L'église et l'école du village

I'm still having a lot of trouble with our flaky internet connection, but I'll try to post these today. One afternoon earlier this week, we were driving through a village called Benet (pop. 3,600), near Niort, and we stopped so that I could take some pictures around the church. A school bus (no, not a yellow one) was waiting next to the church, and I realized that the school in a nearby building was just letting out.

Here are the students walking to the bus. You can see what a beautiful day it was, with a deep blue sky. I walked all the way around the church taking photos, and I noticed a very big stained-glass window in one wall. So I went into the church to see what I looked like. Here it is:

I'm posting these photos at a very large size and I've divided each one in half so that each half can be viewed at full size when you click on it. I wish I could figure out how to do away with the black horizontal line that runs through the two halves of the photos (I tried to disguise it on the second image), but my HTML skills are not that good. Okay, here goes. I don't even know if this lame internet connection will let me upload the post.

P.S. You might have noticed that I misidentified the town where this church is located when I posted these photos yesterday. So many villages, so little time. I have corrected the post.

La Dorade royale

One morning this werk I stopped in at a poissonnerie — a fishmarket — and I saw these beautiful fish called « dorades royales » on display. Fish are poissons [pwah-sawn] in French. The young man who was selling and preparing fish for customers told me these fish were wild, not farme-raise7d, and very fresh. I decided to buy one. He cleaned and filleted it for me. Each fillet weighed about 250 grams (half a pound) and cost about 11 euros. That a little rich for my blood but we really wanted to eat some nice filets de poisson.

The dorade is called a "sea bream" in English, but it has no name in my dialect of English (the coastal North Carolina brogue). We don't have such fish in our waters back there, as far as I know. The out-going, well-versed fish guy assured me they were about the best fish he has in his shop these days. They come from the Atlantic Ocean waters off the western coast of France. This particular species, Sparus aurata, is called the "gilt-head bream," I gather. Related fishes caught in U.S. waters are the "porgy," the "scup," and the "sheepshead." I know we had sheepshead in N.C. waters.

I cooked the fish fillets skin-side down very carefully and very quickly in butter with just salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice. When they were almost done, I turned off the burner and turned the fillets over, covered the pan, and just let it sit for two or three minutes. The fish was not under-cooked. I had already peeled and boiled some potatoes and steamed some spinach. Dinner was served.

Riz rouge de Camargue

A few days ago I made fried rice using riz rouge de Camargue — red rice from the Camargue region of southern France. It's a whole-grain rice that doesn't get mushy when you cook it, but retains some crispness. It comes in red or in brown, but it's not like "regular" brown rice. It's got more texture — it cooks up al dente.

Flavoring ingredients in the fried rice were cabbage and carrots cut into strips, onions, garlic, and basil in a garlicky hot pepper sauce. Also soy sauce, fish sauce, ginger, and a few drops of Worcestershire sauce.

With the fried rice, we had some chicken wings with Japanese yakitori sauce. I dredged the wings in rice flour, baked them on parchment paper in the oven for 30+ minutes, and then dipped them in sauce that had been heated up.

I see that you can buy red Camargue rice on Amazon.com for $4.00/lb. Here's the link. That's a little expensive, but it has to be imported and it might be worth trying. Here's a post about Camargue rice from 2017.

The vineyard in October

The weather continues to be just beautiful. It's so odd. I mean, we've had nice stretches of warm, sunny days in late October before, but this one, unlike those, was not preceded by a gray, rainy period earlier in autumn.

We've had beautiful summers, lasting into late September, in past years. The summer of 2009 was like that. But summer 2018 is one for the record books. I took a walk with Natasha yesterday afternoon in golden sunlight and in my shirtsleeves. In the photo above, that's our house and, on the right, two neighbors' houses.

Tasha is loving the walks this summer fall. She's mostly very good at staying close to me as we walk — I don't bother putting a leash on her. There's always the danger that we'll encounter a deer (un chevreuil) or a hare (un lièvre) and she'll take off running after it, but she always comes back after a minute or two when I start calling her.

The vineyard is such a pleasant environment for walks with a dog. Dogs love running up and down the long straight rows between rows of vines. This time of year, they get very curious about grapes. Natasha just sniffs them, but our late border collie named Callie would always eat a few on walks at this time of year. Most of the grapes have been harvested now, but there are always a few left on the vines after the harvest.

The hamlet we live in, which is located just 3 kms (2 miles) from Saint-Aignan, is on a high bluff on the "left bank" of the Cher River. Between us and the river there are woods and some houses along the road down into the river valley. Because we're high up, the land is very dry in rainless periods like this one. Grapevines, with have very deep roots, thrive in these situations. The 2018 wines are predicted to be some of the best our region has produced in decades.