Carbo Loading

It's that magical time, the breadiest time of the year. For those of us that live by Notre Dame, at least. This year, not only does Pippa go as a field trip (and this means me too, as a chaperone), but the girls also get to make some bread once when we stop in to buy a baguette. Gigi gets private lessons from one of the most celebrated bread bakers in France (and, therefore, in the world, the man on her right). No, I don't know his name.

Here are a few photos from our latest visit, too late to make the story at A Year in Fromage.

 

 

 

Left to their own devices, this is what they choose to make. Gigi wants to make (and eat, entirely by herself) a classic baguette. It is so hot from the oven here that she can barely hold it, though you'll notice she somehow managed to eat one crouton (end of the bread) already. And Pippa makes the braided ring she's been dreaming of. She wasn't allowed to on the field trip, since they had to fit almost 30 loaves on a baking sheet. The ring turns out perfectly, and we dub it a baguegel (pronounced "ba-GAY-gul", a.k.a. a bagel made of baguette dough). I think it's beautiful and, with a little refinement, it could become a hot new trend.

  

There's a dairy booth open today that has this poster. You know what I'm thinking...Three Years in Fromage? A Life in Fromage?

 

Got Me Pegged

My friends and family have me pegged. Besides lots of electronic messages with birthday wishes, I received three physical cards in the mail. One of them:

For the other two cards, both my sister and one of my best friends picked out the same one:

 

Inside the card, the punch line reads, "Oh yeah...like if you had magic shoes, you'd go to Kansas."

 

Gold Mountain - New Meaning

Gold Mountain used to mean San Francisco to me. Now it means this delicious dinner. One of the nice things about doing A Year in Fromage is that once it comes up in conversation, nearly all of my French friends have something they are excited to share. My friend Claire, another gymnastics mom, assures me that I cannot write about cheese and become any sort of cheese expert without having a full Mont d'Or dinner. Who am I to argue?

 

She graciously invites me to her home in the Marais and serves not just the typical Mont d'Or winter dinner, but also a wine from her godparent's vineyard -- an AOC wine of the Jura called Arbois Cuvée Béthanie -- that is specially chosen to go with the cheesy meal. And this meal is cheesy, make no mistake, but not in the sense of tacky or gauche. It's an absolutely lovely tradition involving a melted, oozy, gooey winter cheese. To find out more, see A Year in Fromage.

Cheesing It Up/ Hamming It Up

In case you haven't signed up yet for A Year in Fromage or haven't remembered to check it out lately, I just thought I'd give you some of the latest cheese highlights of my life. My life has become very, very cheesy indeed:

Where can you buy French cheese outside of France? I've researched some of the best spots in some of the big cities, but you all need to help each other out by adding on your own favorite cheese-store sources in the comments.

How can you be polite about your cheese course? Well, first of all, don't chew with your mouth open. But for more cheese-specific advice, check out the posting.

And what are the most beautiful cheeses in my opinion?

As for these "letters home" from my Family by the Seine, I just wanted to let you know that I've recently crossed over 30,000 views, which actually feels quite satisfying as I sit here typing and overlooking the gray river on a dreary, rainy day.

We are back, safely and happily, from a wonderful trip in Senegal. When we arrived home, my brother and sister-in-law were already installed in our apartment, and we're enjoying their visit quite a lot -- the only downside being that with my brother here, I find myself with very few leftovers to use for my lunch the next day. Except for cheese. Even my brother couldn't finish the massive cheese platter.

It may be a few weeks till I get to filter through the 2000 or so pictures I took in Africa and write up our adventure, but in the meantime, you can sign up at Family in Senegal so that you'll automatically receive the stories once they're posted. But here's a little teaser: Anthony and I were fully jealous of our own daughters, even as we were having the experience with them. We just kept saying to each other, "This is nothing like any New Year's Eve party I ever got to go to as a kid..."

 

 

Cheese Aisle Revolution

I break out my camera to take photos in the Montparnasse Monoprix cheese section; it's one of the biggest grocery chains in the country, but this doesn't look like any cheese section I've seen in a grocery store. It's gorgeous -- better than most actual fancy cheese shops in the US, frankly.



But it doesn't matter how lovingly I take these photos. The woman working there comes over and yells at me, "You can't take those photos, and you know it!" When I question both why not and how I'm supposed to know this, she gets even madder. "Of course it's a rule! You must have permission!" You remember the unofficial national motto... "French Bureaucracy: We're Not Infamous For Nothing!"

Will I be imprisoned? Kicked out of the country? Find out what happens at A Year in Fromage....



