Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Off to China...


I have begun The Search. Pipes, drains for the precious water system, Blackwater (shit) and Rainwater (fresh almost) exist somewhere in the olde courtyard. The Veolia inspector person indicated they ran adjacent to the new ancient kitchen. Sure. And, of course, the ONLY fault in our entire dye inspected system was MY connection of the olde kitchen's sink to the rainwater downpipe from the roof. Seemed convienent. Damn. So I have begun The Dig. I have "sign", an old rusted bottle cap at 12 inches and a fragment of a plate found about 16" under the surface. But no sign of an actual PIPE carrying actual shit. I have three tools for this project, 4 if you count me. A 6 foot breaker bar, a square tipped shovel and a gardening hoe-type tool. I chose a spot between the kitchen and where the effulent comes out of the showerroom and disappears into the ground at some oblique angle. Who knows? This could take a while especially at the rate that I dig.


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The front window painting exercize is going forward while I lurch dirt into the pile in the courtyard. Kelly is scraping away, it's looking better as she goes. She is also painting the coffee table black that I have set up in the courtyard on metal sawhorses. She says she is in her Black Phase, guess so.
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No Lean came out of the kitchen to examine the courtyard with me in it. She ringed the area sniffing here and there and chewing whatever vomit-grass she could locate. That promises a little wet surprise somewhere real-soon-now. Nice...cats.
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The language lesson yesterday at A&R's went off pretty well, embarrassment was at it's height as no one there other than A herself can say much in Francaise at all. We all listened attentively at Don as he gave some language theory and explained verb endings to his languid class. Remember, these are all native English speakers, it is 6pm nearing dinner time and their brains are challenged by French no matter what. Mine certainly is. We yawned a bit, listened intently and had a generally swell time. Next time we are at the teacher's house. He wouldn't accept our payment either so we decided to pool the monies and do something wonderful with it when this exercize has reached some natural ending. Buy the teacher a nice bottle of scotch and a straw was one suggestion.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Une Petite Francaise SVP

That's all it really takes, a LITTLE French. Be polite, address all persons as vous, si vous plait is good all the time. CA VA! (How are you - to those with whom you have a standing friendship andhave been properly told that now we can be familiar) To which one replies Ca Va! back (I'm ok). Well today is Tuesday and our friend Don who is a retired language teacher is taking on our little groups need for French tutorage par groupe, oh lord, help him! After 6 years of visiting this lovely, genteel land our grasp of it's language is abouton the level of a 2 year old (or less!). It's NOT for lack of trying, we have many CD's, this course and that course, have taken courses at the local tourist board til we drove them mad, and commuted one a week to Berkeley to bang French into our heads. Little sticks but what does is in the present tense almost always, NOTHING comes naturally. So today we will begin yet again to learn a bit of French for the sakes of the oh so friendly French folk in and about our village and environs. Sure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsfV-ZL4rUo&NR=1
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The black paint job is through for now, now we must scrape off the over-painting on the glass of a million panels, oh boy. So I do a panel or two, scrape, scrape, brush, scrape and I soon tire of this and wander off and Kelly grabs the scraper and razor blade and goes to work on it. This will take a while. I want to get on with the cloth hanging but it takes laying out and pattern matching before it can be hung. It will be one very dramatic entrance to the old girl, the pattern is Japanesey black on a subtle gold in big swirly things that dance along edge to edge almost. The curtains are going to be a lighter gold with a little texture in them, the whole effect should be stunning...perhaps too stunning. No matter, as soon as this scraping activity is done we will have at it.
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I brought over my oil painting "bits" (a UK word meaning...things), brushes, media, linseed oil, tubes of paints, the whole bloody mess. When will I paint? I dunno, I never know...If I get inspiration I'm often unmotivated and if I'm unmotivated my inspiration fades and I'm back at square one again. It's the opposite of procrastination where you should do something but you put it off. This takes less effort. Nonetheless the stuff is here, I have canvasses and we'll see what time does.
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Back to the scrapings,
H

Monday, May 19, 2008

Pork!

