Advent Dinner: Our Quiet Before the Holiday Storm

Before the holidays have us running half way across the world, Christophe and I always have a low key celebration just between us.  We call it “le dîner de l’Avent” or our Advent dinner.  It’s not quite Christmas, so it would be silly to call it that.  It’s our quiet time before the holiday storm.  The weather warmed up enough to have the aperitif outside, but we moved the meal indoors afterwards. 

The Menu

First Course: Crème of Potimarron, Smoked Salmon, Fresh Fennel Sprouts; Homemade Foie Gras cooked in Port, Toast Points

Main Course:  Veal Roast in a Green Olive-Vegetable Broth, served with Carrots

I think it’s important for every family to create their own traditions, whatever it may be; this is ours – a small overindulgence, to say the least.

The blog will be taking a break for the holidays, but will be back in January.  Until then, have a wonderful holiday season.  I’ve got gingerbread cookies to make – no, I’m not kidding.

Come on… humor me.

The holiday season is here, and like most people, I’m in a litte over my head.  Here’s a post from December 2011 which includes one of my favorite holiday movies: Elf.

 

For me, one of the hardest things about living with a new language is not the lack vocabulary, but the loose of humor.  In English, I think I am funny, at times I even make people laugh, but in French, many my comments fall flat.  Half of humor is timing, and I’m often still translating as the conversation moves forward.   Slowly, I’ve gotten better at this, but there another factor of humor I can’t control: culture.   Humor is cultural; a shared experience that collectively strikes a chord in our being.  Perhaps it something built upon moments in our childhood that form our understanding of an idea and it is that shared upbringing that makes us laugh at the same things.  Christophe and I grew up in completely different cultures; he’s French and I’m American.  We can watch certain films together and find the humor, but there are other films that are completely elusive.  Once, we were watching the movie Elf and he turned to me and said, “I don’t get it.”

“How do you not get it?  The man is over 6 feet tall and thinks he’s an elf”, I said wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

“It just seems, I don’t know, not funny”, he replied.

And that is where our cultural differences collided.  Elf is a modern American Christmas classic.  It is built around our childhood ideas of Christmas, Santa Claus, elves, and the North Pole.  Christophe is from the South of France.  He grew up with Provincial traditions such as blé de Sante Barbe, the crèche or nativity, and traditional foods.  Elves existed, but they are tacking lawn ornaments.

Elf takes explaining to Christophe, and sadly, most of its humor is lost in translation but I’m still trying, and I believe.  And that’s all it takes, right?

 

Past cables

It looks more like a stick than a cable in this photo, but this end is located just at the entry of the village.

This looks like an ordinary cable, but at one point, it crossed this valley:

Somewhere far on the other side of the trees, where the mountains start to rise up again, the cable ends.  Just a few generations ago, men crossed the valley using this cable.  I don’t know if they zip lined across or had some cart that toggled along, but the cable used to hang hundreds of feet above ground.  The villagers would cross the valley so they could cut trees down in the forest unnoticed.  Then, they would burn the wood, smothering it to created wood charcoal, and sell it to the inhabitants of the plain.  The plain is only 15 miles away, but at that time, it was a different world.

Nowadays, most of the cable is buried in the ground, but Christophe followed it a few years ago.  Where it ended, the trees were younger than the surrounding forest, and he found a giant, blackened cauldron, which was most likely used to burn the tress.  A neighbor has the lid; which must be a story in itself as how something so big made its way back to the village.

It’s just a small reminder of the village’s history. It’s over 600 years old, and while some of its past has been unearthed, I’m betting most of it is still undiscovered.

Just wait a few minutes …. the weather will change

First snow, then sun.  What's next?

