Murs, Plafonds, Sols in Paradise

Let’s say you want to hang a painting in your new house somewhere in the USA, Canada
or other “modern” countries. You examine the painting for the type of hanger it requires, say it’s a simple ^^^^^ metal piece expecting a small nail head to retain it at some spot on your beautiful wall. You obtain a nail that HAS a head of sufficient length to engage the material the wall is made (say dry wall…er plasterboard or lath and plaster) of or use a stud finder or magnetic device
to find a wooden stud at a close enough location to where you want the painting exhibited to nail to. Then you pound in the nail leaving enough length to engage the hanger device or wire on the back of the painting. Easy enough huh? You could even go another step and use a small molly (plastic/metal) to install a small screw into for that deluxe job. That’s there…where you ARE or WERE once. I live HERE, my house is HERE and the walls involved are HERE too. They are of two broad types, not even distantly related to each other, 2 – 3 feet thick od either SOLID limestone/marble cut from a quarry or from some castle, castle wall, fallen down barn or house or whatever. It is NOT hollow, it is SOLID, VERY solid. Sometimes this type is coverred over with a layer of lime and horsehair, applied up to an inch thick to fill irregularities in the pierres (stones), this type is quite old and therefore fragile at times, very fragile. Regular quicklime plaster is used as well when they ran out of horses. Often the ceilings are the horsehair variety installed over a lath-like assemblage…but that’s ceilings, we are stuck at the wall painting hanging business right now, why did you try to distract me? Another type of wall is
stone and mud/sand coverred with crepie…lime mixed with sand. It can also find itself coverred with the horsehair mix or plaster. No matter…any attempt to NAIL into the stone wall under the horsehair stuff will result in a bent nail, fractured horsehair/plaster and a damaged thumb. You must either relocate the offending nail to a less solid place (like your skull) or grab a hammer drill, drill a 1/4″ hole using a carbide tipped drill, install a molly of plastic or metal then screw in a nice screw. In the stone/mud wall with horsehair covering you can do a similar thing with a chance that you might actually find a spot in the mud that is hard enough that a molly with be able to be glued to the hole, left to cure, then screwed into.
Mollys rule here. Then there’s the roman brick wall with horsehair/plaster or just plaster…you know it because it rains red dust when you try to drill the molly’s hole and hit a brick that is in mid self-destruction, you see these roman bricks can be damned near glass-like or simply MUD that was never fired in a kiln at all or for a time not to exceed 10 minutes. It could be dried horse shit for all it matters because no molly made will be glued or otherwise attached to this crap. It falls apart if touched. Solution? Move the molly’s location and try, try again, maybe this new one will have a half-hard one to fasten to. Then there are the famous HOLLOW brick walls…the brick is actually hollow…it’s lightweight so eacy to assemble upstairs somewhere and is THIN…like 2 inches thin. That’s the hint you needed. Small molly’s CAN be attached, nails do NOT work unless they are very small and won’t hold your painting. The problem here is that when you drill for a moilly to this the drill drills right thru the hollow brick to the hollow place inside and strikes nothing. The thickness may or may not be thick enough to set in a molly at all…now you wisely go to the spring loaded molly for hollow walls and do that knowing it is a one time shot at getting the depth right and you cannot remove the molly to adjust it in anyway once it has been insewrted into the wall or the little sping wing thingie will drop to the inside of the hollow brick never to be seen again, get another molly. Those with wood walls, I applaud your good common sense.

Postman Pat Delivers to Paradise!

