Ditdit in France

Pessimistic Sundial?

2012-02-10T09:20:00.001+01:00

Google translate tells me this says:

"I know you have hours and you will lose"

Are there any Latin speakers out there that can correct me (maybe I'm interpreting it wrong), or should I take this saying as a divine sign of having too much to do and not enough time to do it? I think the biggest thing on my to-do list is buying airplane tickets for next summer's trip, but I've been waiting for complementary information that doesn't seem to be coming at any time soon, so I think this weekend, I'll just take the plunge and buy the tickets. While preparing this voyage, I discovered that my youngest daughter's American passport has expired, which means another trip "en famille" into Marseille on a Tuesday morning to renew it. Which means asking for another half-day off from work. Which means wondering if I will even still have a job by then. Which means should I be looking for another one. Or should I just take the summer off before looking. One easy thing I'm doing today is sending in my paper work for an international driver's license. thanks KSam (I think I saw the tip on your blog, or maybe it was Ken) for the tip on that. It should make renting a car in the middle of small town America a little easier. Okay, I have to get going on today's list...ciao ciao.

*This sundial was on a building in St. Véran, the village where we went skiing last weekend.

Brrr bis

2012-02-08T09:53:00.001+01:00

Hello from sunny ~~Siberia~~ South of France. I learned something recently and thought I'd share. But you smart people probably already knew this: Refrigerator/freezers that are out in the garage no longer work when the temperature of the garage descends below the temperature of the fridge. Because it is so cold, I thought I'd be smart and go unplug the refrigerator out in the garage, but it outsmarted me and stopped working probably a few days ago. The problem was that the freezer section was now warmly isolating my frozen food from the cold outside temperatures and it had all thawed out. I had to toss a couple of bags of soggy sea food and unfrozen French fries. The only thing I was able to save was several cups of pumpkin purée I had made. I am now eating pumpkin spice cake slathered with a Nutella like substance as my prize.

This cold weather has been cause of tension between me and my daughters. They are cold. They keep complaining about how cold they are. Yet just this morning, my youngest was ready to go to school dressed in a tank top covered only with an open light-weight vest. I made her go change and maybe to make me mad, she came back dressed like a gypsy with five different layers of unmatched clothing. Remember those black boots I bought on sale last week for her? She doesn't like them. I should have known better. Maybe I should have a give-away for my friends in France: Size 36 tall black fake suede boots give-away...If she doesn't wear them by the end of this week, that's what I'm going to do.

2012-02-06T10:42:00.000+01:00

The southern Alps

Skiing with friends. I'm the blue Popsicle on the right. It was -15°C all week-end. We had the right equipment, but it was very cold!

We came home to frozen water pipes that my mother-in-law had to blow-dry in order to get the water flowing while we were gone. This morning I was back outside with my blow-dryer so that my husband could take a shower. Once it got light enough outside, I MacGyver-ed our water counter with towels and old socks in hopes that it doesn't freeze again today. No burst pipes, so that's good. Hope you all had a warm week-end!

Happy Crêpe Day!

2012-02-02T15:46:00.000+01:00

My computer is fine. It wasn't smoke that I saw billowing out of it, but, ahem...dust instead. No one told me I had to dust the computer innards, too, not that I dust anything that often anyway. My husband vacuumed out the hard drive and the weird smell is gone and it seems to be running okay. I won't be able to get back the post I erased just before the computer froze up the other day, c'est la vie...I was just talking about our neighborhood, and how close the houses are here and how I like it despite that, because we are so centrally located.

It was really snowing this morning and I had to go in to work the early shift. My above mentioned close neighbors stuck their head out their window as I was leaving in thick falling snow at 6:50 am and wondered out loud with me whether I was going to make it in to Aix or not. I did. Hey, I didn't learn to drive in great snowy Midwest for nothing. Lots of friends and coworkers called in a snow day today. But by this afternoon, the roads were clear so the drive home was easy.

On my way home, I stopped by the Carrefour shopping center in Aix and hit the last of the big winter sales. My 11 year old needs some new warm boots and I took a risk and bought her a pair that were 1/2 off. She is very picky and may not like these. She wanted boots like those big clunky Uggs the movie stars wear with mini skirts. The pair I found are kind of Ugg-y in a down-sized way. We'll see what she says tonight. I bought my self a pair of black low dress boots at 40% off. I wanted tall boots, but couldn't find any that fit well or that I really liked. I always have to wear the color black to work...I'm looking forward to any job in the future that allows me to put some color back into my wardrobe.

It's crêpe day, pancake day...so that's what we'll be having for supper. And then I need to pack my bags for our weekend ski trip...the one where I'm going to freeze my "derrière" off :)

Brrr!

2012-02-01T12:42:00.000+01:00

The sun is shining on Provence again this morning. Some snow has stuck in some shady areas, plus some sort of Siberian weather front has moved in making temperatures way lower than what we are used to. My 8th grader is convinced that tomorrow, it's going to snow again all day. And then it's supposed to be Siberian cold all week-end. My husband and I are going skiing and I am not thrilled about the negative temperatures announced.

I just picked up the above mentioned 8th grader from middle school. When I drove up, she was standing next to and talking to a nice looking boy. They even waved goodbye to each other...So I HAD to ask who he was. The answer I got was succinct. He's a boy. He's in a friend's home-room. And then she changed the subject. Hmmm

I accidenatlly erased half of yesterday's post when I updated...our old computer was reacting strangely this morning....and then it started smoking and smelling like burning electrical circuits. My husband rushed in and unplugged it. My hopes in recuperating my literally went up in smoke. I am more worried about the photos stocked on that hard drive. My husband thinks we can save them, but the computer is probably dead. I'm writing this from an old lap top we have as I dream of one of those thin MacBooks...

Blizzard in Provence :)

2012-01-31T09:01:00.001+01:00

Here's the current view looking out my 6th grader's bedroom window. A view of the neighbors' backyards and the sprinkling of snow we've had so far this morning. The snow is still falling, so who knows, maybe some will accumulate. Maybe just maybe if enough falls, I won't have to go to work this afternoon! The drive into the area of Aix where I work is all down hill and quite perilous to us folks not used to driving in the white "stuff".

Update: The snow turned to rain : ( That was one quick snow day!

Saturday

2012-01-28T08:47:00.001+01:00

Saturday morning.
My husband is already up and gone...on a mountain bike trip to the Lubéron. This time a friend has a truck that will bring all the bikes to the top of the Lubéron trails. He and his friends will probably, wildly, hurdle themselves down these trails before being trucked back up to the top to do it over and over again until they are too tired to pedal anymore or until someone breaks something (hopefully a bike part and not an arm, please).