One thing that struck me since moving to the Pyrenees Mountains in Southern France is how quickly the weather changes.  Currently, the Midwest, where I grew up, has temperatures hovering above freezing after reveling in 60 F degrees and record highs.  In my recollection of things, there was always a warm up and cool down time as the seasons changed.  It’s somewhat “normal”, if we can call any weather pattern normal these days.  The changes that struck me the most since arriving here is that these extremes can happen all within one day.  Right now, it’s snowing; ten minutes earlier, it was sunny.  I can literally be outside working in a t-shirt one day and be trapped in the house the next due to strong winds and a foot of snow on the ground.  I’ve never experiences such extremes in such a short amount of time, unless you counted the mood swings from my high school Spanish teacher.  That aside, I never know what to expect; the laundry takes days to dry on the line and I don’t know what to wear.  Perhaps that is why Europeans are known for dressing in layers; one can simply peel off or slip on whatever whenever it’s needed.

The snow has stopped and it’s clouding up.  We’re either in for a warm up or a blizzard is coming.  I’ll get out my swimsuit…. and my wool hat.

Frenchgiving 2012

Frenchgiving dinner

We finally got around to celebrating Thanksgiving here in the South of France.  As I wrote earlier, it’s not the date that’s important to us, but the sentiment behind it: the gathering of friends and family, enjoying a meal, and reflecting upon the things for which to be grateful.  We revel in the tradition of the meal, but openly adapt it.  Second year running, the game is to use all the traditional ingredients in a Thanksgiving dinner, but change it.  Oddly enough, it’s not stressful and has actually freed up the common problem of the ballet of dishes in and out of the oven.  There are some region substitutions, such as red currants for cranberries, but the goal is to have all the players present, just dressed up differently.

Frenchgiving Menu 2012

First course: Soufflé of Potimarron

Dinner: Turkey Two Ways: Grilled Turkey Breast, Roasted Turkey with Stuffing

Rustic Dinner Rolls

Roquefort Stuffed Mushroom Caps

Bacon Wrapped Green Beans

Red Currant Chutney

Gravy 

Dessert: Pumpkin-Chocolate Cheesecake

Thanksgiving preparation looks a little like this for just about every cook, but here is how the day went for me: (Note what time the turkey went into the oven!)

·         9:30 am wake up; thankful for a day to sleep in.

·         10 am Coffee.  Think of Thanksgiving as a child and remembering my Mom already had the turkey in the oven for hours by now.

·         11 am Think that perhaps I should start making dinner, which is planned to be served at 8 pm.  Start first step of homemade rolls then get the stuffing started.  (This is one dish that has not changed for I cannot call a dinner Thanksgiving without my mother’s stuffing.  It’s nothing fancy, just white bread, onion, celery, spices, and pork sausage, of course.  I am from the Midwest after all.)

Two bowls of stuffing get made because one gets eaten before it even gets into the bird.

·         11:30 pm Step two of rolls: knead and let rise for an hour.

·         12 pm Christophe has promised to vacuum the living room, but his car won’t start.  It’s parked out in front (I’m still not sure why he needed to start his car to vacuum the living room, but….).  Living room goes un-vacuumed and I start the red current chutney and peel the potimarron for the soufflé.

·         12:30 pm Fold roll dough over on itself as directed; left to rise for another 30 minutes.  Start gravy.

·         1 pm Christophe comes back in the house convinced he has a sparkplug problem and declares we will be grilling cheeseburgers for lunch.  He claims we will be eating “All American” today.

·         1:30 pm Fold dough over on itself for second time; by now am only “slightly” covered in flour.



Potimarron cooking for the souffle

·         2 pm Potimarron has been cooked and drained.  I’m beginning to think that I should prepare the turkey, and am starting to guesstamate how long a breastless turkey will take in the oven.  Remember I need to continue with the rolls.

·         2:30 pm Go out and look at Christophe’s car with Christophe. No turkey prep yet, but the rolls go in the oven.

·         3 pm Prepare the Roquefort stuffed mushroom caps, rolls come out of oven.

·         4 pm Christophe brings in the heating wood and vacuums the living room.  Claims he will worry about his car tomorrow.  I pull the turkey (a whopping 8 pounds) out of the fridge.  Last minute hesitations about not deboning the entire thing, but decide to go with my first idea of turkey 2 ways: grilled roast turkey breast with herb butter, and roasted turkey with stuffing.  Remove breast meat and tie into roast.  Christophe declares it to be “cute”.

