Of meat, frost and heat.

 The 'annee de poisse' continues: herewith the 'nth' part. Somehow the freezer compartment door of the fridge/freezer in the Farmhouse managed to get solidly frozen. Odd.

Only three weeks ago I had spent four hours at the Farmhouse kitchen table processing a partially butchered lamb carcass. Or to be more honest, I had been refining a butchered lamb carcass as I am getting very pernickety about my meat. This meant I was removing what I considered to be unnecessary fat, de-boning some cutlets to make lamb noisettes – no point in freezing bones after all. In fact, chops are a pain for domestic freezing as the bones tend to poke through the freezer bags.

Odd bits of meat were put through my cheap but effective Lidl mincer so that I would have lamb mince for winter moussaka.

Actually I do not like processing meat: I am perfectly capable of taking the necks plus heads off chickens and ducks, fishing out the liver and gizzards with my bare fingers but I would much rather not. I can joint a fowl, untie a 'roast' and remove the inedible (to me) bits, ditto with meat for blanquette de veau or just beef stew. I have a wonderful array of very sharp knives. But it puts one (me) off eating the result. Cook dines off the smell of that which s/he has cooked....

I have an obsession with what I call 'clean' meat which mostly means fatless meat cooked by someone else – mostly quality cooked ham, sometimes jambon cru if I can peel the fat off the rim. But especially viande des grisons, which is the Swiss name for bresaola, the Italian dried beef. Even then, I turn over every packet in the supermarket chill cabinet to look at the back and inspect for fat. If the packet is not see-through, the product is rejected. Obviously there are no cameras on the chill cabinets otherwise I would have been hauled away a long time ago.

(Actually I am even worse with smoked salmon, especially the farmed salmon -is there any other now?- which I regard with great suspicion and sometimes a mental tape measure to make sure the fish has not been force fed. The flesh between the fat lines has to be narrow and tight, rather like rings one sees in tree stumps.)

However, reverting to the processed lamb: the point of doing it in the Farmhouse was that I needed the freezer compartment because my freezer was full. I carefully packed up the processed, labelled meat, put it in the freezer compartment and closed (I thought) the door. I thought no more about it.

Until today, Sunday 30^th Sept, because next Thursday I have guests coming to stay in the Farmhouse. So I went to check on its equipment. Apart from the fact that 9 of the 12 egg cups had disappeared, also two out of the three coffee filter jugs, and the vacuum cleaner bag was full, everything seemed fine. Until I tried to open the freezer door. Frozen solid. What to do?

What I did was to take down to the Farmhouse my kitchen step ladder, on top of which I put an upside down, large pan, on top of which I put a fan heater directed at the freezer door. Then I went to have a drink. About an hour later I was able to open the freezer door. The meat was still frozen, thank goodness. But the door was deformed and would not shut again, not even when I got all the ice out of the cabinet.

Now is this my fault? Same as the time I melted the back end of the vacuum cleaner when using its exhaust to rekindle the embers of a fire? Or was the door deformed when I put the meat in and I just did not notice? Fingers crossed that I can get a new door via another one of my heroes – Fred Rouchier of 'Electrochoc' my supplier of all domestic, electric appliances. Of course, as always amongst French artisans, it is his wife who does the research and admin, so hommage to her also.

Beware the evil purple plant

Autumn officially arrived – in calendar terms – on September 22^nd. In real life, that is country terms, it arrives when a basic rule of physics switches. We are all taught at some point in our school life that hot air rises and cold air falls, or vice versa. The turning point of the year is when one dominates the other.

So it was up till about the last weekend of August that we were conscious of hot air rising into the attic rooms, that we had to open the sky lights to let it rise higher, preferably creating a draught on the way. The ceiling fans were switched on way before bed-time. Then, suddenly, it was cold air coming down the stairs and the door to the attic had to be kept closed. Now fan heaters are briefly put on first thing in the morning in the downstairs rooms to compensate for the overnight cold.

beware! the evil crocus lurks....

The most attractive sign of the arrival of autumn is the sudden appearance of the autumn crocus. Given the appalling – and continuing - summer drought this year, I was not expecting it. I assumed the bulbs had dried out. But no, August 31^st I got up, looked out of the kitchen window and there was the first, single, autumn crocus. It is a pretty, pale lilac leafless flower. In the spring, only its leaves come above ground, luxuriant, large and very, very green. Also, very, very poisonous.

