Summer days - jam making - tour de france

We had very warm temperatures for the first part of July.  I personally really like these dry clear days but they are not typical for Belgium at this time of year.  We haven't had rain for at least two weeks, but it seems like we might get some tonight.  The weather has changed since the heatwave during the end of June; the last couple of days have been cooler which has been nice for sleeping...

Speaking of sleeping, Clyde is spending lots of time out on the camp bed under the pavilion.  He was particularly lucky to grab the last circle of sunlight one evening, reflected from the windows of a neighbour's house...

I am astonished to say that I have read two novels already, mostly while sitting outside in the evening.  I am sometimes interrupted by murmurations of starlings... there seems to be a evening rhythm based on the light, that begins with swallows doing cartwheels quite high in the air.  This is followed by the startlings, and then my favourite aerial ballet happens just as it's getting dark, when the bats come out!  The road in front of our house is busy with traffic during the day but in the evenings and nights it becomes very quiet in the garden.

Here is a sampler of the jams and jellies that have been laid down already this year.  I am not so much of a sweets person but I do like apricot jam between the layers of a sacher torte, and red currant jelly is also good to gloss up the sauce for a carbonnade flamande.  As well I tend to eat the Turkish style unsweetened joghurt in the morning, and that is really good with a little bit of raspberry jam.

It is the season of the sales and also the moving time for expatriates, so we have been keeping an eye on facebook marketplace.  We picked up this nearly new Ikea chair, a reproduction of the chair that was on the cover of their first catalogue in the 1950s, for a very inexpensive price.  The main challenge will be on how to keep the cats from scratching it, but as they are outside a lot their indoor scratching is almost nonexistent.

The other day we made a big Indian dinner, with chicken two ways (tandoori and apricot curry), mustard green beans, and I also made garlic naan which we grilled on the bbq.  Charcoal is obviously better but this still worked.

As well as both boys are home it made sense to cook moules; Maggie is not a fan but the three guys are, and the new moules from Zeeland were just in and were ridiculously cheap.  As always I do them in their own juice, without adding any liquid, and as long as the moules are fresh, it's my favourite recipe.

Last weekend was the opening of the Tour de France, and it started this year in Belgium.  We go packed up and joined the Hammers near the abbey of Villers-la-Ville to watch the riders zoom by.  As a Belgian friend told us, seeing the Tour de France means enjoying a six-hour picnic with a one-minute bike race as the cyclists go zooming past.  But we were happy to take part in this very French tradition.

helicopters arriving for this leg of the race

tracking the progress by smartphone

the leader for this day's leg of the race

the pack sweeps by

I have been keeping up with my running, and the cooler temperatures are certainly a lot better for it than when it's stinky hot.  It's now been fourteen days with this summer cold, and I am ready for it to stop.  I will go out for a nice long run today, and see if that can't kick the last of it...

Neither Malcolm nor Duncan have found formal employment yet... Duncan is doing an hour or so of math revisions nearly every weekday to prepare for his examen de passage at the end of August.  I hope that the investment in the textbooks was worth it, and that he will not only achieve a good result in the short term but that he will also establish a more complete base of knowledge to move forward next year.  Malcolm has put in quite a few days informally helping our neighbour with his installation work, but it's "gig" work and not as lucrative as a formal job.  Still, he's having time to work on his mandolin project, build some clamps, and rehabilitate the old workbench vises so that the bench is more useful.