·         4:30 pm Some guest arrive.  I nix my idea of a shower.

I'm adapting recipes from both French and English cookbooks.

·         5 pm Prepare the bacon wrapped green beans.  Change into clean clothes and wipe the flour off my face.  Christophe irons the tablecloth.

·         6 pm Look long and hard at the “two” turkeys.

·         6:30 pm Decide to finally put one turkey in the oven.

·         7 pm Rest of the guest arrive.

·         7:10 pm Appetizers get served.

·         7:15 pm Remember that I still need to get the turkey breast roast on the barbeque.

Grilled turkey breast is done and the green beans and mushrooms are waiting to be cooked.

·         7:45 pm Turkey comes out of the oven.  I separate egg whites to beat into a soufflé with the porimarron.  Place soufflé in oven.  Start sautéing the green beans and mushroom caps.

·         8 pm Turkey breast roast comes off barbeque.  Soufflé oddly not cooking.

·         8:10 pm Notice we are out of cooking gas; tell Christophe he needs to change the bottle of gas.  (Think of like the gas bottles for a barbeque.   This is the country; there are no gas lines that run up here.)

Potimarron souffle - individual portions.

·         8:15 pm New gas hooked up, soufflé start cooking again, and by some miracle, has not fallen.

·         8:45 pm Dinner on table.

It was only 45 minutes late, which by some Thanksgiving standards, is pretty darn good.  Here, in Southern France, anything up to an hour late is still considered right on time.  Very proud to have the turkey in and out of the oven in less than 90 minutes and the grilled turkey breast roast was a big hit.  I admit, the pumpkin-chocolate cheesecake for dessert was made a day in advance, but it’s a cheesecake, it needs time to set.  No panic over oven space, reheating already cooked dishes, or serving in “turns”.  Changing it up, but keeping the ingredients the same is a challenge I’ve embraced.  Now, all I have to figure out is how to top that next year.

A little ambiance.

On the other side of simple

Blanquette de veau

On Monday, I boasted the goodness of simple French cooking.  Simple is good, but I also enjoy the other end of the spectrum: the classic dishes that have a list of ingredients an mile long and take all day to make.  Of the known classics, my favorite is blanquette de veau, or veal stew.  It’s classic French country cuisine, using common vegetables and finishing in the dish off with a rich sauce; in this case, its cream based.  What’s amazing about this dish is not that its popularity partially comes from it being the “ultimate French comfort food”, but in my view, the variations of this dish.  I’ve seen it served with capers, Roquefort cheese, and all sorts of vegetables.  Every working French chef has revisited this recipe, swapping out one cut of meat for another while trying to modernize it or tweaking the list of ingredients of the usual suspects one comes to expect in this dish.  Nothing strays too far from the original, which is telling.  There is a lot to be said for the weekday dinners that take a short time to make, but there is also a choral of songs to be sung for the Sunday lunches that need to be started around 9am to be on the table at a reasonable time.  Complicated can be good too, really good, and when that comes in the form of a slow cooked veal, a plethora of vegetables, and a hint of dried herbs covered in a rich cream sauce, I’m in.

Simply, good

The French cuisine can be terribly complex, it’s part of its charm, but it also embraces a simple, fundamental food: soup.  Soups of all types are popular in France, from bisques and bouillabaisses to creams and vichyssoises, most of which have humble beginnings.

We made pumpkin or potiron soup this weekend from the garden.  It contained two ingredients: potiron and milk, nothing more.  This velouté is all what a soup needs to be: simple good can be and good does not need to be complicated.

Happy Thanksgiving

Norman Rockwell, Freedom from Want, 1943.

 

No days off here, but we will be celebrating Thanksgiving later this week.  As I see it, one needs to adapt.  It’s not the day per say that is important; it is the spirit behind the event.  Enjoy, eat well, rejoice, and be thankful.