In fact colchicum autumnale is a dangerous plant, full of unstable alkaloids that will poison humans or cattle if ingested in large quantities. In times of starvation cattle have been known to eat it with sometimes fatal results. People in hard times have tried to release the sugars from the bulbs. My mother tried this in the Forties but fortunately had the sense to boil only tulip bulbs which are slightly less poisonous. I believe she gave up sugar.

It seems to me odd that a plant should rely on folk memory, 'granny died from eating too much crocus leaf salad', for its survival. Less odd that humans should have this folk memory. This is the kind of knowledge that is discounted in times of near starvation, see about cows above. Does the crocus know that knowledge passes from human to human just as from sparrow to sparrow in the great milk bottle top story? Is a crocus conscious? Is it evil? We are getting dangerously near non-Darwinian theories of existence here.

Arthropods, humans easily concede, do have a consciousness but that is probably only because they move – bite, sting or generally make a nuisance of themselves. Many are so small as to be nearly invisible to the sleepy human eye. Or so it would seem.

Only one week away, in the Great Smoke, and, as soon as I get back, I am attacked. I don't know specifically what I did wrong, whether it was to pick flowers, tomatoes, or to get into bed without shaking the sheet first, but my left hand is covered in tiny, hard, red bites that itch like fury.

If that is what one (or several) small insects can inflict on a human being – thank heavens, or whoever, or whatever, that colchicum autumnale and its ilk, are firmly grounded.

Chicken dreams

What does it mean to dream of chickens? Just ordinary chickens, say four hens and a cockerel. None of your ritually sacrificed black specimens. In my dream the hens were destined for egg-laying until too old when they became confit de poule. The cockerel, of course, in the fullness of time, would become coq au vin, and would probably need much marinading to make him tender.

My dream was quite complicated. The giver of the fowls (in my dream) visited me the following morning to check on his birds. He told me triumphantly – whilst I was still in bed and not quite compos mentis – that our protection schemes had got one of the marauders. And then he vanished. Characters can do this kind of thing in dreams. So my dreaming self got up and went to see what had happened. I thought to see an electrocuted fox lying in front of the hen-house, thought with some pleasure of displaying it for a while to dissuade others of its kind. Only I am (in my dream) not sure if that works.

For some reason or other the dream hen-house had its top cut off and the protective fencing around it halved in height. I gave the birds some water. Then I woke up. My only interpretation of this nonsense is that I am wishful of having hens, or ducks, again at La Chaise. But the time is not right. There are signs of foxes everywhere, nasty little sausage turds in the pathways between one woodland and another. And Arnold has seen them in with the flock very early in the mornings.

Popular opinion is that there are too many foxes currently. The post millenium damage to the woodlands around, the subsequent scrubby regrowth, has made far too many suitable vulpine breeding and hiding areas. But the limits of your average country man's tolerance have been over-stepped. The fox, or the vixen, has been taking the ducks and hens belonging to members of the local chasse. The hunting season has just started. Vengeance is mine, says the man in the fluorescent orange jacket, shot gun under arm. Quietly, unofficially vengeance will stalk the woods..

The first chickens I had at La Chaise were said to be 'Marans' which look like nothing so much as speckled, grey, knitted tea-cosies. Actually since their eggs never got darker than standard egg brown I expect they were a local cross breed because the real Marans hen lays eggs almost chocolate in colour. I was very proud of them, even forgave them for scratching up my attempts at a herb garden, because of their wonderful eggs. But they kept dying on me, by themselves without the aid of today's fox.

When the fourth one died, I panicked and called the vet and got roundly scolded for my pains. Country people don't call out vets to attend to chickens. When I insisted he examine the corpse, he insisted on borrowing my kitchen knife. He ripped the hen open, pulled out its guts and showed me the liver. 'You've been scandalously over-feeding the silly bird (he did not add 'you stupid woman')look at the size of that liver...it died of over-eating, chickens don't know when to stop'.

