Vouvray once more

Yesterday we did something we don't do often, and we went to a place we hadn't been to in several years. It was Vouvray, where our 17-year-old Loire Valley adventure started in October of the year 2000. That was when we first spent time in the region and stayed for a week in a gîte rural in Vouvray that we really liked.

This is the first Loire Valley winery we ever visited, back in 2000.

In 2001, we spent two weeks with friends in the same gîte (a two-bedroom house with a big open kitchen and living room, as well as a huge grassy front yard). We continued exploring the Loire Valley. In 2002, we decided to see if we could find a house to buy in France, with eventual retirement in mind. We had been living and working in California for more than 15 years. We started our French house search in the Loire Valley, and it wasn't a long search. In fact, four days after we arrived in the area as house-hunters in December 2002, we had bought a house. Now we've lived here since June 2003.

The winery and caves are built into a steep hillside.

One of the places that we stumbled upon in October 2000 was Jean-Claude Aubert's winery, located in an area of Vouvray that's called La Vallée Coquette. Coquette means "pretty" or "charming" and the valley has an element of that, but it's mainly agricultural- and rural-looking. That's one of the things I like about it — it's not prettified or pretentious. It has authenticity. Here's an old post of mine showing the winery from the inside and giving more information about the wines.

Fall colors at the Aubert winery in Vouvray's Vallée Coquette

The point of going to a winery in Vouvray is, of course, to buy some wine. If you don't know Vouvray wines, you might be surprised when you taste them. They tend toward the sweet, and they are some of the most prized white wines in France. They can age beautifully over many years. The only grape allowed in Vouvray and its wines is Chenin Blanc, which is also known locally as Pineau de la Loire.

Grape-growing and wine-making are agricultural endeavors, and it shows.

What we bought yesterday was six bottles of dry sparkling Vouvray, and two bottles each of three still (not sparkling) Vouvray wine — dry, semi-sweet (demi-sec), and "mellow" (moelleux, meaning "sweet" or "dessert" wine). The price for these 12 bottles of fine Vouvray white wine came to less than 80 euros — considerably less than $100 U.S. Yesterday, the two customers ahead of us, a couple from Brittany, completely filled up the trunk of their car with cases of wine and headed home with it all.

Houses and other buildings like these are called "troglodyte" — cave dwellings.

We'll enjoy the sparkling wines over the winter. Vouvray sparkling wines are made by the same process as Champagne but with a different grape varietal. And they sell for about half the price of the most inexpensive Champagnes, which are not inherently better, just different. The sweeter still Vouvrays will be good with, for example, foie gras and figues confites (duck liver and candied figs) at Christmastime, and with holiday desserts including cheese like Roquefort and our local goat cheeses.

Here's Walt maneuvering our Citroën car to get it out of the winery's tight courtyard.

Over the years, I've done a number of posts about Vouvray, and we used to go over there (an hour's drive) more often than we do nowadays.  It was fun to see the place again, and to take a few photos around the Aubert winery.

Neighborhood houses

The neighborhood we live in is located about half way between the center of the town of Saint-Aignan (pop. 3,000) and the center of a neighboring village (pop. 1,200). In other words, it's two miles (three kilometers) to town, and it's two miles to the village center (much smaller) from our house.

There has been a lot of building around here over the past 15 years. A dozen or more new houses have gone up just 500 meters (a third of a mile) down the hill from our place. The one pictured above is currently being built — out of hollow brick blocks that are like red cinder blocks. It sits right on the edge of the road, on which there is very little car traffic.

As you can see in the photo above, it looks like another large piece of land, next to about 10 houses that have been built over the past 10 years, is now up for sale. Whoever is selling the land needs to find a better sign maker. You kind of have to stand on your head to read the phone number right now.

Separating our hamlet, which is made up of nine older houses, from the new developments and houses down below are a big vineyard plot and a good-sized section of woods. The hamlet on the other side of the woods has its own place name, as does ours. The house above dominates the lower hamlet. It's shutters are always closed. The older couple who live there seem to occupy the lower level and leave the upper level all shut up.

The house above is unusual here because it is built out of wood, not brick or stone. It has an in-ground swimming pool. When it was first built 10 or 12 years ago, the wood was simply varnished but the house has recently been sold and repainted in an off-white a pale gray color.

Finally, this last house is in our little hamlet, just two doors down from us. It was an old run-down farmhouse when our neighbor bought it in about 1970. He and his wife spent years fixing it up. They've told us that a family of nine was living in one room there, with a cow and some chickens in the attached stables, when they bought the place. Unfortunately, the neighbor's wife passed away a couple of years ago. I assume his daughter will inherit the house when the time comes.