That day between Halloween and Christmas

Somewhere in between Halloween and Christmas, we Americans have a great holiday called Thanksgiving.  Besides being the start of the holiday season, it also seems to unofficially mark the appropriate time to start even start thinking about Christmas.  As a kid, I never saw Christmas ads until after the Thanksgiving Day parade, and decorations, in my home anyways, didn’t go up until we saw the last calendar page of the year.  But, times have changed, and I’ve witness the over burdensome Christmas ads push their way through to Halloween to get my attention, and I don’t like it.

Moving to France, I thought got away from the over-commercialism of the holiday.  During my first few years, I saw Christmas decorations arrive sometime in mid-December.  While I didn’t fully understand why the nylon stuffed Santa, or Père Noël was always found climbing up the side of a house, I did appreciate the timeliness of the décor.  The lights were simple, the Santas humble, and there were no giant blow up yard balloons.

Thankfully, the later has still not arrived, but I have already been completely over saturated with Christmas paraphernalia.  Advent has not even started and I’m being directed to what chocolates I should stuff into the child’s shoes.  There is no metaphorical dam of Thanksgiving, and the flood gates have opened all the way to Halloween.  Christmas in October has arrived in France and I openly admit I’m disappointed.

As a bicultural home, we celebrate holidays that appear on both sides of the ocean.  Christophe is a strong believer in Thanksgiving and what it represents.  He might not be American, but the idea of bringing family and friends together to reflect upon our good fortunes is something he truly appreciates.  Sometimes, that’s hard to do with the noise of consumerism breathing down our necks.  So with that, we stand united on the idea to celebrate one day at a time; fall before winter and Thanksgiving before Christmas.  I still have a menu to plan, a table cloth to iron, and a few pies to make before I’m willing to discuss Christmas.  That is, I’m still preparing for Thanksgiving; that wonderful November holiday. 

For me, Christmas is not until next month.  I’m going to enjoy the turkey before anything else and remember the holiday is not just a precursor for what’s ahead.  Heck, I might even wait and see the last calendar page picture before I decide to go out and find my tree.

 

A blowup snowman dressed as hunter, for Christmas.  Really?

Think you know me?

This is a photo I posted on Facebook yesterday:

Frank's Red Hot Sauce - my favorite!

It got some interesting comments, offers, and even recipes; all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.  One of the points I was trying to make, other than my love for hot sauce, is there are something you just can’t get in France.  I’m okay with that; I can take the trade-off and bring back a bottle of hot sauce every year.  This doesn’t bother me.

France is the height of gastronomy; one cannot talk about France without talking about its food and one can rarely talk about food without mentioning something French.  I am one to defend the rich French culinary traditions, but with the highs come the lows, and sometimes those valleys can be pretty deep.  The discussion developed from my hot sauce photo turned to barbeque sauce and quickly went downhill from there because there is no real barbeque sauce is France.  Alright, perhaps not truly the pits of the valley and something that one can do without, but what the market has created in its place is as just about as low as you can go: spicy ketchup.  It’s not just that I’ve seen people use ketchup over pasta, or that the very mildly spicy version is “just too spicy” for many tame French palettes, but it’s what it represents: this is what they think American food is about.  It’s not. 

The facsimiles of “American food” are shocking and somewhat telling of how we Americans are looked at from afar.  Anything “American Size” is huge; sandwiches à l’Amércaine are topped with fries; and American sauce is some pink concoction I’ve never seen before.  I’d love to know where this is coming from because while barbeque is tomato based, I’ve never seem one confused for the other – and this is coming from a Midwesterner; a region generally considered novice when it comes to spices and all that cooking over fire thing Texas has going for it.  The sad news is, France has hooked into what is bad about the American cuisine.  I like American cooking, heck, I’m a big fan of ham and cream cheese roll ups and I know they’re not considered high class, but what represents us food-wise elsewhere is not doing any favors to our reputation.

So now, when I tell people from the United States, and in particularly Chicago, I can now add ketchup to the list of things people think they know about me: Coca-Cola, Al Capone, and (thankfully) Michael Jordan.

What do you think about the quality of your food?

Our solution, at least to the lardons problem: do it yourself.

