Autumn Diversion & Exertions

The weather changed dramatically this week. We had our first fires, turned on the heat and enjoyed the first real rainstorm of the new season. The virginia creeper on the house is starting to turn.

I don't know about you, but changing seasons always inspires me to change something in my physical world. Although we still do have clients on weekends, there are many week days when the house is unoccupied, and I have used this quieter time to begin a series of improvements. I have been longing to make some changes to our entry salon. The furniture there is a mixture of antiques. I've grown very tired of their darkness and formality. I wanted something fresh. My first project is to redecorate the whole room.

I started with the Louis XVI chairs. They are genuine antiques, made sometime between 1754 and 1793, just a generation after the house itself was built. I especially wanted to change the upholstery, which was very tired indeed. I also decided to paint the dark wood white.

I finally got hold of some Annie Sloan chalk paint and wax, which I've heard about from my blog friend Janet for the last several years. I found a wonderful source here in France. I've known about the shop for quite awhile, but it's just far enough away that getting there is a bit difficult. It finally dawned on me that I could mail order from them, which is what I did. This product can be purchased almost anywhere nowadays, as it is definitely a la mode, as we say over here.

I wasn't sure our skills would be up to reupholstering, but we decided to give it a go. We went to Paris and were able to find some lovely upholstery fabric right in stock at the famous Marché Saint Pierre, one of the hugest fabric stores in France. When we removed the hundreds of upholstery nails, we discovered how often these chairs have been recovered down through the years! We put some wood filler around the entire frame, to allow for our own nails to grip.

The painting process itself was the easiest part. The chalk paint goes right on, no prep necessary, which is my favorite feature. After it dried, I added clear wax and then some dark wax to bring out the decoration on the arms and legs and to give it that antique look. Once the chair was polished, the result was quite professional looking, and matched some other furniture I already had with this treatment. I used the old fabric to make my patterns and everything went together beautifully. Rick hammered on the fabric, I added the braid and voila.

I was very pleased with the results. So much lighter and more cheerful.

I used the same technique on the entry table, though I left the top natural. They go well together.

We're not sure we are content with the way the table turned out. The top is perhaps still too dark. We like the contrast, but we may whitewash it to bring it down a notch. Annie Sloan has a number of books with explicit directions, which make all these techniques quite easy to accomplish. I used the ideas in this one for my projects.

I haven't stopped there, of course. The Annie Sloan paint gets a bit addictive. What you can't really see from the photos is how nicely it polishes up after you apply the wax. It feels very good to the touch.

I intend to redo all the furniture in the entry. We bought some fabric to recover the dark green couch. That's a much bigger job. It comes last. I'm still a bit nervous about it.

The dining room is another focus of my attention. I did manage to repaint all the breakfast chairs and tables. The Annie Sloan colors are luscious. I used her Old White mixed with a bit of Paris Gray for the chairs and table in the entry and Greek Blue for the dining rooms. Only yesterday I received yet another box with four more small pots of different tints. Oh yes, I do have lots of plans and projects scheduled for the rest of the fall.

***

While in Paris to purchase our upholstery fabric, we of course visited the family, who we hadn't seen since their summer vacation in Slovenia. Zinnie has really grown. Last time I was with her in early August, she wasn't even sitting up. Now she's eating solid food by herself

 

and not only crawling, but seriously pulling herself up to standing whenever the opportunity arises. She looks so much like her mother at that age, that I feel as if I'm traveling back in time.

 

Her favorite things to play with are, of course, Quinn's cars and trains. She's a rolly polly jolly baby.

Quinn is a nice big brother and enjoys playing with her. He's very careful to be sure she doesn't pick up dangerous things with small parts, and when she takes something of his that he wants to play with himself, he offers her something else in exchange.

