Paradise Leaks!

Well, days have passed eventfully, with many visits from helpful Bob to fix the leaky sink (failed grout in the wall tile and bad washer in the faucet connection) and help me fire up the century old feul chaffage (oil heater). Lots of idle chatter as we examined and eventually repaired the sink whose mysterious leaking of huge quantities of water onto the kitchen floor had grown boring to say the least. We ate lunch, he left after another hour of story telling and chomping on the fine bread from the new boulangerie in town and great spooning of the beef and cabbage soup Kelly had cooked in the morning. (4 cups Chicken stock, 1 lb stew beef, 4 medium carrots and 1 large cabbage, cook til beef falls apart with a fork, couldn’t be easier)
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On Monday it was The Donkey Faire in Lignieres, a HUGE annual event featuring the Black Donkey of the Berry as the main attraction. This is a buying, selling and extensive gawking festival. Many vendors of leather goods (mostly for donkeys but there were huge neck BELLS for husbands and boyfriends), food vendors, the town Cave was open pouring copious amounts of the local red and white. Only one thing blemished this sparkling, slightly drunken occassion…the damned weather! Dark, brooding storm clouds, buckets of cold rain and wind blasting us and the donkeys this way and that, people hiding in groups under any cover trying to stay dry (failing) and warm (failing). What a terrible thing to have happen on this glorious old event. Here are some pictures for you…and a movie too!>
Two old friends, another…

Donkeys under the clouds,

Brocante (Flea Market!) Day in you-know-where!

Brocante Day in Paradise found us up at 7 or so, coffee, minor cleanup of the small kitchen and then Bvroooom! Off to Chezel-Benoit for #1. Now Chezal has a population that includes various persons afflicted by mental conditions. I’ve been to three brocantes there and every time the hopital (mental) therein releases a few patients to roam the stalls and gawk with the rest of us. Some just stare in abject silence, some run between tables making utterances that bear little resemblance to speech, others mix well with the crowd and could be taken for you or ME on a slightly bad day…we don’t always respond as a more normally sensed human might…a touch alone creates a loud giggle or shout or excessive hand movements (like Italians after Sunday mass). We ambled thru the stalls looking for something magical and needed, nothing, just cold wind and storm clouds above made it a rather miserable experience…along with the few well mannered nut cases
roaming with us. We saw it all and left unsatisfied for the next experience at Nozier near St. Amand Montrond. Only a short distance away it was down the hill from the town proper in what appeared to be a huge campground next to a beautifully dense tract of hardwood forest. Many stalls, lots of junk lying about and the smell of burning merguez sausage wafting by. I queried a vendor pointing to a lovely Henry 2 mirror they had leaning against his car bumper, “Combien S’il vous plait” (how much please), “Une cent euro”, came back…wants 100 Euros for it, not bad, man knows his stuff, good…but too expensive for our cheap blood. 25, a buy, 35, sure, 50, maybe, above that…eh, they’ll be another someplace, sometime. Well back to the car after another futile brocante session and to home where work (always!) awaits.

Last Night’s Debauchery in Paradise

Not exactly debauchery but enough food, wine and booze, to respectfully SUPPORT such an occurance.
We had invited the newest members of our ex-pat community to dinner, Friday at 6. They were Jonny-on-the-spot and showed up exactly at 6. Kelly and I talked with them a short while when BRRRING! Brrrring! went the doorbell, I knew IMMEDIATELY that I had screwed the goose when Bob and Chuck’s smiling faces entered the foyer. Aw Jezus…I had told Bob that he and Chuck were invited to dinner NEXT Friday…this Thursday afternoon. Talk about embarrassing moments, I felt like a complete idiot. Bob and I talked and I explained that with a 2 burner hob and facing a 6 course dinner (YES!) that it was just damned difficult to fit in 2 more TONIGHT, then in a fit of pique I said, “no problem, we’ll make it work”. With that I grabbed the requisite 2 chairs, moved the silverware to accommodate 2 more at the table and set out to slice another tomato and shred more basil from the garden and then plate now 6 appetizers with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. We all shared a delicious Chateaumillant Red in the parlor, the first time that room had b.een used by anyone but us. Talk, talk, talk and we became thoroughly warmed up for t and he dinner to follow. We moved an hour later to the dining room and shortly thereafter the appetiser was gone. More wine, a delicious Reuilly white, then a small pesto plate followed. I excused myself many times to check the progress of this and that and Kelly and I were like a tag team keeping track of the kitchen. With Bob and Chuck there it made for much more lively chat and covered our absences well, it turned out to be a blessing. Then the Chicken Piccata on red pepper/lemon rice and asperagus with roasted peppers were served. Plates exchanged and hauled to the middle room between the new kitchen and the dining room.
A cheese course followed, a sharp Tillamook Cheddar, a spicy English Stilton and a lovely mild goat cheese with thin slices of a white baguette. More white wine, a Quincy white, everybody commented on how absolutely delicious it was with notes of apricot, green berries and grapefruit. I wished I had bought more bottles of it. It is rare and pricy even here a few miles from it’s place of origin. MORE to come…

