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Cooking with Aunt Flo
My Great Aunt Flo (Florence) has a hoarding problem. She LOVES recipes, and has them all over the front of her house. They cover the dining room table, the coffee table in the living room, the card table in the living room (where my Grandma used to do puzzles), and the coffee table in the family room. She sorts them and looks at them and worries about them. It is her overwhelming passion and hobby at this stage of her life, when she doesn’t have my Grandma to look after anymore. It has taken me awhile to figure out that she loves them and wants to keep them. I had…
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Fun at a French Laundry
There is a VERY expensive, 3 Michelin starred restaurant around here, The French Laundry. That is NOT what we are talking about, because while I would certainly go there and enjoy a wonderful meal and invite all of you to join me IF I WON BIG IN THE LOTTERY, my current circumstances would not allow $325 per person without any wine even. No, this is a cautionary tale of washing clothes in a laundromat, which occurred in France, but could have happened anywhere. Our first day in Paris, I woke up before Ted and Maya, and I was ready to go out into the world far earlier than she would…
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Pomegranate, Orange, and Avocado Salad
Ted and I were out walking the spaz (aka, Mulder the Puppy Boy) the other day, and we passed a house we often pass, and I happened to notice that an ordinary looking bush that borders the sidewalk is a pomegranate bush. How did I know? Because I happened to spy a beautiful pomegranate buried deep inside from the corner of my eye. See how lovely it is, hidden in there? Backtracking a bit, Ted’s mom came to visit last weekend, and she brought me a beautiful pomegranate and some avocados. So for Halloween, I was trying to decide what to make, and found a recipe for stuffed peppers where…
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Paris
Oh Paris, why did we shortchange you? When planning our trip, we were tight on time. We only had so much vacation saved up, only so much $$ to spend, and we wanted to go when we wanted to go. We wanted to see more of France than just Paris, and of course, we wanted to see Jean-Marc, which meant the long drive to the West Coast. I do not regret any of it, but I do wish very much that we had had 3 or 4 more days in Paris. When you’re looking at your calendar and planning, you don’t really realize how much time gets spent getting from…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Normandy
After we left Brittany, we drove slowly back toward Paris, with a few stops along the way. On our way out to the coast, we had noticed that we could see Mont-Saint-Michel, which is pretty amazing. You’re just driving along, and then you glance over and see what looks like a medieval fortress that looks like it’s floating. Well, it’s not floating, and it doesn’t look that way when you are close, but from the freeway it appeared that way to me. So we decided to stop and at least look at it on our way to Normandy. Mont-Saint-Michel is an island right off the coast of Normandy (where Normandy…
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Wordless Wednesday
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France – Part 3
Saturday in our French trip, we were on our own. Jean-Marc and his lovely wife had some Business to attend to, so he gave us some suggestions, and off we went. We started in Pleyben (little red 4, above), which has a very old Calvary. Sadly, we did not know what a Calvary is, so we did not take a picture of it. We assumed it was the church. Here is Maya in front of the church. I didn’t really use my phone while I was in France, trying to save money, and Ted was driving, and Maya was just along for the ride. So zero research was done. When…
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Our Time in France – Part 2
Our first day of touring France, aka, not driving 8 hours from Paris to the West Coast of Brittany, Ted’s friend Jean-Marc took us to visit the medieval town of Locronan. As with any village or town in the area, there is a lovely church, St. Ronan. St. Ronan was an Irish pilgrim whose relics were housed for a time in the church. Most of the street signs in Brittany are in two languages, French and Breton. There is a movement to bring back the Breton language, and there are quite a few immersion schools for children to learn Breton. Surprisingly, this was illegal until somewhat recently. Anyway, we drove…
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Our time in France – Part I
We spent our first night in France out by the Charles De Gaulle Airport. Our flight arrived in late afternoon, and we had to get through customs, etc. So we found our hotel, got settled a bit, and had dinner. Maya wanted to shower and go to bed, but Ted and I wanted to try to stay awake a bit. We took a walk, expecting it to be all airport hotels and such, but there was a lovely little village right by the hotel, Roissy en France. There was a charming street with bustling cafes (we wished then that we had not eaten at the hotel, though the food there…
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Wordless Wednesday – Galette Complete in Brittany
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Fun with Plumbing
Back in April, Ted noticed that he could hear water running, and the sound seemed to come from the wall. Once he pointed it out to me, I could hear it as well. We did some internet research, and found some possible causes. A leak, of course, or perhaps sedimentation build up in our water heater. Quite a few years ago, we had to replace our water heater due to sediment. We have very hard water here, with a lot of minerals. Further research informed us that we should flush our water heater once a year. What? We’ve had the thing for at least 10 years, and have never done…
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GRADUATION
It’s been busy around here. Maya had finals, and then we had the graduation. I had family coming into town for the graduation, which made me think, “why not have a party?” So we did. I thought perhaps we would have 20 people, but it turned out to be about 50 people. I am a planner, so my brain gets going and annoys me with its desire to GET THINGS DONE. I planned food for 50, seating for 60 (figuring that people might want to spread out a bit, and what if extra people came, etc.). Planning meals before, who will stay where, how will we get from point A…
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Family Treasures
Monday was my mom’s birthday, and it was also my Great Aunt Flo’s birthday. My mom was born on her 18th birthday, and Aunt Flo always said she was the best birthday gift she ever received. Aunt Flo married my great uncle Wes on her own 26th birthday, and my mom spent her 8th birthday being a flower girl in her beloved aunt’s wedding, a job she cherished. Aunt Flo became a widow after only 11 years of marriage. She never had children of her own, and Uncle Wes’s girls were mostly grown by that point. 2 of them were married, and I believe the 3rd had also moved out…
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Grieving with Flowers
Today is my Mom’s birthday. She would have been 76 years old. I was thinking about her, and remembering how much she loved fuchsias. So I bought one, hoping that I can keep it alive. They do not do well in our micro-climate. It’s too hot in summer, too cold in winter. They do well on the other side of the Oakland hills, in Berkeley, Oakland, and especially San Francisco, where there are lovely fuchsias in Golden Gate Park. My mom would buy them and hang them indoors, but I’m going to try, and am putting mine outside. It’s in the shadiest part of our yard, where they will not…