Musings
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(Not) Wordless Wednesday
I hope you have all been well, and that you have had a lovely Christmas or Hanukkah or Solstice or whatever. Ours has been lovely. One gift I received is a new iPad, which is SUCH a relief, my old one, while much adored, was so out of date that it could not take new updates, and thus pages would freeze and reload and freeze and reload, and it was a nightmare to do anything more than a text or facebook on it. Now with my new iPad, which is all up to date and happy, I am hopefully going to manage to find more time here. We shall see.…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Giving Thanks
As always, there is much to be thankful for. (For which to be thankful…better grammar, but sounds awkward). For those of us in California this year, we are thankful for the mixed blessing of rain. Mostly good, because look at the difference in our air quality from last Saturday to today. I’ve never spent so much time looking at air quality indexes before. At some point the air quality was over 300, which is extremely hazardous. In the picture above, it is likely about 185 or so. The lower picture was good air quality, maybe around 20. It felt so good to go out and take our first long…
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Ode to Sancerre
I adore California Chardonnay, and haven’t found a lot of French Chardonnay that I enjoy. I wish this were not true, because I feel less sophisticated for preferring a big oakey wine to one that is more subtle. But I live in California, and buttery and oakey wines are very popular here. While we were in France this summer, I decided to steer away from French Chardonnays, and instead went with a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, Sancerre. When we came home and found ourselves longing for France, we stated looking for Sancerre around here. You can find fairly decent selections of wine at your local Safeway, and even CVS and…
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Wordless Wednesday
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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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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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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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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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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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Good Eats / Birthday Weekend / Bloody Mary recipe
Thursday was Maya’s birthday, and we celebrated by going to our favorite Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco, then we did some shopping near Union Square with her gift cards. At some Dim Sum restaurants, you order off of a menu (like the place we went last year). At others, the staff bring food around to the tables, either on carts or on trays, and you say yes or no to each item as they bring it around. So they come by and say, “shrimp dumplings?” and you say yes or no, and if you say yes, they give you the shrimp dumplings and mark your check to show that…