New Year's Eve with Dr. Crane

And another year passes. I was messing with the phone camera (documenting the holiday lights -- they all get put away tomorrow) and inadvertently caught Niles (David Hyde Pierce) on the tv. We're streaming Frasier these days. Pierce and I were born in the same year and about thirty miles from each other in upstate New York. I'm pretty sure there are many more than six degrees of separation between us.

Holiday lighting.

I'm heading out to the market this morning to pick up the shellfish for our NYE meal of linguini with white clam sauce. In place of clams, we like to use cockles. Happy New Year!

Ye Olde Inn

This guy looks like he's having a tough time choosing his lunch. Beef? Chicken? I would choose pizza.

La Vieille Auberge, Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

I'm trying to remember... did Ken and I eat here the night we stayed in a hotel on the Mount? Maybe he'll remember. I think this may also be the hotel we stayed in. The room itself was in another building across the street and a little higher up.

Salty pastures

The bay around the Mont Saint-Michel meets France's mainland in what are called les prés salés, usually translated as salt marshes. But I like "salty pastures." It could be the title of a British sitcom. The prés salés are where certain breeds of sheep graze and the marshes are protected as such. Meat from those sheep is prized as a Norman specialty.

Les prés salés viewed from the Mont. I guess I didn't see any sheep on this day in June 2006.

Speaking of food... There will indeed be a New Year's market in Saint-Aignan on Tuesday. Ken placed an order with the fish monger for a kilo of coques (cockles) and we'll make a white "clam" sauce for linguini on New Year's Eve. He also got some duck legs to have with blackeyed peas on New Year's Day. We're set.

To each his own

Here's Ken taking his own photos of the sands in the bay of Mont Saint-Michel.

We were on a walkway along the ramparts that circle the island. June 2006.

The mornings are almost crisp with temperatures close to freezing. And they're dark as we're covered with a blanket of fog. We never saw the sun yesterday. More of the same is expected through the weekend.

Sand watching

Looking at my blog during the holidays is about as exciting as watching the sand at the Mont Saint-Michel. It might be pretty at first, but it's quickly time to move on to something else.

Visitors to the Mont Saing-Michel admiring the sand. June 2006.

We've started to work on the leftovers from Christmas dinner. Yesterday we had CD2, a repeat of Wednesday. Like love, it was better the second time around. Today we'll have an interlude of something in the Asian style as we plan and plot for the New Year's meals. New Year's Day will be duck and blackeyed peas as is the custom where Ken is from. More so the blackeyed peas and less so the duck. The eve before might be some sort of seafood. Salmon? Cod? Pollock? Cockles in a white wine sauce?

Thanks for stopping by!

One, two, three, go!

I wonder what's going on here?

See Jane run. Run Jane, run. More from the Mont Saint-Michel.

It's Boxing Day in the UK, Canada, and down under. It figures. My gloves are in the shop.

Merry happy ho ho ho!

 Bonnes fêtes de fin d'année !

Happy cactus!

This is the 2024 Christmas card created by our friend Sue in California. She's amazingly creative and talented. I haven't counted recently how many of her cards I've saved over the years. I know I don't have all of them (for some reason). Sometimes her cards are made with her own photos, other times they're orignal works of art like this one. Thank you Sue!

Like sands through the hourglass...

So here we are at another Christmas Eve (it's not Christmas and stop calling me Eve!). We'll spend the day puttering in the kitchen, mostly. Ken's heading out this morning to pick up the pintade we ordered for tomorrow's meal. As for today, we'll make our traditional cheese fondue.

Low tide in la baie de Saint-Michel, Normandy, June 2006.

Many French people stay up until (and after) midnight eating and drinking (and some attending Midnight Mass) with their families. The meal is called le réveillon de Noël (Christmas Eve). We never make it to midnight, so we don't try. I'm not sure we ever did. We do things the American way with the big meal on Christmas Day.

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.

