Camembert art

Sometimes I can go months without eating any camembert. And then I see a label that attracts me and I buy one. It's not like camembert is expensive here — I got this one from the cheese vendor at the Saint-Aignan market a couple of Saturdays ago for less than 2 euros.


And then I taste it and remember why it is the classic French cheese. Okay, I know, you could give that title to roquefort, brie, époisses, sainte-maure de touraine, cantal, comté, or our local chèvres. But I'll give it to camembert today and tell you how good it is. Even pasteurized, like this one from the Mayenne region northwest of here on the way to the Mont Saint-Michel.

Grape vine stumps

Bruno and his father, Jacques, of the Domaine de la Renaudie, have found us a big load of firewood for the next three or maybe four winters, as I said. But Bruno also stopped by last Saturday — on his tractor— after a day working out in the vineyard, mulching all the trimmings from the winter's pruning.

The vines, all pruned and prepared, are coming back to life.

We happened to be out on our front terrace having a glass of wine when he drove by. It was that busy, busy day when Walt gave the back garden its first good mowing of the season (always the toughest because of high grass in spots) and I hauled the rototiller around for a couple of hours to get the vegetable garden plots ready for planting this month. We were "slam wore out," as we say in North Carolina.

Look at this amazing flower that I spotted in a neighbor's
garden. Is it some kind of narcissus?

Bruno stopped his tractor on the road right outside our gate and turned off the engine when he saw us. Sorry about making so much noise until 8:00 p.m., he said. I know I haven't given you much peace and quiet today. After apologizing, which was not necessary, he went on to say that there were a lot of grape vine stumps out in the vineyard, piled up at the ends of the rows, and that we were welcome to them if we wanted to go get them.

I used the wheelbarrow to haul back some stumps
that were close to our back gate.

A certain number of the old grape vines die off every year, and the vineyard crew pulls up the stumps and hauls them to the ends of the rows for pick-up. The stumps burn great, and they are especially good for fires in the barbecue. They will also burn nicely in the wood stove.

The scene Thursday, May 1, out in the vineyard. The flowers
on the bush in the foreground have an amazing fragrance.

So one evening this past week, I went scouting out there around the vines to see how much wood might actually be out there for the taking. It turned out to be quite a lot. I toted some of it around (with Callie's help, of course) to make two or three piles. And then I went and got to car to pick up the stumps and bring them back to our woodpile.

Callie resting up after a few busy minutes of wood-collecting

I filled up the trunk of the car three times. And even though Bruno had told me to go take the wood, I felt like a thief. Luckily, nobody was out there at 7:00 p.m. to challenge me.

So here's my new pile of grape vine stumps.

Today we plan to build a fire in the barbecue for the first time this year. We have a whole chicken breast that we put in to marinate in hot-pepper vinegar, rosé wine, shallots, oregano, paprika, and black pepper last night. I'm going to the market to see if I can find some asparagus. And then I have some Belgian endive and a red beet to make a good salad. (Here I am at 7:30 a.m. hungry and ready for lunch already.)

These flowers have come up in our back garden.

The kitchen work proceeds, but there is a lot of outdoor work to do this weekend — mowing and weeding — while the weather is nice. It's supposed to turn rainy again Monday.

Kitchen: dismantled

Empty kitchen cabinets with most doors off now

This is the time we have been looking forward to and dreading at the same time. Over the past couple of days, we have taken a lot of the kitchen apart in preparation for repainting the room. Repainting is a euphemism. First, we have to wash the walls, patch some cracks in the plaster, scrape off the old paint, and then sand walls and ceiling. Only then will we be able to paint.

Our temporary kitchen

We've set up some essential kitchen items in the salle de séjour, which is the dining area + the sitting room. Essential appliances include the coffee maker and the microwave. We'll be eating dinners out of the freezer and zapping our food all next week. I've been saving leftovers for a while now: some lasagne, cassoulet, choucroute garnie, chili con carne, and so on.

Those red maple trees off the front deck

The weather is supposed to be really nice for the next couple of days, so we'll probably spend time working out in the yard and garden. The kitchen will have to wait. And maybe we'll be able to do some barbecuing for the first time this year.