Saturday morning.
The girls are still sleeping and will probably not emerge for a couple of more hours. It's very quiet in the house, the only noise coming from the keyboard as I type this. For company, I have Duffy the Dog who knows that I am a weak ruler. She is sitting in the forbidden chair. If she hears any suspect noise that may indicate my husband's return, she'll hop right out of that chair and lay down on the floor and pretend that she was never up there in the first place. But if I walk by, she just raises her head from her slumber so that I can maybe scratch her ear.
I am not very scary.

Saturday morning.
Later I will go jog with the dog and my youngest daughter, if she gets up in time. When I reach for my running shoes, then and only then will my dog get up. Then she will be so excited I will half wish her back to the chair. She jumps and barks and bites at the laces I am trying to tie, thinking that will hurry me up.

Later on this Saturday morning, we are going to Aix for lunch at my sister-in-law's and then she is taking the girls clothes shopping, her Christmas present to them. My husband won't be back by then and her husband is working, so it's a girls day out. I don't really need anything new, but I will take my camera and we'll see what captures my attention today in this beautiful town.

Mistral 1/ Daughter 0

2012-01-25T10:44:00.000+01:00

The famous Provençal wind, the Mistral, has been howling for the past few days. And yesterday, we had a victim. Outside for recess, my 8th grader had something blown into her eye by a giant gust of wind, and by last night, she looked like she had been in a fight with George Foreman. This morning, it was still swollen, not as red, but we went to the doctor anyway. He gave us some drops and sent us on our way with hopes that the the wind has finally stopped, for a few days anyway.

But I was reminded by the Dr. on the way out of his office, that our sunny blue skies in Provence are a direct result of the Mistral wind blowing all the clouds away, to Lyon (he said). All the way to Paris (I say). And when the wind stops, rain is predicted (the Dr.'s secretary said). ...I'm digressing with some of this morning's typical French waiting room conversation...

Last night, I think my family ate most of my cabbage potato gratin. I wasn't there to see that they didn't just scrape it into the garbage, but I am going to think positive and imagine that they kind of liked it judging by the little that is left. I was at Jazz band practice last night and today I am happy that there just is enough left-over for my lunch.

Voilà, c'est tout.

answering some questions

2012-01-24T08:46:00.001+01:00

I try and answer questions in my comments, but when I get busy, I slack...

One question I had recently was: From what painting did I get the background photo in my blog banner? And the answer is: The photo in my banner is a crop of a painting my dad did. A painting that now hangs above our couch. The whole painting represents a favorite spot by the river in the town I lived in until I was 14, in northern Iowa.

Another question: Is it normal for school to start at 10am in France? Well, yes, if you are a 6th grader in French middle school. Their schedules are not yet full, so there are holes and on some days they start later or get out earlier. Working parents can demand that their children go to study halls during the "holes" in the schedule, but because my daughter's late days are on days that I work afternoons, she can sleep in and I take her just before her first class starts.

What smells so bad? No one asked that, but I'll tell you anyway. Remember that red cabbage I bought at the market on Friday? I'm boiling it right now and the aroma is strong. Good thing both girls are already at school, they wouldn't like the smell. I read somewhere that when cooking cabbage, you should boil it in two different waters, so that's what I've done. Then I am going to mix it with some boiled potatoes and make a cheese-y gratin out of the whole shebang. First one home tonight puts it in the oven. But there is nothing like the smell of boiled cabbage at 8am :)

Last question: Do you think my girls will actually eat this gratin I am making?

Answer tomorrow.

Market finds of the day

2012-01-20T11:22:00.001+01:00

This is what I picked up at the market this morning:

Napa cabbage
red cabbage
fennel bulbs
yellow turnips
onions
radishes
broccoli
cauliflower
roasted turkey leg with potatoes
2 baguettes
2 donuts

The vegetables cost 11€, the turkey leg 8€, the bread and donuts cost 5€. The vegetables are organic. If you look closely, you can see a worm hole in one of the turnips. That doesn't bother me, I'll just cut out the intruder. The donuts are not organic, they are supposed to have holes :)

This morning started out rather badly, I guess you could say I got up on the wrong side of the bed or something like that. As I was putting on my make-up, I spilled foundation down the front of my clean black sweater. After I cleaned that up, I was washing my hands and I tried to squirt soap on my hands but it went directly into my cup of coffee. At 9:45, I drove off with my daughter, supposedly to take her to school before a meeting I had. I forgot to drop her off and drove her down to the center of the village before noticing my extra passenger. She could have piped up, but she was too busy reading a magazine to notice that I had zapped the middle-school exit. I turned around and drove her back up to the middle-school and back down to the village to park and hurried to my meeting. I showed up to surprised looking friends who asked if I was stopping by to say hi before shopping at the market. I said I was there for the meeting which they then reminded me was next Friday.

There was nothing left for me to do but go shop at the market. And you know what? Despite all my silliness of this morning, I'm still in a great mood. Probably because it's Friday and and it feels as warm as spring today in Provence. I took my time filling my market basket this morning, letting the warm sun warm my soul.
Bon weekend mes amis!

Cocktails

2012-01-18T09:14:00.005+01:00

Cocktails, a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

I took this photo on Sunday at around noon. It was nice enough outside to have before-lunch drinks by our friends' pool. The front left drink is a pastis. The small white drink in the back left is an "orgeat"...sugary syrup diluted with water. It's non-alcoholic. And the tall drink with a straw is a lemon-gin concoction. Can you guess which one is mine?

ps This morning, there was frost on the ground, reminding me to seize and enjoy every one of life's sunny moments :)

Mijoteuse

2012-01-17T08:39:00.000+01:00

I have a loaner Crockpot to test out today. These cookers haven't really caught on in France, but you can sometimes find them for sale at the hard discount stores like Aldi or Lidl, I think that's where my friend found hers.You can also buy them used here in France off of the web site " Le Bon Coin". I have been thinking a Crockpot might help out with our hectic night time schedule. We all get home late, so if dinner was already cooked, that would be one less thing to worry about. I'll try it out today and let you know what I think.

I like the French word "mijoter". It can mean slow-cook, simmer...or try and cook something up (as in an idea or scheme). I'm "Crockpotting" about my current employment situation, trying to figure out how to make it be more fulfilling to me. One idea would be with fun people but would mean less vacation time next summer. Another (current), would be just plain boring (but with more vacation). I think I'll throw all the ingredients in my borrowed "mijoteuse" and see what comes out.