The problem for commercial breeders recently is not the fox, or even other predators, but the climate. Hens are not very good at heat. Like old people, they will not drink enough to keep themselves hydrated. A friend, a commercial breeder of hens for eating, lost eighty in last summer's heat wave due to dehydration. A serious commercial breeder in Brittanny lost thousands ...yes, there is something to said about mass breeding of animals – it produces cheap, tasteless protein for the poor.

fermentations

The hiccups will come early to the compost heap this autumn. Not only has it been fed those jams and chutneys rejected by my fit of store-room tidying last week, it has also just received my entire hoard of home made apéritifs. The list is as follows:

Liqueur de mure 1988 – one bottle

Crème de cassis 1989 – one bottle

Crème de cassis 1992 – two bottles

Crème de cassis 2001 – one bottle

Extrait de noyer 2002 – one 1.5 litre bottle

(this is extract of walnut leaves in pure eau de vie

for the prepartion of vin de noyer)

Vin de noix 2006 – one bottle

Sloe liqueur 2006 – one bottle

Crème de cassis 2007 – one bottle

Curaçao maison 2008 – two bottles

And that is the list of those bottles whose location was known to me. I may yet find others. To mitigate my sadness, I have recovered some antique bottles I used for these liqueurs.

Imagine all this alcohol – that is, sugar – poured on grass cuttings which were already liberally dowsed in jam last week – more sugar. All on top of vegetable peelings, some rejected commercial fruit. Add the continuing sunlight. The compost heap, more or less neatly confined to one corner of the vegetable garden, gets the morning sun. Of course it is all going to ferment. It may be my imagination but I can see it heaving, burping, gas bubbles going skywards. Fortunately it does not smell or it is far enough from the house for me not to notice.

The recipes for these alcohols were mostly found in my first edition (I think it is a first edition) of Prosper Montagne's Larousse Gastronomique, (1938) with foreword by Escoffier himself, a gift from a neighbour in our early days at La Chaise. You will find them under 'Liqueurs'. My second French cookery bible was 'La bonne cuisine du Perigord' by La Mazille (Flammarion 1919) which also has recipes for domestic liqueurs.

The reason for the predominace of crème de cassis is that for many years I had some very productive blackcurrant bushes – and there is a limit to the amount of

black currant jelly one family can consume, especially if its head only consumes marmalade. I thought it a fairly harmless cordial when a neighbour at Chantepoule offered some, in very small glasses, to my very small children. But its best known use is for the apéritif , 'kir', actually a means of making somewhat sour white wine drinkable.

The two elements all the apéritif recipes have in common (apart from sugar) is fruit, or fruit tree leaves, and eau de vie, usually plain distilled grape juice purchased from neighbouring farmers. Its alcoholic degree can be quite high – sometimes more than 60 proof..... Until quite recently, farmers had the right to distill their fruits for personal consumption without paying any form of duty. A travelling distillery used to do its rounds of local villages. But this right died with the that generation of farmers in their 80's or over. Now the fermenting fruit has to be taken to a fixed still and duty has to be paid.

The snag with buying eau de vie from a neighbour was that it seldom came in an identifiable bottle. The purchaser had to make a discreet mark on the container. Hence my scrawl, EV, across the corner of a Chardonnay label. Hence a helpful visitor's mistake in making 'kir' for everyone using this 'Chardonnay' and my own

crème de cassis. The rest I can leave to my dear reader's imagination.

sticky joys

The last three days have been dominated by jam making, jam filing and jam throwing away. In short, I made 24 pots (assorted sizes) of plum jam, both red and yellow plums, and threw away 5 random pots of 'stuff' mostly without labels. These included a couple of 3 year old containers labelled 'hot tomato chutney', probably unsafe. Net gain to jam store: 19 pots. Total jam store, 115 pots that I could see, total pots likely to be consumed by JP = 10; he only eats marmalade.

There is something immensely satisfying about making jam, especially from your own fruit. It is not just that the result looks very pretty, or that it can be sold or exchanged or even eaten. It is the idea of conservation, of preservation for winter, of independence from those evil agro-industrial companies that produce 'jams' heavens only knows how and with what. My jams are at least equal balances of sugar and fruit with, if the fruit is low in pectin, the juice of a lemon (organic of course). Somehow the judgement required in assessing exactly the setting point (without thermometer) on a cold saucer seems a witch like skill. The whole is a blissfully sticky job, many tea-trays and tea cloths covered in jam spatter, then paraffin wax when it comes to sealing the pots.