Background, Pierre has a truck. We won an EKTORP Ikea sofa on eBay.FR which resided in (near) Paris). The other day, Friday, we stopped at the boulangerie in Le Chatelet for the usual pastry fix on the way to the junk store in Montlucon. As I sat in the idling Avensis, along comes our brand new friend Pierre. He sees me, I roll down the window and shake hands, “how are you!” In a moments chat re what we are doing in HIS village the conversation turns to acquiring a truck big enough to stuff a sofa into. How? I dunno but it worked at the time, he indicates HIS truck parked across the street “Postman Pat”. I ask if we might borrow it and he said “sure”, our day was made! How to get an IKEA EKTORP sofa from Paris to Lignieres was becoming quite a problem, as neither of us possessed a VL license that allows us to rent such a vehicle in France. So now we have a truck (ex mail truck!) available, after the less thsn satisfactory visit to the Mountlucon junk store (we bought NOTHING) we made our way via the Leader Price grocery outlet and Brico store back home. We emailed the owner of the EKTORP (where does IKEA get these names?!) and made a date for yesterday (Sunday) at 2pm to pick up the object. So up at 7 to prep, remove couch A from spot A, move to spot B after removing sofa B to Spot C. Now to obtain EKTORP D which is 200 miles north of us at Spot D. So off we go thru the streets of Lignieres, out to the countryside to seekout the desired truck “Postman Pat” at Pierre’s own pile of rocks. There she/he was, sitting on the edge of the road as red as a Royal Mail truck ever was.
Pierre, it’s proud owner, wiggled the keys gleefully at us over the fence. He ran us thru a few cautions and notations, “The doors are tough to open”, “use the key and jerk the handle at the same time to open the rear door”, “This is the key for the fuel cap” and so on. After a short tour of his pile of rocks and all the wonderful work he has done to it by HIMSELF no less, we were OFF! Turn the key, watch the glow plug light go out, turn further, Varoooom! She fires right off.
We pull away as Pierre watched anxiously…with good reason! You see this Royal Mail vehicle is RIGHT HAND DRIVE! And I am an American. Not an easy fit for sure. But I have done this before in both England and Scotland so it’s sort of…kina…familiar. Stick has 5 speeds forward with the top one a true overdrive for cruising on flat ground, 4th is normal high gear. 1st gear you could use to pull up tree stumps. Thru the little hamlet we go out thru the forest and 15 minutes later we pull up to the A71 entrance at St. Amand. Grab a toll ticket and the gate goes up and we pull away to accelerate for the next few minutes up to our crusing speed of 55 mph in top gear. Not bad. We settle in for the long drive ahead of us under a cloudy sky with rays of sunshine lighting the road ahead, certainly a good omen. Mile after mile roll by, at first a joy as we can see above the roadside fences and bushes to the views beyond…and they are magnificent! The French countryside is ablaze with spring colors, the reds of poppies, the blue of foxglove,
the yellow of colza and dandilion. Spectacular! We stop for an espresso at one of the many Air du this or that that they have scattered along the major motorways throughout France. Makes for a pleasant stop to walk about, shop for Products Regional featured at almost every one (candies, clothing, ceramics, cookies, the ever present wines) and an ice cream (A Magnum bar…YUM! Cappucino is my favorite, Kelly likes the Dark Chocolate one) then out to ride Pat another hundred miles or so and stop once again, this time for a coke and a pre-packaged sandwich. Not great but filling, it’s a motto when driving on the motorway. Pat does well, she/he cruises and stays firmly in a straight line once in a while, Kelly endlessly monitors my slow drift towards the white line on HER side…the passenger side, it’s my Left Hand Drive theory at work. We drift towards that with which we are familiar, the white line on the left side…I want it closer, and closer. She is the better of us at this game in these circumstances as she is mostly the passenger when we are here and so sees the white line differently.
Nonetheless, I NEED correcting else someone is going to find themselves in a BIG squeeze. Onward to the outskirts of Paris, the Mappy.FR maps and destination instructions are terrific and within a short while we find outselves on the exact exit we needed. Off the freeway now onto a city boulevard, down a hill, thru a couple of lights and there it is!
Into the parking lot of a moderate rise apartment building, like many others in the outskirts of many cities across the globe, this one is different…it holds our EKTORP sofa. Entrance 7, Level 4…up we go!
Knock! Knock! A young man opens the door looking like he just woke up…it’s 2pm in the afternoon. He indicates that Robert is “en le jardin” (In the garden) and waves as though it is around the corner.
Down the stairs we go and out into the parking lot and to the left we go amid screams and yells of little kids in a nice blue pool surrounded by trees. Robert approaches all smiles and shakes my hand “Bonjour!” I say, “je suis Howard”, I say. He speaks english very well and leads me back up the stairs to his apartment. There she is, the EKTORP, all tan and comfortable looking. He bags up the cushions and gets his little girls (10-11 yrs old) to take them downstairs. He and I lift the sofa and thru hook and crook carry it to the staircase after removing it’s feet so it will fit thru the doorway. Down we go, thru the stairwell, little by little, working out the difficulties as they occur. Down finally at ground level, laughing and tired, I go to Pat, start her up and drive to the entrance. We load the cushions and the sofa in a few minutes, it fits easily in the large space of the van, making our life easier. We say goodbye to Robert and his ever so sweet and useful moviestar daughters. Out we go all waves and celebrations to find ourway back to the freeway. A view of the Eifel Tower greets us along with the highrise skylike of a BIG CITY, the ONLY big city I know of near where we have been is PARIS, oh my…a slight goof has befallen us.
The next exit allows us to turn about and get back in the right direction. Off we go headed home. Terrific! Then…it begins to rain. It pours, the heavens open, I switch on the windshielf wipers and spray some fluid to remove the dried on bugs and guts. The rain continues, hour after hour. We stop for another coke about Orleans, we change drivers, climb back in Pat and run on south til the clouds thin, the rains turn to mist then cease altogether about Bourges where we stop to fill Pat with gazoil once again in preparation to turn her back over to her owner in about an hour. I drive her home, unload the EKTORP and her cushions, then drive back to Pierre’s place to hand over the keys and take our Toyota on home to crash. Pierre is all giggles and happy as a clam seeing his beloved “Postman Pat” back in one piece. He offers us a frozen pizza and we go for it for the company and to STOP in this most busy of days. We chat for a couple of hours about France, our life in the villages and the future of mankind. We leave about 9:30, arrive at home about 15 minutes later. We button up the house and head up to sleep the day off. What a day it was! 445 miles altogether, 8 hrs on the road as well. “Postman Pat” was a wonder! Thanks Pierre! Dinner for you and your wife when she arrives from Wales!
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What kind of day is this?