Désactivée — the debit card story

I mentioned a few days ago that my Crédit Agricole debit card suddenly stopped working. It was mysterious, and it still is. Here's the follow-up. After the card stopped working and I discovered that I couldn't use it to pay for an order I wanted to place on Amazon.fr, Walt looked at the Crédit Agricole on-line banking site and saw that my card was no longer listed on our account. Pfft, just gone.

I phoned the bank's help line called SOScarte and I was told that the card was listed as inactive (same word in French and in English). I was advised to go to my local CA branch to get more information. It took me a few days to get to the bank, and when I did go it was pretty confusing. Meanwhile, we kept checking our account to see if there was any suspicious activity there. There has been none, except what I'm describing here.

At the bank, the clerk that I talked to looked at her computer screen and told me that the account the card was attached to had been closed. It told her that was surprising, and I couldn't imagine how that would have happened. She kept looking at her computer to see on what date the account had been closed. I told her I was expecting to receive my regular pension payment from the U.S. electronically that very day. Then she said sorry, I was wrong — the account is still open.

Okay, that was good news. Walt had just recently transferred a few thousand dollars from a U.S. account to the Crédit Agricole to cover our property taxes and other autumn expenses. I told the clerk what the approximate balance should be. She said she could see that balance and added that my pension payment had arrived as well.

She asked me if I had recently reported the debit card lost or stolen, or if I had contested any recent charges on it. No, I hadn't, I told her. When had I last used the card? About a week earlier, I said. In Paris, where I used it to buy a train ticket (I was returning from the U.S.) and at the local Intermarché supermarket. Both those charges showed up on the on-line banking site. I hadn't used the French debit card during my U.S. trip, because I have debit and credit cards on an American account for use there.

Somehow, the clerk said, my card had been reported as missing or stolen, and it had automatically been désactivée by the bank. She carefully checked the card number and confirmed everything. She even turned the computer screen toward me so that I could read it. I didn't have time to see all the details, though.

The only thing she could do, she said, was to put in an order for a new card in my name, and that getting it would take a week. She said she could keep my PIN (le code secret) the same if I wanted, and I said I did. She said I'd receive the code secret by mail (even though it's not changing, there was no other option), but that I'd have to go over to the Crédit Agricole in Montrichard to pick up the new card in about a week's time.

Montrichard? I was again surprised. I told her I had asked that the account be transferred to the Saint-Aignan CA branch more than a year ago, and it had been transferred, as far as I knew. She looked at her screen again and apologized. Yes, she said, you can come to the Saint-Aignan office to get the new card. It should be in by Friday.

I have to say that the clerk didn't really seem to be on top of her job. Since Walt also has a debit card on the account, we've been making do with that one, but it certainly is inconvenient. We have just one checkbook for the account, and I'm not sure if we would be allowed to have two checkbooks. Anyway, it's been so many years since I've written checks on any regular basis that I'd have a hard time writing one now.

It occurs to me that somehow our other code secret, the one we use to get access to our CA account on-line, was it too deactivated a few days before my debit card was deactivated, so there must be a connection between the two events. That time, Walt had had to go the bank to get a new on-line access code. It had to be sent to him as a text message on one of our mobile phones — that was the only option. Banks work in mysterious and unsettling ways.

Meat, meat, and more meat... plus cabbage, potatoes, and carrots

That's what some of my photos look like. The traditional Alsatian sauerkraut serving is a big mound of sauerkraut and half a dozen different meats, which can be varied by the cook. Here's what mine looked like in the serving dish. Farther down, there's a photo of the choucroute as it came out of the oven. I put in the meats, all pre-cooked, on top of the chou to heat through at the very end of the cooking time.

There was enough cabbage and meat here for 2 or 3 meals for 2 people. The choucroute itself cooked for about four hours in the oven at low temperature. I should have cooked it in the slow-cooker, and next time that's what I'll do. After all, I bought three kilos of choucroute crue and I only cooked one kilo yesterday. The cooking liquid was mostly water with just about a cup and a half of white wine. One of the meats I like to include, along with smoked sausages and smoked pork belly, is smoked chicken, which is easy to find here in France.