***

We had the pleasure of welcoming one of Rick's old friends from high school this week. Dick and his wife Ginger retired from their jobs as a teacher and psychotherapist ten years ago, sold their house outside New York, bought a boat and have been sailing around the world ever since. We have kept track of their adventures here, but Rick hadn't seen Dick for over 40 years. We enjoyed hearing about all their adventures. They are, of course, very skilled sailors by now. I'm mostly a landlubber, so the idea of floating out in the middle of an ocean in a small craft makes me feel a bit queasy. Yet I can certainly appreciate the fun of visiting all those ports of call, and having your own free hotel room everywhere you go. Rick grew up sailing, so he can genuinely enjoy tales of the high seas. Dick and Ginger are dropping anchor in London this winter. They tend to sail for about 7-8 months of the year and stay put for the colder months.

***

And now, perhaps randomly, a short discussion of salt. 

I grew up never thinking that there was anything remarkable about salt. When it rained, it poured and that was about the extent of my knowledge of it. I did notice that iodine was added to our Leslie salt and that my mother used it every time she cooked. I found out the iodine helped prevent goiter, which had been a problematic condition in the U.S. up until the 20s, when salt became the vehicle to alleviate this deficiency in the American diet. What I didn't know was that salt could come in so many varieties and that shaking it out of a salt shaker is not the only way to use it. In fact, these days we don't use shakers at all.

When we started coming to France we discovered fleur de sel, which is skimmed from the surface of salt evaporating ponds and is largely unprocessed. It comes in large crystals, too large to shake. It was a revelation to me at the time, and we began bringing it back as gifts to our friends, trying to share our enthusiasm for its very superior quality. We provided little crockery dishes in which to put the salt and little wooden spoons to serve it. I'm not sure anyone was nearly as impressed with all this as we were. We did notice that some fancy food stores in California sold Baleine salt at 5 times the price you can find it here in every supermarket. It is the Leslie salt of France and is processed in the same manner. The large gray salt is used here in cooking water for pasta and the like. It is essentially unrefined sea salt.

Several years ago Jos introduced us to Maldon salt, an English brand, and I was able to find it in Berkeley's gourmet ghetto. The delectable thing about it is its shape. It is a concave flake. For some time now we have used Maldon almost exclusively as our table salt. 

This year, however, we have been introduced to a couple of other varieties of British salt. It has now become a sort of battle of the salts, each new brand vying for our affections. Our friend Monica, who runs a B&B near Limoges, sent us a package of Cornish salt to try out. She swears by it. It does taste different. The only way I can find to describe it is to say it is stronger, or more salty, if such a thing is possible. 

Some Dutch friends stopped by a few weeks ago and we found ourselves again discussing salt.  Their favorite is the Welsh Halen Môn, which they tell us is the brand favored by President Obama. It comes in flavors (e.g smokey or vanilla) and also has that delicate flakey form we like so well. 

We took a taste test with all these varieties and truly they do taste different. It's hard to say what our favorite is though. We have an abundance of choice.

Making Jam & The End of Summer

I've had a forced vacation from blogging due to a hard disk crash and the slow rebuilding of my computer environment and virtual existence. If you've ever been through this, you'll know how maddening it can be. Suffice it to say, I'm glad to be back.

Our summer was glorious beyond all expectations. When it was still raining at the beginning of July, I began to get a little cranky. But the sun did come out and made up for lost time. We've had long warm and sunny days for weeks on end and I have been able to get my fill of summer. Now the weather has turned a little cooler and a hint of autumn is in the air. The beginning of another season I love.

We use a lot of jam in our Bed & Breakfast business. I made some last summer, but not nearly enough to get us through the whole year. This summer I was anxious to increase my production and put away as much as possible. Crates of peaches, apricots, nectarines and strawberries decorated our kitchen counters.