American Diner in Provence

2012-01-16T11:12:00.002+01:00

I suppose this restaurant (Memphis Coffee) has been in the Plan de Campagne shopping center north of Marseille for awhile but we just didn't know about it. My youngest daughter told me about it after going there with a friend. I had to try, of course :)

Elvis does greet you at the door, but go early or you will have a long chat (and a long wait) with Elvis. We went at 7pm after the movie and were able to sit down at a table right away. But when we left at 8:30 pm, there was a long line outside. Elvis was neither fat nor drunk. I don't know why my daughter's friend's mom thought this, unless there are more than one Elvis. He was very friendly though, in an outgoing, corny American kind of way that may have surprised my friend.

The deco inside is very bright and shiny diner deco. There are TV's and speakers playing Elvis concerts (we got to watch the whole Hawaiian one while there). The food and service was good. They don't just sell hamburgers, they had Tex-mex dishes and quite a few French dishes too (like carpaccio and steak tartare). I "made" everyone order American style food, though. Well, my husband chose a hot-dog without me twisting his arm. They have giant hamburgers for the real hungry and margaritas for the real thirsty :)

Here's a photo of a simple burger. the meat and fries were quite good, the bun was okay. For dessert, the girls had Ben and Jerry's ice cream, except for my 11 yo who had churros and Nutella. That's not very American, I know. But she could have chosen cheese cake or carrot cake or brownies...Yum!

This is not a restaurant I'd go to on a fancy date night with my husband, but it's the perfect place to take a bunch of hungry French teens for an American experience or good place to go to before or after the movies. They have a special deal where the movie ticket is cheaper if you eat here.

"Run On"

2012-01-14T09:06:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I hit the big winter "soldes" in Aix, and equipped myself with a real jogging suit and new running shoes as a kind of present to myself for hitting the 30 minute jog mark. This morning I'll try them out on my date to run with my 11 year old. I have to wait until she wakes up though. My 13 year does.not.run. Well, not with me anyway. Apparently, she does okay in P.E. at school, but running with her mom does not interest her. She gets enough excercise....walking to and from school everyday, 3 hours of P.E. a week and also, she does hip-hop dance class on Friday nights. That's pretty intense...kind of like jacked-up aerobics with a techno kind of rhythm. She's showed me some of their moves and I can tell that there is no way her uncoordinated mom would ever be able to do that. I'll stick to walking and jogging...I don't fall down too often doing that.

Later on today we are going to see one of the latest film sensations here in France: Les Intouchables. It's been out since last November and the lines were so long we waited until now to go. My 13 year old is bringing a friend and after the movie we are going to eat in a new-ish Amercian style diner that has opened at the shopping center north of Marseille. I heard that a chubby, slighly inebriated Elvis impersonator greets you at the door...what could be more real to life than that? Photos promised, for sure!

Kings' Cake

2012-01-09T12:49:00.002+01:00

Galette de Rois

Epiphany (and Orthodox Christmas) was this past weekend. To celebrate Epiphany in France, we eat King's cakes. The one pictured above (the one I ate!) is typical in Provence, made out of brioche pastry bread and garnished with candied fruits. When made well*, it's my favorite type of Kings' cake. The other type of Kings' cake, found all over France is the "frangipane" type: a flaky buttery pastry filled with an almond paste. It's very good, and very rich, too! The brioche I had yesterday also had an almond paste filling, which was unusual to find, but good. Another thing you find inside a Kings' cake is a hidden bean and/or a hidden manger scene object or a little toy. Whoever finds the hidden object in their piece of cake is King for the day and gets to wear a crown that is given with the cake when you buy it at the pastry shop.

Yesterday, we went to my sister-in-law's apartment in Aix-en-Provence, where we met up with my two brother-in-laws, some of their family, my mother-in-law and my husband's Aunt. I was the designated Kings' cake cutter (not following cutting advice given to me by my sil husband :). When cutting the cake, you usually end up knowing which piece has the surprise hidden in it, so someone else distributes the pieces. I chose my youngest daughter to hand out the pieces of cakes. Because we had several cakes, we had several Kings (and Queens) of the day. We drank champagne (Ruinart, my all time favorite. My sil introduced me to it!) with our cakes as kind of a last holiday celebration. And now it's time to put away the Christmas decorations until next year.

*the brioche Kings' cake can be very dry if it hasn't been made by a good pastry chef. The one we had yesterday was so soft and moist. Parfaite!

6th grade science project

2012-01-08T13:40:00.000+01:00

Sixth grade is the only grade in France where the grade number corresponds to the American grade equivalent. 6th grade in France is 6th grade in America. 7th grade in France is 5th grade in America. My 13 year old is in 4th grade in France. This corresponds to 8th grade in America. A junior in high school in France is in 1st grade. They count backwards here, or maybe it's the Americans that count backwards, what do you think?

collecting rosemary

But 6th grade is 6th grade and I love 6th graders. They aren't quite yet teenagers, they are still nice :) My 11.5 year old had a 6th grade science project to do this weekend. She had to collect five different local plants and then press them dry between phone books. Above, you see her collecting rosemary that grows wild in the vacant lot behind our house. She could have just collected some from our front yard, but it was more fun to go on a sort of treasure hunt. We took the dog and made a walk of it. She also had to find thyme, green oak, Aleppo pine, and lavender, all native to the Mediterranean region of France.

I'm bilingual, kind of

2012-01-07T12:06:00.000+01:00

Have you seen the video on You Tube: How to fake French? I can't link to it now, because my husband has put some kind of parent control on this computer and for some reason, probably light swearing, that video is getting blocked. But you can go hunt it down if you want...Anyway, in the video you see two girls sitting at a table, one talking in French and the other showing different ways to fake like she understands what the French speaking gal is saying.

The video really tickles my funny bone, because I see myself doing so many of the "faking" techniques, pretending to understand when really, I'm lost lost lost in the conversation. Like just last night, we had a few French friends over for drinks, and once everyone gets talking I stop understanding and start sipping my glass of wine and nodding along and making "mouth" noises like the French tend to do. I do try and add to the conversation, but I get over-zealous and when I think back on what I've said, I cringe because I know my nuances are off and that I tend to exaggerate and repeat myself in my efforts. Or I focus too much on the person sitting closest to me because trying to understand all the other conversations going on all at once still confuses me after all these years. Being bilingual is one thing, but really being "French" in a conversation is another. They do have the art of animated discussions perfected and I am not sure I'll ever get that right.

Must. Keep. Practicing.

Kava Wedding-revised

2012-01-06T10:50:00.003+01:00

the dinner party table

I have always wanted to try drinking kava. It's a supposed relaxing root from the south Pacific Islands and last night, I got my chance.

The bride is a pharmacist in New Caledonia. But she did her studying in Marseille, so last night at her wedding, there were lots of pharmacists from Marseille and the South Pacific. I've been to a Pharmacist wedding before: Hello G. and J.! And past experience has shown me that these doctors love to have fun!

