Friday, May 18, 2007

Paradise huh?

Well most of this day was spent in the shower room, not the bathroom/potty room...no, that's down the hall like in a Paris pension hotel. The object of interest was finishing the crown moulding project. Yes, yes...it's done, not the best job but not too bad either. It looks presentable at least. It still needs another coat of paint as all my handling has made it less than clean looking. Now I get to go on to the next step, creating the shelf for just above the wainscotting. More fun, more strange angles and more painting. I moved the shower enclosure into it's final location and i tlooks good. No leaks at all now, at least when I shower in it, your mileage may differ. Any leak winds up on the ceiling and ultimately onto the floor of the library below on the ground floor.
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I cooked an Indian green curry over basmati rice with blanched broccoli in lemon as the vegetable. I know you are expecting the recipe but frankly, this one is so bloody complicated and full of roasted then ground spices that you will cringe at the very idea of all this work. It IS worth the effort however and you should make the effort at least ONCE to taste what real curry is all about! I don't use curry powder and you shouldn't either, I use the individual spices of Garam Masala, here's a description of them:

from Wikipedia...Garam masala is a blend of ground spices common in the Indian cuisine, whose literal meaning is 'hot (or warm) spice'. There are many variants: most traditional mixes use just cinnamon, roasted cumin, cloves, nutmeg (and/or mace) and green cardamom seed or black cardamom pods. Many commercial mixtures may include more of other less expensive spices and may contain dried red chili peppers, dried garlic, ginger powder, sesame, mustard seeds, turmeric, coriander, bay leaves, cumin, and fennel. While commercial garam masala preparations can be bought ready ground, it does not keep well, and soon loses its aroma. Whole spices, which keep fresh much longer, can be ground when needed using a mortar and pestle or electric coffee grinder.

, roast and then grind them and include 1 can of coconut milk, 4 medium potatoes peeled, chopped coarsely, 2 apples similarly processed without seeds or skin and cooked chicken cubed as the main ingredients. Salt and papper of course to taste, over white rice...basmati is best, 20 minute or more only need apply, let it rest another 10 minutes after cooking off the burner if you want fluffy wonderful rice. I include a few thin slices of lemon and a pinch or two of salt as it cooks. Nice to have the added flavor to your rice.

Before dinner, yes I know it's backwards...anyway...
we went to the little church at the carefour (4 corners) being used as a venue for part of the Bain Douche's Spring Music Festival. The Bain Douche is the old public bath building in town, now converted to a nice theater with italianate modern red seating. The chapel near the carefour is for overflow acts and public performances that are free. It is a tiny church, built in the style of a 15th century miniature cathedral complete with local saints immortalized in stained glass. We became guests of honor when we noticed the producers SUN RECORDS T-shirt and made comment about it, he guessed out origin immediately (How I wonder?) and we were tickets number 1 and 2. We took seats down front when the doors openned. Franck Monnet was the star of the hour and his voice and guitar playing were exceptional. Well worth the price! No joke, he was wonderful and entertaining and musical as he could be. He got two ovations after a 90 minute performance! A little village like ours with a real music scene, amazing!

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Paradise includes drizzle and wind