There are theories about the carrots. A lot of recipes for cooking choucroute call for them, and a lot don't. One that does is Monique Maine's, and her 1969 cookbook Cuisine pour toute l'année is one of my favorites. Some cooks call for putting the carrots into the dish with the cabbage but removing them at the end of the cooking time and not serving them with the cabbage and meat. One thing I've read is that the carrots counteract the sharpness of the sauerkraut, which is after all produced by a fermentation process that creates lactic acid. I wouldn't leave them out any more than I would leave out the onions.

Some recipes and opinions I've read says not to cook the sauerkraut in white wine, because the wine has an acidic character that only accentuates the acidity that is what makes choucroute tasty and not bland. Other cooks say the choucroute should be served only with meats that are specifically Alsatian, which means don't serve it with the "foreign" sausages called Montbéliard and Morteau that come from the neighboring Franche-Comté region. And certainly don't replace the saucisses de Strasbourg with saucisses de Francfort! I'm not that kind of purist.

Here's a recipe for preparing choucroute from a book called La Cuisine alsacienne that was given to me as a gift a few years ago by my friend Martine from Belgium. It doesn't mention carrots. This is my translation.

Sauerkraut

3 to 3½ lbs. sauerkraut

2 onions

1 clove garlic

5 or 6 Tbsp. goose fat

2 bay leaves

2 whole cloves

2 cups Sylvaner wine

2 ham hocks

2 pieces of smoked pork shoulder

¾ lb. slab of smoked bacon

6 large potatoes

6 Strasboug sausages (wieners)

Salt and pepper

Rinse the sauerkraut in cold water. Drain it and rinse it a second time. Squeeze the cabbage to remove all the rinse water.

In a big pot, cook the onion, sliced, and the garlic in hot goose fat. Add the rinsed sauerkraut to the pot. Salt and pepper it. Add the bay leaves and whole cloves. Pour in the Sylvaner wine and about a cup of water. Let it cook for an hour on medium heat, stirring occasionally to mix all the ingredients and flavors together.

Add the ham hocks, the smoked pork shoulder, and the slab of bacon to the pot. Let everything cook together for 90 minutes on medium heat, adding water as necessary to keep the sauerkraut moistened.

Peel the potatoes and put them on top of the cabbage to cook for 20 minutes. Separately, poach the wieners for 5 minutes.

Spoon the sauerkraut into a big serving dish. Serve the meats, sausages, and steamed potatoes over it or alongside.

The total cooking time for this recipe is 3¼ hours. Don't let a lack of goose fat in your kitchen deter you — use a little lard or bacon fat plus some vegetable oil as a substitute. Sylvaner is a semi-sweet Alsace wine, but you can use any dry or semi-dry white wine. By the way, the French recipe calls for making, cooking, and serving with the choucroute something called quenelles de foie (liver dumplings), for which there's a recipe in the book. I've never made or eaten those so I left them out. As I've said, I like to have smoked chicken with sauerkraut, and I know that some people eat it with boiled beef or other meats. CHM once had sauerkraut with duck confit in one restaurant, but I don't think he would recommend it.

La choucroute du mois de novembre

I don't really have anything new to say about choucroute garnie. That's salt-cured or fermenté  (with no vinegar added) cabbage (sauerkraut) cooked with onions, carrots, and aromatic herbs and berries in white wine. Salt-curing or brining thinly sliced cabbage for 4 to 6 weeks makes the sauerkraut much more nutritious than fresh cabbage, and easier on the digestive system. Choucroute is full of vitamin C, for example. And it's delicious. Here's a link to past posts.

And here's one new thing about choucroute garnie that I can share. It's a recipe from the French food encyclopedia called Le Larousse Gastronomique. I have a 50-year-old edition of the book (1967) that I bought 30 years ago, but now I also have an electronic (PDF) version (2007) that I downloaded a year or two ago. Here's the recipe from the 2007 book, publication of which was overseen by the noted chef and restaurateur Joël Robuchon.

Choucroute  à  l'alsacienne

Bien laver 2 kg de choucroute crue à l'eau froide, puis la presser et la démêler avec les mains.

Préchauffer le four à 190°C. Éplucher 2 ou 3 carottes et 2 gros oignons, couper les premières en petits cubes, piquer les seconds de 1 clou de girofle chacun. Mettre dans une petite mousseline 2 gousses d'ail épluchées, 1 cuillerée à café de poivre en grains, 1 cuillerée à dessert de baies de genièvre et nouer.

Enduire de graisse d'oie ou de saindoux le fond et le bord d'une cocotte. Y étaler la moitié de la choucroute. Ajouter les carottes, les oignons, la mousseline et 1 bouquet garni, puis le reste de la choucroute, 1 jambonneau cru, 1 verre de vin blanc sec d'Alsace et suffisamment d'eau pour mouiller à hauteur. Saler légèrement, couvrir, porter à ébullition sur le feu, puis cuire 1 heure au four.

