14 juillet pictures

Yesterday was the 14th of July, the French national holiday. In France it's called le 14 juillet or la fête nationale. This year's celebrations were slightly subdued, because six French soldiers were killed in Afghanistan earlier in the week. It was a Bastille Day in mourning for many.

Tomatoes in the garden

Walt and I didn't do anything special for the holiday. We just stayed home, cooked lunch — a big "fry-up" as I hear the British call it; tempura is what we called it. Turnips/navets, mushrooms/champignons, summer squash/courgettes, and shrimp/crevettes lightly battered and deep-fried.

Tempura of vegetables and shrimp, followed by
a tomato-basil-mozzarella salad

That's not a kind of cooking we do very often, primarily because it makes such a big mess in the kitchen. It was good though, with a Japanese-style dipping sauce of shrimp broth, soy sauce, ginger, horseradish, and mirin (rice wine).

Grapes and grapevine leaves

In the afternoon, I went out for the regular walk with the dog and took some pictures (click the pictures to see them in a larger size). The afternoon weather was beautiful. The garden is soaking up a lot of sun right now, and it needs to hurry because the forecast this morning says we should expect a week of damp, autumnal weather starting tomorrow. We'll see if it actually rains in any significant way this time.

Two little prunelles, or sloes

Today we are headed to Le Grand-Pressigny to have lunch with Jean and Nick — they have a blog called A Very Grand Pressigny. We'll be able to sit out on the patio in the sun, I'm sure. We're taking a bottle of the champagne I bought in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ back in June as our contribution to our 15 juillet celebration. It's about an hour's drive there, and an hour back, so we have to be sages and not over-imbibe.

Wildflowers

Then we can look forward to a windy, wet weekend, they tell us. Bien sûr. Qui vivra verra.

Enjoying some time off

It's nice to have a few weeks off. That's what July has turned into. The garden is growing and hasn't needed much maintenance for a while. We've had no travel or visitors in July. The 2011 French Open tennis tournament is history, and we did our bit for the Tour de France cycling race. The weather has been fairly summery for 3½ months now. What more could you ask for?

Nobody talks about the drought any more, even though
it's still just as dry. I guess most of the spring crops
have been harvested now.

There are plenty of tasks that I ought to be tackling out in the garden and around the house, inside and out. Weeding. Scrubbing. Pruning. But I'm not motivated. That's okay. It's only July. It'll all wait until August. July 14 today, by the way. That's the French national holiday of course — Bastille Day. So I'm going to take another day off.

La rue des Laurendières in our neighborhood.
It's called a street — une rue — but it's not paved.

There are calls to make. We need to get the furnace — well, boiler, actually — serviced. Call Savelys, the company we have a maintenance and emergency repair service contract with. We need to have the chimney swept. Insurance requires that it be swept annually. Both these obligations remind me of winter. I don't want to think about it. Besides, you can't call any business people on Bastille Day.

For lunch, how about a nice lasagne of summer squash with
tomato sauce, béchamel sauce, and ewe's-milk cheese?

We have some more old friends from California coming in about a week to spend a few days. That's something to look forward to. We also have two trips planned now, for late August and early October. We've rented a gîte rural — a house out in the country — for each trip. We'll be traveling with old friends and seeing new countryside. Each trip will be only three or four days long. That's all the time we can take away from the cat and the garden. The dog will go with us.

And some garlic bread made with crushed garlic,
sweet butter, and chopped fresh rosemary?

The hard part of living this life here in Saint-Aignan is trying to keep a steady rhythm. To be busy but not too busy; idle but not too idle; productive but not too driven. To remember, when lazy, that the busy days will come again. The garden will produce tons of squash, eggplants, tomatoes, corn, and beans that will need to be processed and put up for the winter. It will rain again, someday, and the grass will grow. The hedge will get trimmed. The firewood will get sawed. The season will change. But not yet.

Oops, I just remembered that I do need to go do some watering this morning. And then cook lunch. Today is another day.

Video of the Tour at Orbigny

Okay, I know I've done a lot of posts about the Tour de France. Here's one more — just for the châteaux, really.

It's a short video of the Tour de France passing through the village of Orbigny, 7 or 8 miles south of Saint-Aignan. It starts with a clip showing the Château Le Mousseau, then shows the riders going through the countryside and past our vantage point, and finally shows a clip of the Château de L'Estang from the air.

Credit for the video goes to France 2 television.
No violation of copyright laws is intended,
vu que ce blog est purement non-commercial et sans but lucratif.

It's a little less than five minutes of video. The best way to watch it is to click the "Watch on YouTube" button on the control bar under the clip. Or click here. At kilometer 64.7 — watch the countdown on the screen — you can see me, Walt, and our friends by the side of the road, watching the cyclists speed by and taking pictures. The châteaux are a lot more interesting — truth be told.

Greek-style chicken

Greek-style, applied to food, usually means marinated, cooked, or served in olive oil and lemon juice. That's how this chicken is marinated and cooked. I made it with wings, but you could also use other chicken parts or a whole chicken cut into serving pieces.

Wings marinated and spread out on parchment paper for baking...

Since we found that would could buy chicken wings at the supermarket for a good price a couple of years ago, we've cooked them in many ways and styles — Buffalo, Yakitori, Tandoori, Vietnamese, and so on. They've all been good. I've noticed that some of the poultry vendors in the markets around Saint-Aignan have started selling wings, either raw (usually in a marinade) or already cooked.

...and after cooking for about 40 minutes in a medium oven

Twice, recently, I've marinated and cooked wings or other chicken parts Greek-style. The last time was last Friday for our Tour de France potluck picnic — which we ended up having to have indoors — and they were about the best. Here's the recipe.

Greek-style Chicken

½ cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh thyme
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
2 lemons, zested and juiced
1 tsp. hot red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
3 or 4 lbs. chicken parts

In a glass dish, mix the olive oil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, oregano, hot red pepper flakes, lemon juice, and half a dozen strips of lemon zest. If you use dried herbs, just use a teaspoon of each. Place the chicken pieces in the mixture, toss, cover, and marinate in the refrigerator 8 hours or overnight.

Cook the chicken on a grill or in the oven at 180ºC/350ºF for 30 or as long as 60 minutes, basting it with the leftover marinade frequently. The cooking time will vary according to the size of the chicken pieces you are cooking.

If you cook the chicken in the oven, you can save the lemony, herby cooking liquid or oil. Strain the it and use it to season cooked vegetables or fry potatoes in it, for example.

Too many wings, but the leftovers will be good

If you make extra wings, the way I did, you can keep them in the refrigerator and easily reheat them in the oven or even in the microwave before you serve them. Eat them with your fingers, of course. I wouldn't advise trying to eat them with a knife and fork.

Chicken wings for a picnic

If you cook a whole cut-up chicken, or legs or thighs, you can serve them as part of a more traditional meal, with knives and forks. That's what I would do in France, at least with people "of a certain age" like me. It's not very French to pick up foods with your fingers, except bread and apéritif snacks like potato chips and slices of saucisson sec.

P.S. It's raining this morning, with lightning and thunder. Let's hope it rains all day, and all day tomorrow.