vegetables. We needed a new idea.

A capon is just a fattened chicken — a rooster, actually. I had roasted it very simply, seasoned with just some salt, pepper, smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, and bay leaves. It weighed 2,65 kilos, or nearly 6 lbs., so we would be eating it for a while.

I didn't find tetrazzini in any of my French cookbooks. Not even in the Larousse Gastronomique, which is pretty comprehensive. I did find recipes in French on the internet (on y trouve tout... et n'importe quoi) and of course a lot of recipes in English too.

On Wikipedia, I read that the idea or recipe for chicken tetrazzini has been attributed an Italian coloratura soprano named Luisa Tetrazzini, who was a star in the early 1900s. The dish appears to have originated back then in the kitchens of the Sheraton Palace hotel in San Francisco. Or maybe at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Nobody quite remembers.

Wherever it was first concocted, it was a way to use up the leftovers from a holiday roasted turkey or chicken. It's a cream sauce with onions, mushrooms, smoked pork bacon or lardons, and chunks of cooked chicken in it. It's flavored with a little sherry or white wine, and served over pasta. Or baked into a casserole, topped with melted cheese. Some green garden peas are an optional addition. Walt and I both enjoyed eating it. Here's a recipe translated and adapted from a French web page.

Poulet Tetrazzini

8 to 10 oz. pasta (bow ties, penne, macaroni, linguine...)

4 Tbsp. butter

lardons fumés, diced ham, or bacon (optional)

1 onion, chopped

½ lb. button mushrooms

3 fl. oz. flour (40 g)

500 ml. chicken broth

150 ml. cream

2 Tbsp. sherry or other dry white wine

1 lb. of boneless cooked chicken

1 Tbsp. fresh chopped or dried herbs

1 pinch nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

½ cup grated Parmesan or other cheese

½ cup bread crumbs

Cook the pasta in boiling water or chicken broth according to package directions, keeping it fairly al dente. (We had whole wheat bow-tie or farfalle pasta.) Drain and set aside. If you're cooking the pasta in chicken broth, save it to use as the base for the cream sauce.

Separately, sauté the chopped onion with the (optional) bacon, ham, or lardons. (I used diced, cooked sausage stuffing.) Slice the mushrooms and add them to the sauteed onion. Add the flour to the pot and let it cook for 2 or 3 minutes.

Slowly stir in the chicken broth to make a thickened gravy. Add the cream, the wine, and the cooked pasta to the gravy and stir well. Then add the chicken, any herbs you like, the nutmeg, and the salt and pepper to taste.

Pour the mixture into a baking dish. Mix the grated cheese and bread crumbs together to make a topping for the gratin. (Drizzle with olive oil or melted butter if you want.)

Cook in a 350ºF / 180ºC oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbling hot. Serve the tetrazzini at the table right out of the casserole dish. Sprinkle on more grated Parmesan cheese and fresh herbs as you want.

Here's another recipe published by Elise on her Simply Recipes site, which is always a good source.

Puppies

Thanks to all of you for your good thoughts and advice on the question of introducing a new puppy into the house with a senior dog (Callie is 10 now). I wrote about that prospect yesterday. Callie has always gotten along well with our friends' dogs. Here are a couple of photos of Callie as a puppy, taken when we first brought her home in 2007.

Callie is a border collie but she's not the hyperactive hellion that we were afraid she might be. She's also very submissive around other dogs, but she's always gotten a long with them. Labradors, standard poodles, Jack Russel terriers, big Bernese mountain dogs, Brittany spaniels... and so on. So we are optimistic that, even though she's not good with cats, she'll get along with a new puppy.

And I think we will too. I remember the travails of having a puppy chewing up just about everything in the house. We brought Callie home in early May 10 years ago, thinking we would be able to spend the four or five summer months basically outside with her, so as to minimize the damage. Wouldn't you know that turned out to be the rainiest summer we've had since we moved here, so we were mostly confined to quarters. The bottom rungs of our dining room chairs still bear the scars of Callie's tiny, sharp puppy teeth.

