Up to our necks in courgettes

May and June whizzed by and the poor blog has been neglected. It’s not that there isn’t lots to write about – rather that there aren’t enough hours in the day. Yet when our friends from England ask me what I do with my time, I struggle to come up with a credible answer. Whatever I am doing, it’s certainly not sitting on the terrace with a good book; I have less time for reading now than I did when I was a commuter!

The reality is that I’ve spent most of my time over the last month or so, whenever it’s not been raining and even sometimes when it has, either in the garden or at my vegetable plot. Whatever the venue, the agenda has been the same – waging war on the slugs and weeds which have been doing so well in the warm damp weather or planting the backlog of seedlings which have been growing faster than I’ve been able to keep up with them.

I’ve just about caught up now and we’re starting to see some results, mostly in the form of monster courgettes (in the picture that’s a dinner plate, not a saucer!). With all this rain it feels like a game of vegetable grandmother’s footsteps – no sooner do I turn my back than they grow another 5cm.

Given Jonathan declared early on in our relationship that he didn’t like courgettes, this has been a bit of a challenge! I daren’t tell him that there’s a very fine line between a large courgette and a small marrow, because while he will eat courgettes as long as they’re well disguised, he won’t allow even a molecule of marrow to pass his lips.

A couple of weeks ago I was able to give the odd monster or two away, but now everyone’s in the same boat (and if you don’t believe me, google ‘courgette glut’ for enlightenment); my neighbour declined my offer of some more courgettes at the bread van last Friday.

There’s nothing for it but to seek out every palatable courgette recipe I can find and then freeze the surplus!

If you’re in the same predicament, my list of courgette recipes from the past week or so (plus a few I’m planning) might give you some inspiration:

• Courgette and Brie soup (made with our local cheese, Langres, rather than Brie) from The new Covent Garden soup company’s (first) book of soups

• Antonio Carluccio’s Sedani (a type of pasta) with courgettes and walnuts from BBC.co.uk’s recipe section. This is a dream ticket recipe as it sorts out more than one glut – we’re still eating last year’s walnuts and this year’s are already swelling on the tree!

• Petites (that’s a joke) courgettes farcis from Joanne Harris and Fran Ward’s ‘The French Market’

• Courgette and cheese gratin from Marks and Spencer’s ‘France – the food and the lifestyle’

• Pretty much everything from the courgette section of Sarah Raven’s recent ‘Garden Cookbook’ (published just when I was in the direst need and my current favourite). We particularly like the courgette risotto, courgette and dill farfalle and the courgette and lemon salad.

• I never go for more than a few days without cooking something from Nigel Slater’s ‘The Kitchen Diaries’ and his zucchini cakes with dill and feta are especially good (though I sometimes use French ewe’s cheese rather than feta). I have no doubts about this being my desert island book!

• I’ve also designs on the courgette and tomato pie and the broad bean and courgette pasta sauce recipes from Anna Ross’ ‘Green Cuisine’. The latter of these is another dream ticket recipe as the broad bean pods are also looking rather threatening!

So bring on those broad beans!

Présidential 2007

I wrote this piece earlier today, before the result was known, but I decided to publish anyway.

Since school I’ve always had a strong interest in politics so I’ve followed the 2007 Presidential elections as closely as my still-limited French will allow. Through the local paper and talking to friends, I think I have a reasonably good grip of how the process works, but I have had to rely on the UK media to understand the nuance of the political debate. My French just isn’t good enough (yet) and people here are much more discreet about their political opinions – no ‘Sarko’ or ‘Ségo’ posters stuck like ‘for sale’ signs in people’s gardens here.

In the run-up to the first round, the Journal of the Haute-Marne ran a feature on an Observer Journalist, Jason Burke, who wanted to understand the views of the citizens of a typical medium-sized French provincial town. To the delight of our local paper, he chose Chaumont and his piece in today’s edition gives the Préfecture (the capital town of Haute-Marne) a rare mention in the UK national media.

To the uninitiated Anglo-Saxon, the two-stage process may seem a Gallic mystery. In the first round, people voted for one of 12 candidates representing a wide range of interests and positions - from the Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition party to the Workers’ Struggle party and everything else in between. The Wikipedia’s entry on French political parties highlights how fragmented the landscape is; it lists 18 nationwide parties and many more minor ones, including five supporting the royalist cause (and I don’t mean those supporting Mme Royal). Only the parties who can gain the support of 500 ‘sponsors’ from elected officials in at least 30 different departments make the long ‘shortlist’ candidates for the first round.

The process is very open; the local paper publishes the results in detail for each commune and these are also posted on the noticeboard at the Mairie. This is how I know that at least a couple of our fellow inhabitants have Trotskyist sympathies and more than a dozen voted for the Front National (something I’ll worry about for the next five years, no doubt). It feels, too, as if voting is accepted as everyone’s social responsibility – 85% of the national electorate voted in the first round last month.

But elections are not about processes – it’s the result that’s important. From what I’ve read and heard both here and from the English media, both candidates believe that France needs reform and the fundamental debate is about how. Should she become more closely modelled on the liberal economies of the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries or not?

As I see it, France has always been proud of its distinctly individual values - a sophisticated nation with, historically, a strong sense of social responsibility. Playing in the same playground as other western countries doesn’t have to mean playing by exactly the same rules. I fear France may become yet another place where what’s seen as ‘consumer choice’ and ‘economic freedom’ will lead to the sharp divides between the haves and the have-nots which we see elsewhere; she will become just another country where people use the comfort-blanket of shopping to pass the time when they’re not working.

Jason Burke sums it up far more eloquently than me in today’s ‘Observer’; the people of France are either voting to ‘Work longer to earn more’ or for ‘Human values not financial values’.

Jonathan is more optimistic – as his French teacher says prospective Presidents always say they’re going to change the things they so obviously can’t because these things are wired into the French nation’s psyche. There’s still hope for a nation for whom ‘soldiarité’ and ‘cohésion’ are part of the everyday vocabulary, and there’s so much more meaning attached to these simple words in French than can be conveyed in any translation into English.

Links

Jason Burke's article in today's 'Observer'

The Wikipedia on French political parties

The Wikipedia on the 2007 presidential elections

Life is tough

We saw the year’s first lone swallow last Saturday, and while one swallow doesn’t make a summer, things are harder for Jonathan when the sun shines. He has to stay at his desk staring at what I call the ‘ones and noughts’ on his computer screen while I play outside (his name for my ongoing efforts to tame the garden).

It all got too much earlier this week after the fourth or fifth day of continuous sunshine and so he tried to move the office outside. All very well, but even with the parasol the light was too strong and he couldn’t see the computer screen. The experiment failed and he and all his technical accoutrements had to go back inside.

In spite of these difficulties he’s enjoying a couple of weeks of respite – as the days get warmer we don’t need fires, except perhaps to relieve the evening chill, so he’s off wood chopping duty. However, next week the piscinistes come to open the pool for the summer and the daily maintenance routine will start. But don’t have too much sympathy – unlike the wood chopping (my shoulders are too puny) he could delegate the pool stuff to me. But the bottom line is that he enjoys fishing out the leaves, testing the pH and all that schoolboy chemistry. And a very good job of it he does too.

By the way, the lone swallow has been joined by two friends, so maybe we are heading for summer. I saw the three of them this morning in an aerobatic fly-past, chatting merrily together as swallows do. No sooner than the pool opens, they and no doubt more of their friends, will be swooping down to skim a drink of water in full flight – the best pool-side entertainment there is, although it is a bit off-putting if you’re in the water at the time. My challenge now I’ve got this blog going will be to get a picture for you.