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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 One gift I received is a new iPad, which is SUCH a relief, my old one, while much adored, was so out of date that it could not take new updates, and thus pages would freeze and reload and freeze and reload, and it was a nightmare to do anything more than a text or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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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…