Five photos from Chambord

Our travels yesterday included a couple of hours at the Château de Chambord, that monstrosity and/or marvel located just south of the Loire River near Blois. We had finished a fine lunch at the Relais d'Artémis restaurant in Bracieux, and we braved the July 13 crowds at the castle.

This was the first time I'd been inside Chambord in a few years. I took a lot of photos. Here are five of them. More later, of course.

French Renaissance king François 1er, who had Chambord built

François 1er's symbol/mascot, the salamander, as an architectural feature

The king's bed in the royal apartments at Chambord

Lichens on an exterior wall at Chambord

François's folly, built in the 1500s — just in case you've forgotten how grand it is

Today: Chenonceau. Happy Bastille Day — Bon 14 juillet à tout le monde.

Le chantier des Halles à Paris

I went to the central Les Halles market in Paris only once. It was in 1970, and I was spending two weeks in the city as my spring break from classes in Aix-en-Provence. The weather that March was cold, gray, and wet. I wandered around Paris in the bluster and gloom. It snowed when I went to see the park and château at Versailles.

Here's what's going on at Les Halles these days. The Eglise Saint-Eustache sits once more on the edge of a gigantic construction project.

One day I took the metro from the hotel in the Latin Quarter where I was staying and went to see Les Halles. The old market pavillions were in the process of being demolished one by one. The market was being moved to the suburbs, and a new transit center was going to be built underground on that land in the heart of the city. Paris was too congested, and the streets around Les Halles were just too narrow to accommodate all the car and truck traffic that the central wholesale food market attracted.

When it's finished, the "new" Forum des Halles will look like this. You can see
the Saint-Eustache church in the background in this artist's rendering.

When I arrived at Les Halles all those 43 years ago, the whole scene made me uneasy. It was too busy and too grimy for my young American sensibilities. There was something raw and crude about it. It was already a construction, or demolition, zone — an open wound in the middle of a beautiful but worn-out-looking city. I didn't stay. After just a few minutes, I fled to more tranquil, less disturbing neighborhoods.

Temporary "containers" house architects' and engineerss offices around the latest Les Halles construction zone.

Ten years later, I would be living in a small apartment just north of Les Halles, a few steps off the now-trendy rue Montorgueil. By 1980, the area that had been Les Halles and a throbbing, chaotic market was known as « le trou des Halles » — "the hole at Les Halles." As a pedestrian, you crossed it on temporary boards and plywood planks thrown down on the muddy ground. Instead of tunneling under the neighborhood, the authorities, engineers, and construction crews had dug a deep, wide hole in the middle of Paris and were putting in a huge metro station and shopping center on a site that resembled a pit mine.

Another old neighborhood landmark at Les Halles is the Fontaine des Innocents, which dates back to the French Renaissance in the 1500s.

Even when finished, the underground shopping center — Le Forum des Halles — was left open to the sky. Rain poured in, and dampness took its toll on the stone and tile of walls and walkways. Then fairly ugly, garish buildings in glass and sheet metal were built all around the edges of the big hole in the ground. Now in 2013, the Les Halles neighborhood is again being completely redone. The ugly above-ground buildings are gone, and a gigantic steel and glass canopy is being built over the Forum shopping center to protect it from the elements. Les Halles is once more a construction zone. It will be interesting to see how it looks when the work is finished.

Bastille Day visitors

We have friends from the Urbana, Illinois, area spending the weekend with us at Saint-Aignan. Harriett and Tom arrived yesterday from Paris by train. We have a full weekend of activities planned.

I tried to recreate those delicious olives I had at a café in Paris last week for last night's apéritif.

They are flavored with tomato, lemon zest, garlic, and cilantro.

This morning, we'll be going to the open-air market in Montrichard. It's one of the best in the area, though not nearly as big as the Sunday market in Amboise (which will be a zoo this holiday weekend. This afternoon, other friends are coming over to spend the afternoon. We'll watch some Tour de France coverage on the TV and sit out on the deck eating and talking. The Tour is going through our area (Montrésor, for example) this afternoon.

Walt made a Swiss chard and onion quiche with Emmenthal cheese for last night's dinner out on the front terrace.

Tomorrow we're planning to drive up to Bracieux, near Chambord, for lunch at the Relais d'Artémis restaurant. After lunch, we'll see Chambord, Blois, and maybe the château at Chaumont-sur-Loire. Sunday will be the châteaus at Montrésor, Montpoupon, and Chenonceaux.