Officially, kava root is chewed up and the juice is spit back into a common bowl that is then passed around for all to share. Last night's kava was a dehydrated powder that was reconstituted with mineral water by the fun-loving pharmacists. They poured everyone (grandmas too) a shot glass of what looked like puddle water and the post wedding/ pre-dinner party started with everyone downing their kava. They didn't tell us what we were drinking until after the shot. (More pharmacist fun!) Well, reconstituted kava doesn't have much effect other than making your lips a little tingly like too much mint makes them feel. So I guess I still have to go to some south Pacific Island to find out what full relaxing effect kava feels like. (Yes I would taste, if someone passed me a bowl on some warm, sandy, tropical beach...)

Here are some photos from last night's wedding. The bride is my husband's second cousin.

the beautiful bride arriving at town hall

The mother of the bride leads the civil ceremony

The bride and groom were married by the bride's mom, who is an elected official in their home town. There was only a civil wedding, which was not followed by a church wedding. But I'm not sure why. I don't think the groom had been married before and I know the bride hadn't. Having only the civil ceremony could have been because of personal convictions. Before the wedding, they had civil god-parents named for their 3 month old and 4 year old daughters, so it could be that they didn't want any religious ceremony.

isn't the bride's hair pretty!

one of the many tables at last night's dinner

As is typical in all the French weddings I've been to so far (ours included), dinner starts late, at around 9pm and dessert is always sometime after midnight, with a lot of dancing and games in between courses (we played a version of musical chairs last night and as any one who lost their chair had to drink a shot of some strange pharmacological concoction like"Smecta"* mixed with kava...I was motivated not to do that, I won the round!). The tables each have about 10-12 people seated around them and you usually find yourself with others about your same age or with similar interests. Seating is part of the work that goes into all the planning a bride must do. Last night found me at a table with my 2 brother-in laws and all of our better-halves plus 4 members of another family.

dancing in between courses

At one point in the evening, the pharmacists all did a "pharmacist" dance. I was curious to see if this was universal, because when my American pharmacist step-sister and her pharmacist husband got married, they had a pharmacist group dance, too. Well, my worldly knowledge allows me to be the judge and say that American pharmacists have one up on the French pharmacists...the French did not get down on the floor. USA 1, France 0 :)

French wedding cake

This is a typical French wedding cake: cream filled puff pastries stuck together with a hard glaze. In addition to the new couple's names, you see the names of their children who had their civil "parrainage*" that day, too. After cake and a little more dancing, it was time (1am) for us to go. Our girls had to go to school this morning. They both started a little later than usual and as I'm writing this, I just realized that I forgot to send an excuse note to the middle school. I hope no one gets detention because of that. I am a "mère indigne" for sure.

Smecta: a stomach coating liquid, Pepto Bismal, but not pink

parrainge: sponsorship, god parenting

mère indigne: unfit mother

Okay, I am going to drink some more coffee now.

I'm going to wedding!

2012-01-04T10:20:00.000+01:00

I wanted to wait until I had a photo to post, but that may have to wait until Friday.

I just got back from a little jog, where I half-way followed the advice of the couch to 5K people...I can now jog 8 minutes, walk 3 minutes and jog 8 minutes again. You are supposed to do the cycle one more time, but my time is short this morning and here I am blogging....But I did feel like I could go another 8 minutes, no problem.

Now I need to take a quick shower before going to pay the bill for piano lessons and picking up my youngest daughter from middle school. I want to stop by the "good" butcher shop to get some meat for the girls to eat for lunch. They don't go back to school (or eat there) on Wednesday afternoons. Speaking of lunch, my oldest daughter lost her school lunch bar-code card, again. If she doesn't have that card, they make her wait until last to eat as a kind of punishment. (Which I totally agree with, btw). At the middle school she goes to, you have to scan your card in order for a tray to be released to go through the line with. We pay for the full 4 days a week of lunch, so I don't think that not having her card will affect our bill, but it does mess up the school's system. If she doesn't want to keep on eating last, she is going to have to dip in to her own allowance and buy another one. (They are not expensive, but 13 year olds would rather spend 4 euros on other things I suppose).

Tomorrow night we are going to a wedding. Yippee, I love weddings. My husband's father's cousin's daughter (did you follow that one?), is back from New Caledonia where she lives and works and is getting married in her parents' hometown tomorrow night because it is also the 40th birthday of the future husband. Voilà the reason of a mid-week wedding. I'm pulling the girls out of school early so we can get to the town hall on time. This should be fun...and a good photo opportunity, too. Bisous et à bientôt :)

a New Year's study in French footwear

2012-01-02T09:07:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year! Bonne Année!

I hope you all had a great start to 2012. We brought in the new year with a few friends, a potluck and some dancing. After the midnight countdown we tossed shiny confetti into the air, drank a glass of champagne and kept on dancing for a couple of more hours. The party was not at our house and when my husband asked if I thought he could buy some confetti, I said he better leave that up to the hostess. But he was in luck as you can see above. She had LOTS of it...and she may be finding New Year's souvenirs far into the New Year :)

Off the top of my head, here are a couple of my resolutions for 2012:

Lose 5kg
learn to jog 30 minutes without walking
plant a garden
keep trying to eat more vegetables and less meat
post a photo almost everyday (we'll see how that one goes :)

What about you? Any big or little resolutions?

if you had to choose...

2011-12-30T09:32:00.001+01:00

heirloom carrots and turnips

heirloom chocolate muffin and whip-cream

...just kidding, we'll eat both.

When we run out of vegetables mid-week, I head over to the next village down the road that has a Wednesday morning market. It's not as big as our town's, but they do have this one vendor that sells old varieties of vegetables, which I love to try. He gave me those turnips for free with my purchase and I asked how he recommended preparing them. Heirloom vegetable man said that this particular variety of turnip is very mild and is good grated raw into a salad. Maybe I'll do that or maybe I'll just toss it into a soup.

Yesterday, we went into Aix (the big town for us village people). My oldest daughter needed a book for French class, something by Maupassant, but a special edition and our village's little all purpose supply store sold us the wrong version. How can one little book have so many different editions? Someone probably gave our town's store incomplete information about which edition was needed for the 8th grade French class. Or more than likely, we didn't ask for the right edition of the book. Whatever. I looked at the wrong book as another good excuse to go shopping in Aix, where we ended up at the tea house above, having chocolate muffins. Well, my daughters had chocolate muffins, I just had tea, grilled hazelnut flavored tea :)

la vie bohème

2011-12-26T18:06:00.000+01:00

We went hiking on the sunny south side of the Sainte Victoire mountain this afternoon. On our way up the path to the Ermitage of Saint Ser, we encountered para-gliders that had sailed off the top of the mountain. The photo above is my favorite of the day. Or maybe, the one below of the same glider at a different, straight up angle:

What do you think? My dog Duffy thought all the para-gliders looked like giant birds and when we got close to where they were landing in a field, we had to leash her back up so that she wouldn't go pounce on their puffed up sail.