Sapin de Noël 2024

This year's tree. I still have some ornaments to hang before I put all the empty boxes away.

I looked at where I usually keep the phone and almost panicked that it's not there. Guess what I was using to take the photo? Duh.

The way it was

Here's another look at the former parking lot(s) at the foot of the Mont Saint-Michel. They're now mostly gone. Visitors to the island are required to park on the mainland and take shuttles over a newly (since 2014) constructed bridge. Now the bay's tidal waters can surround the island, and the movement of the tides and the adjoining Couesnon River can help to keep it that way by minimizing sedimentation. This view shows the tour bus parking area that is no more.

I count at least thirty buses in the lot. I get a different number each time I count.

I don't know the details, but there are residents on the island that must be permitted to drive, along with law enforcement and emergency vehicles, not to mention vehicles that provide services to businesses such as restaurants, hotels, and shops. I'll bet that access is tightly regulated.

Not so picturesque

I took this photo back in 2006 on one of our visits to the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. Back then, the island was connected to a causeway lined with parking lots (which is where we parked on this visit). The Mont was no longer a tidal island. I don't think we knew it at the time, but plans were in the works to remove the parking lots to the mainland and replace the causeway with a bridge, thus allowing the tides to once again encircle the site. The Mont would become a tidal island once again.

Rooftops on the Mont Saint-Michel.

Before the artificial causeway was removed, visitors could drive right up to the Mont and park.

The work was completed in 2014 (I don't have a photo of that; maybe we should plan another trip!). Since then, cars must park on the mainland and visitors must take shuttles over the new bridge to access the tiny island town and its historic abbey. Now twice a day, when the tide comes in, the Mont is surrounded by water as it had been through most of human history.

Counter programming

Is it like garlic to a vampire? Whatever. May this image ward away any bad luck this Friday the thirteenth.

Light my fire

The replacement part for the wood stove arrived yesterday. It was late, which made me think it wasn't coming, but it showed up. Yay! The package was wrapped tighter than an Egyptian pharaoh and took a lot of effort to undo, but it's here. I decided to try it out right away.

The old broken grill.

The old part had been deformed by eighteen seasons of fire. It had curved into a near semi-circle before finally breaking in two. It was no longer able to fulfill its function: to keep burning logs inside the stove when the door is open. What's more, the curvature significantly reduced the space available for logs and thus the size of the fires I could make.

The new grill in place. It slid right in!

As you can see, the replacement part is straight as an arrow and, for the moment, looks rather spiffy. I'm hoping that it will outlive the rest of the stove. I'm not sure what the normal lifespan of this stove is supposed to be. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

And we have fire! Now I need to clean the fireplace.

Tasha Wednesday

I didn't want to wait a week to post this, so I'm making an exception to the rule. A rule that I made, so it's ok. When Tasha lounges around the house, she often crosses her legs. She looks so sophisticated.

Tasha relaxing in the den.

I'm expecting delivery today of the replacement part that I ordered for the wood stove. It was promised for November 27, but we're way beyond that now. Happily, I got an email a few days ago from the shipper saying that part is in their hands and should be here some time this morning. I was getting nervous that I might have fallen for a scam, but everything appears to be on the up and up. Just late (with no contact from the seller). France reminds us once again that patience is a virtue.

Up with people. And arches.

For most of us tourists and casual photographers, getting that "perfect" shot without people in it takes more effort than most of us will spend. Often, it's just impossible. So, we need to learn to work our fellow tourists into our shots as part of the scene which, after all, they are. People can add color, a sense of motion, and/or a measure of scale to a photograph. Getting that shot can mean standing around for a while until the stars align. You know it when it happens, but a lot of the time it just doesn't.

The abbey at the Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

Software is getting better at removing unwanted elements in photos and I'm certainly not opposed to doing that. It's all part of the creative process. This shot is so-so in my opinion. I would remove the woman and girl walking toward the left. I wish the lone walking woman was a little more toward the left, not blocking any of the window pane. The disembodied feet in tennis shoes on the lower right would also go. I like the idea of taking a picture of a guy taking a picture. I'm not sure it works here as well as I had hoped. But it's okay.

