Rain, rain, go away... and don't come back until November

The weather report says we should expect more severe thunderstorms today in this part of France. So far our luck is holding. Yesterday was a fairly nice day, with some sprinkles of rain in the morning and again in the afternoon, but nothing to write home — or a blog post — about. Today's forecast is for more than an inch (30 mm) of precipitation.

Sunday morning was nice. I walked through some woods on the edge of the vineyard with Callie.

The work of assessing the damage in the Vouvrillon — the area around the village of Vouvray where all the Chenin Blanc grapes are grown to produce Vouvray wines — is just getting under way. A lot of the growers in that area (and surely in others) are not insured for this kind of damage. The insurance is expensive, and many growers just take their chances, apparently. The last time there was such a devastating hailstorm in the area was in 1976.

Grapes in the Renaudière vineyard — as yet untouched by hailstones

Meanwhile, we'll keep our tarps and other sheets of plastic at the ready, just in case we have downpours intense enough today to cause our roof to leak again. We've accepted the roofer's bid for the repair work and sent in our 30% deposit on the job. Now we have to wait for the roofer to schedule the work. Of course, he can't do anything as long as it keeps raining. I hope he doesn't plan to go on vacation in July and August, as many people do.

These woods are one of the places where Callie loves to walk, because there are often deer grazing there that she can chase.

Yesterday I took the car in for a recharge of the air-conditioning system. It had stopped blowing cold. We don't have AC in the house, but in the car it's very nice not to have to ride around with the windows rolled down to get a breath of air. The AC compressor also defogs the windshield. Now if only we could get a little hot, dry weather, so that spending 80 € on AC wouldn't seem so frivolous.

« Des grêlons gros comme des œufs de poule »

“Hailstones the size of hens' eggs.” That's how they are describing the disaster that struck the Vouvray area early yesterday morning. They say that about three-quarters of the 5,000 acres of vines in the Vouvray wine appellation might have been severely damaged in just 15 minutes' time. There was a foot of ice on the ground in some areas. Roof tiles were broken, cars heavily damaged, and so on.

We were luckier here in Saint-Aignan, which is 35 miles southeast of Vouvray. We heard the thunder in the distance early in the morning. But our weather was fine until mid-afternoon, when a light but steady rain began to fall. It's supposed to rain all week, but so far we haven't had any intense downpours of the kind that caused our roof to leak earlier in the month.

Still, I decided yesterday morning that it would be a good idea to put the car in the garage, just in case we ended up under a shower of hailstones. The car was one less thing to worry about. For now, our garden and our neighbors' vines have been spared. 

This morning it's raining and incredibly dark and gloomy for mid-June. We spent the weekend working in the yard and re-potting plants to set out on the terrace. But now the terrace is all dressed up with nowhere to go — it's too damp and chilly for us to enjoy being out there.

There are articles, slideshows, and videos of some of the damage in the Vouvrillon (the area around Vouvray) on web site of the local newspaper, La Nouvelle République — here and here — if you want to see and read more.

Splashes of red

Walt picked these in the yard yesterday. They are fraises des bois — "woodland" or wild strawberries. They're very small, but they are also very sweet and tasty. Walt baked them into a cake yesterday afternoon.

Just on the south side of our hedge, along the road, red poppies — coquelicots — are growing. We didn't plant them; they just came up. Wildflowers are like that.

Finally, these are petunias, which we did plant. They're in jardinières on the terrace. They haven't had time to grow much yet, but they are going to give us good color all summer, I think.

The area just north and west of us is experiencing violent thunderstorms this morning. Walt found a photo on a weather site showing one- to two-inch hailstones that fell on Vouvray this morning. The storm cells are moving toward Paris over Vendôme and Chartres, and all the way up to Rouen and the Channel coast. So far, we are in the clear and the temperature here is supposed to hit the mid-80s ºF (28 to 30 ºC) this afternoon.

Couscous de lapin

I cooked the other rabbit. I had bought two that were sold as un lot — a package deal — and with the first one I made Brunswick Stew. With the second one, I made something similar but at the same time completely different: a North African couscous. Normally, you'd find it made with chicken and/or lamb.

A huge serving of North African couscous. Tomatoes, carrots, green vegetables, and turmeric provide nice colors.

Browning the rabbit

As with the Brunswick Stew, the first step was to cook the rabbit by browning it lightly and then simmering it in a seasoned liquid to make broth. I browned the rabbit in a combination of canola and olive oil, and then I poured on enough water to cover it.