Mostly it was all work, installing the remainder of the curtains in both the upstairs and downstairs windows, painting where it was still needed and sitting in the occasional sunshine. A full day. I decided I wanted another Italian dish for dinner, Eggplant Parmiagiano, riso con limone and Chicken Caccetorri came to mind. I started cooking about 4pm.
Cicken C takes about 2 – 2.5 hrs depending on how efficient you are at cooking the vegies. I start with sauteing the 3 small onions, 1 shallot and the 4 cloves of garlic in 2 tablespoons of olive oil (EVOO). This takes about 10-12 minutes to make the onion/shallot/garlic mix limp.
I added 2 teaspoons of dried oregano to the saute. Then I chopped (1/4″ dice) 4 medium tomatoes, added them to the pot then added one 10oz can of tomatoe puree along with 2 cups of a drinkable red wine.
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The chicken breasts or leg/thighs get pan fried in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil til golden brown and done inside…about 15 minutes. Turn them off and add the breasts or leg/thighs to the tomato saute, keep covered with the sauce as it cooks. Cook for 1.5 hrs or the meat separates easily with a fork.
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The Eggplant Parmigiano is dead easy, slice the eggplant diagonally (prettier) then liberally sprinkle each piece with salt. put each slice in a stainless steel bowl and set aside for 20 min. Rinse the bowl full with cool water for 1 minute. Drain, dry between two paper towels, then
grate 1/2 cup of parmigiano regiano into a bowl and dip each piece into the cheese then into a frying pan on medium heat (oil with a bit of EVOO). Flip to the other side using tongs or a fork about 2 minutes. Remove from heat after two more minutes or until golden brown. Plate.
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Mound 1/2 cup rice on each plate, place eggplant slices on the plate and over the top add the chicken pieces and the sauce.
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Serve with a stout red wine, Cote Du Rhone or Burgundy, Merlot or Zinfandel.
Enjoy.

