As usual in the summer time, when the family is around, I'm not doing much blog writing. Also we haven't really been going anywhere, so there haven't been any compelling stories to tell. But here are some assorted photos that show what we've been up to over the last six weeks or so.
First, the garden is going nuts. We had our first harvest of green beans, that are climbing up the bamboo tripods that I placed around the corn plants. We've had so many beets that we can't keep up, so many of the beet green tops have been cut up, blanched and frozen for use later, as one would do with spinach. The beet roots themselves Maggie pickled in apple juice, using a recipe from the Taste Lithuania cookbook by Beata Nicholson, which Gedeminas and Rasa gave us before they left for Japan.
garden harvests: green beans, and tons of courgettes / zucchini
beet harvest
handful harvest of carrots
As you can see, the zucchini are plentiful, and so far we have marinated and grilled them, shredded and stir fried them; Maggie has made zucchini bread and a fantastic chocolate zucchini cake. Tonight I'm doing a sort of meat and vegetable ratatouille with sliced eggplant, zucchini, sun dried tomatoes, pine nuts, onions, parsley, feta cheese, and ground beef and pork.
My cucumber vines are going like gangbusters, and I've very happy that they are cooperating with my plans to have them climb on trellises, because it makes it much easier to find the cucumbers and harvest them at the right time. Plus there is no issue with end rot or discoloration from soil contact, because they are up off the ground, and I can use the "floor space" for other things... like the zucchini (!) and english salad cucumbers.
We have found now that we are harvesting them every two to three days, we can get more uniformly sized cucumbers, and that means it is easier to pack them tightly into the jars. Maggie has tried two or three different garlic dill recipes, and I have stuck with Sheila Rose's recipe, with the addition of a half-teaspoon of white wine tannins per six litres of pickling solution, just to try to ensure a more crisp pickle. I'm picking them while they are small which means that they don't need to be sliced up, but can be pickled whole.
hand pollinating the corn silks
The corn silks started to emerge maybe a week ago, so every day since then I have been going out and shaking pollen off the tassels of the stalks, and depositing the pollen on the silks. Each fertilised silk strand corresponds with a kernel of corn, so if you want nice big full corn cobs then it's best to help the pollination along.
We were considering going to Les Contamines Montjoie again with the Hammers, but given the fact that I had a big garden to maintain, and projects to complete around the house, and also given the financial uncertainty around my own singing career for the next who-knows-how-long, we decided to stay close to home. But we made sure to visit our friends before they left for their trip.
Having an after-dinner drink in the high field with Bryan and Kiana
Maggie's new blue dress
Maggie has sewed a few dresses already this summer, including this one above, inspired by one that India Hammer was wearing during one of our visits.
On the brewing front I have bottled everything that I've made so far this spring. We have three types of beer ready to drink, after eight weeks in the cellar. They are all pretty good, but I'm also growing to like the "Duivel's Nat" that we made last year. It didn't really impress me then, but after some months maturing in the bottles it's really good now. The elderflower champagne and the Christmas beer both have to sit in the bottles for quite a while before I open them; probably they will be a Christmas party drink. Now that I have had some good success with these kit beers I am planning some more involved brewing, that involves milling grain, and hop selection, and so forth. We'll see how that unfolds in the coming months.
bottling of the elderflower champagne
three kinds of beer ready for first sampling: "special belge" (an amber beer with a nice mix of bitter and sweetness),
saison (a Walloon "farmhouse" ale) and an abbey style
dubbel
a nice clear Belgian saison
One day a couple weeks ago, Christopher, Maggie and I had a road trip to Sint Sixtus abbey, to pick up some Westvleteren, and also made a stop at the Sint-Bernardus brewery to shop for some
sociales (the large bottles of beer for sharing with friends) and to have lunch in the new rooftop restaurant that they have built on top of the brewery.
