Pictures from Cheverny, Chaumont, and Pocé-sur-Cisse

Ornementation over a doorway at the château de Cheverny.

Lettering on a piece of gardening equipment at the château de Chaumont-
sur-Loire. No, I don't know why "ORENGE" is spelled that way.

A decorative lion guarding a doorway at the château de
Pocé-sur-Cisse, just north of Amboise.

Fruit

Fresh fruit on sale at the Saint-Aignan market. Apples are plentiful right now.

We also bought pears, kiwis, and grapes at the market last zeek. Fresh fruit is a standard dessert in France. It complements a simple meal. French food is not necessarily complicated and fancy, despite popular stereotypes.

Above picture taken with a Kodak DC4800 camera, in macro mode

This picture taken with a Canon Powershot S70 camera, also in macro mode

Shopping the Saint-Aignan market

Goat cheeses, shaped into pyramids or logs or rounds, are the specialty of the Cher river valley and the surrounding area. The towns of Selles-sur-Cher, Valençay, Pouligny, and Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine all have their own goat cheese appellations.

Above, a display at the farmers' market in Saint-Aignan. Below, cheeses in the window of a shop in the town of Selles-sur-Cher.


At the market in Saint-Aignan, there are two poultry vendors. They sell chickens, including hens and roosters, as well as turkey, guinea fowl, ducks, and geese. So far, avian flu hasn't reached our region and the poultry business hasn't been disrupted. Pintade is guinea fowl, and effilée means that the bird has been gutted.


Here's the guinea hen (assuming it was a hen) that we cooked after shopping the market a couple of weeks ago. Walt poached it in a broth with bay leaves, onions, and carrots, and then we took it out of the broth and put it in the oven to brown.

The side dishes are sautéed mushrooms, purchased from the mushroom lady at the market, who grows them and sells them, along with galettes de pommes de terre — puff pastries made by incorporating mashed potatoes into the pastry dough (made with flour and butter). To finish the meal, a good lettuce salad, some bread, and a bottle of Chinon wine. A feast.

Demonstrations ; local sights

There doesn't seem to have been an extraordinary amount of violence and vandalism in yesterdays big demonstrations in France. I think the next move is President Chirac's, as far as this new First Job Contract controversy goes.

According to the police, a million people in more than 200 towns and cities across France participated in the demonstrations. According to organizers, there were three million participants. There was some violence, but it appears not to have been bad enough to make the headlines.

* * *

We are going to continue to be very busy over the next 10 days or so, without much time for blogging.

The church towers in Saint-Aignan seen from the market square
in the middle of town.

Châteauvieux, near Saint-Aignan

How's this for a place nobody has ever heard of? It's called Châteauvieux. Population 575 (yes, not even close to a thousand). I's five or so miles southeast of Saint-Aignan. The château is used as a retirement home these days. The town has one grocery store that operates a small café for lunches, and it has a lot of troglodyte buildings and dwellings. It's on my circuit of local châteaux that I show visitors.