An appointment

We have set up an appointment for early next week. We'll be driving over to Chinon to have lunch and then meet with a breeder about a dog. We've been talking for many months about getting a puppy to keep Callie company. We're lucky we've found a dog breeder only two hours from Saint-Aignan who has the kind of dog we're looking for. Here's a link to the site and some photos.

We also want to make sure we don't end up without a dog in the household in the coming years. Getting out and taking a long walk every day, rain or shine, is too important, and there's nothing like having a dog to motivate you to get outside and get moving. The place where we live is ideal for keeping dogs and taking long off-leash walks without worrying about car traffic or bothering anybody.

We're studying the possibility of bringing a Shetland sheepdog into the picture. It will be a slightly smaller dog than Callie, but it should be just as intelligent, obedient, and energetic as a border collie. We've never before had two dogs at the same time.

Our first dog, Collette, was a collie-mix pup that we found at the Humane Society in California in 1992 and rescued. She moved to France with us in 2003, and lived with us for nearly 14 years in all. Then we brought Callie home in 2007, about 10 years ago. Those years have just flown by.

Tarte au chou-fleur

We've cooked and eaten cauliflower twice recently. The supermarkets have had pretty heads of the vegetable in abundance and at very low prices. In France, a lot of cauliflower is grown in Brittany, Normandy, and up near the Belgian border. The weather in those areas has obviously been good for the crop. Nice round, unblemished heads of chou-fleur are selling for one euro right now.

What I made yesterday is a tarte or quiche, as you like. Walt had some pie crust dough (pâte brisée) in the freezer that he thawed and rolled out to line a baking dish. He "blind-baked" the crust, which means he pre-cooked it with pie weights in it as I prepared the filling.

First I cut up and cooked the cauliflower in a steamer pot. I sauteed some chopped onion and smoked pork lardons in a frying pan. Then I let all that cool completely before putting it into the pie shell with some grated Emmental cheese and arranging the cooked cauliflower pieces on top.

The recipe is below.

Tarte au chou-fleur

1 cauliflower, cut into florets

4 oz. smoked bacon or lardons (125 g)

1 large or 2 small onions

1 standard pie crust

3 eggs

6 fl. oz. (¾ cup) cream, whole milk, or crème fraîche

4 oz. grated cheese (Swiss or Cheddar)

a pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper

Line a baking dish with the pie crust and cook it for 15 to 20 minutes in the oven at 350ºF (180ºC). Chop the onion and bacon and sauté it in a frying pan until done. Let the crust and the onion mixture cool down to room temperature. Grate the cheese and set it aside.

Cut the cauliflower into florets and cook them in a steamer pot until they're tender. Let them cool down to room temperature.

Break three eggs into a bowl and beat them lightly. Add the milk or cream (or some of both) to the eggs and stir everything together. Season with nutmeg, salt, and black pepper.

Spread the onion and bacon onto the bottom of the cooked pie crust. Sprinkle on about half of the grated cheese. Cut the cauliflower florets as necessary to make them fairly uniform in size and arrange them in the pie crust on top of the other ingredients. Sprinkle on the rest of the grated cheese.

Pour in the egg and cream mixture. Bake the tart in the oven at 350ºF (180ºC) for 30 to 40 minutes or until golden brown. Let it cool slightly before cutting and serving it.

Woods

I'm not out of the woods yet. I feel better, but not completely. My back has been aching and grabbing for at least two weeks. If I move the wrong way, or when I sneeze or cough (allergies...), it's agony. The only things I can think of that might have caused the back pain are the two long plane rides I took in February, and all the driving I did while I was in North Carolina. The pain started while I was over there.

We have been having rainy, gray days for a while now. Yesterday, we had strong winds again, and I noticed a huge branch had broken out of a tree in a neighbor's yard and was lying on the ground right by the road. The photos here of the woods around the edges of the vineyard are some that I took on Sunday, February 25 — 48 hours after my return to France.