Our manger scene

2011-12-24T15:57:00.000+01:00

notre crêche

It's almost time to put Jesus in his cradle in the manger.

This is how I found him this morning...

driving a red pedal-push car.

I think he will make it by midnight :)

Joyeux Noël à toutes et à tous.

market day finds

2011-12-23T11:53:00.000+01:00

fresh organic bread

Friday is market day. My husband is already on Christmas vacation, so he walked down town with me this morning to get some vegetables for our holiday meal. Tomorrow's menu includes the smoked salmon I bought, plus foie gras and sautéed swiss chard greens. On Sunday at noon, we've decided to do a Christmas lunch raclette. This year, for the first time ever (I think), it will just be the four of us home for Christmas, so we don't have to do a fancy meal. All of his family are going off with their in-laws this year. That's kind of hard for us to do seeing that my family lives about 4000 kilometers away and I only have next Monday off from work. C'est la vie. I'll get my revenge next summer...who knows, maybe I'll stay for the whole two months. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here. As you can see in the photo below, the sun is shining in Provence on this almost Christmas Eve...just what I ordered from Santa :)
Don't tell my girls, they want snow. Merry merry to you all!

jacinthe/hyacinthe bulbs

today

2011-12-15T17:53:00.001+01:00

I love when:
I get off work early and can run all my errands "tranquilement" before it gets dark out. And while running said errands, unobserved, like a fly on the wall, I see one or the other of my daughters walking home from school with her friends, laughing and happy. From my unseen spot, I smile, knowing that radiant girl is mine.

I love it less when:
On my errands, I go to the optometrist because I suspect my eye-glass prescription needs to be updated and I get the verdict I was suspecting...I need bifocals. On the bright side, I'll be able to see again. But bifocals? Geez....

Singing sausage man

2011-12-13T11:45:00.002+01:00

P1010934, a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

So, although I didn't buy any sexy lingerie, much to the chagrin of "mon mari", I did buy a giant sausage from this vendor at the Christmas market in my town last weekend. Maybe because he let us taste many many of his samples and he held my hands and sang racy songs while looking into my eyes as I tested his fares. Maybe, just maybe, if the lingerie lady had the same kind of sales tactic, she would have had more luck with me as a client :)

ps that's not me with the vendor in the photo, but he is getting ready to work his charm on her!

jazz and lingerie

2011-12-10T15:12:00.003+01:00

It's the weekend where our village is having it's Christmas market. We wandered down to the town center and came across this little jazz band, dressed up as Santa's helpers, playing some swinging Christmas music in front of the town lingerie shop. I have never bought anything in that store. Their wares are very pretty, but the day I can justify spending hundreds of euros on a tiny piece of clothing...
maybe I am Mrs. Scrooge :)

back to normal

2011-12-07T10:20:00.000+01:00

Nina's white cell count went back down, as did the pain in her lower right abdomen, so she gets to keep her appendix. She went back for a half day of school today and since they haven't called me, I assume that is going well.

I went jogging with my dog for the first time in several weeks this morning and I was able to go to my far turn-around spot without any problems which means I should probably try and increase my distance next time. Having a dog as a jogging partner is probably the most perfect friend I can think of. She doesn't care how fast or far I run. When I go slow, she just does a few extra happy circles around me, picking up sticks, chasing birds and splashing in puddles as she goes.

For lunch today, I am going to make these cheesy mashed potatoes. My girls beg me for them all the time and tell me that since I already make good mashed potatoes, I should try finding an Aligot recipe. This recipe by my blog friend Katie doesn't look hard at all. I usually by them frozen from Picard, my fast food back-up place. Potatoes prepared like this probably have a gazillion calories, but my girls are lucky in that they are naturally skinny. And since my 11 yo was sick for a few days, she could use some extra calories. I, on the other hand, will have to keep on jogging...

The appendix soap operas

2011-12-06T10:12:00.001+01:00

My 11 year old may or may not have appendicitis. She woke up early yesterday morning because of a crampy stomach ache on the lower right side. I wanted to send her to school (because I did have to go to work), but she had a slight fever, so I decided to keep her home. At this point, I was still going to go in to work and leave her at home alone for a few hours (I have a neighbor who is home and would know about this), but first, I had fellow PTA mom coming over to write up a report after the 6th grade class meeting we attended last Friday night. To calm the pain, I gave my daughter an antispasmodic medicine, which she promptly threw up. This would about be when the doorbell rang. PTA mom had arrived. We wrote our report and as she was leaving, she commented on how sick my daughter looked lying there on the couch. Forced to agree, I decided to take her to the doctor. The doctor confirmed that my 11yo's abdominal pain was in a suspicious area and she ordered some blood work and an ultrasound. At this point, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to go to work and called in absent.

It was 6pm before we had all the results. Because her white cell count is high and the ultrasound couldn't rule out appendicitis, we had to go consult a surgeon, by going through the ER at a private clinic in Aix about 25 minutes away. I was worried that this would take forever, but we were in and out in about 1 1/2 hours. The surgeon we saw said that whatever was going on in my 11 yo stomach wasn't critical and that more blood work in the morning would help his decision. He then prescribed an anti-inflammatory medicine for my daughter to take before going to bed and we went home.

My daughter slept better last night, we've had more blood work done this morning, and at noon, we go back to the clinic to see what the surgeon thinks. Hopefully, this was just a small digestive episode that will pass. At noon, I'll hand off my daughter to my husband. He'll take her home or stay with her while I go to work. It's definitely easier to take care of sick kids when you don't work, a fact that's the same no matter where you live.

