Off to Provence, Really!

So our gentleman seller came thru with an address, a time and a date all thanks to L’s great French! All Hail to L!! She sat right there at the dining room table and called the nice buyer and sorted out all the not-so-trivial details, sooooo cool! She just rattled out the Francaise syllable after syllable fawlessly. Amazing! So now we are off to a small village in Provence to fetch our Portail du fer (Iron Gate). We will take our car, the trusty Avensis with it’s A/C on full as Provence this time of year can be HOT. It’s a mini-California weather type trapped between the Massif Central and the Sea. L charged us with getting her a bottle of Lavender Syrup, thick and delicious she says on top of ice cream. So we will get that done as well. Oh…when do we do this little trek? Next week sometime. Now we use Google Earth to search for hotels and restaurants in response to Kelly’s internet hunt upcoming. I hope we do as well as we did in Lyon last month.
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Today my job was to nail up the wood strips to hang the cloth by and rip more strips and put the fuzzy stuff on the walls between them so that the walls are padded. We NEED padded walls as nuts as we are. Kelly hung the cloth wainscotting along the interior wall after I finished the strips.
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Tonight I’m cooking lamb cutlets, bone in. I actually will BBQ them quickly as we both like them rare. Rub them with morocan dry spice mix and them pound them gently with thyme. Onto the fire for 2 minutes each side and call them done. Garlic mashed potatoes and a salad outside in the courtyard…oh how cool. All easy, simple and delicious.

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The Day After

The summer solstice, 21 June, the longest day of the year here or anywhere else on planet earth.

Brings out the mystery of everything, including parties of 7 for a BBQ in the courtyard of an olde house in Lignieres. The day was sufficiently warm and sunney to keep us indoors while the late afternoon aged into a cooler version. Then after sufficient beer and wine to allow the gathered folk A&R, Mikey, P and his son Jim and ourselves to get hungry we went outside to sit in the shade, drink some more and layout the tomatoes, onions, salsas and Kelly’s terrific mache salad (tiny leaves that each have to be cleaned) in preparation for my burger cooking. I prefer the 15 – 20 % fat version of steak hache (hamburger) that you can get just about anywhere here to the more lean (and less juicy/tasty) 6% stuff. I had preped a fire of small oak pieces and after it had grown hot enough put on all the burgers at once. 12 in all, 2 for each male and 1 for each female.

They cooked through in 5 minutes or less! Off to the buns we had purchased at Champion and handed out to the now salivating guests, myself included. They were excellent, beat McDonalds all to hell! They went, the salsa and chips went and somehow the salad did not, hmmmm, I thought they’d devour the salad too but somehow the salsa had been substituted in the minds and hearts, eh. More for us tomorrow if it lasts. Dessert was an apple pie ala mode with apple ice cream that no one commented on! Yes, the syrup from the apple peels and cores had been used to flavor the ice cream.

We sat and chatted the early evening away and about 10 Mike, P and Jim wandered off hail and hearty. A&R stayed to have a coffee and maybe even see the Solstice Fyre consume the giant stacks of faggots/flowers in the Champ du Foire. A&R took turns checking the crouds progress at the Champ and eventually at about 15 minutes to midnight we joined the frolicing KREW gathered at the now fully involved stack. Naked people chased naked people through the fyre as cats danced in the glare of flames (not really but makes good copy). A dance floor had been setup along with a block long bar which was fully involved itself! There is NO Drinking Problem in France…or at least here in Lignieres! Then bye-byes and kisses all around and A&R were off to home as were we. Into bed, reading for 5 minutes then lights out! The Solstice was a success.

Longest Day of The Year

Well I can’t complain about the weather these last few days, warm and sunny, broken clouds, beautiful actually. Work has slowed on the entry as it nears completion, I need to make a 3/4 round moulding for the corner of the pillar the door is mounted on but that’s about it. It looks good now and the dining room and reading room are nearly completed as well. Nothing seems to ever get completely finished as a myriad of details crop up, paint chips from the ladder, loose seams here and there in the cloth, sand/dirt on the floor…it goes on and on. Like any DIY project the satisfaction is sometimes greatest when you START rather than when you FINISH.
We’re BAD at finishing.
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We are selling the little house across town, we loved the place for the last 6 years that we’ve had it but with this house needing a roof that will cost us nearly $35,000 USD to get done, I can’t do it myself, it’s too high and I’m totally unfamiliar with the materials and how they are used.
The little house is a charmer though, I wish we could keep it but someone will love it and realize what a great value the place is. It’s a walled compound, walls on both sides and the back with a
lockable doored 30 sq/mt garage as well as a big barn (80 sq/mt + 30 sq/mt loft) to store things in. The house (88 sq/mt) is in wonderful condition as we repainted it and did a fancy paint job on both sides of all the doors, really French looking! The 120 sq/mt English garden was designed by a California landscape designer Marsha Pouget. It all works and we are including the refrigerator, dish washer, washer drier combo, and new oven/stove. It has city supplied water and sewer as well.