Tarte amandine aux poires

Yesterday my birthday "cake" was one of my favorite desserts. Walt made it for me (or us). It's called a tarte amandine and this one is made with pears. Amandine derives from the word amande (almond), and the body of the tarte is a sweet, eggy almond custard.

Tarte amandine aux poires

1 pie shell (pâte brisée)

6 or 7 or 4 poached pear halves

100 g softened butter (7 Tbsp.)

100 g sugar (7 Tbsp.)

2 eggs, lightly beaten

100 g powdered almonds (8 fl. oz.)

25 g flour (3 Tbsp.)

10 cl pear (or other) brandy

Pre-heat the oven to 350ºF / 180ºC.

Cream together the softened butter and the sugar to make a light and fluffy mixture.

Add the beaten eggs and then the almond powder and flour. Mix well and add the (optional) brandy (or a few drops of vanilla extract).

Line a baking dish with the pie crust (home-made or store-bought). Prick the bottom to keep the crust from puffing up as it cooks and pour in the almond custard mixture.

Place the poached pear halves (fresh or from a can) on top of the almond mixture, pressing them in gently. Bake the pie

Bake the tart for about 30 minutes, until golden brown.

Un soixante-huitard de plus

That's not really the meaning of soixante-huitard, but it applies in this case. I am a soixante-huitard, broadly speaking, carrying within me the spirit of France's May 1968 events. And I am also 68 years old. Today.

I'll be going out for a walk in the vineyard with Callie the collie in a few minutes. And then between 9 and noon I'll be cooking my birthday dinner: a spit-roasted capon with sausage/mushroom stuffing, some baked sweet potatoes, and some Tuscan (dinosaur) kale from our 2016 vegetable garden. Bon anniversaire, et bon appétit !

Morning in the vineyard with the dog

Clear waters and small oysters

When I was on the Carolina coast in February, I was happy to see that the waters of Bogue Sound, on the Morehead City shore, were so crystal clear. This is a shore I've walked along for 65 years, and I remember times when the water didn't look so good.

Maybe one of the reasons for the water's sparkle is the oysters that live in it. They filter out a lot of stuff that would otherwise make it cloudy. I'm starting to understand why they call the area the Crystal Coast.

The small, wild oysters of the North Carolina sounds and estuaries grow in clumps along the shore. They're called "cluster" oysters, or even "racoon oysters" — supposedly, only a racoon would have the patience, and be hungry enough, to pry them open them and eat them. However, I know from experience that they are very tasty.

One year, nearly 25 years ago, my mother came to California to spend Christmas with me and Walt. When she arrived at the airport, among her pieces of luggage was a pale blue plastic tub that was taped tightly shut. When we got it home, I opened it and found about a bushel of those North Carolina cluster oysters inside. It was a Christmastime treat.

Opening the oysters was not a problem — I just set them on a pan in a hot oven and covered them with a wet kitchen towel. In a few minutes they were steamed through and they just popped open. We and the friends we had invited for Christmas dinner mightily enjoyed slurping them down with melted butter and cocktail sauce.

“Let's have couscous”

That's what Walt said when I came back from North Carolina. We started gathering together all the necessary ingredients, which required a couple of trips to the supermarket.

Vegetables, especially: turnips, both purple and yellow; rutabagas; onions; garlic; carrots; celery; green beans; bell peppers; zucchini; tomatoes (and tomato paste); chickpeas.

Meats: a turkey leg; three slices of leg of lamb; merguez sausages made with beef and lamb; chicken broth. And (why not?) some chicken meatballs from Ikea.

Spices and herbs: ras el hanout, the North African spice blend; thyme; ground fennel seeds; oregano.

Making the couscous stew/soup is really easy. Brown some chopped onions and garlic in a big soup pot along with chicken (or in this case, turkey). Add the spices and let them cook for a few minutes. Add two or three fresh tomatoes (or a small can of tomatoes and their juice) plus about half a cup of tomato paste. Let everything cook together for 10 to 15 minutes.

