And finally, la rentree is here! The girls are so excited for their first day of school! They are dressed and ready in a flash, both of them looking so pretty in special back-to-school clothes. Gigi is wearing the dress given to her by one of her best friends in SF, a French-girl named Zoe, with the incredibly touching thought that when she wore it, it would be like having Zoe and her SF friends there with her. Extra bonus being that Zoe and her mom Alex are originally French with really fabulous fashion sense, so Gigi looks adorable. She's been saving that dress all summer long to wear on this day! And Pippa has on a shirt that came from the hand-me-downs of her slightly-younger but so-much-taller cousin Lydia. So she too feels like she is wearing something with special meaning. Both are so energized and not displaying any signs of nervousness.
Walking to school takes 15 minutes, even though we have to stop to take photos. One thing's for sure: you'll never get a more scenic walk to school, or better first-day-of-school photo than this! Notice that we can see not only Notre Dame, from our lovely look-out on the bridge over the Seine, but also the Eiffel Tower (in the distance, left side of photo). Awesome!
You may not have known it, but every store-keeper, baker, rental agent, banker, and teacher we've encountered in the last few weeks knows that today is not only the girl's first day of school, but also Gigi's 8th birthday. I packed 2 boxes of Trader Joe's brownie mix in our luggage for this occasion, and we bring trays of deliciously fudgy brownies for Gigi to share with her class and the teachers. If that's not going to help make the new kid popular, what will?! The secret, by the way, is to cook them far less than the box suggests: 15 minutes instead of 25, depending on the oven. The second they don't jiggle, they're done. The only brownies that are better than Trader Joe's take a lot more work: see the Barefoot Contessa's Outrageous Brownies. As you are making them, you will swear they are not worth the extra expense ($$$ ingredients!) or effort. But then you will taste them and realize they are the best brownies you've ever eaten in your life. Just sayin'.
And though it goes against all our best parenting judgement, and we know they will go to bed too late on their first day of school, we just cannot resist taking the girls out for a special birthday dinner. There is a famous restaurant, Bofinger, nearby, and we manage to sneak in without a reservation (probably because our dinner hour of 7pm is well before the dinner rush here). The children's menu is amazing: no chicken fingers, pizza, burgers, pasta, all the usual suspects at American restaurants that make me bemoan American eating habits. Gigi orders a salmon en croute. When it arrives, Anthony and I are impressed. It is elegant and could easily be a grown-up dinner anywhere else. The salmon is perfect and succulent, surround by a flaky pastry crust and with a fresh tomato concasse sauce. Naturally, Gigi would rather have pasta.
But it is Pippa's "Marine Discovery" dinner that blows us all away:
The "under water snale" by the way is actually a whelk, called bulot in French. We all taste it, and Gigi is right, it is indeed super "discusting." [Ed note: since this posting we got together with a family of French friends. Their 3 children, ages 4, 8, and 10 absolutely love bulot. Reminds me of children in Japan going crazy for after-school snacks of dried squid and crunchy little fishes with the heads attached.] Pippa chews and chews and chews and chews and finally asks, "If I spit it out, do I still get to tell people I ate it?" (Answer: yes) Along with the whelk, Pippa's children's seafood platter includes 2 kinds of shrimp still in the shells with the heads on, raw oysters, and smoked salmon. It is, frankly, a challenging meal even for many non-seafood adults, and I am gobsmacked that it is on the children's menu.
In case you're wondering why we don't get them something simpler, the other children's menu choices were a "Land Discovery" meal including Duck Foie gras, terrine, and smoked uncooked ham or the "Veal Piccata" with a mushroom sauce.
The best part of the first day of school and Gigi's birthday to boot is that despite the extreme dinner, none of us do boot.
Walking to school takes 15 minutes, even though we have to stop to take photos. One thing's for sure: you'll never get a more scenic walk to school, or better first-day-of-school photo than this! Notice that we can see not only Notre Dame, from our lovely look-out on the bridge over the Seine, but also the Eiffel Tower (in the distance, left side of photo). Awesome!
You may not have known it, but every store-keeper, baker, rental agent, banker, and teacher we've encountered in the last few weeks knows that today is not only the girl's first day of school, but also Gigi's 8th birthday. I packed 2 boxes of Trader Joe's brownie mix in our luggage for this occasion, and we bring trays of deliciously fudgy brownies for Gigi to share with her class and the teachers. If that's not going to help make the new kid popular, what will?! The secret, by the way, is to cook them far less than the box suggests: 15 minutes instead of 25, depending on the oven. The second they don't jiggle, they're done. The only brownies that are better than Trader Joe's take a lot more work: see the Barefoot Contessa's Outrageous Brownies. As you are making them, you will swear they are not worth the extra expense ($$$ ingredients!) or effort. But then you will taste them and realize they are the best brownies you've ever eaten in your life. Just sayin'.
And though it goes against all our best parenting judgement, and we know they will go to bed too late on their first day of school, we just cannot resist taking the girls out for a special birthday dinner. There is a famous restaurant, Bofinger, nearby, and we manage to sneak in without a reservation (probably because our dinner hour of 7pm is well before the dinner rush here). The children's menu is amazing: no chicken fingers, pizza, burgers, pasta, all the usual suspects at American restaurants that make me bemoan American eating habits. Gigi orders a salmon en croute. When it arrives, Anthony and I are impressed. It is elegant and could easily be a grown-up dinner anywhere else. The salmon is perfect and succulent, surround by a flaky pastry crust and with a fresh tomato concasse sauce. Naturally, Gigi would rather have pasta.
But it is Pippa's "Marine Discovery" dinner that blows us all away:
(according to Gigi): For my birthday we went out to a very fancy restaurant
it was seafood (not japoneze or chines seafood) for the first time I ate a
type of snale (under water snale) it was super discusting but the desert was
the best. I had (4 difforent fruits [oranges, strawberrys, rasberrys and pinnapple]).
My favorite fruit were the strawberrys. I opened my presents I got nale polish
from Pippa and mich mach [ed note: miss-matched] gloves and a lot of mich
mach socks. My 8th birthday was the best. I will never forget my 8th birthday.
The "under water snale" by the way is actually a whelk, called bulot in French. We all taste it, and Gigi is right, it is indeed super "discusting." [Ed note: since this posting we got together with a family of French friends. Their 3 children, ages 4, 8, and 10 absolutely love bulot. Reminds me of children in Japan going crazy for after-school snacks of dried squid and crunchy little fishes with the heads attached.] Pippa chews and chews and chews and chews and finally asks, "If I spit it out, do I still get to tell people I ate it?" (Answer: yes) Along with the whelk, Pippa's children's seafood platter includes 2 kinds of shrimp still in the shells with the heads on, raw oysters, and smoked salmon. It is, frankly, a challenging meal even for many non-seafood adults, and I am gobsmacked that it is on the children's menu.
In case you're wondering why we don't get them something simpler, the other children's menu choices were a "Land Discovery" meal including Duck Foie gras, terrine, and smoked uncooked ham or the "Veal Piccata" with a mushroom sauce.
The best part of the first day of school and Gigi's birthday to boot is that despite the extreme dinner, none of us do boot.
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