A forgotten November post

I've just found this post still listed as a draft, so am posting it now.  The polytunnel is full of overwintering plants and the bath is now outside too just to make more room for yet more pots. 

There are still pepper ripening in one of the beds.  I'd obviously missed this one the last time I picked them.  It was very wrinkly but when I cut into it there was another new pepper inside it - bizarre.

These were in the little box I brought back from the field - I love bringing my own produce back down the lane.

November, but there are dandelions in the fields - what is happening to the weather?

Sweet chestnut cases from my field - I have been eating the contents of the decent sized cases - I just love the sweet nutty taste.

 

A November sunset - there have been some lovely skies in the evening lately.

One of my favourite things to eat is boiled collar bacon.  I brought this back with me from England when I visited in October along with a couple of other joints which are waiting for me in the freezer.  I ate this first meal with sautéed potatoes and homecooked beetroot - scrummy.

And on the field the birds are all facing in one direction this afternoon ...

 

Here are a crop of fungi which have been growing against the sides of one of the raised veggie beds.

The compost bins are overflowing and waiting to be turned with the digger when it gets here.

I went into Clinic du Littoral in St Brieuc on 23 November to have the large vein in my right leg removed and several other smaller veins on my calf.  As usual the staff were lovely, my room was immaculately clean and the operation went well.  This time, I went in and returned home by taxi for which I had a prescription from the doctor.

Three things I like:

 

1.   Watching the jays flying over from the oak tree to eat from the bird table.

2.   Rediscovering my slow cooker and making beef casserole and then chicken in cider.

3.   Returning home after my leg vein operation and recovering in familiar surroundings.

 

Frosty mornings, kittens and poppy seeds

It was really frosty on Thursday morning – the first hard frost of the winter here in St André.  I had to put my wellied foot into the animal water containers to break the thin ice coat on the top.  One of the lovely things about frost though is the way it settles on the plants and makes them look magical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can click on any photo to enlarge it.

 

 

 

 

 

The lane back home. 

 

I took a photo of an iced up cobweb and moments later in the early sunshine the frost had melted to little water droplets.  All around it sounded like rain, but it was just the frost on the tree leaves melting and hitting the lane beneath.

 

 

I was attracted to the shadows made as the easterly morning sun shone through my neighbour's gates.

 

 

Back home the kittens were looking photogenic.

 

You know that funny thing cats do - looking into the distance or upwards just to make you look for what they're pretending to be looking at ...

I had a large plastic box absolutely bursting with poppy seedheads from various plants over the last two years from my garden and the veggie patch.  This photo only shows a few of them.  I sat for an hour or so and split them all open and knocked the seeds out into brown paper bags to keep for sowing next year.

 

There were so many different shapes and opening for the seeds to disperse.

 

 

Just to show you that I am equipped for all weathers.  Here, on the terrace, you can see my two log trolleys which I keep filled so that I don't have to go far if it's raining, and a sunchair and footrest for catching even the smallest amount of sunshine at this time of year.

 

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   Drifting off to sleep in my reclined chair in front of the woodburner.

2.   Friends, who I haven't seen for a while, 'phoning to say hello.

3.   My elder son, has decided to come to stay for New Year.

Bowls Lunch, Maize Harvest and Autumn Colours

Firstly, I apologise for the changing text through this post.  I can't seem to do anything to make it right.

Yesterday was the Bowls Club Presentation Lunch at La Vallée in St Gilles Vieux Marché.  To drive there I have to pass, but this time stopped to take photos of, the lake at Corlay.  It is so lovely there in the Autumn with the changing leaf colours and the reflections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we arrived at La Vallée we congregated in the bar before going through to our reserved room for a Kir - cassis and champagne, Breton drink - while we waited for our soup. There were about thirty of us I guess and these are a few of the people to my right toasting with the Kir.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The buffet was good and varied, followed by cheeses, apple tart and coffee.  We finished with the prize presentations and speeches.  It was a good event and well organised.

On the way home I took photos of maize being harvested.  It struck me that the ends of the fields look very similar to a cathedral vaulted roof.

 

I called in to see friends who had their horses on their lawn to avoid using the lawnmower.  Inside their woodburner was doing a grand job.  I left with a bag of beetroot which are cooking as I write this.

I did my usual Saturday early Supermarket trip this morning.  I go early for two reasons. Firstly, to ensure I get a €3 bag of the bread I use for the animals and, secondly, to get some of the €1 bags of veggies.  Today, the bread bag had a huge loaf round loaf in it (more than 30cm/12” across) with slashes in the top which I rescued for me to eat.  It cut beautifully when I sliced a piece to have with my fried bacon, tomato and egg breakfast and was in no way stale.  I just bought two €1 bag of veggies – mushrooms – and when I weighed them on getting home, there were 1005g of the little beauties.  They weren’t soggy or brown or damaged in any way.  I can never quite understand the criteria for selling the €1 polybagfuls.  I do though, transfer the mushrooms to brown paper bags before putting them in the fridge salad drawer to stop them sweating.  I bought a thousand of these brown paper bags on eBay and use them for all sorts of things, taking veggies and eggs round to neighbours and especially collecting and storing seeds.  The other bag contained two heads of Romanesci broccoli which I have never cooked or eaten before.  I shall have some with my supper this evening.
 