Lardons: matchstick sized pieces of cut bacon commonly used in French cooking.  Bacon, as we Americans know it, is not found in the supermarkets.  In fact, anything I’ve seen marked “bacon” resembles more of a sliced piece of ham with a bologna like resemblance.  Potrine, which is actually thinly sliced bacon, is used to wrap around green beans or meat, but is never served for breakfast.  I’m no trying to write in circles, I’m just laying the foundation for my discussion.

I’m far from being the first to make note of this, but the quality of food sold in stores is declining.  There will always be higher end grocery stores or organic chains that offer high quality foods, so I’m referring to the stores where the majority of people do their weekly shopping, you know the everyday grocery store.  We shop there.  Christophe and I don’t buy transformed foods, frozen pizzas, or microwave lunches.  These products have already been under scrutiny, and their lack of quality is not under debate.  We try to buy products as close to their natural state as possible; vegetables, eggs, flour, meats, and cheeses.  Part of this is because both Christophe and I really enjoy cooking, and you can’t do that with a microwavable fettuccini alfredo, but another large part of this is we just can’t tolerate bad food.  Not bad food as in “I accidently overcooked the chicken”, but bad food that is being made as cheaply as possible regardless of the end product.  Some of the products we buy are not in their 100% natural form.  Lardons does not roam freely around a farm, but I can at least identify the product I’m consuming.  The meats has been cut, cured, and salted; a form of preservation, but as anyone bacon lover would attest to, it’s just darn good – until now.  What should be a simple process of adding salt and time, has now become an overindulgent salt lick that spoils a dish.  And “smoked” flavor is simply a chemical injection.  We’ve tried several brands, but have come up with the same conclusion: the quality is declining, and those who make it seem to really not care.

I read a book over 20 years ago called Human Scale by Kickpatrick Sale. Clearly, it left a mark on me. While the premise of the book is about the size of communities and creating those that respond to individuals’ needs, there was an interview with the current president of one of the largest beer companies in the United States.  He basically said, the company will continue to make a lesser quality beer, thus focusing on profits, just to the level to which society will accept it.  Got that?  The beer quality stops just before it becomes undrinkable.  That was 20 years ago, and now that philosophy has grown to touch about everything we eat, from over salting foods to using chemical injections.

What to do?  Not everyone can raise a garden to eat for a year.  Those who know us know we have an immense garden and we don’t come close to that.  Raise your own livestock?  Not likely.  Protest?  Sure, but that only goes so far and you eventually get hunger and buy something in haste.  Be aware?  That works, but what next?  What happens when we know this decline is happening and cannot do much about it?  What do you foresee as feasible options?

 

What's for dessert?

Veal Scallops, stuffed with white mushrooms and onions, in a green olive-beef broth reduction, served with tomato Quinoa

This is what we ate for lunch on Sunday.  We tend to indulge on Sundays when we have more time to spend together.  Even after a terribly satisfying meal like this, we often ask each other, “What dessert would you serve after this?”  Or, to take the rather French approach, “What cheese should follow?”

It’s not that we walk away from the table hungry; in fact, the contrary.  We tend to eat light or very little for Sunday dinner because of the copious lunch we consumed.  The questions are hypothetical; there is no next course, but we ask them each Sunday all the same.

We laugh at ourselves with these questions, and Christophe thinks it’s a very French thing.  He claims if the French aren’t cooking or eating, they’re talking about food.  Nothing is more exciting than the next meal nor more nostalgic than the last one, well prepared that is.  He believed talking about food was just a French thing; that is, until he meet my family.  We might not discuss the values of a medium aged goat cheese, but we know that a piece of chocolate chip pie just might put the topper on that dinner we just had.  And, who can forget that awesome roast we had for someone’s birthday or how good the pizza was at the Wii bowling party last year?  Talking about food, even when sitting in front of well-licked plate, is not unique to a singular culture; everyone does it.  (Elsewhere, I image someone suggesting churros after those tacos or a good gelato after the pasta meal.) Maybe it’s because we dream of that perfect dinner, or secretly want to be a 4 star rated chef who simply oozes with good taste and knowhow, but talking about food or “what’s next” seems to be as natural as putting shoes on in the morning.  We do it because, that’s all.  