Fruit processing can be a messy job but is much helped by a decent radio programme – France Inter or France Musique – and the occasional foray into tasting. Plums are amongst the easiest of fruits to prepare, just halve and pop into a pot with an equal quantity of sugar. I let them marinade overnight. The secret that recipes forget to mention is that the plums should be cooked soft before being brought to a setting boil otherwise you will just find yourself re-boiling the lot, having potted and then discovering it will not set.

The rejected preserves were mostly pesto – just basil with olive oil and pine nuts, no cheese as that goes sour – and apple mint jelly. Both suffered from the same defect. For some uknown reason basil and pine nuts absorb olive oil like sponges, so however little one puts in a pot, eventually the oil spills over. It smells fine, unlike when one puts pecorino in the mixture which goes sour very fast. The pots I rejected dated back two years. The basil was one solid lump, smelt all right but I was dubious. The jelly had gone from the mint, leaving a hard, unlovely lump.

In fact I have found a cheat's way of making pesto: first cook your pasta, troffiete or linguine or whatever, drain well and keep warmish. Then, in a large frying pan, put olive oil, ground pine or walnuts, finely shredded basil leaves. When these have melted, put in the pasta to warm up, lastly add grated pecorino.

I have totally given up on mint jelly as a larder stand-by. I just make sure there are a few pots of apple jelly, not too old, and mix in the chopped mint the day before. This may be difficult in 2012, so far all the apples have dried on the trees. My French friends are still dubious about mint jelly.

Apart from the plums, the fruit on the trees looks very sad. The peaches are few and small. The Comice pear tree has totally dried out, lost all its leaves though its branches are still supple. It might revive if we get this week's promised rain. The other pear trees bear their usual crop of black-spotted inedible fruit. There is only one pear tree whose fruit I appreciate. It has a hard, brown skin and needs long slow cooking with a few cloves stuck into the flesh. Then it becomes a tender pink. It is what I was served with roast pork in Holland – and that was a long time ago.

A week of heroes

My present number one hero is Didier Angibaud, the vidangeur, more familiarly known in English as the pig slurry man. This is the man who came at short notice to empty the leaking swimming pool and transfer the chlorinated water into the golf course reservoir which was desperately low.

The swimming pool was steadily leaking into the fields which, at nearly two euros the cubic metre, was unacceptable as an option for any length of time. Nor was the water doing any good to the fields. The grass grew high and rank. The sheep refused to, and were not allowed to, graze it. The pear tree may have benefitted but that is doubtful. Anyway, the water percolated into the septic tank inspection chamber and chased out a lot of flies. Not desirable around holiday homes. And we had probably lost 50 cubic metres already before deciding enough was enough.

Fortunately, having taken the executive decision to close the gîte pool we were able to offer our holiday makers the use of our own larger, heated pool with wave machine. Even more fortunately the temperatures have been so high we have not had to heat this pool but it has swarmed with a variety of small children.

Didier owns a couple of heavy tonnage tanker lorries more usually employed in emptying septic tanks and pig slurry tanks. The contents he can 'resell' as fertilizer, assuming the recipient fields are not too far away. When he comes to clear our four septic tanks the 'boues' are usually emptied into some discreet place in the woods. He was pleased by the neat solution of emptying the pool water into the Black Pond in the woods, mostly because he could do this from the roadside.

It took him about seven trips to empty the pool. Mathematical persons present reckoned he put 75 cubic metres into the Black Pond. Of course the water pouring down the side of the pond did soften the bank. As we were watching, a cherry sapling loosened its hold on the earth and slowly sank, upright, towards the bottom of the pond.  It is still standing there and will doubtless flourish. With any luck the chlorinated water will have killed off the pond weed but will not affect the insect pond life. Insects can go elsewhere – weeds are stuck.

Number two hero is the Wonderful Arnold who had been watering the greens using the horse tubs, filling each by hand, hauling them from green to green with the tractor, then watering each green by hand. This had to be done to keep the greens alive until the irrigation system could be cobbled back into use which also required more water in the reservoirs. And various, expensive, complicated taps and valves until the pump can be properly put back into working order this winter. The pump and I are not friends.