Loger alors dans la choucroute 1 palette de porc fumée (moyenne) et de 500 à 750 g de poitrine fumée ; couvrir, porter de nouveau à ébullition sur le feu, puis remettre au four. Après 1 h 30 de cuisson, retirer la poitrine et ajouter 1,250 kg de pommes de terre. Cuire encore 30 min.

Faire pocher 6 à 8 saucisses de Strasbourg à l'eau à peine frémissante.

Lorsque la choucroute est cuite, retirer la mousseline, le bouquet garni et les clous de girofle, et rajouter la poitrine pour la réchauffer pendant 10 min. Dresser la choucroute dans un grand plat et la garnir avec les pommes de terre, les saucisses et les viandes coupées en tranches régulières.

I've reformatted the recipe to make it easier to read. Here's a translation:

Alsatian-style Sauerkraut

Rinse 2¼ lbs. of brined (salt-cured) raw sauerkraut in cold water. Squeeze out excess water and untangle the sauerkraut with your hands.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF (190°C). Peel 2 or 3 carrots and 2 large onions. Cut the carrots into small cubes. Prick each onion with 1 whole clove. Wrap 2 peeled garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns, 1 tablespoon of juniper berries in cheesecloth and tie it into a bundle with kitchen twine (or use a spice ball).

Grease the bottom and sides of a pot with goose fat or lard. Spread in half of the sauerkraut. Add the carrots, onions, the cheesecloth bundle, and an herb bouquet. Then put in the the rest of the sauerkraut, 1 raw ham hock, 1 glass of dry Alsatian white wine and enough water to barely cover the sauerkraut. Salt lightly, cover, bring to the boil on the stove, and then cook for 1 hour in the oven.

Add and push down into the sauerkraut 1 a medium-size piece of smoked pork shoulder and 1 to 1½ lbs. of smoked belly (slab bacon). Cover the pot, bring it to the boil again on the stove, and then put it back in the oven. After 90 minutes, remove the bacon and add 2½ lbs. of small potatoes. Cook for another 30 minutes.

Separately, poach 6 to 8 Strasbourg sausages (frankfurters) in barely simmering water.

When the sauerkraut is cooked, remove the cheesecloth bundle, the herb bouquet, and the two whole cloves. Put the slab of bacon back into the pot for 10 minutes to reheat it. Arrange the sauerkraut in a large dish and garnish with the steamed potatoes, the sausages, and the meats cut into uniform slices.

My choucroute is rinsed and ready to cook, but it's only 6:30 a.m. so it's not in the oven yet. I've included some photos of my mise en place (the ingredients). I'm using a spice ball for the peppercorns and juniper berries as well as a few allspice berries and the whole cloves, and I'm putting in two bay leaves instead of a more elaborate herb bouquet. More tomorrow...

The vineyard on November 1

Bright golden and reddish leaves under a milky sky. That's our scenery these days. It's autumn, but you can feel winter in the air. Here's the Toussaint sunset.

The 2017 Touraine grape harvest began in late August, making it the earliest since 2003, the year of the great heat wave and our first summer here. This year's grape crop was down by as much as 40% in many parts of the Touraine wine area. The upside is that the quality of the grapes harvested was apparently very good.

Cold weather in April and May, including morning frost and freezing temperatures in many parts of the region, led to a reduced harvest. However, the summer was warm and dry, with alternating periods of very high temperatures and then some cooler days. Mainly, it was dry.

We got only about two-thirds as much rain as we might expect in August, September, and October. In wet years, we'd get two or three times as much. The dry weather continues, but the grapes were taken in long ago. Some varieties fared better than others.

As you can see, some parcels have lost all their leaves now, but others haven't. Soon, the vineyard will take on its wintertime "graveyard" look. Pruning will begin, to prepare the vines for next year's new growth.

Meanwhile, we are enjoying walks through the vineyard in dry weather — no wet feet or muddy boots — and the views from our windows are colorful. But the fact is, we need  some rain now.

The back yard on November 1

Yesterday afternoon I did something I hadn't done in a while. I took my camera on my walk with Natasha. The dog is much less wild and less likely to run away in the afternoon than in the morning. I'm not sure I know exactly why.

We started in the back yard, of course. Then we went out to the edge of the vineyard. There was a pretty sunset — photos to come. The grapevine leaves are colorful now too.