So, to answer this week’s questions, I replied, “a young Cantal and for dessert a poached Bosc pear with dark chocolate sauce”.  Christophe smiled.  Apparently, he agreed.

November Tomatoes

I’ve bragged to my fellow gardener friends that we can have tomatoes as late as December.  Granted, they aren’t the kind you can eat just off the vine, but once the skin is removed they are excellent for cooking because they are so sweet.  Autumns can be wonderfully mild here due to the Mediterranean climate, but they can also be somewhat unpredictable.  So far this season, we’ve had high winds, torrential down pours, and even some snow flurries; clearly, not tomato weather.  Any tomato in contact with the ground froze, but some found just enough shelter to make it through the storm and are continuing to ripen.  I don’t think those that remain will make it until next month, so this year, it looks like our last few tomatoes will be from the month of November, and not December.  So, without further ado, my November tomatoes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

French Mustard Glasses

Fact:  a lot of mustard sold in France is actually sold in drinking glasses; this type of packaging includes cornichons (pickles) too.  Similar to the fast food give-away gimmicks I collected as a child; these glasses mark the childhood of almost every French person, albeit the head of Mayor McCheese is not etched into the glass.  Some people hate them, some love them, but they come in as many styles as there are tastes.  There are series with popular cartoon characters, colored glass, clear glass, stemware, and even cocktail glasses.  When Christophe bought the house over 10 years ago, the house was filled with odds and ends, including a cupboard full of old mustard glasses.  I’ve been using them for years and never knew what I was drinking out of.  I like them, but honesty, we rarely buy mustard in small enough quantities to get a glass.  We buy family size, even though there are only three of us, and one doesn’t even eat mustard.  We cook a lot with it and bring jars upon jars of it back to the States with us every year because real Dijon mustard is hard to find.  The small jars we do buy are yellow mustard; a must have when we have American style hamburgers.  Yes, the glasses are just a marketing scheme, but they work, just like Ronald McDonald plates that come out every year from my mother’s cabinet or the flavor themed kool-aid plastic cups that are stacked up high somewhere in the back.  I’m not going to go out and try to get me the full collection, but if a nice one comes along that can hold a few ice cubes and a health splash of bourbon, I’m keeping it.

Chestnuts

Oh precious chestnut, why do you taunt me so?

Chestnut season is here and they fell to the ground by the hundreds this last week as the autumnal winds kicked up.  I gathered a large bowl full and then spent the entire next day making jam from them.  I’m not exaggerating; it took four hours to get their shells off: two hours for the first layer and another two hours for the second one.  I’ve tried just about everything to speed up this process: steaming, boiling, and even freezing the nuts to see if I can get the shells to pop off like a peanut shell, but no luck.  (Happily, peanuts are much easier to shuck, or I would have grown up eating jelly and jelly sandwiches.)  That’s before they’re boiled and ground, which is not even the final step of adding sugar and cooking the concoction.  It’s long work and by the end of the day I’m completely feed up, but it’s worth it at the breakfast table.  We’re already ¾ of a jar down from the five I made.  Christophe is hinting that I should have another go at it before the ground freezes; I’m hinting he should attack that “honey do” list I posted on the fridge.  Neither of us is budging, for the moment.  But, I’ve got an ace up my sleeve: I have just over 4 jars to wait and then we’ll see what can be negotiated.  I'm thinking....painting!

Cheese: Morbier

Given the abundance of cheese France produces, I’ve decided to tackle the subject once a month in a series of posts that bring some of the lesser known cheeses, (at least outside the France borders) into focus.  Some cheeses have a complicated history which I try to boil down to what makes them unique and notable, and others simply developed from “farm cheeses” made to be consumed where they were produced.  Either way, “Cheese” gives me a chance to explore one of the gastronomic delights of France and justify my excursions to a cheese monger as “research”.  And the research can be oh, so grueling…

Don’t let the blue line fool you; this cheese has nothing to do with Roquefort or other blues.  In fact, Morbier very mild, delicate, and slightly nutty.  The line that runs through the center is its foremost characteristic.  As the cheese was produced, a layer of protective ash was placed over the curds and then finished off with additional milk gathered in the evening.  Nowadays, the layer is decorative, vegetal in origins, and tastes no differently from the rest of the cheese.