As you can tell, it's busy. And the weather is just perfect. We are finally getting the pay-off after all the gray and damp weather we had in April, May, and June.

Le 15e arrondissement de Paris

Did you know that the 15th is the Paris arrondissement that has the highest population? Nearly 250,000 people live in the 15th which would make it alone one of the 10 largest cities in France if it were separated from the rest of Paris. More than 10% of the population of Paris is in the 15th. The 15th also makes up about 10% of the area of Paris — but it covers only about 3.25 square miles.

The rue Lecourbe in the 15th, and the elevated metro line that runs along the edge of the arrondissement

The 15th is not a tourist area. It's a middle class neighborhood, mostly residential, on the southwestern side of the city. There aren't any major monuments in the 15th — but there are many cafés, restaurants, shops, and markets. I once did some research using the French Pages Jaunes web site and found that there were more boulangeries (approximately 75 of them) in the 15th than in any other Paris arrondissement. That makes sense, because so many people live there.

Nineteenth-century buildings in the 15th arrondissement with their street-level shops

The longest street in Paris is the rue de Vaugirard, which starts near the Jardin du Luxembourg and runs all the way out to the Porte de Versailles, all the way across the 15th. In fact, the neighborhood is also knows as the Quartier de Vaugirard. Among the other major streets that run through the 15th are the rue Lecourbe, the rue de la Convention, the boulevard de Grenelle, the rue Cambronne, and the avenue Emile-Zola.

 There are a lot of cafés with outdoor seating in the 15th arrondissement.

The 15th didn't become a part of Paris until fairly recent times — less than 200 years ago. It was annexed by the city in the mid-1800s. Until then, the area was outside the city walls. A new wall was built between 1840 and 1860, and the 15th was then included in Paris. The population of the area increased five-fold between 1850 and 1950.

 Newer and older buildings side by side in the 15th

CHM's family has lived in the 15th arrondissement since at least the 19th century. His grandparents lived in the same neighborhood where he lives now. His father, a well-known doctor, had his medical office in the same building that CHM still lives in, and he started his practice there before the year 1900. By then, nearly 100,000 people lived in the 15th.

The Invalides church isn't actually in the 15th, but like the Eiffel Tower and the Tour Montparnasse,
it's right on the edge of the arrondissement.

Back in the 1970s, I became friends with a family that lived a little farther out in the 15th, on the rue de la Convention. The "matriarch" of the family was a woman born in 1903. She had lived in Paris since she was a young girl. She told me she remembered when, on weekends, she, her sister, and her mother would go out to the Porte de Versailles, on the edge of  the 15th, and pick flowers in the fields. You'd be hard-pressed to find a field of flowers around there these days.

Plats en inox

‘Plats’ are serving dishes or platters, and ‘inox’ means ‘acier inoxydable’ — stainless steel. They are standard or classic serving pieces in Paris bistrots. One of the reasons why I went to Paris was to bring some home in a big suitcase.

I didn't buy them; they were a gift from CHM. He's a very generous man. He told me that these dishes were his mother's. She passed away nearly 40 years ago, if I remember correctly. CHM also said he would probably never use the platters and other dishes again, so he offered them to us.

You can be sure that we will use them. They will appear on our table on a daily basis from now on. Walt and I say a public thanks CHM for his generosity and for thinking of us when it came time to give up the stainless ware.

These platters and bowls are not only practical and unbreakable, but they are or soon will be antiques. They remind me of the hundreds of times over the past 40 years that I've had lunch or dinner in Paris restaurants and have seen these kinds of platters brought to the table.

L'Institut Pasteur

Last Saturday morning I took a walk over to the Institut Pasteur in Paris. It's only a couple of blocks — a few hundred meters — from CHM's apartment. I went to have a look because my friend Evelyn has said she really wants to visit it the next time she comes to Paris. Maybe I'll be able to go with her.

I was surprised that I had no memory of seeing this building before. I must have seen it, though. Back in the 1970s, I knew somebody who lived not far south of its location and I walked through the neighborhood many times. The Pasteur Institut has existed since the late 1880s.

There's a sign saying Musée next to the front door of the main building. According to Wikipedia, that's the oldest building and it contains Louis Pasteur's private apartments, the crypt where his body is interred, and an information center — those make up the museum.

Since 1908, eight of the institute's scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize. The Institut Pasteur is just a few minutes' walk from the Gare Montparnasse.