Pork IS The Meat! Pork chops, bacon, gammon, Pork Roti, sausages of nearly endless variety. Pork is the King of Meats! We wanderred off to A&R's Sunday afternoon to drink 5 bottles of cheap bubbly wine (at least what I brought was!) and assist in the preparation and cooking of a quantity of pork belly meat. I know of this thru study of wild hogs and the butcherie of pork. Yes! A sharp thin bladed knife 6" - 8", slip it under the tough pork skin on the back, proceed to pull thru the meat pressing down as you go under the skin, the shoe leather comes off leaving the precious white pork fat. Remove it entirely, do NOT throw this away! You can render this for the fat in a skillet over a medium fire and use the resultant for bisquits, fring or sauteing of meats, fish. Great stuff pork fat. The we cut the belly across the grain of meat to make steaks 1" thick and 8" long. Small bones remained which was fine. Salt, pepper and lemon juice then wrapped in aluminum foil and placed over the BBQ fire at about 350 degrees. The packages each contained about 3 such steaks and took about 1.5 hrs to pre-cook. Remove from the fire, unwrap and now drench with the following sweet/sour BBQ sauce.
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Sweet and Sour BBQ Sauce

Catsup, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Puree 2 cups
4 cloves of garlic minced
White Wine vinegar 1/2 cup
1/2 cup sugar, marmalade, brown sugar or molasses, jam (you can be very creative here!)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Teaspoon black pepper
1 - 4 hot peppers finely chopped, watch it!

Combine all and mix thouroughly.

Dredge your pork steaks in the sauce, both sides and place on the medium BBQ fire. Cook, turning every few minutes til browned and the sauce carmellized. DO NOT BURN!

Remove the meat from the grill and allow to rest 10 minutes before serving.

This recipe s also good with chicken breasts, lamb chops, pork chops.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Brocantes = Rusty Tools

How can there be so many rusted old tools? Where the hell do people find them? They MUST think they have value BUT in reality they take not a little bit of "brushing up" before any of them could be utilized for anything useful. I mean garden rakes that the handles are so eaten by beetles that the thing weighs nothing! Hammers that were used before WW2 by a 300 lb ANIMAL beaten to a mushroom and then the broken handle repaired by black tape from a WW2 GI. How? No part of these things can be used. I LOVED watching three men trying to get an ancient lawnmower's engine to run, no !@#@#@! chance, the last time this thing actually ran to mow grass/weeds was just after Citroen created the Duex Chaveau! We went to two such junk ales this morning, ringing about the rows of knick-knacks, rusted tools, baby clothes and such without spending a dime. We have become jaded, perhaps we bought ALL the GOOD STUFF over the years and this is the REST. May it all rot in a landfill somewhere. We ran into our friends A & R and shared a cuppa coffee and a stick of bread with ham and butter (what passes for breakfast hereabouts ) and examine their FINDS. Not a bad take, the REST of the GOOD STUFF! Never fails, timing is everything! They were there first. We are headed to their place and lick our wounds with a pig BBQ and wine later this afternoon. We departed #1 brocante to travel across the township of St. Amand to the Medieval section for another try at scoring some great thing. No luck, it wasn't there either! We did pick up some duck shaped aluminum candy molds for the hell of it. What for? I dunno, but they are cute and CUTE counts sometimes. In France there's a LOT of cute stuff, not useful...but cute. On the way home we stopped y the little house (our first abode in France) and I removed my oil painting supplies from the grenier (attic) and picked up a few empty flower pots for my growing collection of plants-that-will-soon-be-dead. The home to relaxfor a while amaid the squalor of the ruin, peice together the tile wall covering into the dining room and write thi blog entry. Now off to our friends to fill out the rest of the day with laughter and good food.