Still here, almost awake

I got my fourth dose of the Covid 19 vaccine yesterday morning, not quite 24 hours ago. The pharmacist jabbed the needle into my left shoulder, which is both hurting and itching this morning. I did not get a good night's sleep because of the pain I felt every time I moved.

In addition, in the middle of the night, Tasha heard something and went wild barking. Walt said he thought he had heard a bell ring, but I didn't hear it. We have a bell at our front gate, and we can see it from an upstairs window, but there was nobody down there that we could see.

I never did get back to sleep. I hope that 24 hours from now I'll feel a lot better. Meanwhile, I think I'll start researching stuffing/dressing recipes in preparation for Monday's capon feast that we'll be cooking for our Christmas dinner.

Birthday dinner no. 41

Walt and I started making and eating French steak au poivre as his birthday dinner in 1982. That makes this one number 41. This year, we bought a thick steak called a faux-filet from the local butcher. Instead of Cognac, we made a sauce with Calvados (apple brandy) from Normandy, along with crème fraîche, veal stock, and Dijon mustard. And a good amount of crushed black peppercorns, of course.

Surprisingly, the sauce, despite all that pepper, is pretty mild. It's also very tasty. The raw steak gets coated with crushed pepper and "marinates" for an hour or two before being seared in a hot frying pan. The meat absorbs the peppery flavor, and the brandy and cream tone it all down. Here's a link to a 2020 post about French steak au poivre, including a recipe. BTW, we didn't eat all of this. We have leftovers for today or tomorrow.

Christmas cacti (Schlumbergera)

I have three little pots of these plants in the greenhouse, but they haven't bloomed this year. I think I haven't given them enough shade, and maybe I've been watering them too much recently. All of them, I think, are plants that I grew from cuttings taken from a bigger Schlumbergera that was growing in a pot in our garage when we moved into the house 20 years ago. I'm going to re-pot them together in a bigger pot or planter box this weekend and see if they do better.

I was just reading an article about Christmas cacti in Southern Living magazine on the internet. It explains how to get the plants to flower. It may be too late for this year, but maybe I'll get a good bloom next year.  Here's a post about the Schlumbergera plants that I wrote in 2012.

Wines and vines outside Saint-Aignan

Yesterday morning on my walk with Tasha out in the Rendaudière vineyard, I ran into one of the people who tend the vines out there. He said his day would consist of a morning of pruning vines and then an afternoon of helping bottle wines. The expectation was that the winery, called le Domaine de la Renaudie, would have filled 20,000 bottles by the end of the day.

Above are some of the 75 acres of vines that belong to the Denis family, who own and operate of the Domaine de la Renaudie wine business. Our house and hamlet are visible in the distance. The Denis family grows Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Gamay, Cabernet Franc, Côt (aka Malbec), Pineau d'Aunis, and a few other grape varietals. The woman running the business these days is great-granddaughter of the man who founded the business many decades ago. She recently took over from her parents. According to the winery's web site, their potentiel de production is about 190,000 bottles a year, and about half of that is Sauvignon Blanc white wine that is part of the Touraine Chenonceaux appellation. The famous Château de Chenonceau is a 30-minute drive west of Saint-Aignan.