Tis Christmas Market Season

2011-12-04T10:59:00.002+01:00

Christmas market season seems to kick off the first weekend in December. There were several to go to this weekend, but I didn't have much free time. We did go to the one at the Château Bas vineyards, though. Mainly because our favorite smoked salmon supplier was going to be there and we wanted to get our order in for Christmas Eve dinner. But we did do a bit of wine tasting (and buying) too. Surprised? Don't be...it's one of my favorite local wines :)

some of the wine selection

We didn't even try any of the rosé wine. Rosé is for summer, n'est-ce pas? A friend that works at this vineyard told me that she has sold a lot of rosé, though, especially to the "Belges". I could make a joke about that, but in reality, I like rosé all year round, too :) We tried several of the whites before choosing one to buy a case of. We also picked up a case of their red table wine, without tasting, because we know it's good.

tasty nibbles to go with the wine

I didn't take any photos of the Danish smoked salmon from the "Maison Danoise". I was too busy eating and talking to the lovely couple and their son-in-law that do the selling. It turns out that in the summer, they organise tours of an island in Danemark where their smoke houses are and in 2013, they will organise a tour to Greenland, too. I would love to do that! Anyway, if you look at the menu of their products, you can see that they sell both raised and wild salmon products. We love the wild salmon and that's what we pre-ordered for Christmas Eve dinner. I'll go pick it up on the 21st of December and try and remember to take a photo before we eat it all.

roman ruins: the temple of Diane 1avJC

After visiting this small Christmas market, we toured the grounds of the vineyard. This place is very special, because you can visit the ruins of a Roman temple and next to it sits a small chapel. This is also the start of marked hiking trails. If you are ever in the neighborhood, park at the vineyard, walk around to the back and this is what you will see at the head of the trails. It was kind of cold yesterday for hiking, but we did gather moss, sticks, leaves and rocks that the girls took to church. Their youth group was decorating the nativity scene in one of our small community churches yesterday. Not in our town, but the next village down the road. I don't know if it is officially because of a shortage of priests, but the priest in our town is also the priest for two other villages. So sometimes, our girls go to youth group in another town.

Happy Sunday :)

and that's life

2011-11-30T11:04:00.001+01:00

After taking my 6th grader to school at 9am (my 8th grader started at 8am), I headed to the pharmacy to stock up on cold medicines. That RhinAdvil (with pseudoephidrine) I was talking about yesterday is only for sale in a pharmacy, but then so are aspirin, ibuprofen, and paracetamol products. You can't buy barrels full of those products at any old grocery store. This fact I can both understand and rant at. I think it's easy to abuse these kind of products and if you can only get small quantities of them at rather high prices in a pharmacy, then I think you are less tempted to use too much. BUT...pharmacies in France tend to have earlier closing hours than grocery stores do (and you are lucky to find a grocery store that stays open until 8pm )... And why is it that mega colds seem to come on after hours when you find yourself out of any way to lessen the misery before the next morning when the pharmacy opens. Murphy's Law.

So now I'm all set with what I need to make it through the next few days. I bought some Vitamin C too, for good measure. I do think you can get that at the grocery store in France in the organic food aisle. But since I was already at the pharmacy, I just picked some up there. Now it's almost time to go pick up my 6th grader, who finishes at 11am on Wednesdays. And then at 12, I pick up my 8th grader (they hardly ever have the same hours and they go to the same middle school). Most days they just walk, but because I'm here on Wednesday mornings, I like to pick them up.

French school goes by trimester and the first one is done. Report cards are coming out and I found out yesterday that my 8th grader is on the honor role. I'll find out on Friday if my 6th grader made it on there too. I hope so for her. It's hard being number 2 to a sister that shines pretty bright. They are both great girls, unique and special in their own ways. I feel pretty lucky thinking about that right now :) (despite this stupid cold

je suis malade

2011-11-29T20:04:00.000+01:00

The daily posting will be meager tonight...a bad cold has set in.
I still have many things to accomplish before the day is over, thank goodness for RhinAdvil...I think that pill is something like the illegal Sudafed.
Before tonight's band practice, I am having some good old chicken noodle soup.
I'll try and go out in style with a better post tomorrow.
Sneeze, sneeze, cough, cough...

Counting the days

2011-11-28T20:31:00.002+01:00

Today I hung up our advent calendar and filled the little date pockets with chocolate: milk chocolate for my 6th grader and dark chocolate for my 8th grader. I will put a couple of euros as a surprise in random pockets and I have a bigger monetary surprise for the pocket corresponding to the date of the 24th of December (French grandma gave some money that I'll slip in there just the night before).

The advent season started on Sunday at church and the calendar starts on December 1st. Using both, Sundays at church and the calendar, we have fun counting down the days to Christmas. Even more than Thanksgiving, I love Christmas. We don't do a huge amount of presents, but something about the spiritual side of this holiday moves me more than any other.

I am also counting down the days to the end of NaBloPoMo...I think I almost did it. For the very first time in my short blogger life, I have posted every single day for a whole month (I guess I should have signed up for the official event). Only 2 more days. Allons-y!!!

2011-11-27T19:07:00.002+01:00

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving weekend. I think my favorite part about the meal is all the left-overs. Especially pumpkin pie left-overs. We had three pies last night, and it's the pumpkin pie that was hardly touched by my French friends. I was expecting that. They are more used to that squash cooked up in a soup or a gratin. No problem, all the more for me :) A good American friend who lives in my village was free for tea this afternoon, so she helped me with that left-over.

I've lived in three different places in France: southern Paris, Cannes, and now here in a small village near Aix-en-Provence. And it's here that I've met or had the most American friends. Just yesterday, while standing in line at the butcher's for my pre-ordered turkey, I met another one (American, not turkey :). She over-heard me asking questions in French about my order and when I was done, she spoke to me in English: "I think we're both here for the same thing". She too was celebrating Thanksgiving on Saturday with her French neighbors. I wish I'd gotten her name, but it's a small town, I'm sure we'll run into each-other again. She came to Provence from Maine in 1982. That's funny to me because the friend that came to help me eat left-over pie today is from Maine, too. And we're all here, hiding out in the south of France, perpetuating an American tradition, or two...

Persimmons

2011-11-26T17:59:00.001+01:00

Here's another one of the starters I'm serving tonight. Little endive boats filled with a slice of smoked salmon, cubes of kaki (persimmon), lime zest, green onions, salt, pepper, olive oil and somelime juice. Let the eating begin :)

friday night happenings

2011-11-25T22:10:00.000+01:00

Hi from my kitchen, where I am still baking up a storm. Late Friday night and I'm tired and I almost forgot to put the sugar in my pumpkin custard filling. It's a good thing I tasted before pouring it into my pie crust. French people already think pumpkin pie is weird, but I'm not going to win over any new fans if I leave the sugar out.

Now that's in the oven, I'm making a celeriac soup that I'm going to serve with sea scallops as part of the first course. Lots of butter and cream. Yum :) I foresee a long jog/walk on Sunday to eliminate the extra calories. I hope the weather holds up. It's been getting much colder...but nothing like my family back in the Midwest is experiencing. My sister in Colorado and my step-sisters in Minnesota have all had snow already. I don't think my family in Nebraska has had any, though. If we get snow once in a winter here in Provence, it's exceptional. And that's often enough for me...my three-plus years in Hawaii turned me into a "frileuse" (extra sensitive to the cold). It's a good thing I ended up in the south of France!

Bon weekend mes amis!

