Pictures of, not from, the Tour Saint-Jacques

Here we are on Monday morning. Schools all over France open their doors to pupils today. And the weather is supposed to be "torrid" — that's the term the weather woman, Valérie Maurice, used a few minutes ago on Télé-Matin. Here in our region, le Centre-Val de Loire, temperatures in the north are supposed to be about 30C (86F) and in the south they'll hit 34C (about 93F). Saint-Aignan is smack in the centre of the région Centre. I doubt that many French schools, if any, are equipped with air-conditioning.

For a while now, I've been posting photos I took from the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques in the center of Paris 10 years ago. Here are a few pictures of the tower itself. It was built at the beginning of the 16th century as the "new" bell tower for a 12th-century church that was torn down after the French Revolution, two centuries ago.

As always, you can enlarge these photos on your computer or tablet screen to see more detail. The Tour Saint-Jacques is about 175 feet tall. That's 300 steps to climb, with no elevator.

On another subject, we made another nine jars of tomato paste over the weekend, using tomatoes from our 2023 vegetable garden. That makes 14 jars in all — a total of three U.S. quarts (five British pints — nearly three liters). We put it up in hermetically sealed jars that we'll keep in our downstairs cellier pantry and use over the course of the winter.

P.S. A grape harvester just went by, followed by a tractor pulling a trailer. The 2023 grape harvest has started in the Loire Valley.

Beef and broccoli...

...with mushrooms, onions, hot red peppers, and noodles.

This was lunch yesterday. Tender beef. French broccoli. Mushrooms (champignons de Paris). Hot red pepper. Red onions. Five spice powder. Sauces: hoisin, light soy, oyster, and chili black bean paste. At the table: sesame seeds and sesame oil. It was good. BTW, I bought a new wok; it's got a non-stick coating that is advertised as very durable. I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Looking south, north, and west...

...from the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques.

On the left above, the view looking south. I can see the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, Notre-Dame cathedral, and the Panthéon. On the right, looking north, about all you see is the Pompidou Center.

Above left is a close shot of the Saint-Merri church, also north of the Saint-Jacques tower. And above right is the view toward the west out to the La Défense business quarter just outside Paris proper.

Blettes avec pois-chiches, tomates, et ail

In French, blettes are the word for chard. American friends of ours who live just five miles upriver from us grew a good crop of chard this summer. The variety they grew has red stems and leaf ribs, not the standard white stems and ribs. You can see how beautiful they were.

Day before yesterday, they gave us a kilograms of fresh blette leaves (2¼ lbs.) from their 2023 garden. We decided to make a recipe using blettes, pois-chiches (garbanzo beans, chickpeas), tomato sauce or paste, olive oil, garlic, and bread crumbs. We've made similar dishes before — once using kale, and once using collard greens. The original recipe calls for spinach. It's a Spanish tapas dish, but we had it as our main course at lunchtime.

The first step is to wilt or "sweat" the greens over medium heat with olive oil and a spoonful or two of water or wine until they are tender. Then brown some garlic cloves in olive oil. Take them out of the pan and brown some bread in the same oil. You can use ready-made bread crumbs or croutons. If you use croutons, reduce them to crumbs in a food processor with the garlic cloves. Add spices like cumin, paprika, powdered coriander seeds, and black or white pepper.

Cook or open a couple of cans of garbanzo beans (chickpeas). Make or heat up some tomato sauce or paste with some hot chili peppers or hot red pepper flakes cooked in it, to taste. Add a tablepoon or two of sherry or red wine vinegar to perk it up.

Finally, combine the tomato sauce or paste, the bread crumb mixture, the garbanzos, and the greens in a frying pan or wok. Mix them together, gradually adding some wine or water to get the consistency you want. Serve hot or warm.