Above shows you what the vegetable garden plot looks like in November. We haven't yet raked up the big pile of maple leaves we have out on the front driveway. We'll spread those leaves over the garden plot this month, to keep the weeds down over the winter.

The big news in France this morning is that we haven't had any vraies grosses pluies — big rainstorms or long rainy spells — since last February or March. October was very dry. You can see how dry-looking our back yard is. Most years at this time it's much greener.

As you see, we haven't yet taken the garden hoses in for the winter. In other words, with leaves to rake up and hoses to bring in, not to mention potted plants that have spent the warm season outdoors, we have our work cut out for us.

« Férié »

Un jour férié is a day that is celebrated as a holiday. Today, November 1, is the Toussaint holiday in France — All Saints' Day. La Toussaint has been celebrated on this date by the Roman Catholic church, and therefore in France, for more than a thousand years. Tomorrow, by the way, is La Fête des Morts, or The Day of the Dead. That one is not a public holiday in France.

The view from an upstairs window...

Usually in this part of France, the winter rains start about now. This year, the weather is still dry. No rain is predicted before Saturday, and that should be just some mist and drizzle. The first heavier rain won't come for about 10 days, they're saying. On November 1, people take flowers to the cemetery and set them out on the graves of loved ones who have left this life behind. At least they won't have do do that in a cold rain today.

...and from the kitchen window

This morning I'm off to Intermarché, across the river in Noyers, to buy three kilos of raw sauerkraut and some smoke-cured meats and sausages to serve with it. 'Tis the season. I like to buy choucroute (salt-cured, shredded cabbage) that is not pre-cooked and then soak, simmer, and season it myself. I'm glad Intermarché is open today. In Saint-Aignan, SuperU is closed for the holiday.

Automne devient hiver

So somehow my Crédit Agricole debit card, a MasterCard product, has been de-activated. I don't know why. Last Friday, I tried to place an order with Amazon.fr and the transaction was declined when I went to pay with the debit card. I called the bank's SOScarte help line and was told I need to go to my agency and have them explain what happened and why. Maybe I'll do that this morning.

A snowball bush, or viburnum

Meanwhile, it's my morning to go walking with the dog. Now that we are on "winter time" here in Europe, we can go out earlier. It's still too dark to take many photos, however, until eight-thirty or nine o'clock, especially when the sky is overcast. And it has turned cold now. Our low this morning is 5ºC — 41ºF — making it the coldest morning since last winter.

Sunset over the Renaudière vineyard at the end of October

The November rains haven't started yet, but they are predicted for the coming week. So far, the fall colors are pretty. All the leaves will soon be on the ground, of course. If you look closely, you can see that the vines in the parcel closest to our back gate have already lost all their leaves, while most of the vineyard parcels are sporting bright yellow foliage.

Lundi 9 octobre au soir

I was up at 4:00 this morning, because I heard the dog whimpering and her claws clicking on the floor. We went outdoors and walked around the back yard. I was admiring the clear, crisp night sky full of stars — the Big Dipper, especially, was brilliant. For some reason, when I went back to bed a few minutes later, I starting thinking about the last walk I took in Paris.

Au Petit Lutetia on the rue de Sèvres, not far from where CHM lives

It was Monday, Oct. 9. I had reserved a room at a hotel out at CDG airport. I had a free evening and I thought it would be nice to spend it with my friend CHM — I hadn't seen him a single time in 2017, for a variety of reasons, even though he spent the summer in Paris. Coincidentally, we were both flying out of Paris CDG airport the next day, headed for the U.S. East Coast.

Leaving on a jet plane

I took my suitcase to the hotel, left it in my room, and at 5:00 I got on an RER train that would take me into central Paris. The fare was 24 euros for the round trip, but including the dinner CHM and I had in a little Japanese restaurant in his neighborhood the whole evening cost us less than 50 euros. At 9 p.m. we said our au revoir and I headed back toward the Saint-Michel-Notre-Dame RER station for the return trip out to the airport.

Stylish shop windows

I decided to walk. From CHM's neighborhood to Notre-Dame cathedral is not a really long distance, on streets that run more or less diagonally from southwest to northeast across a big section of the Left Bank. The weather was warm and clear. The shop windows and café terrasses, all lit up for the evening, were picturesque in a couleur locale kind of way. A lot of people were out enjoying the warm weather.

The Hôtel Lutetia (boulevard Raspail) is undergoing major renovations, hidden behind this tarp

The route took me up the rue de Sèvres, where Walt and I had stayed, in two different apartments, on vacations some 20 years ago. Those are good memories. Then it took me up the rue du Four, where Walt lived for a few months, in a boarding house, back in 1981. More good memories. This was a neighborhood I worked in as a teacher back in the 1970s and 1980s.