I also bought a net of oranges at full price as I was doing yet another beef casserole and rather liked the juice and flesh of an orange in the last one I made.  The beef I used this morning was basse cote de boeuf which the butcher cut for me from a very large chunk and it was surprisingly lean.  I browned it thoroughly deglazing the frying pan with the remains of a bottle of Merlot, added carrots, onions, garlic, swede, from the garden bay leaves and thyme, salt and pepper, a beef Oxo cube and nearly enough water to cover the contents of the pan.  The delicious cooking smells emanated from the kitchen for at least four and a half hours.  The book - 1000 Years of Annoying the French came in the post from a friend on the Survive France Network.

The sun came out about  midday; I was beginning to think it was going to be a grey day.  I took both kittens into the garden and introduced them to the areas away from the terrace.  So far they haven’t ventured further than the boring, flat, random paving and I thought they needed a bit of an adventure.  I took them half way down the garden and left them on top of a table so they had a good view of everything before venturing down to ground level.  By the time I had got back inside, removed my Crocs and put the kettle on they were back chasing round the settees.

Three things I like:

1.   Finding eggs in the house in the area where the Coucou de Rennes hens live - I thought they'd given up laying permanently.

2.   Watching the kittens sleeping together.

3.   Making and eating my first pumpkin soup of the year.

Autumn weather, duck and fungi

 

 

The supermarket had prepacked duck joints this week for just over €5/£4 a pack.  This is the recipe I made up to cook them.

 

Preheat oven to 220°C – fan oven temperature.

Cut excess pieces of fat from the duck pieces and render down in small frying pan.

Place thick slices from a large onion in the base of a roasting tin.  Rest the duck pieces on the onions so they don’t touch the bottom of the tin.

Pour the rendered down duck fat  over the duck pieces and squeeze the juice of an orange over them too.  Tuck sprigs of thyme between the duck pieces and then season with salt and pepper.  Drape the duck with streaky bacon.

Into the roasting pan pour boiling water to depth of about 1½”/3.75cm.

Cover with lid or foil and cook in oven for 40 minutes.  Reduce heat to 160°C and continue to cook for a further 1 hour and 20 minutes.  Remove lid or foil and the bacon from top of the duck pieces and cook for a further 40 minutes to crisp the skin.

Remove duck pieces, keep warm while resting them for ten minutes and make the sauce.  Discard onions and reduce pan juices.  Then add a tablespoon or two of redcurrant jelly, some freshly squeezed orange juice and, optionally, a pinch of Chinese five spice powder.  I had some reduced rabbit stock from the pies I made so added some of that too.  It was a scrummy sauce.

 

I like to serve the meat off the bone so I stripped off the crispy skin, cut it into strips and ate that - cook's perks - then plated up the about a quarter of the meat with sauce, buttery mashed potato, and two home grown vegetables; courgettes in garlic butter and roasted pumpkin.  

I'm not sure yet what I shall do with the other three meals worth of duck, but I shall do some recipe research and meantime fridge/freeze the meat.

There were long periods of sunny weather inbetween the showers today.  I sat in the garden with a coffee in 23°C sunshine and then went walking with a camera.  Each day brings more and more fungi in the lane.  The first photo is of fungi growing on the old oak beams which form the edge of some of my raised veggie beds.

 

These two photos show two fungi in a neighbour's field.  They are about 8"/20cm across and about 10"/25cm high.  I took off one of my wellie shoes and balanced on one leg to give an example of scale.

 

Here are some of my chickens enjoying the warm weather in the duck field along the lane and some of my ducks enjoying the weather once the shower started about three minutes later.

 

Why are there catkins on the hazel on 3 November?  Is this another sign of global warming?

 

Back home because of the rain after visiting my neighbour who's still on bedrest with her broken leg.  Purrdy was curled up in the corner of the settee, Claude was very much awake and Daisy was woken by the camera beeping - I must put it on mute.

At the moment, one of the small roundabouts in St Nicolas du Pélem is surrounded by very large pumpkins and chrysanthemums.  The huge pumpkins make mine look like oranges! The cemetary is behind the wall in the left background and that will be full of chrysanthemums too, as they are the flowers that the French leave on the graves on All Saints Day, 1 November.  Prior to that date the supermarkets and florists are full of chrysanthemums which is a flower associated with death and is never used as a gift plant here.  Strangely, when my father died in England in 1981, the wreath I ordered for him was of deep raspberry coloured chrysanthemums.

 

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   Eating comforting cold weather foods now that Autumn is well established.

2.   My neighbour's grandchildren visiting me - well my rabbits really - but me too.

3.   Having an extra day of playing Short Mat Bowls this week.