Easy cheese ball

2011-11-24T18:52:00.003+01:00

We're having a few friends over for dinner on Saturday (I know, I already said that) and I've started making some dishes ahead of time. There will be turkey and mashed potatoes (tis the season) and hey, what's a pseudo Thanksgiving without a cheese ball. Since this recipe said it could be made ahead, that's what I did.

1lb (about 500g) smoked mozzarella, coarsely chopped (I used smoked Scamorza)
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tbs sun-dried tomato pesto
1 tbs chopped parsley
pepper (the recipe called for salt, but it's already pretty salty)
give it a whirl in the food processor until it has the consistency of a thick paste

I can find Ritz crackers now in my French grocery store, so I'll be serving my cheese ball with this extra American touch :)

The Christmas trees are here

2011-11-23T11:38:00.002+01:00

--- Envoyé depuis mon mobile Orange

I went to the grocery store this morning to do my Thanksgiving food shopping and I had to drive around a mountain of Christmas trees that had been dumped in the middle of the street. 'tis the season :)

turkey order

2011-11-22T20:24:00.001+01:00

Today I ordered a turkey for Thanksgiving. We'll eat it with friends on Saturday. I had to special order it from the butcher shop because turkeys don't show up until Christmas time in French grocery store meat sections. I hope it won't be too big to fit in my oven.

Here's some trivia for Tuesday: My butcher is from Italy, southern Italy to be exact. He's Sicilian. I think he's been in France for a long time. But I can get good Italian food products in his shop :)

Okay, now I have to go to Jazz band practice. We're playing for the Telethon the first weekend in December, which is only two practices away. Yikes.

Corsican clementines

2011-11-21T20:08:00.002+01:00

--- Envoyé depuis mon mobile Orange

Our source of vitamin C for the next couple of months. They just started showing up at the markets recently. So sweet, no seeds...we eat many everyday!

Sunday night

2011-11-20T20:20:00.001+01:00

Hi. I'm just back from lunch and an afternoon in Marseille with the "belle famille". We had pizza, pasta and other Italian type dishes at a restaurant called Villa Dona. It's in the Valentine neighborhood, near where one of my brother-in-laws lives. This restaurant gets about 3 out of 5 stars on a couple of web sites and I'd have to agree with that. I was very happy with my pizza: sautéed spinach, goat cheese, fresh tomatoes and fresh anchovies...but some people in my group complained about the service being a little slow and a little grumpy. I was late anyway, so I didn't notice the slow part and the waiter that was supposed to be grumpy was winking at me, so I can't complain too much there :)

I was late because I played in a small music ensemble at a Mass this morning. I always love playing in a cathedral because the sound is so good. My husband and girls went in to Marseille before me and I caught up with them at the restaurant. We were there to celebrate one of my French nephew's 18th birthday. After lunch, we went bowling, which neither the newly 18 year old nephew nor the 70-something year old grandma seemed to appreciate much. I think the 18 year old thought he was too old...he was surrounded by his much younger cousins and his silly aunts and uncles who are embarrassing bowlers. And the French grandma had birthday cake on her mind. She thought the bowling was taking too long. But we did have fun and we did get to have our cake afterwards, too. All's well that ends well :)

Kev Adams in Carpentras

2011-11-19T17:04:00.002+01:00

The scene from last night's comedy show.
Lots of screamin' teens :)

Last night's comedy show was very good. Kev was on scene and making us laugh for almost 2 hours which is quite a feat for a just 20 year old young man. The kids in the audience know his sketches so well (most of them are on YouTube) that they were saying them along with the star. It got a little annoying to me, the old fart in the audience, when someone would shout out the punch-line before Kev did. But Kev seemed to roll with the punches, just making his act even funnier. A lot of his act is a "mise en scene" of his life as a high school senior, focusing on anecdotes from school, with friends and at home with family. I could relate to when he was poking fun at his mom.
"How does he know what I say to my girls?" Maybe my nagging is part of a universal mom thing :)

Before starting his show, he asked everyone to shut off their phones and cameras because he'd be signing autographs afterwards and that would be a better time for that. (The one photo I took above was just at the end of his show and since he was taking a photo of the audience, well, lots of us took a photo of him at that moment.) I suppose he didn't want people filming and posting his show on the web.

Kev Adams, signing autographs after the show.

Anyway, since he did say he'd sign autographs, we waited around after the show. And we waited. And waited. And waited. And right when my husband annouced that we would wait no more, Kev Adams came out of his "loges*" and the teens started screaming and....we the parents, got to wait some more :)

*I can't think of the English term for that back stage changing room...brain fart...

Soda

2011-11-18T16:21:00.001+01:00

It's been a long day and we're not done yet. I got up at 5 to go in to work on the early shift. I took my 6th grader to the opthamologist this afternoon to get her eyes checked and she's fine. She'd been complaining about not seeing the black board at school, but the doctor didn't detect any big vision problems. Now, I'm off to parent-teacher conferences for my dialated pupil pupil. And then tonight, we are going to see a stand-up comedeian that is a big hit with french teenagers: Kev Adams. He has a show that has been on the M6 tv channel. It's called Soda, which is the word ados spelled backward, which is shortened slang for the word adolescents. He's very funny. I hope I can stay awake long enough to laugh. And if I can get close enough, I'll take a photo of him with one my screaming teenagers. We have to drive to Carpentras to see his act, the show in Marseille sold out. I heard that tonight's show is, too.

Tootleloo :)

Class photo day

2011-11-17T09:19:00.000+01:00

It's class photo day at my daughters' middle school. One of my daughters used the curling iron to put little ringlets in the hair around her face, while pulling the rest of her long hair up in a loose bun. This same daughter painted her finger nails fluorescent green for the occasion. I'm not sure that was worth the effort. The flashy lime color probably won't show up in the big group photo and the individual photos are close-up head shots, no fingers in sight...unless she poses her hand on her cheek. I kind of hope someone stops her from doing that.

My other daughter used the same curling iron to make her hair as flat as possible. She has P.E. class right before the photo, so I think her effort may be wasted, also. In a rare event, she has nude nails, but she did fill her back-pack with 2 Santa Claus hats and big sun-glasses. She said something about how her 8th grade class decided to dress-up for their photo.

Hey family: The Christmas card photos are going to be good this year :)

Ninety ninth

2011-11-16T08:49:00.000+01:00

Hello Wednesday morning. My 13 year old is already at school and Miss 11 year old goes at 9am. I'm helping her go over an English lesson for a test that she has today. She makes funny mistakes in English that she wouldn't make in French, like mixing up the order of the months in the year or spelling the days of the week wrong. She just asked me why oh why is 90 spelled ninety, but 9th is spelled ninth? Where did the "e" go and why? It's my mother tongue, but I have no good explanation for that one. I can only answer that French, her mother tongue, is just as confusing to me.

