I am not complaing though, as I was getting bored after having four months of October weather. It's just a pity the daffs and hyacinths are flowering, because I assume the snow will do for them.
Theoretically they have heritage protection, which means you are not allowed to demolish them. Sadly, since they have not acquired a modern use, this means they are simply left to decay and fall down. Their original purpose was to store tools and provide shelter from the elements to field workers while they ate their lunch. The huts usually have a fireplace - much of the work in the vineyards, such as pruning, was done over winter, so a place to thaw out was very welcome. The huts also often have a mini-cellar - just a hole dug in the floor with a trapdoor, which was for keeping your drink cool in the summer.
Now the little buildings, each one of them different, stand scattered about, one every few fields, covered in vegetation and losing roof slates. They are too small to be turned into holiday accommodation, and modern farmer workers hardly get out of their airconditioned tractor cabs, so their only function is to add a sense of delapidated charm to the view.
I strongly recommend clicking on each photo to enlarge them. They will open in a new window.
So I am looking for photo indexing software. I have tried some, but they all seem to want to put tags on the photos themselves, or change the photos in some way. I need something that does a complex hierarchical tree structure (which counts Adobe Photoshop Album out of the equation) in something that resembles a spreadsheet with links to the photos in their original folders.
The weir is associated with the Moulin de Chanvre (the Hemp Mill), the last house in Preuilly on the Chaumussay road. The water backs up behind the weir and is diverted down a mill race on the rive droite (right / north bank). The weir is also the border between the communes (local administrative districts) of Preuilly-sur-Claise and Boussay.
So who has the responsibility of clearing away the debris of the fallen tree? Theoretically the landowner (ie the proprietor of the Moulin de Chanvre) has the responsibility, but mill owners are offered several choices of approach, ranging from doing all the work themselves to having the Office nationale de l'eau et les milieux aquatiques (National Office for Water and Aquatic Environments) arrange everything. In practice, probably Yohann Sionneau will sort it out. He's the river technician based in Preuilly with the Communauté des Communes de la Touraine du Sud (an organisation that all the local communes belong to, allowing them to pool resources). He can probably organise the manpower and machinery via the local council and fund it from a central river maintenance fund.
I haven't owned a pair of rubber boots since I was a child, partly because once I became an adult I could never find any that were affordable and fitted around my calves comfortably. Amazingly, these ones do, so that combined with the small price and the irresistably apt motif, I had to buy them.
I am also struck by how empty the streets were, although this may be a function of the photographers working early in the morning so that you could see the street rather than the people.
Where one of the ditches flows into the Claise I noticed there was quite a bit of sludge and plant material, but what caught my eye was a large hairy caterpillar. I realised that someone had dumped a load of pine tree clippings into the ditch. Each of the clippings had a processional caterpillar nest encasing it, and it was clear that it was these nests the culprit was trying to get rid of, not the pine clippings per se. It seemed like a peculiar choice of disposal methods, since the perpetrator must have had to bundle them up and carry them down to the river somehow. Why not pile them up and burn them? That is the standard method of destroying them. Why risk spreading the highly irritant hairs all over yourself and maybe even your car upholstery? My greatest fear is that they were first doused with insecticide which is now merrily washing down the Claise. Yohann, the river technician, is going to be more than a bit exasperated when he finds out.
Neil, over on Chez Charnizay, noted in a recent post that the processional caterpillars have been active all winter. They will indeed have been having a very easy time of it in the mild weather, but nothing except the very coldest weather slows them down. They are one of the climate change winners, moving inexorably up through France, further and further north. They are a real problem if, like Neil and Antoinette, you have pine trees in your garden. The nests are high up and you need a cherry picker to reach them to cut them down. The glass fibre like hairs float down, landing on your pets or the ground or your outdoor furniture. They produce a reaction that ranges from mild discomfort (similar to stinging nettle) to anaphylactic shock. Some people are more sensitive than others, and dogs are more sensitive than cats to the irritant protein the hairs inject.
And speaking of clichés, did you know that the word does have the same meaning in French and English, but in French there is an additional meaning, very commonly used but rather different and unexpected if you don't know the etymology?
Its cousin the Dorade grise (Black Sea Bream) comes from a different kettle though. Numbers fell in the 1970s - 80s through over fishing in the Atlantic, but it has bounced back now. It is netted along the French Atlantic coast, the Channel, all around the British Isles and the North Sea. Never as highly regarded as the Gilt-head, it is nonetheless a very nice fish. I guess it's the Pollock (Colin) to the Gilt-head's Cod (Cabaillaud). Anyway, when I saw some at the fish stall in the market in Preuilly on Thursday for only €7.50 / kg I was delighted and bought one for dinner costing a smidge under €4.
The meal served at this simple and elegant setting was the ultimate French peasant classic, poule au pot, and the venue was a private house. J and H were relaxed and generous hosts.
Couldn't find a pair. Plenty of gloves, no pairs. Even worse, plenty of gloves: all for the left hand.
From the road it appears that there is only one house dating from the time of the rebuild, but I wouldn't be surprised if the bones of many of the houses in town are that old. This building is here.
I have a lot of photos of interesting buidings in Azay and will be posting them here from time to time over the coming few weeks. Next time you're in Azay, spend an hour walking around - it will repay your time.
We used 5cm béton cellulaire blocks. These are the very light cement bricks, full of air and cuttable by hand, that we had used on part of the upstairs bathroom wall. We just glued them to the placo, shaped them using a hand rasp, then plastered and painted them.
I think they work really well, and am really pleased we took the decision to do something slightly different.
