Three things

Our Vélux windows are here! They arrived yesterday. Last week, when Coco ordered them, he said it would take three weeks for delivery. It took one week. So good. There is a possibility that the windows will be installed on Monday.

That's the case even though we don't yet have official permission to put them in. Our neighbor-mayor said that getting such permission is a foregone conclusion, so we'll go ahead and have them put in.

Top-hinged Vélux windows for the attic room

Speaking of permits and permissions, all the paperwork we did turned out to be fairly simple except the measure of the house and all the floors, including the terrace, garage, and utility room. Now we finally know how big the house is.

Here's a photo from yesterday — the attic work is progressing.

And we know the size of the new attic room. It's about 65 sq. m./700 sq. ft. — though because of the slope of the roof, the part that is considered taxable living space is just about 550 sq. ft. Our annual taxe d'habitation will go up, but not by much. This is a tax paid by both owners and renters in France.

* * *

Carrots. The carottes des sables were very good in the veal stew. What I made was not a classic blanquette de veau, which is veal with onions and mushrooms in a cream sauce made with white wine. I added other vegetables: carrots, of course, but also rutabaga and turnips.

A veal stew with early spring vegetables, in a white sauce

I think this is a very good way to do a white veal stew. You could also use turkey or chicken. I was surprised to find good veal for stew in a Food Lion supermarket in North Carolina. And it was inexpensive — if I remember, it was only about $2.50/lb. I made a blanquette de veau while I was there, and it seemed to be a hit. Here's the recipe I use for blanquette.

* * *

The cat's name seems to be sticking. I think we are going to continue calling him Bertie. I need to ask Jan, who left the cat with us, if Bertie is a nickname, and if so, what it stands for. Not that it matters, but I'm curious. Another English friend here in Saint-Aignan says Bertie is often a nickname for Albert.

This is Bertie's "ramp" and open window.

Bertie himself seems to have settled in. We have a lot of our furniture and furnishing stored in the garage for the duration of the construction work, including a couple of mattresses and comforters. Bertie has found a comfortable place to sleep on a folded-up comforter, on top of a mattress.

Callie out by the garden shed — notice the blown-down
plum trees, and a cherry tree that is in full bloom as well.

The cat's window is open during the day, so he can roam the neighborhood as he pleases. He still spends a lot of time in the garage. He was there a few minutes ago when I went downstairs. Everything is fine when he's outside unless Callie sees him and chases him up a tree. This weekend, we are going to try to get the cat and dog together on peaceful terms.

Carottes des sables

I've often wondered if it was just a marketing gimmick. I see them in the markets and supermarkets: carottes des sables. Carrots grown in sand. They are packed in paper-lined wooden crates and the carrots still have a good amount of sand clinging to them. The other carrots in the stores and markets, whether they are displayed loose in bins or sold in sealed plastic bags, have been washed so they are completely clean.

Those are the ones I usually buy, and I buy a lot of them because Walt and I really like carrots prepared all sorts of ways: grated and dressed with vinaigrette to make a salade de carottes râpées; cooked with a little water, some butter, and some sugar to make carottes glacées — glazed carrots; or with cream, as carottes à la crème. And carrots always go in stews, including bœuf bourguignon, coq au vin, and blanquette de veau.

Carottes des sables from Normandy

The carottes des sables are normally the most expensive kind (along with carottes bio — organically grown ones). Yesterday I was in the supermarket and looking specifically for carrots. I always like to have some in the refrigerator. Besides, I was planning to make a stew. The store I found myself in was Ed, the "hard discount" market chain. And there I found two bins of carrots. There were washed carrots, and "sandy" carrots.

Which would you buy? Clean ones or dirty ones? When I looked at the prices, I saw that they were the same — 99 cents a kilogram. That's a standard price for carrots, though in winter they can be cheaper. Since I had never bought carottes des sables before, I got some of those. They are supposed to be better, even though they are a pain to wash. Who wants all that sand going down the kitchen drain?

I washed a couple of them to show the difference.

It turns out that carottes des sables are more than dirty carrots. They are grown on the Normandy coast between the Mont Saint-Michel and the towns of Carteret and Cherbourg. They have a Label Rouge designation, meaning that they must come from that area and be grown according to precise methods. I think some are even A.O.C.

The soil along the coast near the towns and villages of Pirou, Créances, and Saint-Germain-sur-Ay is, obviously, sandy. It is also slightly salty, because it's close to the sea. The farmers use seaweed as a fertilizer, and the sea breeze brings salt spray to the fields. Carrots love sandy soil, and this environment supposedly gives them a distinct taste and texture. CHM and I visited this area 12 years ago, but we didn't pay attention to carrots. There are many châteaux and churches to visit there.

The château de Pirou, near Créances.
Thanks to CHM for the 1998 photo.

Wikipedia says (my translation of the French version): “The production methods practiced around Créances to grow carottes des sables make them to ordinary carrots what the lambs that graze on the salt-sprayed meadows near Mont Saint-Michel are to ordinary meat. These carrots are grown in sandy soil composed of river silt and benefit from a mild maritime climate, sea breezes, and salt spray. The are fertilized with local seaweed. All these factors give the carrots the taste of the sea, a deep orange color, and a tender heart” — in other words, the core is less fibrous than in other carrots.

Do they really taste better than other carrots? I'll find that out at noon today and report back. I'm cooking some in a white veal stew.

Progress, and no progress

There is progress on several fronts. The work in the attic continues. The crew took only one day off — well, actually, they worked that day, but not chez nous. Coco told me that he and his two assistants were involved in pouring 29 cubic meters of concrete over in Tours, for a new police station.