Cherry Pickers in Guess Where

Yesterday, a Wednesday, was beautiful in the morning, sunny, warm and no sign of the usual. We decided over the morning espresso to take the day “off” just because. What this really meant was a wild run with a short list thru Bourge’s hardware stores for odds and ends, nuts and bolts (really!) and a quick run into Geant to get our (cats!) favorite kind of cat litter, one that works (clumps…imagine.) in the Litter Robot. The level was down and there was none left in the last box. 5 boxes bought. Off to another store to exchange some pillows from the shower room’s builtin to one’s that more correctly match the setting…black and bigger, beautiful. Then wander off across the countryside northwest of Bourges and returned home at 1pm. So much for the day “off”.
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I painted the top of the bathroom and TV room windows for Kelly whose arms couldn’t reach far enough. Ugh. Started dinner proceedings about 5:30. Then Bringggg, Bringggg! The phone, our new friends Ann and Raj, Kelly yells from upstairs, “Ann and Raj have asked us to go cherry picking, wanna go?” I found myself saying “sure…I guess”, this amidst great chopping of shallots and mincing of garlic for my favorite Ragu “Cantanese (Catania, Sicily) Whore Sauce”. It is a delicious and unusual combination that eats very well. Here’s the recipe as I do it, other’s mileage may vary: Takes about an hour and a half to prepare and cook. Feeds 3 teenage males, serves 4 hungry cherry pickers. 6 normal people will be well fed. Burp!
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fry 6 strips of smoked bacon that have been cut into 1/2″ pieces. chop, chop. Until nearly cooked crisp but not quite. LIMP does it.
1 teaspoons salt (MAX)…remember it’s going to reduce now by about 1/4 so too much salt is a meal killer. You can always add more at the end of cooking.
In the same pan saute 4 medium shallots cut into thin slices lengthwise.
do this until limp, 5 min or so. DO NOT ALLOW TO BURN!
Add 4 large chopped fine cloves of garlic.
Add 4 carrots 1/4″ dice.
Add 2 stalks celery 1/4″ slices.
Cook until carrots just soften, about 10 minutes over medium heat.
Add 1 teaspoon hot pepper flakes or 1 dried hot pepper. Be careful.
Add 4 large tomatoes, core then diced, skin, seeds and all.
Add 1 11oz can/box of tomato puree.
Add 8 oz green olives (pitted or unpitted)
Add 2 cups nice red wine, take a sip first, must be good enough to serve guests. Not the Champion 79 cent a plastic bottle stuff, a stout 2.50 bottle of Red Vin Du Pays or a cheap Cote Du Rhone will do nicely.
Now reduce heat to a simmer and cook until the diced tomatoes are reduced to soft pieces and the sauce is nicely thickened, about 1 hour.
At this point one could turn it off, allow to cool then freeze the sauce in smaller batches for future meals for two. Goes wonderfully over chicken, veal and large flakes white fish like cod. Delicious.
To serve, Boil 1.5 lbs Fetucini, bucatini, or liguini til al dente (look at package instructions please), place hearty amount of sauce over top, grate on some parmisiano regiano or Pecorino cheese and get another bottle of red ready, dinner is SERVED!
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So we drove away from my now uncooked sauce towards Ides St. Roche, a small village a bit south of Lignieres to get a tour of their own pile-of-rocks an old mansion in the heart of the quite lovely village. Wonderful rooms with the same no-square-corner approach to building as our pile-of-rocks. Floors to be replaced but SOME…ohhhh, very nice encaustic floors with no damage or cracks apparent in at least three rooms! Beautiful. The kichen has a large fireplace with a beamed ceiling overhead, it will be a fine place to cook. The hall behind is HUGE with a lofty ceiling that is in excess of 15 feet high, what a setting for a dinner party for 40 good friends! The barn was down the street as is a certain practice here in countryside France. A huge ancient thing leaning this way and that, mostly that at least 3 and maybe 4 feet out of kilter. Must have been built with wet wood with the grain accidentally faced the same way…towards the street. Anyway, it stands, and has for a long, long time, several hundreds of years I suppose. Behind it was The Orchard. Led by Raj we waded into the orchard, waist high and higher in noxious weeds and underbrush. We picked cherries and more cherries, amazingly sweet and delicious in this nearly abandoned orchard behind their barn. Several trees were just coverred with ripening cherries ready to burst at the next raindrop. So Ann plucked, Kelly picked, Raj climbed the ladder to locate and sever sevral heavily laden branches and I emptied the branches of the fruit, one for me, gulp, one for the bucket until we had nearly denuded the two trees. We had many pounds of cherries to share between us. Great fun with our new found friends and soulmates. Home to finish dinner and drink a bit of wine. We sat in the Library while I watched over the cooking ragu. We and our fellow cherry pickers ate at 11pm sharp, the latest dinner I have ever prepared. We drank 3 and a half bottles of Red (mostly Cote Du Rhones, a favorite of mine) and had wonderful, laughing conversation until Raj felt the droop of his eyelids and we said goodnight about 1230. We immediately went to bed to awake to guess what? Rain and about 10 lbs of fresh cherries in a bin by the radiator. Now what do I do with these that makes sense?
Hmmmmm