 

Bonjour, With Feeling

I pride myself on having some manners, some class (not much, but some -- give me that). After a lifetime of living in the US, I feel like I've done my duty when I respectfully approach the saleslady and say, "Excuse me. Can you please tell me where I could find the games for 8 year old?" At which point, here in Paris, the lady will give me a supercilious stare and say, pointedly...

TO READ THE REST OF THE STORY, CLICK HERE

Rats Love Farmers' Markets

So those of you who've checked out A Year in Fromage will have noticed that you're already familiar with some of the material. Yup, it's true: You have been my guinea pigs. But not my dead rats. For those, you'll need to check out the new material on A Year in Fromage, but I wanted to make sure you knew about it here:

There are not one but two taxidermy shops right by Pippa's elementary school. Even after two years in Paris, and with her new middle school big-girl status, Gigi still refuses to look in the windows, much less the stores. So I guess I won't be taking her by Aurouze, which Anthony and I happened upon recently while walking through the 1st arrondissement. With twenty gorgeous nearly-antique dead sewer rats hanging in the window from the same number of nearly-antique traps, it's quite a sight to behold. These are 91-year old dead rats, and I know this almost-precisely because the sign proudly proclaims, "Captured around 1925 at Les Halles."



Click here to read more...

And another story that will be new to you, and is much more appetizing:

These pretty pears, with the tips of stems dipped in bright red wax are Passe-Crassane. Why the wax? To cauterize the end and prevent dehydration. They remind me of the beautiful $100 melons I used to occasionally receive as a gift when I lived in Japan, but less uniformly perfect. Forget about the occasional Bosc (how boring), here we buy Guyot Rosée, Comice Extra, Packam, Conference, William Rouge, Abate, and others I can't even name.

 

 

Click here to read more

A Year in Fromage

After almost two years of imagining, planning, procrastinating, and -- occasionally -- self-doubting, I have launched my one-year, daily writing project called A Year in Fromage, which looks at life in France, one stinky cheese at a time. Check it out! Sign up to follow it daily! Pass it on to your contacts who love cheese or France (or both)!

In fact, I'm two days into the cheese-a-day project by now. Only 363 more to go! If you've already tried to sign up for the e-mails but couldn't figure it out, I do want to tell you that I figured out (ha! of course Anthony figured out) the technical glitch on the site, and now you can, indeed, sign up to follow by e-mail. For today's post, enjoy both a story, and a cheese, that really stinks.

Loyal readers of this blog may recognize today's story, from one of my earliest days in France, but much of the material on that site will also be new. I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile the two blogs I've got going. This is what I've come up with for the moment:

I'm going to continue writing in this blog the stories and observations that are more personal. Also, I'll try to give you a nod over to the most recent all-new postings at A Year in Fromage. However, even for the re-purposed posts you may already have seen, they will have added cheese elements, so there's always something new there.

I once said I felt like I was working 4 full-time jobs: parent, travel agent, writer, and administrator of the small business I was running from afar in San Francisco. Well, that business -- a French-immersion preschool -- has since closed (to my great relief, frankly) and I'm now down to "just" 3 full time jobs. In reality, it means I actually get to spend much more time writing, which I love. I've had one piece and photography published in the Wall Street Journal and have just turned in another that will be published soon. I've been working on some creative projects, including A Year in Fromage. So, I hope you enjoy both blogs!

Strategically Placed

Ah Provenceneyland™...land of lavender, poppies, flower-covered markets, flower-covered fields, and even flower-covered cheese.

 

But as Van Gogh knew, if there's one thing that just takes your breath away here in Provence, it's the fields of sunflowers. When you see a big field like this gleaming in the sun, you really must pull over and celebrate the moment. Trina here knows how to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

Then James goes and makes a joke about me cavorting topless among the sunflowers. And, well, perhaps you know how much I love to titillate (pardon the pun) and how little I care about modesty. So I actually do it. Oh, don't get your knickers in a twist. James graciously returns to the car and Trina's the one who takes the photo, even though, frankly, we're all such old and good friends, I can't imagine any of us would really have cared. Nice sunflowers, eh? Too bad we didn't also take a photo of me strategically holding the two cantaloupes....

Chez Restaurant Simon Montpelier

This is a good indication our children have crossed over...to the French side. After so much traveling and eating out, they develop an obsession with restaurants and decide to create one in our house: Restaurant Simon Montpelier (named after a ghost in one of their favorite books, Which Witch?).

They create an elaborate menu that proves a high level of Frenchification and some serious innate foodieness. The girls actually make about 90% of the meal by themselves. And the service -- en français -- is like the friendliest, most adorable, but French-est waiters ever, complete with perfect accents, Gallic shoulder shrugs, and pouty lips. There's even a bread basket. Though I must admit that the kids are total crap when it comes to opening a wine bottle.