There is no comparison between jam you purchase at the supermarket and that which you can make at home. I learned that last summer when I discovered a marvelous recipe for jams. It's very easy. By cutting down on the amount of sugar and following a few simple steps, you can create an incredibly tasty jam in minutes which brings the taste of the fruit forward and retains its rich, bright color. One morning when we were making breakfast for clients, we heard the sharp sound of porcelain against porcelain and could not imagine what was being eaten in the dining room, as the food had not yet been served up. We discovered that our client had taken the freshly made apricot jam and devoured it as if it were compote! In fact the taste is so delicious and fresh that it is much more like a fruit preserve than a jam. The compliments have kept coming. I highly recommend the following recipe:

Cut any kind of fresh ripe fruit into small pieces and weigh them before placing in a glass or ceramic bowl (no metal) in layers, cover the fruit with 40% sugar (by weight). I use sugar made for jellies and jams which has a bit of pectin added. When the fruit is all cut up and layered with the sugar, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator at least over night and up to two days.

The next day, strain the juice which has formed out of the fruit, adding as much of the undissolved sugar as possible. Set the fruit aside and put the liquid on the stove in a large pot. Boil very gently watching closely, until the liquid has reached about 230°. The liquid can carmelize or boil away if it gets too hot or goes too fast.  This step usually takes about half an hour. Even if I can't get my candy thermometer to register 230°, I put my fruit in after that amount of time.

Allow the fruit to boil in the liquid until you hear the steady sound of the boiling liquid become a bit more sluggish. It needs to get a bit thick. This also takes about half an hour at a soft boil.

Voila! That's all there is to it. Place the jam in sterilized jars and seal. It will keep for a year or so. Or if you just make a small batch, you can keep it unsealed in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. To some of the peach jam, I added a large vanilla bean. This gives a nice hint of vanilla flavor.

***

Life in the garden is winding down, but the end of the summer brings some very spectacular blooms. Our multi-colored morning glory came into its own and covered part of the back wall.

The sunflower seeds sent to us by a friend in California developed into large plants each with a different happy face.

***

Last week our friend Amy and her daughter Arwen came to stay at the Maison Conti for several days. We spent one day in the Loire Valley visiting several sites, including Chenonceau, undoubtedly the most beautiful of the big châteaus. The day was fine, and since we chose to go on a weekday after the kids were back in school, we didn't have a fierce crowd, as is often the case.

The interior of the castle is very attractive. There is a long history of women owning and occupying the château and therefore there is much soft charm and grace to the decoration. The gallery, with its black and white marble floors, which stretches across the river Cher, is a gorgeous room. During the war, it was a hospital for allied troops and more than a 1000 men lay on cots up and down the hallway. It seems like a very nice place to recover from the horror of battles.

Out every window are views of the river as it rolls gently beneath the building.

I have posted many photos of Chenonceau throughout the years I have been writing this blog, so I won't add too many more here. This time, however, I really focused on the flower arrangements which are among the most extravagant and beautiful I have ever seen anywhere. They grace almost every room no matter what the season.

They are not small little bouquets either, but arranged in huge pots, requiring an enormous number of fresh flowers. And of course they would have to be changed regularly to keep them looking good, which they always do.

I notice them every time I go and have often wondered who creates these luscious displays, which constantly change.

And how could they could afford so many flowers? I think there must be dozens of such bouquets throughout the house. Even if the arrangements are simple, their size is breathtaking. This is only the smallest sampling.

This year I got part of my answer. We have never before visited the little farm and garden tucked away to one side as you exit. I highly recommend it to you if you visit Chenonceau.

On the garden grounds thousands upon thousands of flowers grow on about an acre of land.

It is so pleasant to stroll through the grounds and enjoy the blossoms of many colors. In the castle kitchen was a beautiful arrangement of gourds and vegetables. There is a small edible section in the garden as well. It's hard to imagine a more wonderful job than arranging flowers for Chenonceau!

Halcyon Days in the Garden

The past weeks have served up the most perfect weather and with that, a most glorious sense of well-being. Augusts are usually rather quiet in our business, as most of the French are at the coast or in the mountains, and family events are seldom planned for this month of the year. We have the occasional visitor, someone generally breezing through on their way south or west. Thus, it has been the perfect opportunity to work and play in the garden. Although the plants get a bit leggy and tired, there is still much pleasure to be had amongst the borders.