Up with the dawn, cat slept beside me all night long as far as I know, shedding hair by the handfuls but WHY? It's miserable outside, the dim light of the pre-dawn shows nothing but clouds as far as the eye can see and, our favorite, heavy drizzle...slop I call it, just slop, is falling. Too wet to work outside to dry to be serious about a work stoppage. Damn! Today WAS to be for a major brocante happening, hunt for smaller fare than before, ancient photos, a painting or two, drawings, a side table. The 17th is Assumption, a Catholic excuse not to work today and instead take all your junk, furnature, rusted parts and inoperative electronic stuff and place it up for sale in a field somewhere. That's the GIVEN in the formula, the UNKNOWNS are but two...the weather, being cold or wet AND will people actually leave the warmth of their houses and come? Well, the weather part is determined, blustery and wet, slop...so we decide to try it anyway KNOWING hardly anything will stop a Brocante from occuring once scheduled. Off to Chateauneuf-Sur-Cher to see what is happening, in town we find the site, a nice man in a bright yellow safety vest is standing in the middle of the street opposite the alley where, at the end, are unbrellas and many parked vans and trucks and a few people visible milling around. We take the next alley across the bridge and park a ways down on the left side in a small parking lot. There are 5 cars therein, we make it 6. We leave the comfort of the warm car, I don a black shopping bag for a hat of sorts and we stroll quickly down the alley, across the brdidge and into the site of the main event. Muddy grass and tarp and umbrella coverred booths dot the field. Stepping around pools of water and with the drizzle coming down almost as rain now we examine booth after booth for valuable wares and wonders of the not so modern world. Touring row upon row seems futile as most things are either sopping wet or covered with enough visqueen (plastic) or dripping tarps to be un-seeable and un-examinable. We walk on. After some 15 minutes of this brutality we take our leave, as we pass a booth, a pile of rusty tools lying in a small bucket of rusty water grabs my eye and I stop to look. It is an apparently handmade, hand forged BOLT that has been made ingeniously into a monkey wrench! It actually WORKS too! Holding the item up to view "Combien, S'il Vous Plait" I ask, the gent replies "Doux Euros", I say "Tres bien" and hand over a two Euro coin "Merci! Merci" I say, and the beauty is mine! Useless but necessary. Now an iron paperweight with a secondary (wrench) and looking at the roughly mashed head, possibly third purpose (hammer) in hand we walk back to the car. Off to the next one which is in Pruniers along the highway to Chateauroux.
The drizzle continues as we near Pruniers, some cars in the marie parking lot but no sellers visible, more cars...but still no umbrellas, no booths, no traffic director person to point the way. This one actually appears to have been cancelled because of the weather! Unusual, we drive along slowly looking for any signs of activity, there is none so off now to Bommiers for the next one, 5 minutes later we pull into a parking spot with 5 cars once again and get out of the car, a loud female voice is calling to the public to
come to the brocante. We obey crossing the bridge over a small stream and l'viola! tables, umbrellas, 4 vendors, a doorway seems crouded nearby and we join the croud seeking warmth and to get away from the wet. Inside it's all crafts, knitting, embroidery, paintings, drawings, stupid bear lamps, handmade jewelery...nothing of real interest to us so off we go, back to the car to the next, final and last brocante of the day in ________________.. Hmmm, at last a vendor with which I have interest, goat cheeses, thimble sized, sprinkled on top of each was small quantity of spice, coarse pepper, cumin, oregano, mint, dried onion...ohhhh these are fine! I ask "Comien, S'il Vous Plait" He says "Doux Euro demi pour veigt-cinq"...cheap, cheap, cheap...10 Euro cents a piece! "Oui!" I say and he carefully plucks each one out of the display and places hem in a little plastic box then bags them. I pay with exact change " l'viola!" he says and I'm off with a ":Merci!". Homeward bound now trying to be dry in mind if not dry in body we reflect on the mornings activity. "What a bust!" Kelly says, "Yep!", I say "but got some goat cheese and a nifty paperweight! for 4 Euros 50...not a bad haul!" She nods in agreement.
>Monkey wrench made from a bolt

A Wednesday in Near Paradise

Rained and drizzled all night, my newly planted charges are really happy about it. This appears to be a quite wet year when I remember back to last spring, good for plants but somwhat cool and a biut cloudy for my sunny disposition. Made eggs over easy with Chuck's terrific huge fresh eggs deliverred yesterday by Bob just before soup. The oh-so-thin bacon fume is delicious but just a bit too much heat (EDF man showed up at the door to read our electric meter) and poof! It's up in smoke! I ate the ruination and made another batch for Kelly's use. I sliced up a few of the little white potatoes and friend them in sweet butter, all made a wonderful filling breakfast before we spend today painting walls, doors, baseboards and that damnable fibreglass sponge that I've put up on the wall to make it "smooth".
Off to the painting people, off!
The whole day went well, Kelly painted windows and baseboards and doors and I climbed the awful rickedy ladder dozens of times painting the fiberglas mat white and cussing all the while. Hours went by and the job was typical, slow, sloppy and unsatisfying at this stage as there is still the crown moulding to complete and the mini-shelf that will be placed above the wainscotting to dress the room up a bit. The pictures attached show the fiberglass mat in all it's glory, a before and after if-you-will of how it looks. I wiped enough dripped paint off the floor and other newly painted beige surfaces to paint another wall at least! I love painting but this is less than easy due to the wattery nature of the paint itself and my sloppiness.
After the painting was done, about 1:30 we adjourned to the little kitchen to make a potato, garlic and onion soup. Here you go! 2 lbs of white or red potatoes peeled and chopped into small pieces to cook rapidly. an entire garlic peeled and chopped coarsely, one onion diced. 3 tablespoons of dried or fresh sage, 2 bay leaves.5 cups of water, 3 tomatos chopped, two tablespoons of olive oil and a 1/2 cup of cream or milk.
First combine the potatoes, garlic, onion and sage with the 5 cups of H20 (water!) in a 2qt pot and bring to a boil, reduce and simmer for 30 minutes until the potatoes are cooked through. At the same time saute the chopped tomatoes in the 2 tablespoons of olive oil until they are cooked and thickened. Nice and simple. Now strain the cooked mixture, save the cooking water!
Using a hand ricer or a food processor or other high speed device that scares the hell out of cats and that mushes stuff up fine...process the cooked potatoes, onions, sage and garlic...pull the bay leaves prior to this else it is a disaster! Combine the processed mixture, the tomatoes and the water and bring back to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and continue until the mixture is smooth and of the proper consistency for your soup. Add the cream or milk and turn off the heat. Add salt to taste. Serve either warm or COLD, delicious!



Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Tuesday, a day at home, a day at work.

Retired in France doesn't mean just eating and drinking well and letting the sun rise and set while you relax staring at the birds as they feed from your multiple feeders. It means unexpected visits on days you had hoped to be left alone to work on the damned bathroom some more. Bob (name changed to protect the innocent...US!) rang the doorbell at 11:30. I heard his voice from upstairs on top of the awful rickedy ladder as I was gluing into place the fibreglass mat to create a smooth surface for recieving the paint. Down I went to greet our now guest, recieve the eggs he offered so generously (tried to pay him 3 Euros for them but he refused) and chat about happenings in and around Lignieres, relationships and personal situations that we can't do anything about. I wanted to work on my damned bathroom, not discuss our tiny world's denizens, alas it's what we did for almost two hours. We paused somewhat to partake of my Onion soup, (4 cups chicken stock, 2 cups thinly sliced yellow or white onions, one shallot sliced similarly and sauted til lightly browned on a medium fire, this takes about 30 minutes. Add onions and shallots to the stock, bring to a boil and reduce to simmer another 30 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with french bread and butter or do the traditional French thing, cheeses (guyere and Parmisiano Reggiano baked on top of the sliced bread with the soup poured over) added for additional zing. Bob was pleased, we were pleased, I excused myself to get back to my !@@@@! bathroom project/albatross. He excused himself and left shortly thereafter. I went back to work, completed covering the the two remaining walls and went to work on the garden waste pile. I had retrieved the incinerator and various foodstuffs from the little house in the morning and so loaded up the metal can and lit a fire. It took the better part of two hours to elliminate the pile of debris that I had collected over the last nearly two months we've been here. After the fire had diminished to smoke I drove over to Champion, the supermarket here in town, purchsed three more of the large flower pots for my pot garden, 4 more 50 liter bags of potting soil with which to fill the pots and plant nasturtums, parsley, corriander, japanese onions and others. 6 pm came and I quit all the hard labor about the planting and put on my chef's hat. we had purchased crab claws and a live crab yesterday at Auchan in Chateauroux. I put on water to cook the whoile crab and busied myself at cracking the crab claws as a cold addition to Kelly's wonderful mushroom soup that she made yesterday. Delicious meal along with a lettuce, tomatoe, avacado and onion salad dressed with red wine vinegar and olive oil, salt and pepper (for me...as Kelly seldom uses them relying instead on the flavors of the ingrediants to satisfy her taste buds).

Monday, May 14, 2007

Moonday, Lunday, a day of no work.