Le Restaurant Allard, a Paris institution founded by a woman from Burgundy in 1932

Finally, I crossed the boulevard Saint-Germain and, a few meters farther along, turned into the narrow, bustling rue Grégoire-de-Tours, full of restaurants that were full of young people. On the rue Saint-André-des-Arts — I was in the home stretch by then — I walked past the Restaurant Allard, where Walt and I had a memorable meal one evening 11 years ago, when we were on our way to the U.S. together for a long road trip. I had walked about 2 miles and enjoyed every minute. By 10 o'clock, I was on an RER train that whisked me back out to the airport at Roissy.

Sunday surprise: rain + beef burgundy and a tamale pie

Rain hadn't been predicted, so I was surprised when I went outdoors with Tasha at 4:30 this morning. The rain was really more drizzle than downpour, so we were able to wander around the yard for a few minutes. Her "official" morning walk, a longer outing, will happen in about 90 minutes, after the sun comes up.

Beef, shallots, garlic, carrots, thyme, and mushrooms cooked in red wine

We changed our clocks overnight, so now in addition to jet lag I have to deal with another time adjustment. Actually, the jet lag is nearly over, and we stayed up "late" last night, not turning in until 10 p.m. Well, actually, that was just 9 p.m. on today's winter-time clock, if you see what I mean — falling back and all. To cope, I made Bœuf bourguignon (above) on Friday, and we are having it for a second time at lunch today. It's comfort food for this dark and damp season. (Here's an unconventional take on Bourguignon, with boulettes de viande — Meatballs Burgundy.)

 

Since butter is scarce in France according to press reports, I bought a 250 gram block of lard (saindoux, pur porc) yesterday and for lunch we made a tamale pie with masa harina, lard, chicken broth, corn, and some chicken chili con carne from the freezer. Over the past few days, I've done shopping in our two main supermarkets, Intermarché and SuperU, but both times I forgot to look around in the dairy department to see how much butter there actually was or wasn't on the shelves. We have five 250 gram blocks of butter in the freezer anyway. That will last us for a while.

Chard not charred

This past summer, a volunteer chard plant came up out in our vegetable garden. Walt noticed it first and started watering it. It grew huge leaves with thick white ribs.

Then, while I was in North Carolina, Walt moved a four-year-old burn pile — branches, limbs, twigs — over to the garden plot. And yesterday he burned it. Earlier, I had gone out and dug up the Swiss chard plant, which was close to the burn pile, so that it wouldn't be charred by the heat of the fire.

The weather was foggy, verging on misty. Officially, people here are encouraged not to burn yard trimmings and clippings. Everybody does it, however. I see plumes of smoke all around the area at this time of year. Compared to the pollution produced by hundred and thousands of fireplace fires over the winter, a feu de jardin like this once every few years can't possibly have much or any effect on our air quality.

Here's the not-charred chard after Walt cooked it yesterday afternoon. It will be good as a side dish or in a quiche or omelette.

Time and place

I had less severe jet lag yesterday than on Wednesday. I slept later yesterday and even later this morning. I'm coming back to life. For me, jet lag is worse coming east toward France than it is going west toward North America. It has something to do with going against the direction of the sun instead of going in the same direction as the sun. Or maybe it has to do with spending a sleepless night on an airplane coming toward France, and not just spending an extra-long day on the plane as when going toward North America.

Here's where I came from: the salt marshes of coastal Carolina. My mother lives on the edge of this one, which covers the "headwaters" of Calico Creek. It's a tidal marsh. It might look like land, but it's not really land. It's salty mud, with seashells embedded in it but no rocks. And it's covered in tough grasses.

Here's where I wound up. It's the Renaudière vineyard outside Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, in the Centre-Val de Loire region of France. This is real land. It's very dry land right now. But it will start raining soon and this will be muddy land — clay with lots of rocks embedded in it. In prehistoric times, this whole area was sea bottom, and people sometimes find fossils of mollusks among the local rocks.

Barbecue taste-off

On my 3½-hour drive from the coast up to RDU airport on Monday, I made just one stop. I got off the new high-speed highway at Goldsboro, N.C., and I headed for Wilber's Barbecue restaurant. It's one of the best in North Carolina, in my opinion. I've been going there since the late 1960s, because back then my father would drive me from Morehead City up to Duke University in Durham, where I was a student. He loved Wilber's pit-cooked, eastern N.C. barbecued pork, and so do I. The whole cuts of pork are basted with sauce as they barbecue, and then the meat is shredded ("pulled") and sauced some more while warm.

