New Year's Eve and Day food plans

Happy New Year's Eve to all. For our New Year's Eve celebration, we've decided to make a big pan of paella, the Spanish rice, chicken, and seafood dish. Instead of chicken, we'll have salmon with ours, along with mussels, cockles, shrimp, and a Portuguese chorizo sausage. The vegetables are onions, tomatoes, green and red bell peppers, artichoke hearts, and chickpeas. This is my own recipe.

Below are some photos showing mostly paellas I've made in past years, plus two photos of huge pans of paella that are often on display in French outdoor markets. The market paella is sold by the portion in plastic containers as carry-out food. The first photo at the top is one I took at a market in Paris, and the last on at the bottom is one I took at the Sunday market in Amboise. (I've put a recipe in the comments — in French and then in English.)

       

       

Tomorrow, on New Year's Day, I'll be cooking a pot of black-eyed peas — traditional January 1 fare in the U.S. South. We're going to be having the black-eyed peas with poached saucisses de Toulouse (plain pork sausage) and with cuisses de canard confites — duck leg-and-thigh pieces that have been slow-cooked in duck fat. All you have to do is put the duck pieces on a rack in the oven and heat them up until they are golden brown. I'll probably take pictures of both today's paella and tomorrow's sort of "mock cassoulet" made with black-eyes. Stay tuned.

We won't be having guests for either meal. The current Covid Omicron surge means we are still self-isolating as much as possible. In urban areas, people are required to wear masks indoors and outdoors. Shopping is a necessity, but gatherings of people indoors are strongly discouraged by the authorities here in France. We haven't yet had our Covid booster vaccinations, but mine is scheduled for next Thursday morning. We'll be getting the Moderna vaccine for our third dose. Walt expects a call from the pharmacy any day now to get his appointment set up. I'm already hearing about some people here getting a fourth dose of the vaccine...

Tours landmarks and buildings

         The hôtel de ville (city hall) in Tours was built in Renaissance Revival style in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The Café/Brasserie de l'Univers is an attractive restaurant but it seems to get mixed reviews from customers.
It's a good place to have a coffee or a glass of wine and watch the people passing by.


        
The Maison Gouïn, now a museum, dates back to the 15th century, with modifications in the 16th.
The Église Saint-Julien, at the south end of the bridge over the Loire, dates back to the 11th century and was originally
a monastery. It features stained-glass windows created by Max Ingrand and nowadays houses a museum
dedicated to the history of the wines of the Loire Valley.


         Here are some more of Tours' maisons à colombages (à pans de bois). The ones on the left are on the Place Plumereau
in le Vieux Tours, and the ones on the right are on the nearby Place du Grand Marché (map).

Maisons à pans de bois à Tours

Like Rouen, Tours suffered terrible destruction from bombings during the Second World War,
especially the neighborhoods on the banks of the Loire river. But just a few hundred meters from the river,
many old half-timbered houses remain. There are a good number of them around the picturesque Place Plumereau,
known in Tours as the Place Plum' (sounds like plume) and dating back to the 15th century.

     

The area around the Place Plum' is a car-free pedestrian zone that's full of restaurants and shops.
Here's what the house on the left above looks like today. My photo is from 2006.

     

On warm sunny days tourists and students (Tours is a university town) gather in the area, creating a festive atmosphere.

     

Pourquoi aller à Tours ?

Restaurants. Shopping. Cafés. Spectacles. As I've already said, people in France call Tours un petit Paris. During our first few years in Saint-Aignan, we went to Tours a time or two every year because we wanted to go to concerts by artists like Julien Clerc, Laurent Voulzy, Isabelle Boulay, or Alain Souchon. Or to shop for things that were not easy to find out here in the country (Asian and other imported foods; clothes; hardware; housewares...). We enjoyed the urban experiences we had beed used to when we lived in Washington DC or San Francisco, without the long drive (4 hours or so) in heavy traffic in and around Paris. Since the beginning of the Covid crisis, well... we've been pretty much housebound. Maybe that's why Tours looks so attractive to me right now.