And my third hero is our pool man, M. J-F Bonnin who comes every fortnight during the summer season. He came one morning early, disrupting his schedule, with temperatures just about touching 30 C, to put the winter cover on the pool to secure it, just in case some adventurous children got into the pool garden, despite all my devices, and decided to walk across the pool. Nephew Freddie tried that once, on a simple pool cover. He did not get very far. Obviously M. Bonnin is looking forward to replacing the torn liner and doing all the associated works – but he is being very prosaic about it, not gloating at all.

So far, 2012 has seriously been an annee de poisse, an unlucky year – and we are still in August. If it does not rain soon, the natives will get restless: no rain in the last ten days of August, no champignons in the early days of September.  And this morning, August 20^th, one of JP's ancestors (a Wedderburn) decided to fall off the wall, doing considerable damage to his plaster and gilt frame but non to the decanters on the table below. Presumably he was a wine buff.

'Greece', Blues, Bugs

The delight of friends coming to stay is that one sees La Chaise through fresh eyes, especially if those friends' eyes have not visited for some time. All of a sudden one forgets leaking roofs, thistles, sulking pumps and the lack of follow through on the assumed sale of lambs. The beauty of the place returns.

Thus it was that I went with Caroline (and my stick) to 'Greece', the hilly part of our fields at the end of the property, an area officially known as 'Fontenelles' otherwise 'Little Springs'. The 'Little Springs' were turned into a large pond, with pump, in the hollow of the valley some 20 years ago in the course of which the caterpillar digger nearly drowned and had to be towed out by two tractors. (Another story, another time.) We called the hillside 'Greece' because of its rough grass, visible chalk stones, evil thistles, juniper bushes and rampant herb plants. It was also a hillside that ( before sheep ) showed a large variety of wild orchids when climatic conditions were propitious.

The herb plants, mostly wild majoram and ground creeping thyme ( serpolet), still flourish though the junipers are beginning to die. Caroline and I went down there because the herbs attract almost as many butterflies as the Buddleia by the kitchen door. The difference between the two is that the Buddleia predominantly attracts Fritillaries, the day-time flying Humming Bird and Hawk moths. 'Greece' has the Blues, the Adonis, the Common, probably the Short-Tailed and the Large, never mind the commoner butterflies, white or yellow. In fact, on a visit in 1990, Eric Rudge – who knows his butterflies – catalogued eight different types of Blue. Dave, from York (where are you Dave?) photographed one by means only known to him and other butterfly photography experts. 

We wandered up the hill-side to Green 5 from which we had a wonderful view back to the Farmhouse buildings. The Blues were busily everywhere, dipping on the ground spreading thyme, on the higher majoram flowers, ignoring the vetch and the clover. Around us the age old junipers were dying with a high rise form of thistle threatening to take its place. Possibly the carduus nutans, which is hairy,though the picture in my wild flower book shows something more like eryngium maritimum, which is a more naked plant, both described as rare-ish and the latter preferring sandy soil to the chalk which we have which suits the former. Whichever – it cannot be swiped dead by a walking stick.

Then Caroline pointed: amongst the Blues there was a totally black butterfly, only one, and sooty black. We hurried back to consult my butterfly bible and Caroline decided that what we had seen was a variation of the very common White Admiral – ab.obliterata, a White with all its white obliterated by black. We were very impressed with ourselves (and the Collins butterfly book*) so had a few more glasses of wine than normal, on holiday, that is.

It was only a day later, when Caroline and family had headed safely off towards the Channel coast, that I discovered I had come back with another, better known, insect from 'Greece'. A few aoutat - harvest mites in English or chiggers in American - had hitched a lift on my skin and were busy feasting on my blood. Ironic, given that I always warn our holiday tenants to wear shoes and socks when walking in the fields because of these beastly little mites which are the larvae of microscopic acariens. I was wearing espadrilles but a skirt and no socks, silly me. As a consequence I was itching for days until I realised what had bitten me. The little xxxxx always bite where clothes are tight, e.g. under bra,belt and knicker lines. At first, before one knows what they are, the horrid possibility of fleas occurs. The only remedy is a long, hot bath, an anti-histamine, and a glass of wine – this last for the morale.

Dear Caroline, if you read this, and you have suffered from bites – it was not the bedding, it was the bugs......

*Butterflies and Day flying Moths, of Britain and Europe, Collins 1989