sharing platter of bread, cheese, and charcuterie
a view of the hops growing in the nearby fields
More than a year ago Maggie heard from a colleague that her elderly grandmother was looking for a home for her woodworking tools. She had been a cabinetmaker, and had specialised in restoring antiques... In fact it turned out that she had done quite a bit of work on Alnwick castle, in Northumberland, which we have visited; it's also where some scenes from the first
Harry Potter movie were filmed. The colleague knew that Malcolm had started his
lutherie training, and so suggested that Malcolm and the grandmother meet. Maggie and Malcolm visited her a couple of years ago, and he did a bit of sample restoration work for her, and then we heard nothing more about it. We learned last month that she had passed on, and so the granddaughter called us and asked if he'd like to come pick up the tools...
We loaded up the trailer with a workbench equipped with three vises, along with many clamps, chisels, gouges, boxes of veneers, gilding and finishing materiels, and a variety of other interesting things, including some interesting items pictured below.
silver-chased fan or mirror handle, shaving brush,
brass miniature irons, perhaps for inlay work,
and three ivory paper knives
Malcolm has left me the workbench to replace the one he took with him, but most of the rest of the items have gone to his workshop/apartment in Boom. He's going to have lots of fun arranging and organising all of those tools!
In terms of work projects around the inside of the house, we got down to business and tackled the kitchen...
the old kitchen before renovation
in progress
kitchen essentially completed (needing only some painting)
Any renovation project always takes much longer than one expects, but after a couple of weeks we are pretty much done. Can you see the pale green "half walls" that border each of the white chest-of-drawers-style lower cabinets? These are meant to simulate the kind of brick supports that you would find in a country-style kitchen in Belgium and France. We like flow blue china, and the door frames are already that colour, so I think we'll paint them blue to match. I am particularly happy with the successful installation of the range hood, which involved hammer-drilling out a rather large hole through the thick brick back wall so that it would vent grease and smoke and odours outside.
We have made the counters to accommodate a 90 cm stove (unlike the 60cm one we have now) and are waiting until the summer sales to choose a new stove and refrigerator, but in the meantime everything is functioning well.
I had another painting project this past week: the cleaning, surface preparation, priming, and painting of the back wall of the house two doors over. These neighbours are in their 80s, and wanted to have the painting done while they were away on a week's vacation in Bretagne, so I took care of it for them, and made a little money for the job. It's a good thing that I did it because now I feel a bit more capable to tackle the outside back walls of our own house, which definitely need a scraping, filling, sanding, and painting.
Duncan resumes karate for the summer
This week and next Malcolm is vacationing in La Rochelle with his roommate and friend Antoine and his family. Duncan is doing some odd jobs around the house, and will babysit for friends tonight for the first time since before the confinement began He is also happy to have resumed karate, which exceptionally this year will happen in summer, as they lost several months' practice in March/April/May. His friend Arthur is coming to stay over tomorrow for a couple of nights, which will be great for the two of them. I'm glad he's getting some more time with friends, as the confinement was pretty hard on him from a social point of view.
I have had a couple of planning meetings this past week or so with Thom Graham and Marie-Pierre Demoutiez, the other members of the music/dance/drama team. We have received the go-ahead for me to return as musical director for the autumn production of
Grease, so we are already starting preparations, and planning to have a summer musical theatre camp during the third week of August, to get the kids started on learning some of the chorus numbers, and also helping them prepare for auditioning for the leads...
Grease is a fun show, but I haven't seen the film version since I was a kid, so I'll have to watch that again, and listen to recordings of the stage version, which differs substantially from the film.
I received confirmation from
La Petite Bande that the Japanese visa application process is continuing, so as far as I can tell the project remains un-cancelled. I am hopeful that it will happen, but am also a bit concerned about whether or not I will be able to travel to Canada in the week or two before I am supposed to fly to Japan from Toronto, to sing the
No Tenors project... it's hard to know now what will happen a few months from now. I just hope that people in Belgium, Canada, and Japan are responsible about the safety protocols, and that I'll be allowed to travel.
Posts