L'Eglise du Dôme aux Invalides

One of the main landmarks in the neighborhood where I spent the last few days is the gilded dome of the Invalides church. The Michelin Green Guide describes it as "the masterpiece of the age of Louis XIV" — he was king France from 1643 until 1715. Work on the church began in 1677 and it wasn't completed until 1735.

Running south from the front of the church, the avenue de Breteuil provides fine views of the gilded dome and is itself a beautiful green space in the middle of the city. As you can see, with the warm weather came hordes of young people picnicking, sunbathing, or just enjoying the fresh air on the grassy median. Finally, it really felt like summer (and still does).

The dome is an irresistible subject for photographers, I guess. You can see it from many points around the neighborhood, with a variety of views from close up or far away. The gilding, when the sun shines, really attracts your eye and camera lens. By the way, this is the church where Napoleon's tomb is located.

I'm back in Saint-Aignan now and, as usual, those few days in Paris seem like a dream. A nice dream, but somehow unreal. In fact, every time I stepped out the big carriageway door of CHM's building, I was astonished to find myself in the city and see all the people and cars rushing by. CHM's apartment is on the courtyard of the building and is very quiet and calm. But the neighborhood is a beehive of activity.

This was my first time I'd spent more than 24 hours in Paris since 2009, and my longest visit since 2006. I lived in Paris for five years back in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Walt and I spent many vacations there between 1988 and 2002, before moving to Saint-Aignan. I have so many good memories of the city. Now I have more. Somehow, just knowing that Paris is still there is reassuring to me.

Red store fronts...

...in CHM's neighborhood in Paris. Yesterday morning I went out for a walk to take some photos and do some food shopping. I didn't buy anything in any of these particular shops, but the red paint caught my eye.

A shoe and leather goods repair shop

A shop selling food products from the Auvergne region of France's central highlands

A wine and cheese shop

These photos are ones I took on the rue du Docteur Roux and the rue Cambronne near the rue Lecourbe in the 15th arrondissement. It's an urban residential area where middle class Parisians, including a lot of senior citizens and a lot of young couples with children, live. I like it and would love to live here if I could.

By the time this posts to my blog, I'll be on my way back to Saint-Aignan.

Yesterday in Paris

On Thursday, we had a couscous royal for lunch in a restaurant with Ellen & Paul and Peter & Jill. Here is a photo as a sort of teaser. I'll post some more photos next week when I'm back on my computer. I can blog on the tablet, but tasks like processing and uploading photos are definitely more difficult to accomplish than on a PC.

Le couscous royal: all this for one person's lunch 

Yesterday for lunch CHM and I decided to buy a spit-roasted chicken, some potatoes, and some céleri rémoulade from a shop in the neighborhood, and I picked up a bottle of Saint-Emilion wine to go with all that. Then I went out for a long walk around the city.

La Tour Saint-Jacques in the center of Paris

Thanks to The Beaver, who comments here and lives in Montréal, I had learned that the Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris is open to visitors this summer. In my nearly 45 years of living in and visiting Paris, I've never been up to the top of the tower (it's 16 stories high). It's squarely in the center of Paris, so the views have to be stunning. I'm not sure it has ever been open to the public before.

Unfortunately, all the tours yesterday afternoon were already full. There's a sort of a quirky system for reserving a tour. You can make a reservation for any day of the week if you phone in on Thursday morning between 10 and 12. Otherwise, you have to go to the tower and see if there is any space available on one of the tours that day. You might get in immediately, or you might have to reserve a tour later in the day. You can't reserve for any other day (unless you do so by phone on Thursday morning).

C'est clair, non ? Anyway, the upshot is that all the tours were booked yesterday afternoon, and I haven't yet decided whether to go back today to see if I can join a tour (they're not "guided" tours exactly, but accompanied). I might have to come back to Paris later this summer to go up there. In September, the tower will be closed to the public again.

So instead of going up to the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques, I walked through Les Halles, over into the Marais, and up to the Place de la République. It was sunny and hot out, and there were throngs of people on the streets speaking every language imaginable (including a lot of Americans of course). I'll post some pictures next week.

Un verre de sauvignon...

..à la terrasse d'un café parisien. Elle n'est pas belle, la vie ?






(This is an experimental post that I composed, with some difficulty, using my Android tablet.)

posted from Bloggeroid

Banana pudding, a Southern standard

The name "banana pudding" has a very specific meaning in the U.S. South, where I'm from. It's a pudding in the British sense of the term — a dessert. It's almost a "trifle" in British terms. Yet the ingredients include, of course bananas, which are tropical.