Morbier is made from cow’s milk, most often non-pasteurized, and is considered a semi-soft cheese.  The milk is exclusively produced from two types of cows, the Montbéliarde and Simmental Française whose diet is uniquely pastoral grass and hay.  The cheese is named for the village of the same name in the Jura Mountains of the Franche-Comté region, not far from the Swiss border.  Morbier received AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) standing in December 2000 and since then its production has tripled to over 9,000 tons annually.

 

French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup – or where I’m at, it’s simply called onion soup.  As for its history, there are as many versions as there are websites that turn up on a search, so I’m not going to even attempt to sift through and find the real story.  What I do know is, the caramelized onion – beef broth- cheese topped soup we call French Onion Soup originates from Lyon and was a humble way of feeding a peasant family with limited resources.  But honestly, besides its geographic roots, that could be said for the origins of most any soup.

French Onion Soup as we know it is real, but the true version is a far cry from the pub served watered down broth covered by inches of plasticized melted cheese. From my understanding, there are two versions.  One is the beefy broth we know made with caramelized onions, a slice of baguette, and topped with a thin layer of Gruyère cheese.  It is common, everyday food and too ordinary to grace a bistro menu.  The other, soupe à l'oignon, is a late night snack quickly whipped up after some hardy drinking intended to rehydrate and place something in the stomach before passing off to sleep.

I actually got a kick out of serving the beef broth based French Onion Soup to my French family.  We had a laugh when I called it “French”, as if I’d bring an “American Pot Roast” to my mother’s table.  Gastronomically, there are some stereotypes and as a two culture household, we enjoy poking fun at both, like knowing sandwiches a l’americaine, or topped with fries only exists in France or that French Onion soup is simply called dinner.

Will there be rain?

There’s talk of rain, and lots of it.  An air front is moving up from Spain loaded with water which is going to get blocked by a northern air mass, thus stalling right above us.  Autumnal showers are common, but this is expected to pass the norm.

It’s funny what the weather makes you do.  We prepared by bringing in heating wood, tarping the wood pile, putting some final garden items away, and taking down the laundry from the line.  There was a bit of a charged energy in the village; other people were doing the same: preparing.  It reminds me a bit of preparing for a Chicago blizzard; milk was bought, the pantry was stocked, and the shovels were placed at the ready.  Then, we sat, looking out the window and watched in anticipation, squealing with joy when the first snowflake appeared.  Right now, we’re at the window, staring up at the clouds to see what they will bring.  So, we wait.  It’s supposed to arrive Friday, but the weather has already been all over the map.  This morning it was gray, overcast, and a bit damp, but now it’s sunny, mild, and windy.  It’s as if nature isn’t sure itself what it will do.  The weather has been finicky just about everywhere this year, and this brewing storm is no exception.  For now, I say bring it on; we need the rain, and this childlike giddy of a meteorological wonder is exciting, but ask me after a few days of being housebound, having burned through all our dry heating wood, and being feed up of being wet, and I might change my mind.  Reminds me of after the snowstorm…

Pickled Peppers!

Hot Peppers: I decided to continue with my vinegar theme and pickle them.  The peperoncini, jalapeño, and hot lemon peppers ended up being a late crop, much later than I expected, so we didn’t get to enjoy them until now.

Contrary to expressed concerns, the hot peppers in my garden have not taken over indigenous plants.  Any future concerns about the French cuisine being later known for its use of hot peppers should be nullified.

(Note to self: Next time you decide to boil vinegar, do so when the weather allows you to open the windows.)

And sometimes Friday.

United States had the most hits this week, so it's the darkest green,
but any shaded country is where a connection was made too.

 

Some of you might have noticed I’ve missed a few Friday posts over the last month or so.  I sweated about the first one, but then I noticed the world didn’t stop and people still came back to the blog without a complaint.  Then I missed another, and another.  I don’t like saying I’m going to do something and then let slide, so I’ve decided to make a minor adjustment: and sometimes Friday; that is, I’m changing my statues from “Lynn blogs every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to and sometimes Friday.”

