The traditional apple tart

Saturday's dessert was typical, for me. I made an apple tart. Quelle surprise ! This time I used an apple variety called Reinette du Canada grise. Tasty. I also used some home-made applesauce (our apples) from last year to line the pie shell. It was a little too much, but I used it all because it had been frozen and I didn't want any left over. In any case, it was tasty. The applesauce added a little cinnamon and clove flavor (but not too much) to the tart.

 

Home-made tarte aux pommes. What looks like powdered sugar on the tart is just light reflecting off the glaze.

Yesterday, we finished up the blanquette that Ken made last week. Today we're going to get pizzas from the supermarket and take a break from cooking. Then Tuesday it's our traditional Xmas Eve cheese fondue followed by Christmas Dinner on Wednesday, starring a roasted guinea fowl capon with all the trimmings. Ho ho ho!

Solstice lunch

Oh, and my birthday, too. We made the traditional (for us) steak au poivre in a cognac (in this case, armagnac) cream sauce with frites (French fries). The beef was rumsteak (sirloin in American English) from a local butcher. This piece weighs in at 410 grams (just over 14 ounces). Here it is "marinating" in crushed black pepper prior to cooking.

Our piece of rumsteak marinating in crushed black pepper.

Once the beef is seared, it's removed from the pan to rest. Whatever's left in the pan forms the base of the sauce. Ken added a little fond de veau (veal reduction) for flavor and consistency along with cream and a good helping of armagnac. In between the main course and the dessert, we enjoyed a salad of frisée (curly endive) in vinaigrette. Wine was a sparkling Vouvray as an aperitif then a red Seguret (Côtes du Rhône Villages) with the main course.

À table ! Good bistro style food.

The sauce is served over the beef (cooked rare for our taste) with fries along side. Yum! Tomorrow, I'll show you the dessert.

Landing or taking off?

I don't remember. I'm also not sure if that white mass on the bottom is the tide rising or something else. I'm going with the tide. I'd also wager that the bird is taking off as the tide rolls toward it. I wasn't very good at labeling and/or remembering eighteen years ago when I took these pictures.

Is that a cormorant? Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

Today is the winter solstice! The days have already stopped getting shorter. It won't be long now before they start getting longer again. Yay!

Strolling on the sand

I can only think of one thing that might be more difficult than pushing a baby stroller in the sand. That would be pushing a stroller up and down the steep streets and stairs of the Mont Saint-Michel itself. If I remember correctly, the island's few streets are paved with cobblestones. More fun!

I hope they steered clear of the quicksand. Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

I'm off to do some pre-holiday grocery shopping this morning. But first, it's my turn to walk Tasha. The wind has died down, but it's colder this morning than it was yesterday.

Stick in the mud

Here's a 2006 photo of a group of kids "playing" in the quicksand that surrounds the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. The adults are there, just outside the photo. The web sites I consulted on the topic (actu.fr and wikihow.com) say that it's nearly impossible to sink all the way into quicksand due to the body's natural buoyancy and the fact that most quicksand is not very deep. The quicksand is actually a pocket of water below the sand's surface. When you step on it, you press out the water as your feet start to sink in. As you'd expect, once your feet go under, your weight continues to push water out of the sand surrounding them, creating a suction force that prevents you from wriggling out. The more you fight it, the farther in you go, to a point. Gentle movements that allow water to re-penetrate the sand will work to free you. One leg at a time.

It's easier to free yourself if you're barefooted.

Low tide

When the tide goes out at the Mont Saint-Michel, people can walk out onto the sand flats. Or are they mud flats? Quicksand flats? There is a danger of getting stuck in quicksand. We saw a couple of tour groups whose leaders were demonstrating how the quicksand gets you and how you can get out. It's amazing to watch.

Looking out over the Baie du Mont Saint-Michel at low tide.

All the flats in this photo flood over when the tide comes in. That's something else that's amazing to watch. I've been on the Mont once while the tide came in. Alarms in town warned people to get off the sand flats, to move cars out of the lower parking lots, to get the last buses back to the mainland, and just to be aware of the rising water. We planned to spend the night on the island so we weren't worried. We enjoyed a nice dinner then a high and dry hotel room before we needed to leave the next morning.

House lights

I should have waited until it got darker, but I was impatient. Still, you can see the lights hanging over the deck.

This side of the house faces east.

We just approved an estimate to have five new roll-down shutters installed. Merry Christmas to us! Two of the new shutters will be on windows in this photo. First, the kitchen window (middle left) shutter will be replaced. We had the current shutter put in almost twenty years ago. It's brown while all the shutters we've had replaced on the house since are white. The new shutter will be solar-powered like those we installed on the back (west side) of the house. The attic window in the dormer will also get a new shutter (as will the other attic window on the north side). They've never shutters, but since we had the attic finished, it makes sense. Two glass block windows on the south side, ground floor, (along the road) will also get shutters. That's a total of five new shutters for the house.

We also got an estimate for the deck door/window, too, but that's a big and costly job; we decided to skip it for now.