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The other wonderful thing about it is that it is HERE! This is The Berry, The Valle Noir, the REAL France! The big cities are certainly interesting and sophisticated and full of museums and sights galore BUT this place functions and IS the heart of the country. The people are extremely friendly and welcoming almost to a fault. The Tourist Board that we talk about so often has the most wonderful freindly and USEFUL staff, who translate documents, make phone calls, intercede on your behalf with officialdom, buying tickets etc. etc. They are most helpful to say the very least. We love our big city Bourges! It is but 45 minutes away across the valley and has a wonderful medieval core that exudes charm and sense of place. Small shops and a village-like atmosphere pervade the downtown area. It’s outskirts contain the large mall-like stores we have all become used too everywhere in the world with easy parking and great buys. (http://www.bourges.fr/) . Our other large city Chateuroux (http://www.chateauroux.fr/) has many of the same services and is somewhat closer at about 25 minutes away. Lignieres (http://www.lignieres.free.fr/) is a market village, the confluence of 5 major roadways through the Berry region of Centre. We have an open-air market twice a week, Monday and Thursday in the 14th Century Hall downtown. Fresh local produce of all kinds, chickens, beef, and yes, horsemeat are readily available cut to your order. We LOVE the marche, it is a social event attended by most residents every week, people stop to chat and watch the scene. We have 3 boulangeries, two meat markets, two hardware stores, two florist shops, a shoe store, 2 real estate offices, a big Champion supermarket w/ service station, a car wash, 8 resturants, 4 bars/taverns and on and on. It seems impossible to our Californian sensibilities that this is all available in a village of some 2000 people, hardly a wide spot in the road in the US but it is so. The culture supports it and the society values such diversity of choice.

Here’s the Listing on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=130234244587&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=003

If the link gives you trouble just paint, copy and paste it to your browser. Thanks!

Weather or Weather Not

It’s NOT right now, oh the ACTUAL weather is nice, calm to 5mph, broken clouds, warm…about 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees F) BUT my weather station is down. Real down. Like I took the pole with the sensors down to find out why it was reporting 138 kph winds all night and no temperature readings at all. The pole is 40 feet tall and is a handful to take down and bring back up. I’ve devised a METHOD that will make it easier on me but Kelly might find it a bit daunting, we’ll see. I’ve tied a strong rope to the mast about 20 feet up from the ground and led it over to the house were a bar that goes over the window will serve as a pulley. Kelly can pull down with the help of gravity to aid me in my quest to raise the bloody thing. I’ve charged the batteries and remove the corrosion from the sensor cable (RJ45 telephone cable) where it plugged into the transmitter. Similarly I’ve now charged the batteries for the data collection/display and we should shortly be ready to test. I want to move the transmitter piece down the pole so I can reach it so I don’t have to raise and lower the damned pole each time I need to charge the @##$#! batteries. Seems sensible. Here’s a few of my reporting sites for your perusal:
http://www.kell12.members.sonic.net/lignieres_weather.jpg picture of the street and sky,
http://www.kell12.members.sonic.net/myweather.jpg Weather chart w/ small pic.
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Meanwhile my trusty mate Kelly is hanging cloth on the walls in the entry, matching patterns, measuring, snipping and shoving the ends into the wood strips I afixed to the walls yesterday and the day before. It is work she willingly does and she’s quite talented at it, the results are stunning. The olde girl (the HOUSE!) is looking very good these days, work has picked up with warmer weather and progress is being made. Kelly looks good too.
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I’ve dropped 16 lbs so far on this trip, I’m at a not-so-lithe 206 lbs as of this morning, hoping for more (less) as the summer begins. I refuse to diet, I just eat less and do more as the method I’ve chosen. Diets just don’t seem to work with me as I don’t respond fast enough and then lose the initiative, this way it just drifts ever lower and week by week my pants are getting looser.
Goodbye for now,
Lute
“>Link My AWEKAS Reporting Site click on dot in middle of France, check out the video cams too! …click on Weather Maps and then WEBCAM, just put cursor on top of camera icons . Good fun everywhere, lots to see!