The change is all in the wording.  I’ll still blog on Fridays, but I don’t want to set myself up for something that might not happen every time.  This way, when I do post, it’s more of a bonus than a letdown; a positive spin, so to say.

Life: that’s the reason for the change.  Like you, I’ve got responsibilities and I want to live up to them.  I want to experience the moments I share, not just hear about them from others. I’m going to be taking this time to research a few more agents, look into independent publishing, and after some serious nudging, start my next book.  I’ve got a few chapters ideas in my head that need to be jotted down anyway.  I might even try to weasel in some cooking.

I’m thrilled for the following I have, and am overjoyed with the worldwide support I get.  I see it all on a global map blogspot provides me. I get to see what posts are popular and where the hits come from. For examples, hits from the United States: clearly my friends and family and hopefully, some agent checking out my work; hits from Ireland: friends of old who I’ve never forgotten and a time I hold dear; Australia: perhaps some family, and then there are the many others from Russia, Africa, and South America which I may never know the face behind.  Regardless, I love the support and hope my blog is providing those outside France the “French touch” they are looking for and some insight on the daily ins and outs here.

So, I’ll be back on Monday, perhaps with news of the weekend, a lunch menu, or just a funny story to share.  The same goes for Wednesday, and sometimes Friday.

The Courge Report

Even after a summer of chasing a fox out of the garden, we had a pretty good courge or squash harvest.  We lost one potimarron plant to the animal’s digging, but the rest made it through the intruder’s nightly drama.  In addition, we planted butternut.  It’s growing in popularity in France and Christophe discovered it the first time a few years ago on our annual return to Chicago.  He was thrilled we finally were able to add it to the garden.

All in all, we have 12 potimarrons, and two more are still ripening in the garden.  Christophe already used one butternut squash, but 12 remain.  In total, we have 31 pounds of potimarron and 28 pounds of butternut – then a friend gave us a pumpkin from his garden which is the ballpark of 20 pounds.  It doesn’t take a math degree to see we have over 70 pounds of squash – the birth weight of a baby hippo.

I can see the Forest Gump-like jokes coming on: squash soup, squash bread, curry squash, sweet and sour squash, squash and squash cookies, the list can get pretty long.  So, bring it on – I’ve got 70 pounds of squash to cook with and can use a few more recipes.

Monday’s Leftovers: Autumnal Lunch

In France, Sunday lunches are sacred.  They are a time for family and friends to gather together, put the work week on hold, and come back to the table to the things that inspire.  We participate in this ritual that allows us to spend time together and reflect upon our good fortune.  Growing up, my family also had our Sunday brunches, so coming back to this tradition is a welcomed addition to my weekend.  Monday’s Leftovers is a periodical series that recaps those moments, the lunches, and the memories that are left long after the dishes are done. 

Monday’s Leftovers: Autumnal Lunch

Ahh… the real fall has returned.  Not that the rain and afternoon fog are not real, in fact, they are quite typical autumnal weather, but I’m referring to the fall weather that lets us sit outside, count the leaves as they fall for the pear tree, and enjoy the changing of the season.  The morning was filled with seasonal chores such as racking leaves and preparing to bring the potted plants inside.  The yearly, “clean-up to close-up” move has started as summer gear is moved into the basement.  Christophe will complain about the clutter for months and only be happy again when everything is moved back outside – next summer.  Until then, I ignore the complaints.

Inside, Christophe is working on clearing out the freezer, so he dove in and found some rouget filets and a bag of stewing beef that dates back to God knows when.  He attacked one of the butternut squash before I could snap their group photo, but he came up with a dish that brought together many products of the season: mushrooms, squash, and grapes from last week’s vendanges. 

Boeuf de saison à l’échalotte et aux champignons, velouté de butternut et ses raisins.

Stewed beef with shallots and mushroom, butternut velouté, white grapes.

 

I do this everytime! I eat first and then remember I need to take a photo!
Rougets fillet in rouille.