What? Arches again?

Gothic vaulted ceilings are constructed with columns, arches, and butresses that work together to channel the forces of the loads they carry, thus creating a usable space below them.

Vaulted ceiling in the abbey at the Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

We're expecting a contractor to come by this week to look at our automatic garage door. They (brothers) installed the door back in 2018, and it's been great. The problem is that it has recently developed a rather annoying tick that causes it to reverse itself before it closes. We can't identify the problem, so we're hoping the guys who installed it can do so and fix it easily. We're also going to ask them to work up estimates the replacement or installation of new shutters on various windows around the house.

Even more arches

This is probably the last of the arches photos from the Mont Saint-Michel. I took all of them back in 2006 and decided to re-work them a little. The originals are what they are: taken with my old Panasonic bridge camera, my first digital camera. I was just learning to use Photoshop for the most basic of post-processing, mostly cropping and straightening. But now, except for the smartphone camera, I use a full-frame DSLR camera and Lightroom for "developing."

More columns and arches in the abbey cloister, Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

I successfully placed our order for a chapon de pintade (Guinea fowl capon) yesterday. I was lucky that the rain moved out just as I was heading out to the market. Soon after, the wind picked up and it's been blowin' a gale, calming down a little over night. I'll pick up the bird on Christmas Eve at Saint-Aignan's special Christmas market.

More arches

More views inside the abbey at the Mont Saint-Michel.

Columns and arches. Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

The wind and rain seems to be moving off. At least the rain. I think we're going to have wind most of the day. And dropping temperatures. I still plan to go out this morning, mostly because I need to get a prescription renewal.

Cloister

This is the abbey cloister at the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. I don't know the identity of the woman posing for a photo.

The abbey on the Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

Mother Nature is going to try to meddle in my weekend plans to go to the market and order our holiday bird. I may have to put it off for a week if the weather gets ugly.

A new tradition

Chocolate snails! We've been enjoying them around the holidays for a few years now, so I guess that qualifies as a new tradition. This year, instead of sticking with the basic milk chocolate and dark chocolate snails, we tried almond and caramel. They're all good. Neither one of us is a big chocoholic; a little goes a long way. But these rich snail-shaped chocolates hit the spot!

Individually wrapped bursts of chololate. Perfect for the holidays.

The walnut tree

This was yesterday's sunrise from out by the lone walnut tree among the grape vines. It was brief; soon after I snapped this shot the sun rose up behind the clouds and the color faded.

Our hamlet is visible just right of center.

I've just realized how close Christmas is. On Saturday I'll go to the market in town and order our holiday bird. We're planning on a chapon de pintade this year, a male Guinea fowl, as the main course.

The outside

This is one of the few photos that I took of the Sées cathedral's exterior. It seems this cathedral has burned, partially collapsed, and been rebuilt numerous times over the centuries. 

The spires of the cathedral at Sées in black and white. June 2006.

The weather forecast is now revised. It seems that it might not get as cold as originally predicted this week. We'll still see single digits, but won't get very close to freezing.

Arches, not fallen

Still in the cathedral at Sées. The paint job certainly livens things up. I don't know if this is a reproduction of what it originally looked like or something new. It sure makes a big difference from those old cathedrals and churches whose walls are darkened by centuries of smoke (from candles, etc.) and other air pollution.

Sées, Normandy. June 2006.

Today's our last "warm" day before a cold spell sets in. We may get down to or below freezing by the end of the week. It's Decemburrr.

Soaring

This is another view inside the cathedral at Sées.Not much to "say" about it. Sées rhymes with the English word "say."

The cathedral at Sées, Normandy. I hope. June 2006.

No leftovers photo today. We took a break from lamb on Saturday and had an Asian-style chicken stir-fry. We'll get back to the lamb today.