We're watching le cube

They call it "Le Cube." It's the new decoder from our satellite television provider. We've had the old decoders for nearly seven years now. One was a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) called PiloTime. It gave us forty hours of recording time, but the interface was slow and awkward, and the thing was dying a slow death.

One of the boxes that our new satellite decoders came in.

The other decoder was not a PVR, but it, too, was losing functionality. So we decided to upgrade with the new attic work so that we would have two new decoders and the ability to record either upstairs or downstairs. The new Le Cube gives us eighty hours of recording time and has a new, more user-friendly, interface. The new remotes are shiny and clean have no buttons missing. And all Ken had to do to get them was take the old decoders in to a store and exchange them for the new ones. Easy-peasy.

By the way, Le Cube is not a cube. It's a standard polyhedron that's mostly white, with one corner in black that suggests the shape of a cube. But the box it came in is a cube. A very stylish cube.

It took about a whole day to hook them both up, run the setup programs, download stuff from the satellite, and figure out how it all works. But we're getting used to them now.

The acorn in the moon

Hey, that's one heck of a zoom lens! Ok, it's not the moon. It's the dirt road out back that runs through the vineyards. I'm pretty sure there are no acorns on the moon. But there are plenty under the oak trees all around. They're competing for space with the walnuts, hazelnuts, and chestnuts.

This acorn had probably just fallen. Then next day I noticed it was crushed. Probably by a tractor tire.

And the squirrels are competing for the nuts with the humans. We've pretty much given up on our hazelnut crop these past few years. The nut weevils and the squirrels get most of them. I don't want to give you the wrong idea; we're not overrun with squirrels. I see one or two at most every now and then. But when I see them, they're in the hazelnut trees.

Another day, another pizza

Pizza is one of my favorite foods. Especially French pizza. I'm sure I would love Neapolitan pizza, too, but I've never been to Naples. So for me it's French style individual pizzas. I've been making pizza at home for close to fifteen years now, if not longer. I have two pizza stones for the oven, a peel, and a small collection of recipes for crust.

One of Sunday's pizzas, ready to be sliced.

My current favorite crust is based on a recipe from our friend Tom who lives in Illinois. He had a wood-fired pizza oven built into his kitchen not too long ago. When we visited Tom and Harriett in 2006, they treated us to their home-made pizza. Un vrai régal, as they say in French!

Sunday's pizza was made with the rustic tomato sauce I made last week. I ground up a couple of small steaks along with some smoked lardons (bacon) and sautéed them with onions, garlic, and some chopped eggplant from the garden. That all went into a pot with the garden tomatoes, herbs, and spices. We ate it on pasta last week, but we both thought it would make a good pizza. I didn't take the sauce all the way to the edge of the pizza this time because it was thick with meat and eggplant chunks and I didn't want that to spill over on to the stone. So I kept a little bare crust around the edge.

We topped the pizza with black olives and two kinds of grated cheese. One was mozzarella and the other was a dry Wisconsin cheddar that we were recently given. I made two pizzas and they were excellent (if I do say so myself). Served with a green salad they made a terrific Sunday lunch.

Aw, dry up!

Summer's wildflowers have set seed and are drying into brown ghost skeletons. The coming winds, rains, and snows of winter will beat most of them down, but a few will survive upright into spring. I wonder if this one will?

The last few seeds of this spent flower are still holding on.

We ate the last best corn on the cob Saturday. There are a few more ears out there, but they're small and probably not fully formed. Ken read about doing corn in a skillet, so we did. Melted a little butter and put the corn right in, turning it frequently, covering it a little, until it was done. Then salt and pepper. But no fiddling with buttering a hot corn cob at the table since they were cooked in butter already. And the corn had a firmer texture than it does when it's boiled. Very good.

And, thanks to a suggestion from one of Ken's readers, we gave Callie one of the cobs after we ate the corn from it. She chowed down and consumed the whole thing in about five minutes. Happy days!

Reason we live here #2

I was going to put a higher number in the title, but then I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So while it's not the number one reason we live here, it's very close. Living within reach of a wine producing region is great; I've lived in Upstate New York, Washington, DC, and San Francisco, CA, all close to wine production.

I think these might be côt (a.k.a. malbec) grapes.

But now I'm living among the vines. The growers and wine makers are my neighbors. I watch the transformation of the vineyards through the seasons of the year from my windows. I walk among the vines nearly every day. I know the sights, the smells, and the tastes (yes, I pluck the occasional grape) of the vineyard. I share it with dogs, cats, pheasants, foxes, and deer.

And I drink the local wines, almost exclusively. The Touraine region is rich with wine styles. Red, white, and rosé. Dry and sweet. Still and sparkling. The local varietals include gamay, cabernet, côt, sauvignon, chardonnay, and chenin. There are also several old varietals grown around us with less familiar names like pineau d'aunis and grolleau.

Many of the people who grow grapes and make wine in this region descend from generations of winemakers. A lot of them are small and medium sized producers. When you visit a winery here, you will likely be talking to the winemaker or a member of the family.

It's a very interesting and a rather delicious place to live. You can read what I wrote four years ago about our wine country lifestyle here.

First day of fall skies

While the sky was not particularly dramatic on Thursday, it was still pretty. I thought I'd record the sunrise on the first day of fall. It was a warm morning which made the daily walk with Callie very pleasant.

Looking easterly toward the sunrise at around 7:30am.

The grape harvesters were out at first light and Callie didn't want to go toward them, so we walked around the vineyard in the space between the vines and the woods. That took us in a wide loop around the menacing machines.

Looking toward the west. Callie's listening to the hum of the harvesters.

Once beyond the vineyard parcel where the closest harvester was working, we got back on the dirt road and headed westerly. I could hear harvesters over on the next hillside to our south and out in the vineyards beyond the end of the dirt road to the west. Callie kept a sharp eye out for them in case they decided to turn and attack.

The grape harvest is under way

The harvesters showed up earlier this week to begin les vendanges for the 2010 vintage. There are some hand pickers out there in certain parcels, but most of the grapes are picked by machine. The big harvesters ply the rows, vibrating the grapes from the vines. Their hum sounds eerily like the vuvuzelas during this year's World Cup, only with more vibrato.

Harvester on the left, waiting tractor and trailer on the right.

When the bins on either side of the harvester are filled up, the driver dumps the grapes into a waiting trailer. When that fills up, another driver takes the grapes back to the winery while the harvester continues on. Then he returns with the empty trailer for another load.

The full harvester makes its way toward the trailer to transfer the picked grapes.

This will be going on now for a few weeks. Then, sometime around the first of November, the first fermented grape juice will show up in the markets in the form known around here as bernache. It's not wine yet, but a fizzy taste of things to come. And it's renowned as a great cure for constipation.