Painting The Roses

Yesterday and the day before I spent about an hour and a half first watering down the white exterior satin acrylic paint for the wicker chairs then using a HVLP (like a Wagner only from the UK) spray rig to apply said paint. So fast! The thing really delivers the paint without a ton of overspray to the item being painted. Wicker chairs have 10 thousand cranies and little nooks where any other painting method (short of dipping it!) just doesn’t cover. These 4 chairs are quite old and one might just throw them away if one wasn’t somewhat crazy about wicker chairs. They just needed some loving attention. I coated the arms and back with exterior white glue to help the rigidity somewhat then powerwashed them last week. I painted then Sunday and Monday. . Overnight it cured sufficiently so this morning I turned them over and painted the underside of everything. Kelly thinks they look great, I do to. We decided NOT to paint the old cobblers bench and instead clean it up, sand it lightly and apply a clear lacquer finish. The next painting project will be the front shutters, all 24 of them, again in white as that is what this house wants. I do it in Sicilian colors if it were my choice but alas, calmer ideas are at hand and she would kill me for even suggesting it. The French would have a fit! This IS The Berry afterall. Staid and non-progressive. Brown is as exciting as colors get here generally. It takes the MAYOR’S permission to change outside colors on a house.

A Daytrip Away

We decided last night that we needed to go to Evry, 330 Km north towards Paris to the IKEA there to acquire some new curtains and associated frilly things and other misc. items for the house. It was certainly a good idea as we were up til after 12 with our evening guests for a 6 course dinner featuring the same pork stuffed with garlic and fennel that we served last week with a sauce made of blood orange juice, sugar, carrots sliced to serve as a side vegie. The first was a basil/walnut pesto witrh alsacian noodles that looked like bucatini but was egg noodle based. Quite a hit but I think difficult to eat as the noodles were somewhat too thick and were springy. Thus messy and difficult to get a fork full. Italian bucatini or fettucini would be a better choice. A cheese course was stilton, tillamook white cheddar and a delicious soft goat cheese rolled in cracked pepper with toasts brushed with olive oil. I made strawberry ice cream with fresh sliced strawberries over the top, very good. Then we dove into a few of our collection of desert wines. All in all a very nice dinner that came off well as we are fast becoming expert at this art.

The trip to Evry was an easy 3 and a half hours until the last 2 kilometers which made us lost and confused, each roundabout led to another and the signage was terrible as usual. One IKEA sign at the first roundabout was reassuring but French signage is just not adequate to the task at hand. Not enough signs and not enough information either, and more often than not no distances are given. So we wandered about the area, roundabout to roundabout hoping we’d get a hint break and sure enough! A HUGE blue building appeared and it was our IKEA waiting to be assaulted by two Californians in search of bargains for the Grande Maison.
3 hours and three hotdogs later we exited the store with the following:

12 pair of 3 meter long white frilly curtains that the French use as both decoration and to shade a room from excess sun.

1 set of actual curtains of a dark grey velvet for our bedroom.

100 white plastic clothes hangers

4 Wicker Chairs for outside seating.

4 Cushions for same.

Big blackboard for the kitchen.

A lampshade.

2 packages of flourescent light bulbs. (total of 6)

4 plastic cutting boards for the new kitchen someday real-soon-now.

2 cheap knives for same. I LOVE cheap knives! They sharpen up real well with a steel and if you screw them up, like I do ocassionally you haven’t wrecked a Sabatier or Trident just a serviceable cheap knife. Throw it away and buy another.

On and on to the tune dah, dah, ta, dahhhhh…545 Euros!
That plus the 45 Euros worth of tolls going and coming AND 35 Euros of diesel fuel for the Toyota…and you have one very expensive day at an IKEA. Gads. Thank goodness they don’t have one nearer to us and we only go once every 4 years.