Progress continues with the cat too, but not with the name. Yesterday morning I opened the garage window and set a plank in front of it that Bertie can use as a ramp to get in. The window has bars on it, so there's not much danger in having the plank there — except that other cats might come in through there along with or instead of Bert.

Springtime flowers

Bertie followed and slipped outside, between my legs, when I opened the garage door to put the plank out, and then wouldn't come back in. I had planned to let him out through the window so that he would start to get used to it. Too late. He was out and wouldn't be called or caught.

Two or three hours later, I looked out the kitchen window to see if I might spot Bertie out front or across the street in the neighbors' big yard. No. I opened the window and called him: "Bertie, Bertie, Bertie, Bertie." Callie got excited at that point and tried to push her way up to the kitchen window with me. She started barking.

Grape hyacinths by the driveway

Walt got Callie settled down and I called again. That's when I heard the throaty meow below. There was the cat, right under the window. I went downstairs to call him in through the garage window, to show him how to get in from now on — but he was already in. He's a smart cat.

Last night, Walt went down to see what the situation was, and when he came back upstairs he announced that Bertie was in for the night. He had closed the window, and he and the cat had played for a few minutes. I went down and played with him for a few minutes too. In fact, I took Bertie a few little pieces of smoked chicken off a bird we have in the refrigerator right now.

Callie chased Bertie up a tree. Bad dog!

So there is real progress on the cat assimilation front. And that is true despite the fact that Callie chased Bertie up a tree yesterday afternoon. We were coming back from our walk at about 6:30 and Callie saw Bertie sitting by the fence along the street, before I saw him. She took off, and of course he did too. Next thing I knew, Bertie was perched high up in one of the maple trees out front. Callie was barking like crazy.

Bertie had no trouble climbing down once we got Callie inside.

Okay, I think this is now officially a cat blog. On other subjects: as I said, the attic work continues. On Tuesday we went to the village hall, la mairie, to turn in a sheaf of paperwork that our neighbor the mayor had dropped off a few days before. After I wrote her an e-mail to tell her we were having work done, she brought us all the forms and papers we needed to file a déclaration with the authorities.

When we went to the village hall on Tuesday, our neighbor-mayor took us on a little tour of the premises. The building has been refurbished — the façade sandblasted, the walls inside painted. The mayor seemed quite proud. The lobby is painted in two shades of violet, one lighter and one darker, for contrast. Her office is in two shades of gray, in the same style. Her desk is a big clear glass table with lots of curves and no angles. We'd never seen the mayor's office before.

One very funny thing we noticed is that our mairie has the required, official portrait of the Président de la République — Nicolas Sarkozy, right now — hanging on a wall... but behind an open door! That made us laugh, because from what we've gathered our mayor is not at all a Sarkozy supporter.

Progress on the attic conversion

Madame le Maire then handed us off to the man who runs the front office and deals on a day-to-day level with village residents like us. He looked through our file, added some information on a couple of pages, and told us what other papers we needed to furnish. For example, we needed to add a cut-away drawing of the space we are converting, showing its length and width. That made two drawings. We also supplied half a dozen photos.

We had to measure the whole house to get the figures we needed to fill out the forms. They wanted to know the surface area of the whole house (la surface brute, about 350 sq. meters) and then the surface area of the parts of the house that could conceivably be finished off as living space (la surface nette, about half as much). This is probably for tax purposes. The only modification we need actual permission for is the roof windows, because they will change the exterior look of the house.

Springtime in the hamlet

To fill out the papers, we had to calculate and report the dimensions of the garage, the terrace, and the parts of the attic where the sloping ceiling is too low for the space to be considered aménageable, or convertible into usable living space under the law. In the attic, the usable space starts where there is six feet of headroom or more. The rest is usable for storage or whatever, but it doesn't count as living space for tax purposes.

I think our taxes will increase on the basis of the new square footage (or meterage) of the house's living area, but I'm not sure. This morning I have to go back to the mairie to turn in the completed forms with required additions.

Out the door, and...

Yesterday I decided the poor cat really needed to go outdoors. He'd been closed in since last Thursday.

I took a chance. I opened the back door, and out we went, me with my camera. The cat didn't follow me into the back yard. He wanted to go out front. From a perch we set up for him in the garage, he had been looking out that way for a few days. Now was his chance to really get a feel for that area.

Out front is where the wood pile is.

He came on around back along the other side of the house. He scampered out toward the back gate, and suddenly he was over it. I opened the gate and followed. I left it open, and in a minute or two the cat walked back through it. Good, I thought, he wants to stay in the yard.

Exploring...

Ha! Another few seconds later he was over the gate again. And he disappeared. I walked a ways out into the vineyard to see if I could spot him, but he had vanished.

There was nothing to do but go back in the house and wait. Maybe he would come back. Maybe not. People had told me it was important to keep the cat inside for varying lengths of time — a week, two weeks, even 30 days — so that it would consider the new place home, and would come back after excursions outdoors.

...and then posing...

A couple of hours later, I had pretty much given up. I wished the cat the best, and hoped he would have a good life wherever he wound up.

Then Walt looked out a back window. "Bertie is out in the yard," he told me. Well how about that! I went downstairs and opened the back door. The black cat was perched high in the big apple tree, not far from the back door.

...and moving on.

When he saw me, he came running down from the tree — he found a long branch that runs at a 45º angle toward the ground, so his descent was smooth and fluid. He ran straight to the back door and walked right in.

Facing toward the back gate, but obviously drawn
by what's out in the wider world.

I'm going to consider that that's that then, and I'm going to open a garage window this morning so that he can have free access to the outdoors and can come back in when he pleases. I still need to inform the neighbors that the black cat they are going to start seeing around the hamlet is not a stray, but our new mouser moler.