Meringue atop layers of pastry cream, cookies, and bananas: banana pudding

And they also include American "vanilla wafers"  — cookies (Br. "biscuits") that are available everywhere in the U.S. In France, the equivalent culturally might be the « petit beurre ». It's a little butter cookie. You could also compare American vanilla wafers to the French « langue de chat ». (Here in Saint-Aignan, Walt made a batch of vanilla wafers from an American recipe the day before so that we could make banana pudding on Sunday.)

Pastry cream: flour, milk/cream, sugar, and egg yolks

And finally, there are two French ingredients. One even keeps its French name in English: meringue, which is beaten and cooked egg white. The other is a kind of flour-based custard called « crème patissière » in France — pastry cream. It had never dawned on me until I made banana pudding last Sunday that the custard in it is crème patissière.

Home-made vanilla wafers

As Walt pointed out, banana pudding of the kind I describe is even better the second day than the first. We realized that when we ate some more on Monday — I had made two dishes of it.

Here, I'll post the recipe. This the American recipe, so you need to know that a cup is 8 fluid ounces. Actually, the British fluid ounce is slightly smaller than the American fluid ounce, but not significantly so.

Banana Pudding

3/4 cup sugar, divided

1/3 cup flour

dash salt

3 eggs, separated

2 cups milk

1/2 tsp. vanilla

3 dozen vanilla wafers (or similar cookies)

5 bananas, sliced

Heat oven to 350°F (180ºC).

Mix 1/2 cup sugar, flour and salt in top of double boiler. Blend in 3 egg yolks and milk. Cook, uncovered, over boiling water 10 to 12 min. or until thickened, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla.

Reserve 12 wafers for garnish. Spread small amount of custard onto bottom of 1-1/2-qt. baking dish. Cover with layers of 1/3 each of the remaining wafers, bananas and remaining custard. Repeat layers 2 times.

Beat egg whites on high speed of mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in remaining sugar until stiff peaks form. Spread over custard, sealing well to edge of dish.

Bake 15 to 20 min. or until lightly browned. Cool slightly. Top with reserved wafers just before serving.

I've been thinking about how U.S. and British measures are always slightly different. Gallons come in U.S. and "Imperial" (Btitish) sizes. So do fluid ounces and pints. I wonder if all that didn't come about in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when people started publishing recipes and cook(ery) books. The U.S. and British peoples were enemies during that time, and they fought at least two wars (Independence and 1812). I guess Americans decided to go their own way...

Arras

I'm in Paris at CHM's and I'm experimenting with blogging from my tablet, without a 'real' computer...

Off to Paris by train

I'm going to Paris today. I find traveling stressful nowadays — especially traveling alone. I guess I'm too fond of the comforts of home.

Besides, ma raison — my rational mind — keeps having to reassure mon cœur — my emotional mind, my heart — that no, you won't have to go to the airport. You won't have to deal with long lines and crushing crowds to get checked in. You won't have to go through invasive security checks, and having to get half undressed. You won't have to deal with heavy suitcases. You won't be away from home for two weeks.

You won't have to stand or sit around waiting for several hours before they call your flight for boarding. You won't have that nervous-making takeoff to worry about, and you won't be cramped into a tiny airliner seat for seven or eight hours. You won't have turbulence! And you won't have to land, and go through security again, and catch a second flight...

Summer roses

No, it's just a train ride. Walt drives me up to Blois — that takes 30 to 45 minutes by car, depending on traffic and weather. Then I get on a train that whisks me directly into central Paris in 90 minutes' time. In Paris, I find my way down into the metro, carrying a very light piece of luggage, and I go directly to CHM's neighborhood by metro without having to change lines. It takes maybe 20 minutes. Then a short 10-minute walk and I've arrived.

Tomorrow we'll be having lunch in a restaurant with some people whose names you might recognize — Peter Hertzmann and his spouse Jill, who happen to be in Paris this week, and Ellen L. who lives in Paris, and maybe her spouse too. We're going to a couscous place that we've been to several times before — Le Vent de Sable. Here's a link from 2006. And another from 2007.

A couscous that I made recently, with rabbit, vegetables, and "chorizette" sausages

It's raining this morning, but nothing dramatic. It's supposed to be cool and kind of showery today, but the weather is set to turn summery again tomorrow and through the weekend. I'm not sure what else CHM and I might end up doing during my three-day visit. I've thought of going out for some walks around the city myself  — maybe back to my old stomping grounds in the Latin Quarter and around Les Halles and the Marais.

