Strange leaves

Right in the middle of a row of vines covered in red wine grapes, there is one grape plant that has the strange-looking leaves you see in the photos below. And it has bunches of white wine grapes growing on it.

I've never seen leaves like these on any other vines in the vineyard.

Meanwhile, the red/blue/black grapes all seemed to ripen at once a week or two ago, thanks to warm, sunny, dry weather.

You can see that the leaves on these plants are very different from the leaves on the one up above.

Can anybody identify the strange white wine grape plant? Somebody said it might be Chasselas, which is usually grown as a table grape, but none of the images of Chasselas grape leaves I can find look like the ones in my first two photos above.

Chasselas grapes are grown and made into a wine called Pouilly-sur-Loire in the village of the same name, about a hour's drive east of Saint-Aignan.

Despite the blight...

Walt says he thinks he's thrown out about half of the tomatoes that our 2014 garden has produced. Still, it has been a good year for tomatoes, and we have quite a few that are ripening on the vines. If this beautiful dry weather continues, we'll get a lot more. And we have these sitting in the kitchen, waiting to be eaten fresh or cooked for putting in the freezer.

Besides all the tomatoes we have eaten in August and September, we have made 15 pints of thick tomato sauce and have those in the freezer already, for winter meals. That's more than 15 lbs., or 7.5 kg. If half of the tomatoes from the garden hadn't had to be discarded, what in the world would we have done with them all?

Throwback Thursday — 1985

In the spring of 1985, somebody that I worked with threw a garden party. Pictures were taken. Here's one of me, nearly 30 years ago already. I had recently come back from a trip to Africa (Sudan, Niger, and Mali) as part of the press pool traveling with then-VP George H.W. Bush. Reagan was in the White House.

Look at all that dark hair — it was natural, too.

I was working as a writer and editor at the U.S. Information Agency in Washington. I had been hired by my friend CHM a couple of years earlier to be his assistant editor on the staff of a magazine published in French by the U.S. government. From that position I had moved into a job as a writer/editor in USIA's Africa press service. I traveled a lot, mostly in the U.S.

So I was working with CHM in a building near the Air and Space Museum and the NASA offices just off the Capital Mall. And I was living with Walt in an apartment on Capitol Hill. Walt was working as an office assistant for a prominent member of Congress from California. Thanks to CHM for saving and scanning the photo.

Kitchen news, retro-style

Yesterday I ordered a piece of kitchen equipment of a kind that I have never before owned and never before used. Decades ago these devices became popular in America. Back then, I viewed them as a ridiculous fad of little utility or interest. Times and tastes do change. In fact, whole countries and cultures change noticeably over just a few decades. I've seen it happen.

A new kitchen appliance

The thing I'm talking about is called a cuiseur or mijoteuse électrique in French. When I tell you that my favorite kind of French cooking is preparing what are called plats mijotés, you'll wonder why it took me four decades to decide to acquire a mijoteuse. Some of the most famous plats mijotés are coq au vin, blanquette de veau, and bœuf bourguignon — not to mention la poule au pot and le pot-au-feu.

So if you know what the verb mijoter means, you've figured out what appliance I'm talking about. The next time I decide to make a daube de bœuf, lapin en gibelotte, or choucroute garnie, it will be just the the kitchen appliance to have at the ready.

Here's an American slow-cooker that resembles the one I've ordered.

Mijoter means « faire cuire ou bouillir lentement, à petit feu » and, more figuratively, « préparer un plat avec soin, avec amour ». It means "to simmer", in other words. The device is a "simmerer" or, as it's known nowadays, a slow-cooker. A crock pot. I'm jumping feet-first into the '70s!

The one I've ordered from amazon.fr has a removable oval-shaped stoneware cooking dish that you can put on the table to serve the meal from. And then you can run it through the dishwasher. It holds 6.5 liters if filled to the brim, for about 5 liters of usable volume.

 The removable stoneware cooking vessel

With that shape and size, it can accommodate a small poulet, canard, or pintade, not to mention a small rôti de bœuf, de veau, or de porc that you want to braise slowly for several hours. I can see some good NC-style pulled pork or a batch of chili con carne coming out of it... not to mention all my favorite French plats mijotés listed above.