The rabbit cooling after simmering for an hour

The seasonings were three small onions, three garlic cloves, half a dozen allspice berries, a dozen black peppercorns, and three bay leaves. Plus salt, of course. It simmered for an hour, and then I took it out of the liquid and let it cool. I strained the liquid to use as a base for the couscous broth.

Couscous is a kind of tomato-based soup or broth of meat and vegetables that is served with the cooked couscous "grain" — it's not a grain, actually, but a form of pasta. I had a big can of whole tomatoes in juice, and I had a lot of little bowls of cooked vegetables in the refrigerator or freezer, leftovers from recent meals. The main vegetables that you usually put in the couscous broth are onions, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, summer squash (green and yellow), turnips, and chickpeas. As you'll see from the photo below that I took and labeled, I had a greater variety than that, and it worked out really well.

Ideas for vegetables you can put into couscous broth

As for the rabbit, I decided to do what I did when I made Brunswick Stew week before last. I pulled all the meat off the bones after the rabbit had cooked and cooled down. The rabbit cooking liquid made a good base for the couscous broth, and the large and small chunks of rabbit meat went into the soup, along with the juice from the tomatoes and the cooking liquid from all the other vegetables. Turmeric, cumin, hot red pepper flakes, and other North African spices gave it good flavor.

"Pulled" rabbit meat and tomatoes from a tin

The other meat you usually have with couscous is the spicy little lamb and/or beef sausage called a merguez [mehr-GUEHZ]. We didn't have any merguez sausages, but we had some similar but fatter sausages that we got at SuperU. They were sold as « chorizettes » — little Spanish chorizos (see the photos above). They were really good with the couscous. In France, you can find merguez sausages in any supermarket.

Couscous "grain" — pasta, really — steamed with raisins

Finally, you cook the couscous "grain" or semoule. It can be steamed over the broth in a special pot called a couscousier, or it can be quick-cooked according to the directions on the package it comes in. We did the quick cooking this time, and we added a handful of raisins to the semoule. You serve some couscous grain on your plate and then you put vegetables, meats, and some of the spicy broth over it.

Another indispensable condiment to have with couscous is some of the hot red pepper paste called harissa. If you like your couscous extra-spicy, take a ladleful of the broth and squirt a tablespoon or so of harissa paste into it. Stir it with a fork to mix it all up and then dribble it over the pile of semoule and vegetables. Try it — you'll like it.

The combination of hot peppery broth and sausages, sweet carrots, and even sweeter raisins that explode in your mouth when you bite into them... well, it's amazing. And you get all those vegetables and the rabbit (or chicken) meat as a bonus.

A soft landing, with a lot of barking

Late yesterday afternoon, Walt and I were upstairs watching a TV show when Callie went wild barking in the entryway way downstairs. Sometimes she does that if she sees the Bertie the cat walk by the sliding glass door down there.

We called the dog but she wasn't paying attention to us. "Is that Callie growling?" Walt said. He muted the TV and we realized that we were hearing the roar of the gas burner in a hot-air balloon. Walt went downstairs to try to calm the dog down and to see where the balloon might be.

It was flying really low to our south, right over the neighbors' houses. It was even lower than the balloon that passed over a week or two ago and that looked as if it might hit the tops of the trees in our yard. At one point, we thought this balloon might be landing on our neighbor-the-mayor's property. That would be unusual.

This balloon, no more than 20 feet (6 or 7 meters) off the ground, kept drifting northwest over the parcel of vines closest to the mayor's house. Callie was wild with excitement. We opened the back door and we all went out in the yard to see what was going on. We couldn't control Callie at all, but she doesn't know that she would be capable of getting out of the yard by jumping over the fence or gate, so she's never tried to and there was no real danger.

I grabbed my camera, of course, and started snapping photos. We didn't go out and talk to anybody, mainly because of the dog. But we watched for a while. We wondered whether one of the passengers might have had a panic attack or some kind of medical emergency that required an urgent, unplanned landing. The vineyard is a good place for such a landing because there are no utility poles or electrical wires out there. At the same time, the gravel road is a pretty narrow space to land on, and you wouldn't want to land on the vines and support posts.

We saw a couple of vehicles speeding through the vineyard from the other end of the road. They arrived, and there was a lot of activity for a few minutes. Then the vehicles drove away and the balloon went back up in the air. It went straight up, because there was pretty much no wind. At a pretty high altitude, it starting drifting west and finally disappeared into the distance.

Our excitement for the day... I think Callie really enjoyed it.