Grass

First before I piss off every one of my fine British friends let me say that I like lawn, it looks nice when cut low and tight around flower beds and garden walks, and spacious acres all flat and outlined with trees and flowers is certainly spectacular. I also admire the effort required to create these green patches, as well as the hard work necessary to maintain them in pristine-like condition. That said, I am simple uninterested in the latter effort and would not EVER under take the former. Why? I am too busy. The Brits, as a group, are certainly busy too…but MOST of someones BUSY, female or male (mostly the latter) is dealing with the meadows they have purchased and turning them into lawns. These lawns fight back if you hadn’t noticed, they grow with every rain and ray of rare sunshine here in the Berry. This place is more like Ireland than any French travel noveletta would speak of. It rains here an average per month of OVER 3 inches. A meter per annum, about what a good lawn here would grow in a month left to it’s own devices. Then one has to cut it back down after any extended absence or find someone who WILL. I won’t be doing this chore for you, too busy doing Other Things, namely painting, moving stones, building furniture, cooking, repairing chairs, chasing away stray cats (another blog coming on THAT!) and other misvelleneous chores assigned by the boss, her name is Kelly.
She is my wife. The observation is not lost on me that every single one of our British friends and compatriots have this same issue common to them, too much lawn to let alone for anytime to do anything else of meaningful gain. One fine lady from the north of the British Isles and who will rename completely nameless in this blog has a fine place a short distance out of Lignieres. A cute-as-pie French cottage she has completely decorated in an arty and beautiful way plunked right down at the top of what appears to be a meadow just about everytime I see the place. Why? Because the dear person is HERE, in this area about a month or six weeks per year. The lawn not so slowly becomes first scraggly, then taller like alfalfa then into a full blown meadow when left uncut for various periods of time. She struggles with this as she cannot deal with it’s height herself and so must get help periodically. The meadow must be struck down to allow for the parties and people she loves to have around her. A deal has been struck between another Brit with the same damned problem (MORE!) as she has but HE is here full time thus only spends 75% of his time mowing, weeding, planting, trimming, edging and cutting on his OWN spacious lawn-meadow so he can spend the rest of his SPARE time dealing with HERS! This is MADNESS! For the Love Of God, spare these poor souls there love affrair with GRASSES, so they can take care of their houses and ruins so as to improve their lot. Gad Zooks! I’d scrape out a path thru the meadow, down to the corner trees, over past the fruit trees and back, not straight, all curvy and pastoral-like, put down Loire River stone over anti-weed cloth and call it good. Clear an area of 10X10 for a bench and some chairs and I’d be set. Enough! The GRASS is Not Greener on the other side of the fence…it’s LONG and MEADOW-Like…they must be gone somewhere, maybe on a golfing vacation, they LIKE greens! It’s certain they’re Brits.

Cars and The French

Cars, nice cars…are the norm here with French manufacturers Citroen, Renault, Peugeot 90% of what we see on the road. Large SUV types are rarer but not unseen during a typical drive. What IS rare are the scenes of smoking, steaming cars with hoods up that seem to infect every French story or article. This is an exageration of the facts as these cars are now modern, safe, well engineered and entirely driveable anywhere in this huge country. Many of the cars are deisels, the attraction once was that deisel fuel was cheaper and maintenance was less frequent as well. Nowadays the price of deisel fuel is equal, or in certain stations, HIGHER than gasoline.
The day before yesterday we bought another tank, it is a memorable occassion as once completed your wallet is much lighter than it was before you started pumping. With prices at 1.45 Euros per liter that is 3.784 X 1.45 = 5.49 Euros per gallon and with our dandy USD to Euro exchange rate of 1.55USD to ONE Euro it is currently $8.50 per gallon. A fill up of our Toyota Avensis is 12 gallons or $102.05. Enough to keep you home! Most cars here are what we in the US would call SMALL, and several are smallER than anything you can buy in the US. There are many models of each major manufacturer’s cars. The prices are about the same taking into account the exchange rate. Used cars can be found in most towns with the major new car dealers having the larger lots. Used prices here appear to me to be quite a bit cheaper than we would experience in California. I would say most French people here are quite loyal to their own car industry in that they buy French cars by the droves and they buy them OFTEN. The prepoderance of autos seen are new or only a few years old, no smoking olde rusted hulks here!
Most cars seem to get 35-45 mpg as a matter of course seemingly without size restriction.

