Le soleil !

We saw the sun yesterday afternoon. The weather started changing, in other words. The fog cleared, making way for... well, rain. But between fog and rain, we got a few hours of sunlight. It was beautiful, as you can see from these pictures.

This is an ornamental cherry tree in our side yard. In March,

it will be covered in pink flowers.

I didn't go outdoors — well, not really — to take these photos. I just went out onto the front terrace. I took them on an impulse, and I'm glad I did. The yellows really popped out under the yellow light of the sunshine.

This tree is just over our fence on the north side.

I woke up this morning thinking I was going to write a post about the hibernation season here in France. I searched my blog to find that I've written several times about hibernation here in November and December: Dec. 2 and Dec. 3, 2007; Dec. 13, 2010; Nov. 24, 2011. One nice thing about a blog is that you can look back and remember that you've been through these cycles before. Besides,the colorful pictures here kind of woke me up again.

Our side yard on the left, and on the right a tree
in our neighbors' yard across the street.

When I say hibernation, I mean sleeping for 9 or 10 hours every night for weeks on end. Staying in the house most of the time, except for the daily walk with the dog. Fog and gloom. Short hours of daylight and long nights. But it's the same every year. It's hard for me to imagine life in the wintertime farther north than Saint-Aignan. Well, Paris, I guess, where it doesn't matter what the weather is or whether it's light or dark outside, because there's so much activity and artificial lighting. But out in the country, winter can get monotonous and mono-tonal.

Right now it's time to start working on that duck. By the way, the Larousse Gastronomique food and cooking encyclopedia says that « en langage gastronomique, le canard est toujours appelé caneton » — in the world of French gastronomy all domesticated ducks are called canetons (young ducks). Because that's what they are (or ought to be), the book goes on to say.

Monochromaticity

These days, in this season, it often feel like we are living in a monochromatic world. If you focus your eyes, though, suddenly you see the colors. They're muted, but they're there. (By the way, I looked up the word that I chose as a title for this post. It really exists, according to American Heritage: [MAH-noh-KROH-muh-TIH-sih-tee].)

Click the picture to enlarge and colorize it.

Yesterday afternoon I took the dog for a walk out in the vineyard. It was 5:15, which is getting close to sundown. The fog was so thick that I could see only a few meters ahead. Callie kept disappearing into the fog, but I knew she was close by. I just kept calling her name in a low voice so she'd stay close.

Click the picture to enlarge and colorize it.

If you click on the pictures above, you'll see them in color. I didn't take them yesterday — it was too dark when I went out. They're from a recent morning walk.

Here's are links to the full-size black and white picture, 1 and 2.

Weekend cooking project

I'm starting today. I took the duck out of the freezer this morning (Friday), and it will thaw slowly in the refrigerator until Sunday morning. Then the work will begin.

Besides duck, the ingredients are pork, turkey, rabbit liver, mushrooms, eggs, shallots, spices, and white wine. It will be quite a production. Let's hope it all works out.

As you can see from the labels, I got a duck from the supermarket for 4.95 euros a kilo. That would be something like $3.00 a pound in U.S. terms. What a deal! This weekend's recipe will use only part of the duck; the rest will go into some other recipe. A canette, by the way, is a duckling. It's sold cleaned, with no giblets (PAC = prête à cuire = "ready to cook") except the neck. The duck weighs 1.772 kg, or almost four pounds.

Life in the fog

It's really foggy again this morning here in the Loire Valley. The low temperature is the same as it has been for days on end: in the high 30s Farenheit. I can't complain, really — it's not freezing cold, it's not raining, and it's not snowing. But it sure is gloomy.

Callie on her morning walk around the edge of the vineyard

I just saw a report on TéléMatin about the release of the 2012 Beaujolais Nouveau wine, which happens on the third Thursday in November every year. It seems the grape harvest was only 50% of normal this year, and a lot of the vignerons in Beaujolais are facing financial problems. More gloom...

Cherry tree

I think we got the problems with our 2013 enrollment in the French national health system cleared up. We re-applied in September, as we do every year. Around October 1, we got a letter saying we needed to send in some more papers. We did that. Then last week, the woman who's handling our enrollment called and left a long message on our machine. She said she still hadn't received the papers. Who knows why? We definitely sent them. Lost in the mail? Lost in the bureaucracy?

Winter vines

I'm glad the woman called us and didn't just cancel our coverage. She gave us another week to complete the enrollment. Every Tuesday, the health insurance agency sends an employee down from Blois to hold office hours in Saint-Aignan and meet with people who need assistance. We went in Tuesday morning. We were third in line — there were 12 or 15 people in the waiting room by the time we left — and after a short wait we explained our situation to the agent. He took the papers, stamped them to show the date we brought them in, and assured us he would hand them off to the right person at the main office in Blois the next morning.

Autumn leaves

I hope it's all straightened out now. Things like this still make me very nervous. I guess it's because I feel like having such affordable health insurance coverage is almost too good to be true. Now we have to wait for a letter telling us we are re-enrolled... or not.