Up, I made bisquits, not scones...no raisons, no dates no dried fruit, just flour, milk, butter (no lard vegetable or pork) and leavening...baking powder, a teaspoon of salt. This always works, 1.5 cups of flour sifted together with 1.5 rounded teaspoons of baking powder and the salt, then cut in with a cutter or fork the fat...the lard or butter til it has all made up to little lumps, add enough milk to combine the ingrediants, try a cup, add more if needed to form a coarse dough. Powder your hands and the wet dough with flour and form into 1/2" thick (15mm) thick patties about 2" (50 mm) in diameter, place into a baking sheet or skillet...makes about 5 to 7 bisquits. Mine went to hell this morning, laid flat and refused to rise almost at all...browning took almost an hour in the pathetic electric oven I have at my disposal...hard tack, yes hard tack. Crusty, hard outside, soft inside, way over baked brown and dry as desert sand. NOT a good bisquit! The fault? The bloody leavening powder has died! We sent a pound to ourselves before we left California almost two months ago now...alas it is still in transit along with three more boxes of stuff we'll have it some day. Baking powder as we know it has not been found in France, they do not have this tradition I guess and are used to rising bread with various yeasts, I need baking powder for this bisquit baking chore and have none that is fresh. I wait anxiously.
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Then after sufficient coffee espresso) to wake us thoroughly off to Chateauroux to seek our fortunes. Leroy Merlin must wait for the junk store...we have bought LOTS of stuff at this regional TROC de L'ile...like a thrift store/consignment shop in the US...lots of furniture, lamps, mirrors, chairs, tables etc. The one in Chateauroux is excellent in that we almost always find some near hidden, forgotten GEM therein to purchase and pack into our Toyota Avensis. How it always fits remains somewhat mysterious, but it does.
Today it was a set of 6 Henry II wood chairs, a nice oak table with one drawer for the Prep room, 2 small stools that look like kids woodshop projects but very well made of oak weighing about 10lbs (5kg) each and last but not least a nicely made tan leather couch, 6 ft long, not a sleeper really but quite comfortable and nice looking..I laid down on it to let Kelly see how it fit me, planning for the near future snoring session I guess.
We took the stools and two of the six chairs and agreed to have TROC de L'ile deliver the rest this Wednesday between 4:30 and 5 pm. Then off to Babou to find a few 1.49 Euro scissors, flashlights and batteries and who knows what else, all Chinese made but then cheap and worthy of use at the first look.
Then back across Chateauroux to Leroy Merlin for plywood to resubstanciate the wicker chairs seats before someone winds up on the ground! The chairs are wonderfully victorian but worn and fragile, they need paint and cushions and seat plywood to make them last a few years. Kelly moved thru the CASA (CAH-Zah) store finding 40% off bargains, wine glasses and flutes for champagne when that day happens. Then to Auchan for onions, potatoes, beer, coffee beans, oysters, crab and crab legs, vodka for the liqour cabinet, and a few other essentials like chocolate. As we exited the store it began to rain a cold drizzle and dark clouds summoned us homeward towards Lignieres to end our buying spree. It rained all the way home.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Paradise is for the birds

Up at 7am to noisy birdsong from the swallows that are nesting (or trying to) above the windows under the cornice where I can't get to them with a hose. If they weren't so messy I wouldn't care a bit but they do poop and it rains down on the street and sidewalk below making a mess of everything. Flashing CD's seem to be the preferred non-violent method of discouraging them, I have done that in California under our deck but not here...yet. Off we went at 8:30 to the brocante in ORVAL, the outskirts of St. Amand Montrond, a devil to find as we saw only two signs that refered to it and had arrows to tell you which direction. It was largely a chance of dumb luck that we found it at all. Lots of sellers but with little to sell that was of interest to us EXCEPT the plante madam, she had lovely small plants at the typical prices (2 Euros for a seeding) that we've come to expect. I spent 32 Bucks (Euros) buying this's and thats, she was grateful and I admired her careful touch with her charges as she packaged them carefully in small plastic sacks. That was our only purchase at that brocante though we spent a hour and a half there gawking. Then on to Mountlouis for a producer sale...plants, vegies and various cheesemakers and wine producers joined the fray. I bought more plants for my miniature formal garden, most of which I didn't even know the name of. Two Hortensias...for 12 dollars each that were HUGE and would have been 40 bucks back in California. Various sages, some mints, italian parsley and others were bought along with the hortensias. We ran into a few friends hanging out at the Menatou Salon winery booth sipping delicious red, I'm used to and respect the whites from that region but have never had the red, it was light, fruity and delicious, made to drink right away as we were doing. It was a 2005 vintage and worth a buy when I next see it in a grocery store. Home we came to plant the new plants and admire our labors. Kelly is putting on the 2nd and third coats of paint on the bathroom wainscotting that I have installed therein. It's beginning to look like a completed bathroom and WILL once I cover the walls with the fiberglass cloth, she paints it and then I paint and apply the crown mounding. What a job this bathroom has been. May be done by weeks end with luck and diligence.