View on a gray day from my favorite chair in the living room

Company is coming May 14, so we will do our level best to finish at least the major scraping, patching, sanding, and painting work before then. We can do touch up and detail work in June, when things settle down again. Over the past five years, we have refurbished two bedrooms, two bathrooms, our big living room, and the downstairs entryhall of this house. We have become experts at it. But we dreaded doing the kitchen because cooking is such an important thing in our daily life.

A year ago we had a major leak in the kitchen ceiling
during a heavy rainstorm. Nice color, eh?

The dreary institutional greyish beige paint will be gone soon, replaced by bright yellow on the walls and white on the ceiling. That's a nice prospect.

May Day

Today, May 1, is a big holiday in France. It's la fête du travail — labor day. Most businesses are closed, there's no mail, and there are manifestations — parades, if you will, or demonstrations — organized by the labor unions in Paris and other cities.

I picked these flowers in the neighbors' yard
(mum's the word but I know they are not 'mums).
What are they?

This May is the 40th anniversary of the turbulent événements de mai '68 en France. I'm sure we will be hearing about May 68 all month. For people of my generation, born after World War II (aka the baby boomers) and participants or close observers of all the joyful and terrible things that happened in France, the United States, and other countries in the late 1960s, that period was a turning point in the history of Western societies.

Old houses in Mennetou-sur-Cher

Meanwhile, here I am in Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher. The big event here yesterday was that we "scored" some firewood, thanks to our neighbors at the Domaine de la Renaudie winery. Right after lunch, the 80-year-old Monsieur Denis — Jacques, not Bruno — stopped and rang the bell at our front gate. I went out to talk to him.

House in Mennetou-sur-Cher

He brought the good news and a piece of paper on which he or someone had written out by hand all the details of the firewood "opportunity" he had turned up for us. We will get 14 stères (cubic meters) of logs cut into one-meter lengths. That's just short of four cords. We (meaning Walt) will have to cut each log into three pieces that will fit the width of our wood stove. That's a lot of work, but it doesn't have to be done all at once.

A carved door in Mennetou. Sometimes this is
the only sun you see there, I'm sure.

We'll pay 550 euros for that — 38 euros per cubic meter or about 140 euros a cord. I think that's a pretty good price, especially considering that the wood will be delivered to our front courtyard AND stacked for us by the delivery guys. We could do the stacking ourselves, except that stacking seems to be a requirement imposed by the deliverer. Tant mieux — who's going to argue with that. After all the trouble we had finding the last batch of wood we bought (at about the same price), we can't be choosy. In the local free paper full of ads, I saw wood for sale for 40 euros a cubic meter, with no mention of delivery.

The problem with the 550-euro price, of course, is the value of the dollar. Or lack thereof. What we will pay in dollars for the wood will be closer to $875, or $225 a cord. Unless some miracle happens and the dollar regains a lot of its former value before the wood is delivered sometime this summer, we'll just have to grit our teeth and shell out the moolah.

A composite shot of two street signs in old Mennetou-sur-Cher

We should be able to keep the wood stove burning for three or maybe four seasons with that much wood, depending on how cold it gets outside. We use the wood stove to supplement our oil-fired boiler and radiators, and it greatly reduces our heating bill. The price of fuel oil has, as you would expect, doubled over the past three or four years. The current average price in France for a liter of heating oil is €0.87, which comes to just over $5.00 per gallon. It's easy to use two or even three gallons a day in cold weather. That could come to 300 or 400 euros a month...

Okay, that's more than you ever wanted to know about the cost of heating the house here. What it comes down to is that wood is cheaper than oil. And it's a renewable resource. And it's fun to sit close to the wood stove on winter evenings. Now let's enjoy the coming summery weather, which Météo France is promising us for the weekend.

If you want some andouillettes/chitterlings,
this place in Mennetou specializes in them.

Speaking of the weekend, in Mennetou this one will be given over to the Foire aux Andouillettes (the Chitterling Sausage Fair — chitterlings are hog intestines, if you don't know). It's the 36th annual such fair, and here's a link for more information. Along with all the andouillettes you can eat (can you say "acquired taste"?) and other local food specialties, for the price of admission you also get live folk music by local groups, exhibits of local livestock, and a carnival for the enjoyment of your children.