A Roof Examination

This is a long story, hopefully I can shorten it and keep the most frustrating portions intact for your enjoyment. We bought the Grande Maison last August…2006, it took until Novemberf to close, delay after delay and the damned problem of money transfers reared their ugly head time and time again. That said…we successfully DID get the money here and thru magic and much French wringing-of-hands the money got into the right hands. The house became ours. We, however weren’t destined to open the front door as the new owners until we returned to France in late March. We gathered the keys from the real estate agent and we were IN! The dust hasn’t cleared since! About two weeks AFTER we arrived we received an estimate for the replacement of the roof, it’s gutters and affiliated attachments, drains, roof slates etc. 19,000 Euros. For what?! A ROOF!? You have GOT to be kidding! They weren’t kidding, the roof was failing and indeed was dangerous so we were told, as pieces were falling off of it and could decapitate someone on the sidewalk below! We had NEVER been told by anyone of this condition (s), not the previous owner, her son or the attorney or our real estate agent! No one said a thing! Good grief! It could have collapsed and killed hundreds during a protest parade! But no, it did not collapse and actually doesn’t leak much either. Nonetheless a detailed reading of the estimate yeilded 19,000 Euros worth of repairs and replacement. Shit! So at 6pm last night in came a different roofer with his own ideas and his own inspection, he pronounced the back roof of the house “bon” (good) and the front “malvaise” (sick/bad). Now this IS progress! Much shaking of hands and a promise to return with a Euro figure Semaine Prochain…next week. We will see then what another number is. The joys of living here never cease to amaze me. I love Paradise, I think.

A beautiful Sunday in Paradise

A Beautiful Sunday today, puffy clouds passing over, in the 70’s this afternoon and with The Queen and her Prince coming for dinner tonight at 6. We have several such pairs hereabouts, mostly Brit ex-pats but a few French ones too. We have had several of the British variety to dinner over the years and it’s always an enjoyable bash. We like to make formal dinners, 5-6 courses are normal, tonight we will have the following:Cold Potato Soup with Garlic and Parsley as a first course. Pork Roast with fennel and garlic with Orange Cinnamon Carrots and Italian White Bean salad, the second,Cheeses from The US, a Tillamook White Cheddar, Great Britain is represented with a fine Stilton Blue and locally produced creamy Goat Cheese with Garlic. All this on toasts of the local bread. The Third.Raspberry Tart with Chocolate Sauce, the fourth.Dessert Wines from Sicily, Italy and France. A fifth.Espresso, the 6th.Just enoiugh to fill out the entire evening til about midnight given our level of drinking and general bullshitting.The tart is made, the white beans are made, the carrot dish is cooking, the soup is cooling it’s heel in the fridge and the Roti (pork roast) is waiting to be skewered on a rod and insewrted into the rotisserie.All is well. The house is as presentable as this particular pile of rocks can be right now with many unfinished rooms. The guests appreciate such a scene as it is one threy themselves are quite familiar with, having an uncompleted 12th century castle as their abode.

Moonday in Paradise, Jour du Grande Marche

Market Day in Lignieres, the Monday 1st in any month is the BIG market, many vendors sprawled along the winding streets and under thge cover of the 14th century open air Hall. Vendors yes but people, no. Rain you see or the threat of same kept people away and vendors closed up early to avoid the rush. A sad market day when this happens but there will be many more. We went to the tourist board to collect MC, she had come in early to go with us to the Marie (City Hall) to sort out who owns the garage next door to us asa we would like to either purchase it or rent it so we could better use our backyard sans car. We learned that it was owned by the same man who runs the little Proxi Market just across the shared alley. So we will go to him and ask someday soon. Then to the bank to deposit a small refund check from an impound account associated with our purchase of the Grande Maison du Bourge. It rained and stopped, rained and stopped. Stoped at the dentists office and sat patiently while she finished up some poor soul’s mouth, we got a dual appointment for this Wednesday at 11am. Then abled down the block to buy a loaf of compagne (whole wheat) bread from the corner boulangerie and walked home. Upon our return I noticed that the neighborhood cat has torn up one of the planters I just filled with planting soil and destroyed my seeding (zuchinni seeds) of it, so I stuck 6 inch pieces of wire into it and wet it thouroghly to keep the beast from pooping in it again tonight. Guess I’ll have to put some wire cover over them soon. The house is still clean from our weekends labor for the Queen and Prince so we just sat around and watched the intermittant rain and slept like cats.