Agrafe

Pièce métallique qui retient, assujettit. A piece of metal that holds or fastens. A fastener. A kind of staple.

These are the fasteners that hold vines to their support wires. The vineyard workers go through and carefully attach the vines in spring and summer, and then in autumn and winter they go back and remove all the wire fasteners before they prune the vines. Fasteners. Fastidious. Not fast work.

May holidays

The rain is back today, and it's a holiday in France — le 8 mai is Victory in Europe Day, marking the day the German army surrendered in 1945. It always falls on May 8, of course. This year, tomorrow happens to be a holiday too — a Catholic holiday called l'Ascension, marking the day 40 days after Easter when Jesus, resurrected, finally departed this Earth and ascended to Heaven. It always falls on a Thursday.

This is a new leaf on a Chardonnay vine. The vineyard is just beginning its 2013 growth cycle.

May is full of holidays in France. May 1 is Labor Day, or la fête du Travail, in France and many other countries. And then 10 days from now the Christian holiday of Pentecost — la Pentecôte — will be celebrated, with a Monday holiday in France called le lundi de Pentecôte.

The recent garden pruning we had done left us with four or five big piles of branches that we need to cut up for use as firewood.

If it rains on every one of these holidays, people in France will get pretty grouchy. We've finally started having some nice weather, and Walt and I have been getting a lot of work done in the yard and garden — tilling, mowing, and cutting wood, mostly. I guess with today's rain we can take a holiday too.

Haricots beurre from Portugal

« Haricots beurre » means "butter beans," but butter beans are different beans from country to country and region to region. We saw these advertised in a supermarket flyer, and Walt picked up a bag when he went shopping. I cooked some the other day and we both thought they were delicious.

A lot of the dried beans we cook and eat here in Saint-Aignan come from Portugal. Often they are labeled in Portuguese as well as French, and sometimes the label says the beans are Origine USA. These haricots beurre, however, are marked as Origine U.E. — in other words, they must have been grown somewhere in the European Union. Nowadays, we find not just kidney beans (haricots rouges) and white beans (haricots blancs) but also black-eyed peas (cornilles), giant lima beans (pois du Cap), and even black beans (haricots noirs) more and more widely available. Ten years ago, the choice was more limited.

These particular haricots beurre resemble pinto beans more than the U.S. butter beans that I remember from way back when. They have very tender skins and a nice buttery texture when they're cooked. I didn't have to simmer them long at all, but I did soak them in cold water for a few hours before putting them on the stove. I went ahead and salted them at that point, bucking the conventional wisdom. I also put in some black pepper, a whole onion, a whole garlic clove, two bay leaves, and one dried hot chilli pepper.

This post might be of more interest to people who live here in France, or at least in Europe, than to those who live in the U.S. If you like to cook and eat dried beans (légumes secs in French), look for haricots beurre at the supermarket. If your local supermarkets have a section for imported products, including Portuguese foods, you might find them there. Our Saint-Aignan area grocery stores have Semaine du Portugal events a few times a year, and maybe yours do too.

Living with a baker

It's the best of all possible worlds. Fresh baked goods a few times a week, and all you have to do is photograph and eat them. Welcome to my life.

Walt made this tart over the weekend. It's a layer of rhubarb baked in a pâte brisée crust,

covered with a layer of fresh strawberries and glazed with home-made rhubarb jam.

It doesn't hurt that it is strawberry season, and we have a great strawberry and asparagus stand, selling locally grown products, at the Saturday morning market in Saint-Aignan. Also, it's great that we have a rhubarb patch. Rhubarb thrives on water, and all the rains we've had since last autumn have made it grow like crazy this spring.