The system of auto inspection keeps the junkers and ill-repaired cars off the roads as a car that cannot be fixed MUST be scrapped. Annual, Bi-Annual inspections are mandantory for all motor vehicles. The cost of the inspection is about 65 Euros. The inspection is done at a special facility marked as Control Technique. They inspect using a series of very modern test equipment and are fastidious as only the French can be. Brakes, engine, tires, transmission, lights, turnsignals etc are tested and reported. If there is a problem it is documented and you are given a short period of time to repair the offending item and then the car is reinspected. Once passing the inspection you are issued a sticker which goes on the windshield for examination by whomever is interested, and they WILL look. The Toyata is scheduled to be inspected by the 8th of June, so tomorrow (the 7th) we’ll take her to St. Amand to the Control Technique for her bi-annual. She has new front shoes (tires), fine Michelin speed rated jobbies that hit us to the tune of 222Euros for a pair…they had died in about 18,000 miles! Why? Hell if I know, except the roads hereabouts are twisty lanes and she’s a front wheel drive beast. Anyhow we got a pair and with the exchange rate (1.55 to 1) that was a mere 344 USD for a PAIR of tires!
Yes we do see olde cars, at fairs and exhibitions which are very popular and some of the cars are truely rare, some are merely odd. Simca’s, Renault dauphines, old Pougeots, military trucks and jeeps from WW2 all make up a melange of wonderful voitures (cars).

It is surprising how many old cars one sees at these meets, all driveable, all well maintained by outward appearances. Many cars need remourques (trailers) it seems, to haul off yard waste, downed building materials, rocks, stones and of course lawn mowers and garden tractors, but THAT’s another subject for another blog entry.

Off to the Medicin…

#95 Off To The Medicin…
Yesterday afternoon came our friends A&R to sit at tea (an English Thing you know!) with a delicious pastry bought at the grouches boulangerie at the round-about. The grouch there is the young woman who it seems is far less happy with her chosen career than she should/needs to be. Every order taken with a surley groan and a look that says “You English/American/Hollandaise swine, bothering ME like this, Get your bread somewhere else!”. Nonetheless the breads and pastries from the place are superior so we all go and hope we get the nice middle aged woman instead. Such is our little world. There ARE several other choices, even the Proxie next door but that place gets the nod, surley or not.
We chatted away for a couple of hours about the weekend, the brocantes and the parties we attended. Such a Life we all lead together, like one big ex-pat family. Eventually I bothered “A” to tell us how to make a doctor’s appointment in French as we have never done that here in the last 6 years of visits. We are both running low on our meds and need valid prescriptions to take to the pharmacy to get them refilled. A promptly took the phone and made the call herself and got ME an appointment in two or three easy sentences! A-bloody-mazing! Little does the Medicin (doctor) know he’s getting BOTH of us for the same services…Kelly and I at the same time. We are joined at the hip. I will fill you in on the gory details when we get back.
GORY DETAILS: We walked thru the streets of Lignieres admiring all the old archetecture and all the newly painted shutters and doors. We arrived at an empty waiting room attached to the side of the Doctor’s Grande Maison Du Bourg (Big City House) we sat down in the waiting room for a few minutes admiring the artwork and archetecture of the room. Soon the door to the doctor’s office openned and he greeted us with a deep “Bonjour Mrdame (Miz-sur-dahm)”, in we went and he invited us to sit down. His office space was chuck full of both medical equipment and art, drawings, etchings and paintings and a bronze sculpture of a human chest on the mantle.
He asked us in French (Remembering we were referred to him BECAUSE he spoke English!) after i said we were American, ” What do you want?” or something to that effect. I explained I needed to get prescription refills for three drugs and produced the empty bottles for him. He quickly went to work checking the lables for dosage and soon called the pharmacist to aid in determining which could be had in France and what their names HERE were as well as any dosage differences. This took a bit of time, occassionally he would query us as to how often we took this or that one and what it was for. I always keep a list of my prescriptions and dosages with me in my wallet (good practice for travellers!) and gave him the sheet. He studied it and called once again to the pharmacist to enquire as to those drugs names etc. All in all a very efficient service done with a smile and friendliness that I didn’t expect. He then asked me to come to the exam table so he could take my blood pressure and listen to my heart. “Bon, Bon” he said as he looked at the resulting measurement and then he listened to my heart with a stethescope, “Bon” he said and I was through. Then it was Kelly’s turn. Same thing, he took her blood pressure but was not as happy with hers and told her so with a concerned look on his face. A few minutes later he had filled out a form on his computer and printed it, an invoice! 22 Euros each! Yea gads, such a bargain!
Only one thing, we only had 20’s and 10 Euro notes, Kelly gave him 50 and he couldn’t make change so gave back the 10 with a shrug. I told him I’d drop the other 4 Euros by later.
Then hand shakes and “Merci’s” to him and off we went to the pharmacy around the corner to get the new prescriptions filled. What an easy process this was and a very necessary one as well.
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I watched “Cloverfield” the newish movie about a monster tearing apart NY City and scaring the holy-be-jezus outa lots of people running in the streets and metro. I found it interesting in the first 10 minutes, never thrilling and even less scary. In fact it was tedious, all the jerky camera motions, inadequate character development, under-seen monster led me to not give a shit whether anyone survived. Who cares? Give it up! Some psycho-thriller. Oh well…Hollywood.

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.

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.