I planted borage from seed this year, intending to use the pretty flowers to garnish my plates for clients. I love the rosy, hairy stems and the perfect blue star form of the blossoms.

Emily and her family stopped in Montmirail on the first leg of their extended vacation. We bought a badminton set and Quinn had his first go at it. It's not easy for a three year old to find the coordination to whack a small birdie with a relatively small racket, but Quinn managed to make the two connect a few times, which gave him great satisfaction.

He has no lawn space in Paris, so while he has enjoyed playing with hoses in his city garden, he had never run through the sprinklers before. He found it exhilarating!

One of Quinn's favorite activities, no matter where he is, is to build roads and then drive his toy cars over them. Can you see the board he found to create a hilly track amongst the plants?

Zinnie is beginning to crawl and she enjoyed playing in the grass as well.

Last year this space was used as a large vegetable garden, which of course was very nice, but the lawn provides us with so much more real estate for romping and relaxing. I love the green expanse and since March, we have only watered twice. This is the perfect climate for grass.

Sometimes we have thought that it would be much more convenient if our garden were adjacent to the house, but we have all come to the conclusion that having it at a little distance makes it seem more magical and special. The walk is only about five minutes and along the way we enjoy greeting neighbors; the lady who decorates the church with flowers twice a week, gave us a fushia branch yesterday morning, the little old lady at the end of the lane sprouted a peach pit and proudly gave us the baby tree to plant in our garden, M. Villette always greets us and chats about the weather, garden man gave me a huge compliment the other evening when he said our garden was "pas mal" (not bad). He is the village gardening expert and his comment, though typically not too effusive, was given with genuine appreciation for what we have done. It stayed with me.

Here's a view of the garden as it looked last year, before we put in the lawn or planted the hedge. We have a corrugated iron shed that had been added onto in three other sections over the years. Not so well constructed, I must say, all tumbly down and basically unusable. Our latest project is to tear down the extra sections, preserving the original structure and building a deck and an indoor/outdoor room  in the enormous space that we gain.

We have gotten as far as the deconstruction/demolition. We are currently rebuilding the back of the shed. We are able, so far, to reuse the old materials for the reconstruction. Even the nails, which are, in some cases, enormously long and thick. Next we will tidy everything up and begin to make our construction design plans. We move rather slowly, as we are doing it all ourselves and we have to wait for quiet days. Still, it moves ahead at a steady pace and hopefully by next season we will have a wonderful space for outdoor meals and relaxation.

In the process of demolition, we uncovered this bit of stone carving...the top of an old column, which had been used as a foundation support. It is made of limestone and definitely carved, not poured. I have no idea how old it is, but it seemed remarkable to me that anyone would bury it in the ground for a pier. It makes a nice low seat, and I put it in the rose bed.

I have been weeding every day and for some reason it has been the most perfect of activities. It has put me into a kind of sweet reverie, and in my mind I have relived some days of my youth when my brother and I would poke among the trees and shrubs of a wooded lot near our childhood home in Palo Alto, California. I recapture those childhood feelings of joy and trust in the here and now, all is exactly as it should be and I want nothing more than this moment. As I pull weeds by hand, there is the satisfying ripping sound as strong roots disengage from soil, the smells of tomatoes and dill surround me, the feel of damp grass is beneath me and the sun shines down upon my shoulders and back. I meet little creatures under the plants, who seem much less interested in me than I am in them. There was a fat and shapeless toad who hopped away, cramming his form through a small crack in the stone wall, and a lizard not much bigger than a match stick who wiggled through the grass, scaling the blades as if they were giant trees.