Wilber's barbecued pulled pork from eastern North Carolina

I bought a pound (450 grams) of the spicy, pulled pork and asked the man selling it to put it directly into a zip-top bag that I had put in my suitcase for the purpose. I flattened the barbecue out and put the bag in my suitcase for the trip back to Saint-Aignan. Coincidentally, Walt had taken some of my home-made pulled pork out of the freezer over the weekend, and there was some left over. So today we are going to taste Wilber's barbecue side by side with the pork I make in the slow cooker using eastern N.C. sauce, and we'll see how different they are.

My Saint-Aignan slow-cooked pulled barbecue made with French pork shoulder

It may well be that I am too jet-lagged to be objective about the barbecued, pulled pork. Wilber's barbecue is cooked for 8 to 10 hours in a smoke house over oak and/or hickory coals. My barbecue has been frozen, while theirs has not. Anyway, Walt also made a batch of his good cole slaw to go with it, and we have French fries to cook. It'll be a good meal, whether or not the difference between the two versions of barbecue is clear or not.

Side by side — Wilber's on the left, mine on the right

I also brought back a bottle of eastern N.C. barbecue sauce made by the Scott's Sauce Company, also located in Goldsboro. Scott's used to operate a restaurant, but it went out of business a few years back. Now it's a company that makes and sells Scott's sauce in N.C. supermarkets. The ingredients listed on the label are vinegar, water, salt, peppers, and spices. Don't think the pork tastes vinegary, though. It's spicy hot.

I wonder how many people in France have a bottle of Scott's BBQ sauce in their pantry or fridge...

Think of N.C. pulled pork as a kind of French pork rillettes but with less fat and more spice, served hot. Or as Mexican carnitas without the cumin.

Electrical problems and solutions

In most ways, my trip back to France — my 89th Atlantic crossing since 1969 — was one of the easiest that I can remember. My drive up to Raleigh-Durham airport, which now has a daily non-stop Delta flight to Paris, was uneventful and the scenery was pretty. The check-in process at the airport took some time, because nowadays the airline's automated kiosks reject me, since at the point of departing I don't have a round-trip ticket. I have to go see an agent, which means standing in a long line as special cases like mine get authorization to board the plane. A human ticket agent has to examine my French carte de résident, and then I'm good to go. Normally, Americans are not allowed to fly to France without a round-trip ticket, and the maximum stay is 90 days unless you possess a long-term visa or a residency card.

I still had time to have a chicken Caesar salad in an airport restaurant before it was time to board the plane, which was scheduled for take-off at 5:30 p.m. and was on time. One of the best things about it all for me was that the plane was only half full. As soon as everybody was on board, I spied an empty row of seats and quickly moved myself and my carry-on bag there, leaving the two people who were sitting with me in the row I was assigned to some extra space, and giving me the luxury of being able to lie down for part of the overnight flight if I decided to. And the empty row I occupied was in what Delta called a Comfort + area of the plane, which meant I had much more legroom than in a regular economy seat. I was sittin' pretty.

The plane landed at 7:30 a.m., 15 minutes early, at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport after a smooth eight-hour flight over New England, Newfoundland, the North Atlantic, and Brittany and Normandy. Once off the plane, I walked for what seemed like a mile to get to passport control, where the immigration agent scanned my residency card but didn't even look at my passport, and on to baggage claim. Surprise of surprises, there I saw my suitcase already riding around on the conveyor belt along with half a dozen others, so I didn't have to wait 30 minutes or more for it to come out as I normally do. I sailed through customs, where nobody paid any attention to me, at about 8:15 a.m.

Since the old 10:15 a.m. high-speed TGV train from the airport directly to Tours has now been taken off the SNCF schedule, I had decided to take an RER commuter train from CDG through the middle of Paris and on to a station about 15 miles south of the city, where Walt would come and pick me up. That seemed like a better plan than hauling my heavy bags to a train station in central Paris and waiting hours there for a train to Blois. The only other solution was to stay at the airport and take the afternoon TGV to Tours, which was scheduled to depart at 2:15 p.m. I didn't relish the prospect of spending six hours hanging around in the airport waiting for that train.