I also wouldn't mind inspecting the recently refurbished Place de la République. It's always fun, too, to walk through some of the neighborhoods where Walt and I used to rent vacation apartments back in the 1990s and early 2000s and to see what's changed — or hasn't. We always had a really good time on those vacations. This trip will be the longest time I've spent in Paris in one stretch since 2006.

I won't be seeing a lot of "grape trees" (as the young son of visiting friends called them) in Paris.

I don't have any special shopping to do, and I haven't made reservations in other restaurants — though there is a Japanese sushi place just down the street from CHM's building that I really enjoy — or bought tickets to any concerts or plays. Paris might be fairly quiet, since summer vacation is just starting, but I think the schools are still in session. It'll be nice to get a breath of urban air and atmosphere, and to spend some time with an old friend.

Pour ou contre les congélateurs ?

When it comes to freezers, there are pros and there are cons. The pros are obvious, especially when you live in the country and shopping every day is out of the question. Being able to put the harvest from the vegetable garden away for wintertime meals is also a plus.

The negative is that you end up with a freezer full of plastic bags filled with lord-knows-what that you have long since forgotten about. Our neighbor told me one day that she once bought a freezer, but after a couple of years she got rid of it because she never could quite figure out what was in it, or why. The fact is, you do have to empty the freezer regularly to figure out what you're keeping.

Well, we did that last week and I found some treasures along with all the bags of frozen squash pulp and shrimp broth that we decided to throw out. One treasure, from my point of view, was a big zip-top bag of grits. I must have brought it back from the U.S. on a past trip. If you don't know what grits are, I'll tell you: they are what the Italians call polenta, but made from white corn (maize or maïs) rather than yellow corn.

Grits are mostly a breakfast food, while polenta is a lunch or dinner treat. Grits can be too. I cooked up a batch of the Southeastern Low Country specialty called "shrimp and grits" for lunch yesterday. For good measure, to go with the shrimp and grits I also cooked up some okra that was in the freezer. It made a good lunch.

Vivement l'été !

Summertime, bring it on. Welcome to July. The month has dawned sunny and ... almost ... warm. Warm is such a relative term. Our temperature today is supposed to hit 75ºF — not quite 25ºC. But we'll take it. June was chilly and gray except for the first week. We were due for a change.

This is one of several jade plants I have in pots. In San Francisco, I could leave the jades outdoors year-round, but not here.
They'd freeze in our Loire Valley climate.

Walt planted some marigolds outdoors, but something — we suspect snails or slugs — immediately ate all their leaves.
They're completely gone, except a few that we have in pots on the terrace.

Nearly all the potted plants are now outside. I've gradually been moving the ones like jade and kalanchoe that don't like chilly and damp conditions off the glassed-in front porch and out into the fresh air and, hopefully, sun. They seem happy enough. I still have several cuttings in water, waiting for roots to form. I can't believe it's July and we're where we might expect to be in early May for all these gardening activities.

Millepertuis (St. John's wort) is trying to take over the whole south side of the house along the road.
I don't know how to get it under control.

The big bank of millepertuis — Hypericum, a.k.a. "St. John's wort" — along the ditch and up against the south wall of the house is having its best year in a long time. I guess it has enjoyed the wet conditions. The flowers are pretty, but the plant is invasive and hard to contain. If anybody has any good ideas about how to keep St. John's wort under control without ripping all out, I'd be happy to hear them.

 Clothes on the line — I hope to be able to dry laundry outside until October.

It's nice to be able to hang clothes out on the line to dry. This time of year, the north side of the house where the clothesline is located gets morning sun and afternoon sun. Most people here don't have or use clothes driers; they prefer to hang laundry outside in the fresh air. I know I do. I guess in many places in the U.S. that's against local ordinances. Not here.

A red squirrel visited the back yard a few days ago. We don't see many of them, and we don't have gray squirrels here at all.

Blackberries and cherries are doing well this year.

Walt transplanted some kale and collard greens that I had carefully planted in one of our garden plots a month ago. My careful planting style was just to throw the seeds on the ground and hope for the best. Oh, I did scatter some compost over the seeds to give them a fighting chance. They've come up and now they need to be moved, and that's mainly because as many weeds as greens have grown up in that spot. The easiest way to get rid of the weeds is to move the little kale and collard plants to a different plot.