Buffeted

Colorful pictures, yes, taken last week out in the vineyard right behind our back gate and hedge. Good memories of October. November, so far, est une autre histoire. Even though yesterday was a decent sunny day...

I lay awake most of the night, however, listening to the wind blow and feeling it shake the house, and listening to the clatter of heavy raindrops on the tile roof and skylight windows. Because we are on the high ground above the river valley, our house takes the brunt of the westerly winds that bring in storms off the Atlantic Ocean, 300 kilometers, 175 miles, distant. It didn't help that I had drunk an inhabitual big cup of strong black coffee late yesterday afternoon.

The fact that the vineyard runs due west from our back gate — I took the photo above just inside that gate — for two or three miles means that there are no woods or buildings to block the west wind. And the fact that our house is three stories high, and we sleep on the top floor right under the roof tiles, exaggerates the effects of bad weather.

The weather forecast was so alarming that at about 9:00 p.m. I decided to go down in the rain and put the car in the garage, after having decided to leave it out overnight because I have to go to town this morning. Eighty kph (50 mph) winds were predicted. It's still too dark for me to know whether our trees lost any branches, but at least I know that none fell on the car.

We are still nervous about the roof over the kitchen, which really leaked a lot of water during the rains of late spring, but so far this fall the news is good. The man who repaired the problem seems to know what he's doing. We have asked him to put together an estimate for the cost of repairing the cracked and water-stained kitchen ceiling.

I'm not sure when the work will be done — probably next spring — but our homeowner's insurance is supposed to foot the bill, whenever. More heavy rains and high winds are predicted for tomorrow. We have to go out in the car in the middle of that storm, for a rendez-vous and some shopping in Montrichard.

Stuffed squash rings

We grew a lot of winter squash, and some summer squash, and then we also had volunteer squash from 2012. Plants came up in the garden at different spots and we just let them grow. They were mostly summer squash from our 2012 plantings of green zucchini (courgettes) and yellow squash.

The volunteers were from plants that had hybridized, I guess, because they were basically yellow but with green ends on them. They were shaped like zucchini. They grew very big, and we assumed they were too big to be edible. They seemed to have become gourds. Until we tried one...

Callie was pretty interested in what I was doing — getting the rings ready for the oven.

Yesterday I cooked the last big hybrid summer/winter (autumn?) squash according to an idea that I got from Ms. Lemon's cooking blog, here. Ms. Lemon lives in Southern California, I believe. I don't know her but I'm happy to have found her blog when she left a comment on my recent post about Jacques Pépin.

What you do is cut the long sausage-shaped squash — a summer or winter variety — into 2-inch (5 cm) thick slices. You then use a knife or spoon to remove the seeds and pulp at the core of each ring, hollowing it out so that you can put stuffing in the hole. Lay the rigs on one of the cut sides, and then fill them with stuffing.

I didn't know how much stuffing I would need but it worked out. I mounded the stuffing up and used it all to fill the six squash rings I had made. The ingredients were:

¾ cup dry couscous (180 ml)
1 cup or more hot water (240 ml or more)
2 small carrots, grated
1 small onion, finely chopped
6 or 8 mushrooms, finely chopped
½ cup of dried tomatoes, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped or pressed
1 tsp. fennel seeds
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1 pinch ground cloves
10 oz. ground pork, chicken, or turkey (300 g)
2 eggs
salt and pepper
olive oil
smoked or sweet paprika, for dusting

Put the couscous in a 2-cup measure or large bowl and pour on the hot water. The couscous will absorb all the water and become light and fluffy. It's the base of the stuffing.

Sauté the carrot, onion, garlic, mushrooms, dried tomato, and spices (your choice of spices, really). Let that mixture cool and then mix it with the re-hydrated couscous and the ground meat. Add the eggs and mush everything together well, seasoning the stuffing to taste with salt and pepper.

Fill each squash ring with the stuffing mixture, mounding it up on top, and sprinkle each mound of stuffing with some paprika. Drizzle each squash ring with olive oil. Put the stuffed squash rings in a medium oven for 30 minutes or more, testing the squash with a skewer to make sure it's tender. Then turn the oven up higher to let the stuffing mounds brown a little. Serve.

Nasturtium flowers

I think these flowers have an unfortunate name in English. It makes you think of the word "nasty" — which the flowers are not. In French, they're called capucines, which suits them better.

Our weather seems to be back on schedule. It started raining yesterday, November 1, which is La Toussaint in France. The rains always seem to start at the beginning of November. It's not cold though — 15ºC this morning, nearly 60ºF, but windy and wet.

These capucine plants grow in one of our vegetable garden plots. They seem to like our chalky soil, and they reseed themselves every year. They would really take over if we didn't pull them out regularly. I took these pictures on October 30; I can't remember if it had rained or if we just had a heavy dew.

The months go flying by. Les jours se suivent et se ressemblent, sauf le temps qu'il fait. Mais plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

A day late...

...and probably a dollar short. Or a euro. Yesterday morning I was working away in the kitchen, cooking lunch and making a small batch of quince jelly, when I noticed I had an audience. It was Bertie the black cat. This is my (late) Hallowe'en photo.

Bertie observing kitchen activity through the curtain on the kitchen window

I finally broke down and made a small batch of quince jelly. Well, it's not finished yet, but the juice is made and in the fridge, with the sugar dissolving in it and, I hope, jellifying. I gave away some quinces to friends, more or less in exchange for some walnuts and figs. And I'm saving a couple of pretty quinces for Jean and Nick, when they come at Christmas. I hope they'll last that long.

First you chop up the quinces (I used 2½) and cook the pieces, peels, cores, and all, to make juice, without any other ingredients. I posted photos of quinces still on the tree just a few days ago.

Then you let it cool and strain it all through a kitchen towel or cheesecloth. With a small batch like this (one liter of juice), I just put the towel in a colander and poured into it the contents of the pot. It dripped for an hour or two, and I decided to press and squeeze the towel to extract as much juice as possible.

I think that skimming the jelly after it's been boiled with clarify it completely. That's what's happened in the past. I used a bag of sugar that has a little bit of pectin in it to help the liquid jell. It says that you are supposed to boil the liquid just five minutes before you put it into sterilized jars and store it in the cellar.