 

 

 

What's on the menu? It's long, and both abridged and translated here from the original French:

Menu Notre Dame:       Children's Menu:                             Menu Charlemagne:
Vegetable plate              Grilled salmon with thyme, walnuts   Foie gras with vinegar sauce
Chicken&gravy, potato  Onion soup                                         Duck confit, grated carrots, potato
Cheese plate                  2 scoops of ice cream                        Apple tart, berries, chocolate sauce

However, if you ever manage to get a coveted reservation here, we recommend the Menu Gastronome, as it is the only one offered with real -- instead of plastic/paper -- food:

The Menu Gastronome starts with the playfully named and executed entrée, conceived entirely by Gigi: a vegetable "tagliatelli" of cucumber and carrot, offered in rosettes with a honey dressing:

For the plat, served family style: lemony flounder filets breaded in a crunchy matzah-meal crust (finally! something to do with all that leftover matzah):

And for le dessert: chocolate fondue with fresh seasonal, organic fruit:

After a wonderful date night, Anthony and I rate the Restaurant Simon Montpelier 4.5 stars. On the plus side, the ambiance is lovely, with pleasant music played not too loudly and a great view. The meal is delicious -- truly. And the price can't be beat, as there is no bill. However, we do have to withhold half a star since in lieu of payment, the guests have to do the dishes.

 

Holy Crêpe!

On Feb 2, all over northern France, people are eating crêpes in order to celebrate Chandeleur or Candlemas, which marks the purification of the Virgin Mary and the final presentation of the baby Jesus. It also marks the start to the Lent season. And while we don't actually do anything for Lent (the only thing we give up ever year for Lent is giving things up for Lent), we are big believers in a holy day whose traditions revolve around eating crêpes. That is really the kind of religious tradition I can get behind, with 100% conviction. I guess that makes me egg-nostic (ugh).

Most of the Parisians will eat what I call "basic" crêpes -- the traditional street crêpe menu that almost never varies. For the meal, you can have what is actually called a galette, if you're being true to the Breton routes, or a crêpe salée (salty/savory), if you just want to distinguish from the sweet ones. A true galette is darker brown in color, with a nutty flavor, because of the buckwheat flour used in the batter. Galettes are usually filled with gruyère cheese, ham, and, if you order the "complète", also an egg. However, tradition dictates actually making the crêpe yourself on this day, flipping it in one hand and holding a coin in the other hand. If you manage to catch the crêpe, you'll get your wish -- and presumably have prosperity -- for the coming year.

For the dessert crêpes, the usual filling choices are simple sugar, sugar and lemon, jam (almost always apricot), caramel (on the menu if you're lucky), and the ubiquitous first choice of seemingly 99% of the population: nutella (the chocolate/hazelnut spread shown below in all its melting, oozy glory, before the folding process).

However, it must be remembered that we are from San Francisco. Therefore, we believe in innovation in our food -- such as pizzas topped with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, barbecued chicken, blue cheese, caramelized onions, jalapeño, and/or feta (according to my cousin Kevin: pizza is either plain or with pepperoni, and everything else is just a San Francisco abomination). And so it follows that even though the classic French crêpes are tasty (they're classic for a reason), we still get sick of them and like our crêpes to have creative fillings. The more complicated, the better. The best crêpes we've had so far have been in Bretagne -- which makes sense, since they are originally a Breton food -- and also a great spot right by Versailles, where we had this lovely peach, salted caramel, peach ice cream, whipped cream crêpe.

 

I often walk past this crêperie, and though the url doesn't actually lead you to the restaurant's page or menu, I love the name and web address nonetheless. 

 

And while this is not specifically crêpe related, I feel like the name creposuk.com leads us directly to this café. Am I the only one juvenile enough to find this funny?

 

 

My friend Aurore, who hails from the Marseills area growls, "Those Bretons have taken over everything! In the south, it's not crêpes for La Chandeleur, it's bugne or oreillette," which are doughnuts. I guess that would have worked, too, and I could have titled this posting "Holy Doughnuts." It would be just as bad a pun, and just as delicious a tradition.