More recently still, Chris and Annie brought us a galette hollandaise. None of us had encountered one of these before. It had the usual accessories - gold cardboard crown, ceramic feve (in this case, in the shape of a Tour de France yellow jersey wearer). It was particularly good and was made by their local boulangerie-patisserie I think. Tim and Pauline stayed to lunch after an excursion to the Preuilly market to buy bitter oranges for marmalade, and some wedges of galette hollandaise went down very well with homemade proper custard (egg yolks leftover - for once - due to Simon's 
I really should get round to making one of these seasonal galettes myself, so, curious to see what made the difference between the ordinary ones and the 'Dutch' style ones, I searched for recipes. Apparently the galettes hollandaises have a macaronnade spread over the top (basically a frothier version of the filling). This looks like a good recipe, which I might try in due course.
Not nasty, dark, wet, misty, clammy, chill through to the bone winter, but hard frost followed by sunshine winter, just like I remember from growing up in Canberra. It was -5°C overnight, and the frost lasted all day even though the temperature supposedly reached +5°C. This morning we are forecast the same temperature (for some reason, the temperature is at its lowest after sunrise), with icy roads and mists. I will not be reporting back about the accuracy of the forecasts.
The new blog header was taken at about 2.45 yesterday afternoon. It looks beautiful, but I should have worn my gloves.
We think this mixer is more or less what we are after - it certainly reads like what we want. The problem is that like many French appliances they only seem to be offered by a few online stores so we have never seen one in the flesh.
As devoted viewers of QI will no doubt recall, if you put a Siamese cat in a refrigerator it goes black. That is because the hair is temperature sensitive. The fur on the face, tail and feet ie the extremities, are always cooler, so always dark. However the body fur is warmer and stays pale.
It's to do with an enzyme in the hair called tyrosine. The enzyme is involved in the production of melanin, a brown pigment, but it is heat sensitive, breaking down if the temperature goes up too much.
Cook for 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 190°C oven. Once they look like gingernuts remove from oven, and when they can be handled without burning your fingers or falling apart remove from the baking tray and put on a wire rack.
Being large, they are the last of the fruit to ripen and are ready in late September - October. I poached a few, but most of them went to make jelly (we have already eaten every jar) and I ran the pulp that remained after straining for jelly through a food mill to remove skin and seeds. It sat in the freezer until a week or so ago, when I got it out to make quince paste.
Quince paste seems to have originated in Turkey and from there made its way to Spain and Portugal. In English language cookbooks it is often called membrillo, which is the Spanish word for quince. Quince paste in Spanish is called dulce de membrillo. The French for quince is coing, so quince paste is pâte de coing. In England it is commonly referred to as quince cheese, and this is how I first encountered it, at the farmers market I shopped at regularly in the late 1990s-early 2000s. It is used both in a sweet and a savoury context, as a counter to strongly flavoured cheeses or game and as a petit four or friandise with coffee. In France it is regarded as a seasonal treat, made in the autumn and served over the Christmas - New Year period.
To make it you combine an equal quantity of quince pulp and sugar in a large boiler. Heat it slowly to dissolve the sugar and then simmer for about 1.5 hours, on the lowest possible heat. It burns easily, so check it regularly and scrape the bottom of the pan. Slowly the colour will darken from orangey pink to brownish orange as it cooks. It is like working with molten lava, both in its appearance and its capacity to burn the unwary cook. You can't cook it with the lid on because you need to drive a fair bit of water off. To protect against burns and splashes I use a mesh lid on the pan, which allows steam, but nothing else out.
Once it has got thick and dark and you are having difficulty preventing it from burning even on the lowest heat, transfer it to a baking tray lined with baking paper. Put it in the oven at 50°C for another 1.5 hours to dry out some more. Then leave it in the fridge overnight to cool completely and set. The next day tip it out on to a board dredged in icing or vanilla sugar. Ideally, cut the paste into thick rods with a wire, but a long knife will do. Dredge or roll these rods in sugar, wrap in waxed paper and refridgerate. To serve, unwrap and cut into cubes. Roll the cubes in vanilla, golden castor or raw sugar.
You can also bottle (can) it by putting it in sterilised jars instead of in the oven. Close the jars and process in a water bath in the normal way. This will give you a paste for spreading on bread like a jam, which is very popular in Spain topped with Manchego cheese.
I can't work out if the most visible piece survived because it was covered, or because it wasn't covered. I also can't work out if it is a "buy jeans from us" advert for a shop in town, or for a particular brand of jeans.
So now we have a very smart looking filter coffee maker that is so much better than our old (12€ from Intermarché) filter coffee maker, which also makes better coffee. Result! Thank you Ingrid and Huub for your kind generosity!
This means that we have used an otherwise unusable space and that when uncle Geoff visits he can access tea constantly throughout the day without have to find the makings.
I find it a pleasant drink, sweetish and smooth, but not one I think to serve regularly. Here in the Touraine it is also widely available and popular, but it is not, strictly speaking, a local drink, nor is it made locally. It is made in much the same area as cognac is made, and many of the producers are also cognac producers. The drink is a blend of newly fermented grape juice and cognac which is then aged, resulting in a fortified wine.
Once the lambris is nailed to the battens you have to finish it with a top rail, and put a moulded corner piece in. As is usual with these things, the actual lambris was the cheapest part of the whole operation, with the battens and mouldings more than doubling the cost.
This is why we went for the non-cheapest option for painting, as well: GTMI. As you can see in the above photo I managed to put the grey paint on the wall with not too many issues, but the photo below shows the problems I had with the red paint. That's why you can see Bruno...
We like our lambris - painting it the same colour red as the end wall of the kitchen has tied the kitchen and dining room together, and it means the walls should be protected from damage from big clumsy blokes not fully in control of a chair.