Eating & Cooking in Avignon

 

One thing I certainly enjoy about traveling is discovering restaurants and local specialties. Of course Provence is well known as a food mecca. We did eat out a few times, but most of our experiences in this realm were not particularly memorable. With so many tourists in town, the restaurants were doing such a lively business that we found the normal amount of care that goes into serving customers did not seem to be possible. Our meals came out of the kitchen long after we'd ordered them, the plates were hastily put together and the prices seemed very high. Eating in cafes and restaurants was not a relaxing and gratifying experience during the festival. No worries. Emily had her apartment with a nicely supplied brand-new kitchen, a small terrace for eating and while she was at work and Zinnie was asleep, I had a lot of fun cooking up meals for us.

Our place was located just down the street from Les Halles, the Avignon market, which is open 6 mornings a week. We went there almost every day. The exterior is much like the museum at the Quai Branly in Paris, with a beautiful vertical garden decorating its walls.

 

On the inside are small stands where local producers sell their wares. It reminded me a little of the Nantes covered market, though not quite as big. Still, anything a person could want can be found here.

 

The produce was inspirational. So beautiful to look at. Emily is a vegetarian, so the favorite vegetable market stand was always our first stop and our meals revolved around these daily purchases. I love the multi-colored carrots available in the south. They are just as sweet and delicious to taste as they are to look at. If you are as charmed by these, as I am, you can purchase the seeds to grow your own from one of my favorite Etsy shops, Cubits. I have some of these colorful carrots from this source growing in our garden now, but they haven't come out of the ground yet. We shall see if they like the more temperate northern climate.

 

Emily eats fish, so I became a pescetarian for the week. This was an unlikely turn of events. Rick knows me as a person who avoids fish, much to his disappointment. But the truth is that I have always wanted to enjoy eating fish and this gave me a wonderful opportunity. For one thing, the fish is absolutely as fresh as it can be, and for another Emily is a sort of expert on the subject. The first night we had these beautiful little rougets (red mullet), which the fish monger fileted for us. They were really out of this world delicious. Emily and Jos recently gave me three Nigel Slater cookbooks and in one of them he gives information on how to identify the freshest fish on offer. He says that if the fish is very fresh, it will not smell "fishy." These little critters were of course Mediterranean.

After our first morning at the market, this was our haul. The charming small artichokes are available almost everywhere now. They make a nice salad. The peaches and nectarines were flat and incredibly tasty. The tomatoes came in three colors, several shapes and solid or striped. I don't think I've ever had a tomato so delicious, with the possible exception of the ones my grandfather used to grow in his vegetable garden when I was growing up. I had never met a white or rose colored eggplant before. Aren't they pretty? I like their petite size. The beans are the type that dried white beans come from, but these were fresh. I decided to make soup, as I think of these white beans as being quintessentially Provencal.

I looked for a recipe but couldn't really find one, so I made something up. It involved browning and then steaming some onions, egg plants, carrots, fennel and a touch of garlic, then adding some tomatoes, the beans and a bit of chicken broth. I threw in some fresh basil and salt and pepper. For good measure, I garnished it with Italian parsley and pieces of chopped sun-dried tomato. It turned out very well indeed!

Tomatoes are a bit like strawberries or corn, I think. The moment you pick them, they begin to lose their taste. These beautiful varieties were all from local sources, so they were as fresh as they could be without having your own garden out back. We loved how simple meal preparation became. Just cut up the vegetables, sprinkle some herbs on top, drizzle with good olive oil and voila! What a feast.

The carrots are even prettier once they're cooked and mixed up together with a drop of butter and salt and pepper. It's all that's needed.

 

Cold vegetable plates, simply prepared make a fabulous easy meal.

Emily taught me how to eat a sole and avoid the bones by scraping the meat away from the spine in the middle of the fish. She also encouraged me to try some seaweed vegetables. Here it is called passe-pierre or salicorne in other parts of France. This was my first taste and I was pleasantly surprised by how delicious it is. It's not particularly salty. I would characterize it as slightly sweet.

The restaurants in Avignon did a very brisk business while the festival was going on. In general, however, we stayed home, and I think we probably ate better than most.