Last Night’s Debauchery in Paradise

Not exactly debauchery but enough food, wine and booze, to respectfully SUPPORT such an occurance.
We had invited the newest members of our ex-pat community to dinner, Friday at 6. They were Jonny-on-the-spot and showed up exactly at 6. Kelly and I talked with them a short while when BRRRING! Brrrring! went the doorbell, I knew IMMEDIATELY that I had screwed the goose when Bob and Chuck’s smiling faces entered the foyer. Aw Jezus…I had told Bob that he and Chuck were invited to dinner NEXT Friday…this Thursday afternoon. Talk about embarrassing moments, I felt like a complete idiot. Bob and I talked and I explained that with a 2 burner hob and facing a 6 course dinner (YES!) that it was just damned difficult to fit in 2 more TONIGHT, then in a fit of pique I said, “no problem, we’ll make it work”. With that I grabbed the requisite 2 chairs, moved the silverware to accommodate 2 more at the table and set out to slice another tomato and shred more basil from the garden and then plate now 6 appetizers with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. We all shared a delicious Chateaumillant Red in the parlor, the first time that room had b.een used by anyone but us. Talk, talk, talk and we became thoroughly warmed up for t and he dinner to follow. We moved an hour later to the dining room and shortly thereafter the appetiser was gone. More wine, a delicious Reuilly white, then a small pesto plate followed. I excused myself many times to check the progress of this and that and Kelly and I were like a tag team keeping track of the kitchen. With Bob and Chuck there it made for much more lively chat and covered our absences well, it turned out to be a blessing. Then the Chicken Piccata on red pepper/lemon rice and asperagus with roasted peppers were served. Plates exchanged and hauled to the middle room between the new kitchen and the dining room.
A cheese course followed, a sharp Tillamook Cheddar, a spicy English Stilton and a lovely mild goat cheese with thin slices of a white baguette. More white wine, a Quincy white, everybody commented on how absolutely delicious it was with notes of apricot, green berries and grapefruit. I wished I had bought more bottles of it. It is rare and pricy even here a few miles from it’s place of origin. MORE to come…

A Day with Friends

Up with the dawn, read CNN, drink a few cups of espresso to get a charge on…then the doorbell, Brrrring…brrrring it goes. Kelly answers it as I’m vacuuming the upstairs now. I hear a “bonjour” as the front door was openned, a short exchange in French, not Bob yet, then the door closing. “Howard…(she NEVER calls me Howard), come down here…(Jesus, a command too!) sure enough, one of our wayward parcels has just arrived via France Post. Huh? Must be the one that was last to leave the US…mailed on the 22 of March (YES!) full of cast iron objects for the cooktop we brought from the US. Thank the gods! If that hadn’t made it to us the new kitchens fine old relic of a cooktop with a built in grill would have been so much scrap iron. Amazing. Is there HOPE we’ll see those other two again someday when our travels meet? Time will tell.
Brrrring, brrrring! It’s Bob muttering outside the front door, come to help me with the old perenial leak in the bathroom about the shower plumbing. Down for coffee again and the inevitable story or six and opinion pages from the Bob Journal of French Life. We always enjoy these sessions, he is a genuine man’s man and has worked his whole life doing an array of jobs too long to list and now has this farm outside Lignieres with all manner of animals. His are, without a doubt, the best eggs on earth and he always a warm smile.
An hour passes then UP and at the dripper in the wall. Solder, torch, flame shield in place and wet matches makes this a less than auspicious beginning of a dramatic repair. MORE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2lN7juT838

Warm Day in Para dice!