Peel and cut up the root vegetables and the celery. Add them to the pot and then pour on enough chicken broth and water to just cover all the ingredients. Continue simmering for 30 to 40 minutes. When the turnips and carrots are tender, add green beans, zucchini, and bell peppers (either fresh or frozen) to the pot. Voilà.

Season the broth generously with salt and pepper. As it finishes cooking, brown the lamb and then the merguez sausages, separately, in a frying pan. Transfer the meats to the oven to keep them warm. Spoon some of the couscous broth over a cup of so of cooked chickpeas (a can is fine) and heat them up in a saucepan or in the microwave.

Prepare couscous "grain" according to package directions. On your plate, top a mound of "grain" with vegetables and broth. Serve the meats, including some of the simmered turkey or chicken, alongside, and add some chickpeas as a garnish. Mix some hot harissa spice paste into a cupful of broth and dribble some of it over your plate at the table. Prepare to enjoy eating couscous for two or three days.

Gulls not laughing

I'm continuing my Carolina coast series of photos until my jet lag is gone — that should be on Friday, one week after my return to France. Besides, it's been rainy, so there haven't been a lot of photo ops here in Saint-Aignan over the past week.

The shore birds we see most often in North Carolina are called laughing gulls. The ones above are sleeping on a dock, soaking up some winter sunshine.

In summer, the laughing gull has a black head, but in winter the black fades or disappears completely. The one above appears to be a juvenile, judging from the dull color of its feathers. The adult gull's tail is black with white spots, and the wings and back are gray. The one below has a red eye socket and a yellow beak.

Laughing gulls are not tame, but they aren't afraid of people. They are beggars and thieves, so be careful if you are carrying food. Don't leave food unattended on a table if there are gulls around. They will steal it. The gull above is facing not into the wind, but tail toward it.

Laughing gulls range from Venezuela to Canada over the Caribbean islands, the U.S. Atlantic coast, and even southern California. Their shrill cry sounds like some kind of hysterical laugh — thus their name. The one above is a nice specimen, with a deep red beak.

I read on Wikipedia that "vagrant" laughing gulls are sometimes seen over the U.K. In France, the American bird is called a mouette (gull) atricille (black-headed). The gull called the mouette rieuse (laughing) in Europe is a different species entirely.

Training it

I've been back in France for four days now. That means I'm still jet-lagged but not severely. I got a decent night's sleep and I woke up at 5:40 this morning, which is my normal wake-up time. So physically and mentally, I'm re-adapting.

Waiting for the train at Tours-SPdC and watching the boards to see which track it's coming in on

To get to the U.S., I normally take the train directly to Paris or the airport, and I spend the night in a hotel room. Since the flights to the States usually leave before noon, I don't want to risk missing my plane because of a late train on the morning of departure. And it costs less to take the train than to drive to Paris.

This isn't a TGV but it looks like one. I was waiting on the platform for my TGV to pull in.

Two weeks ago, I took the high-speed train from the St-Pierre-des-Corps TGV station just outside the city of Tours directly to Paris CDG airport. (TGV stands for Train à Grande Vitesse, and the main Paris airport is named after the former French president Charles de Gaulle). The train ride takes about 2 hours.

This train is headed for Lyon, if I remember correctly. That's a 6-hour ride on a slow train like this one.

Then last Friday morning, for my return, I caught the TGV again. I had arrived in the airport terminal where the train station is located, so that made it easy. It's a short walk from baggage claim to the CDG TGV station. It was pretty crowded, with a lot of people carrying big suitcases waiting on the platform for the train to come into the station. It was 10 minutes late.

Riding around the south side of the Paris area on the return trip to Tours

I had a reserved seat — reservations are required on TGVs — so I wasn't worried about finding a place to sit for the ride, but I was worried about my big, heavy suitcase. My reserved seat was on the upper deck of the train, and I didn't want to have to haul my suitcase up a flight of stairs. Luckily, I found a slot for it in the downstairs baggage rack. The ride was easy and pleasant.