Glad to be in the back yard

Tasha always seems happy to get back home after one of our walks around the vineyard. She stands at the back gate and waits impatiently to be let back in.

Here's a view of the vegetable garden as I saw it yesterday morning.

It won't be long before we start getting ripe tomatoes. Walt picked some green beans day before yesterday, and we've been getting zucchini (courgettes) for a week or two now.

Yesterday I mentioned that we have grape vines in our back yard. Here they are. They're white table grapes of some kind, but the vines are shaded by two big apple trees, so they don't produce many bunches of grapes.

We do enjoy the leaves, though, at this time of year. It's unusual for us to make stuffed grapevine leaves twice in the same year, but that's what happened in 2017.

More dolmas

I realized a few days ago that the leaves on the half-dozen grape vines that grow in our yard (they're table grapes) were still bright green and perfect-looking. On Friday I went out and cut four dozen of the best ones and blanched them in a steamer pot.

Then I made a rice filling for them to make grape-leaf dolmas — feuilles de vigne farcies in French. The filling is based on this recipe, but I adapted it by using crushed pistachios instead of pine nuts, chopped raisins rather than currants, and dill instead of mint. I put in less cinnamon than called for, and I added some spices including ground fennel seed and cayenne pepper. I also added two beaten eggs to the stuffing to make it "stickier" and easier to work with.

Rice stuffing for Dolmas

1¼ cups (150 g) raw rice
1 onion, finely chopped
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cups chicken broth (or water)
½ cup toasted pine nuts
¼ cup dried currants (tiny raisins)
¼ cup (or more) chopped fresh parsley
¼ cup (or more) chopped fresh mint
1½ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. allspice
3 Tbsp. white wine
salt and pepper to taste
1 lemon (for the juice and the rind)

Cook the onion in olive oil until it softens. Add the rice and cook it in the olive oil for a couple of minutes. Add the broth and cook on low heat until the liquid is absorbed, stirring occasionally. The rice doesn't need to be completely cooked at this point, because it will cook later for quite a while inside the grape leaves.

Toast the pine nuts and add them to the warm rice along with with the currants (raisins), herbs, and spices. Mix well and and add the juice of a lemon and a little white wine — save the lemon rind to cook with the stuffed leaves. Season the rice mixture with salt and pepper, stir well, and let cool before filling and folding the grape leaves.

The stuffed leaves cooked for about an hour in a 160ºC / 320ºF oven, covered with some olive oil, chicken broth, and lemon juice. Vegetable broth or just water would be a good cooking liquid too, but don't leave out the olive oil and lemon juice. And don't let them boil too hard. We ate the dolmas warm but not hot, after they came out of the oven and cooled down. They're good with a yogurt-cucumber sauce like Greek tzatziki. See this post from 2010.

Recapping

That's enough about dogs and cats. Bertie came up to the sliding glass doors a few minutes ago, but without a mouse. I gave him his food. Then he came inside and Tasha pounced on him. Bert headed downstairs to the safety of the garage, where his kibble bowl is.

I still have photos of the Château de Chambord that I took in June and haven't yet posted. Here are a few of them. That visit seems like it happened an age ago. It was four weeks ago today.

Since then, Callie the collie died suddenly and unexpectedly. Tasha the new puppy learned how to walk down all the stairs in the house as well as to walk up them, so she's independent now and has the run of the house. She's really growing up. We had Callie's body cremated and now we have received the ashes from the vet's. We are trying to plan a time to go out and scatter them in Callie's favorite wooded area on the edge of the vineyard.

Then the clutch went out on the Peugeot. We almost decided to sell the car, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It's the car we bought in 2003, the year we came to live here. I guess the car has too much sentimental value for me to be willing to part with it. Sometimes the pace of change gets to be too fast and you have to try to slow it down.

Finally, the weather has become bearable again. It was blazing hot for much of June. Then it turned uncomfortably chilly for a week or so. In early July, it turned hot again. Right now the mornings are slightly brisk, but the afternoons are warm and sunny. High temperatures are in the mid-70s to 80 in ºF (mid-20s in ºC). It's the way it's supposed to be.

July 4 and July 14 — our 15th of each in France — are now history for another year. Summer is on cruise control. The garden is growing. I'll get the Peugeot back from the mechanic's in three or four days and we'll put the Citroën back in the garage, taking it out only for longer drives. We'll putt-putt around the area in the old Peugeot, from supermarket to bakery and back, the way we've been putt-putting around for the last 14 summers. Vive la France !

A mouse in the house

This thing about the cat having free access to the house has major drawbacks. Bertie just brought a live mouse in through the terrace doors. The mouse of course ran to hide under the furniture with both Bertie and Natasha chasing him. I don't know how we'll get him out of here if Bertie doesn't catch him again.

I guess the little rodent is Bertie's Bastille Day present to us. Now I've had to close Tasha out of the room, because I don't want her playing with an injured or dead mouse. Cats! They really are wild animals in a way that dogs are not.

Our friend Evelyn says she keeps a butterfly net handy to deal with such situations. I wish I had one right now. E. and L. can catch the live prey that the cat drags in and then release it back outdoors.

Right now I'm thinking we are going to have to take the room apart by moving the rug, coffee table, and sofa, as well as maybe the cabinet that has the TV and stereo system on it, so that we can try to get the rodent out of here. Sigh...

P.S. We can see the mouse running around when we move pieces of furniture, but we can't catch him. Now I won't be able to leave any doors open in the morning when Bertie goes out hunting. The cat will just have to stay outside. I don't know what ever possessed me to bring a cat into the household anyway. Phooey.

Walt has now set two baited mousetraps under the sofa. Maybe they will be effective.