Well, with THE letter in hand…what letter? The one we got Saturday from EuroPost saying they have a parcel to deliver to us at 10 Rt. St. Amand. Long letter in French that we both understood well enough to figure out that they had something for us and that we we’re not there to receive it whenever that was. Some days ago we figured anyway. So we took the letter to the Tourist Board and had our friend there Anna call EuroPost to find out IF they still had them and if they would send them to our new address instead. The result of that call was a statement that they had already returned them to the US! The letter said we had 14 days to retrieve them or notify Europost of where to send them…now they are gone?! Oh boy, stress mounting up. So, not to be held back, we took off for the Europost in Bourges to find our damned shipments(3). The countryside was breathtaking, as always, with whole fields of bright red poppies here and there. Once to the location, no address given, just drove around the Zone Industrial until we saw their signage, we found all windows shaded and all doors closed except one. Walking into the place there was no one at any desk, no sounds except equipment fans and as far as we could see no employees at hand to talk to at all! The place was empty except for us and piles of boxes and a computer system. After a few minutes of shifting our weight from one foot to the other we exited that area and went around front of the building which looked equally closed and deserted, we say Alloooo into the empty spaces with no answer forthcoming. Hmmmmm, what gives here? Should we call the police? Pictures of the purported employees lined the wall but none were to be seen. Sooo we wandered into the room filled with crates and boxes to no ones chagrin at all…a thief could have emptied the place with no notice at all and there we were. Kelly heard some voices, from where? There! In the back room, on a break, the whole crew. Then the papers were out and the lady kindly called the English speaking help line which was no help at all, yes there was a parcel, yes it was sent back at the insistence of the shipper to….to….GERMANY! What?! Why the hell Germany? Maybe it was the tapis (carpets) Kelly bought on eBay and NOT the three long gone parcels we sent from the US back in March. Shit! Who knows, when I talked to the EuroPost person she said that there was 1 parcel, weight unknown, sender unknown. This is nuts! Did the US Postal Service REALLY use these guys for our poor parcels, 1000 pounds of which are now long gone?
Kelly called at 6pm local time, 9am Suisun Time and got to a US Postal Service person…YES, they use Europost, yes, they tried delivery on the 5th and 16th (the letter received Saturday was the first we knew of any delivery attempt), that’s all they knew either. Shit! Well Kelly was predictably pissed, as was I, we don’t need this news at all. We had so very carefully picked what needed to be shipped and what would come with us on this trip because we knew we were gpoing to move into the big house this time around. We packed it so carefully, evrything just so…in foam, in bubbles, in plastic wrap, inside blankets and comforters and now…where the hell is it? Somewhere between France and the US via Germany for some reason. POE (Port of Entry) perhaps to the EU? How am I to know?
Then off to Brico Depot to buy the ladder of our dreams with a budget of 100 Euros allocated. We found it in the form of a folding ladder that would extend to some 3.5 meters, enough to doi the gutters outside too.
It and 2 smaller companion step stools for Kelly upstairs and downstairs…some plastic angles and covers for the moulier (over the surface channel stuff) for the overhead lamps. The to Mondail Tissues (World Fabric) to check out whatever Kelly needs for the wall covering, curtains etc. project. We went to Carefour to get bread, beer and whatever else. Then home to work on The Mansion!
Oh well, another beautiful, if frustrating, day in Paradise.

Paradise Revisited

Yesterday I skipped a blog, left for the Horse and Donkey Center outside of Lignieres at 7pm, we possessed tickets to see two acts as part of the L’air du Temps music festival presented by Les Bain-Douche theater of Lignieres. The Horse and Donkey center has many large buildings, some that have been converted to venues for stage and music productions. A huge ancient barn all duded up with stage lighting, lasers and music equipment galore stood before us. My estimate of the crowd was a few under a thousand who had paid the sum of 21 Euros for the privilege of watching Vallerie Leulliot and Florent Marchet last night. What a show! Vallerie was first up and she and her band were wonderful, She sang and played played keyboard and also a bit of guitar with which she is a fine talent. Her music has the rhythm of a reggae beat with soft melancholy lyrics, lovely to look at and easy to listen to she was an instant hit with the audience and with us. Here’s a bit from youtube for you to sample of her work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r98MwMVHnIs

She was followed by the terrific band of Florent Marchet, wonderful complex melodies and a rhythmic rock/jazz melange. He had the audience in his hands. What a show…his went on with 4 encores no less, for 3 solid hours! We got out at 12:30am! What a night of entertainment it was, the audience was so very appreciative and the bands of such high quality, my hat’s off to Les Bain-Douche and the city of Lignieres for this fabulous night, one we won’t soon forget. Here’s the link for Florent’s group on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfRhmxMjCGs
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Home today after a morning at a brocante full of rusted junk and folk art made from clothespins. I bought two containers of french fries for 3 Euros…delicious! Back we each took up our respective work stations, Kelly on the floor of the middle bedroom, soon to be TV/computer room, and applied the 5th coat of some white paint over the deep green color that was there. I cleaned up the guest room of a few tools and began the lighting project in the potty. This invoved hanging a brass chandlier with 3 lamps by a hook in mid ceiling and running the needed wiring via above wall channeling, that’s what you must do here if you want electricity anywhere in one of these old houses with 2 foot thick walls made of mud and stone. It took me about an hour to pull out the old porcelin fixture from the side of the wall and do the channel installation badly (without neat turns and covers) and wire the lamp to the switch. It all works and Kelly is pleased with the result, so am I. Tomorrow is grout the showerroom floor day.
See you later!
Howard

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!

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.
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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!