 

 

 

 

The Miss List

 

Things I miss that I didn't expect to:

• Cheap, delicious Asian restaurants (wasn't Vietnam a French colony? Aren't there loads of Asians living in Paris? Why is this so difficult?)
• Good sandwiches, including -- but not limited to -- banh mi (which is a cheap, delicious Vietnamese sandwhich, see above)
• Non-sugary, whole-grain, crunchy breakfast cereals: specifically Joe's Os/Cheerios and Barbara's Shredded Oats
• Trader Joe's nuts, candied nuts, steel-cut oats, orange-muscat chamgagne vinegar. Trader Joe's in general
• Large tubs of European-style plain yogurt (and I'm in Europe. Go figure.)
• Stonyfield organic yogurt tubes, which the girls love frozen
• The occasional summery day in the middle of winter
• Colorful houses and clothes. Bright crazy colors in general
• My Kitchen-Aid stand mixer. Different electrical outlets, so didn't bring and not worth buying here
• Good girls' soccer programs
• Being able to compost garbage through the municipality
• Dryer. Actually, Anthony's the one who misses this. Who knew he had this strong a preference for non-crunchy clothes?

  

photos 1 nd 3: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=141897461&page=1, and  http://www.foodpeoplewant.com/banh-mi-sandwich/

 

Things I miss that I knew I'd miss:

• Ton Kiang dim sum, Burma Super Star restaurants, and King of Thai Noodle, all on Clement Street. Clement Street in general -- one of San Francisco's greatest, most eclectic shopping streets
• Friends and family
• Elaborate week-long school field trips from the girls private school in SF
• Having a car, but just occasionally, for massive shopping trips
• Mangoes (cheap and good, as opposed to expensive and not great) and other tropical fruits
• Golden Gate Park -- being allowed to play on large expanses of grass
• Having more than one toilet in the house

  

left photo from: http://chineseppl.blogspot.fr/2011/08/dim-sum-etiquette-tapping-to-say-thanks.html

Things I thought I'd miss that I don't:

• My big, beautiful house in San Francisco. Still love it, but it's not going anywhere...
• Inexpensive, super-stocked second-hand clothing stores (well, I still kind of miss Goodwill, but it's also a relief not to have anything like that here, because I have no extra closet space)
• Dryer. Turns out, I don't so much mind hanging laundry or having crunchy clothes
• Gymnastics. Truth is, the gym where the girls work out here is a much, much better facility and program than the one they had in San Francisco

  

 photo from: http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/7087814/new_york_ny/tokio_7.html

Things I first missed, but it turns out I was wrong:

• Lock lid leftover storage containers (finally found at Monoprix)
• Salsa and soft corn tortillas (finally found at Monoprix, though not much choice here)
• Ground turkey and chicken. Can get it here from butcher. But at $7 per pound

photos from: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=112870 and

http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/tesco-price-comparison/Speciality_Breads/Old_El_Paso_Soft_Flour_Tortillas_8.html

Things I do not miss at all, and knew I wouldn't:

• Driving, parking, maintaining a car
• Paying private school tuition in San Francisco (20 times higher than what we pay in Paris)
• Foggy summers

photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/araswami/5071149157/

Things I already know I will miss when I leave here:

• Four distinct seasons, fall leaves on the ground
• Using and hearing French all the time
• Some of what's available at the fresh produce markets, certain types of fruits and vegetables
• Cheap, great boulangeries and patisseries almost everywhere
• Our French friends
• Not having to pack a school lunch every day for the girls. Hooray for cafeterias! (But I think this is uniquely a problem of San Francisco private schools)
• Walking by Notre Dame, medieval streets, the bridges over the Seine, and Paris architecture as part of daily life
• Walking (instead of driving) the girls to school
• Quick access to limitless different countries, languages, cultures, and travel destinations
• The cheese. The cheese. And the cheese

 

But by far the thing I miss most of all...

 

...and the one thing that actually makes my heart ache is that I have missed my cousin's entire pregnancy and the birth of my niece. Well, technically she will be my second-cousin-once-removed, but I will consider her a niece nonetheless, and she is going to be born any day, any minute, in the hospital right where my own girls were born, just a few blocks away from our house in San Francisco. If we were there, we would have raced for the privilege of being the first ones to meet that little baby girl (probably having to emerge victorious in a real smackdown wrestle in the hospital corridors with the baby's grandparents who live locally). Thank goodness for Skype, but it's just not the same.

Here's Pippa (with Elmo) as a newborn, at that same hospital.

 

And here's Gigi as a newborn: same hospital, same hat, different blanket. What will the hospital-issued blankets look like now? Here's my cousin, holding Gigi as a newborn, but any second now, he'll be holding his own little miss! (And yes, I realize if you're trying to make sense of this blog that the one who is actually pregnant and just about to give birth would technically be, therefore, my cousin-in-law -- and actually my second-cousin-in-law -- but I think you'll agree that just "cousin" reads better.)

 

 In this case, it's not so much "Wish you were here" as a big fat "Wish I were there!"