There were RER (Réseau Express Régional) commuter trains scheduled to leave every 15 minutes starting at 8:45 a.m. for the 90 minute journey down to the Gare du Guichet in the suburb of Orsay. The RER trains leave from the same station as the TGV trains in CDG terminal 2. I went there and tried to buy a ticket from a machine for the train to the Gare du Guichet in Orsay, but the Gare du Guichet didn't appear on the list of stations served by the RER. It must be too small. I had to go to a ticket office with human agents and buy my ticket there (it cost 14 euros). I rode an escalator down to the departure platform at about 8:50 a.m., thinking I'd get on the 9 o'clock train and arrive in Orsay at about 10:30.

I was surprised to see an RER train sitting in the station with people on it. The list of stations where it was scheduled to stop included the Gare du Guichet. Oh, it must be the 8:45 train running a little late, I thought, so I got on, found a seat, and waited. After a few minutes, a woman's voice on the station's public address system announced that trains were immobilized in RER stations all around the region right then because of an electrical problem, and nobody knew how long it would take to get it fixed. All we could do was wait. More and more people were getting on the train.

Finally, at about 9:20, the woman's voice came back on the PA system and announced that the electrical problem wouldn't be resolved before 11 a.m. She "invited" passengers to get off the train and find some other form of public transit for the trip into Paris. Hundreds of passengers disembarked and got on the escalators to go back up into the station lobby. I sat there wondering how I was ever going to be able to call Walt on the phone and tell him where I was. He had left home by then and I didn't have a cell phone with me. How would I ever be able to get to the Gare du Guichet before he gave up hope of finding me? What would Walt do when he couldn't find me? Drive back home and wait?

And then just as nearly all the passengers got off the train and disappeared up the escalators, a man's voice came on the PA system and announced that the electrical issue had been resolved. Suddenly the overhead lights in the train car came on for the first time and the train's motor started running. Attention au départ!, the voice on the PA system advised us. And off we went, leaving behind the hundreds of passengers who had just disembarked in search of other transit options.

The train ride through Paris was slow but comfortable. A lot of trains were backed up, I think, and the system must have had to have a lot of kinks worked out of it after the stoppage. There were very few passengers waiting on platforms along the way into Paris and even in the city, either because they had left to find other means of transportation for their morning commute, or because all of France is on school vacation right now. By about 11:10, I arrived at the little Gare du Guichet, where I had hoped to be by 10:30. Walt and Tasha were supposed to be waiting for me there, after a two-hour drive from Saint-Aignan.

However, there was no sign of Walt, Tasha, or our Citroën car. I walked through the little station and looked around the surrounding streets, but didn't see our car. I went back into the station and asked the woman on duty if there was a pay phone anywhere. There wasn't. (Earlier I had been unable to find a single pay phone in CDG airport. I had however been able to send an e-mail to Walt to tell him when I expected to arrive at the Le Guichet station.) I asked the station agent if she had seen a man with a small Shetland dog earlier in the morning, and she said she had not. I asked her if a man with an American accent like mine had come in and asked her about the late trains. She said no. So there I was, wondering if Walt had had an accident or a breakdown on the drive up to Orsay from Saint-Aignan, or whether he had given up on finding me and driven back home.

The station agent let me use her phone to try to call Walt, but I just got the answering service. I left a message and waited some more. It was raining outside, so I had to stay in the little train station lobby, where there was no place to sit down. Just when I was about to give up and go to a nearby café for something to eat or drink and a place to go to the bathroom (no toilets in the train station), I spied the Citroën driving by out front. I ran out and waved at Walt, ran back into the station to get my suitcase and carry-on bag, and ran back to the car. It was after 11:30.

Walt of course thought I had been waiting there for an hour or more, when I had in fact been there for less than half an hour because of the late trains. He probably thought I'd be exhausted and pretty grouchy. He hadn't heard about the electrical problems on the commuter train network. He had taken a wrong turn off the autoroute when road work and a big truck in his way had blocked his view of the signs along the road, and had had to drive a long way before he found a traffic circle where he could turn around and get back on the right road. And there he was. What a relief! I had been wondering how I would ever get home. And two hours later, we arrived and enjoyed a nice lunch of lasagna that he had taken out of the freezer, with a glass or two of wine. I went out for a walk in the vineyard with Natasha at about 4:30, and was in bed asleep by 9. Isn't France fun?

Rentré, j'espère

By the time you read this, I should be back in France. I hope I had a good flight! And a good train ride and car ride. Je vous raconterai tout ça demain matin.

These are two old photos of our house outside Saint-Aignan, in the Loire Valley region of central France. I'll of course be glad to be home again, after spending two weeks in my other home, coastal North Carolina.