The French school system is coming to the end of their first trimester which means it's time for report cards. There won't be many surprises as most teachers put the grades on an on-line password protected site hosted by the middle school after each test or graded homework. I like being able to follow along this way and be able to know where I can emphasize my help with homework. Even P.E. class is graded. This trimester my 11 yo had wrestling and gymnastics in that class. It would be safe to say that I was of no help here.

mid-November remembering

2011-11-15T09:32:00.004+01:00

A little over five years ago, my dad was in a hospice room. It was a big double room and from his bed, he couldn't necessarily see us over on the couch. His pastor was visiting and had put a religious music cassette to play in a radio on the bedside table by my dad before he came over to sit down and talk with the family. I think my dad thought that the pastor was gone when he called out for me to come shut off that music (he didn't like it). My dad was a pretty polite guy and he wouldn't have asked me to shut off the music if he'd known that the pastor was still there.

It's just a little memory that makes me smile. Another one comes from that same week. My dad's wife, my step-mom had cleaned up his room, fluffed his pillows, moved a chair by his bed and opened the curtains to let in the sun. When she was done, my dad softly asked if she had gotten him all feng-shui. We both looked over at him. He was smiling at his little joke.

It's crazy how fast five years go by.

Like I said in an earlier post, I have Thanksgiving day off from work, even though that day isn't a holiday in France. I'll use the day to cook and we'll invite friends over for a dinner the Saturday just after. I'm thankful for my far-away family and friends and all the good memories we have. Even if we are not together and some of us are not here anymore, November is especially a time when I think of you all.

Winged gloves

2011-11-14T21:41:00.002+01:00

gloves, a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

I laughed when I saw these gloves in a Parisian window display last weekend. What good are half gloves? Chic, maybe, you know, for when you drive your Porsche down the Champs Elysée. But I'd rather be warm (in my old Renault :). The winged ones are pretty. Maybe I could sew some wings on my plain full sized leather gloves. I need to dig them out of the winter box soon. Early mornings and nights are getting nippy here in Provence. The girls need to wear warm coats to school, now. I keep getting tricked...when I leave for work in the early afternoon, it's warm, so I don't wear a coat. But when I walk back to my car at night, I keep getting surprised by the cold. Maybe now that I've written this fact down, I won't forget my coat or at least a big sweater tomorrow.

salsa

2011-11-13T20:26:00.001+01:00

Look at these colorful shirts. My husband bought a ridiculously bright one here for his salsa dance class. The shirt is only ridiculous out of context. In a Cuban salsa class, bright and flashy bottle cap image covered shirts are a obligatory. I wanted to take more photos inside this shop, but it was forbidden. I'll have to take a close up of my costumed dancer in action.

Bon weekend mes amis.

lipstick

2011-11-12T09:42:00.002+01:00

lipstick, a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

I thought this big window display for one small tube of lipstick was funny. It makes a big deal out of an almost nothing, although this is probably some fancy brand-name almost nothing. I don't wear lipstick, so the brand name didn't catch my attention. (Imagine playing the trombone while wearing lipstick? It doesn't work.)

We started the school year with an 8th grader that wanted to start wearing some make-up. Had you asked me last year, I would have said NO WAY. But said 8th grader has good negotiating skills and has an un-flawed background check (good grades, good friends, all around good kid).
She didn't want to wear much, just a tiny bit of eyeliner and some base coat to cover invisible (to me) flaws. She does wear very flashy nail polish, though. Fluorescent yellow finger nails with black smiley faces painted on them have left our house to go to middle school. I don't see the problem with that, as long as she keeps on getting good grades and hanging out with good friends.

What about you? Do you have a teenage girl? What age did she want to start wearing make-up?And when did you let her?

common ground

2011-11-11T10:27:00.001+01:00

Last night for supper, we had couscous made for us by the one of the cleaning ladies from where I work. I was touched that she shared with me and my family. Originally, she had made the meal for other co-workers in another building. They had been kind with her after her husband died a couple of months ago. She is a Muslim from Algeria and this shared meal also coincided (almost) with their holiday Eid ul Adha. You can click on the link to learn the meaning behind this festival. Part of the holiday consists in sharing sacrificed meat, which is what she symbolically did with the couscous. (Couscous is a brothy vegetable stew that does have pieces of meat floating in it. It is served over the couscous grains). I don't really make this dish, though I do cook the grains and serve them with steamed vegetables. My couscous is not nearly as good as my co-worker's is.

I am going to make her something American to fill her Tupperware dishes with when I give them back, probably chocolate chip cookies as she has three teenagers that would probably appreciate them. My job is sometimes very isolated, so thank goodness I can look forward to when the cleaning lady comes at night. We try and talk (in French), but I don't always understand her through her north African accent and I am not sure she always understands me through my American one. But everyone understands each other through food, n'est-ce pas :)

eating my way through Paris

2011-11-10T11:18:00.001+01:00

We ate at the Auberge Aveyronnaise in Paris near Bercy (12th arrondissement). We had an entrée and a big main plate of typical food from this region of France. It's very meat oriented with duck, game, beef or sausage as choices to be accompanied by sautéed potatoes or even better, a big scoop of cheesy potato aligot (pictured above). There was also a fish dish on the menu. This seemed to be a very popular restaurant with the locals. We would definitely go back, as it is near the hotel we usually stay at in Paris.

Millefeuille, a flaky creamy dessert. We were so full after our Auvergne dinner with aligot that we ordered one dessert with four spoons.

Mmmmm, cheese. Probably the one reason I could never be a vegan.

A chocolate shoe, almost too pretty to eat. Here's a little known fact: I am not a huge fan of chocolate. I'd almost always choose cheese over chocolate as a dessert. I have one daughter who does love chocolate, though. To the point of where she is in a very bad mood if she doesn't get her daily dose. She's 13 and we have found that if she eats several bowls of Special K with slivers of dark chocolate for breakfast, she's usually okay for the day. She's very skinny. Maybe I should consider switching over from cheese to chocolate :)

Okay, I hesitated showing this photo. I am sure I am going to shock some of you out there with this photo of "magic bread". But what's Paris without baguettes...and a little humor. I am not shocked by this bread. I just think it's funny. I would have bought one if I had been hungry. Imagine walking home with that tucked under your arm! And I do remember a long ago pretzel making party in college, where our end product ended up looking an awful lot like the baguettes above :)

One day in Paris

2011-11-09T09:08:00.001+01:00

Photos from Paris last Sunday. Just a glimpse of what we saw walking around with our friends....

Before meeting up with our friends on Sunday morning (they were not in the same hotel), my husband and I took in the Diane Arbus photo exhibit at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. These were photos from America in the 50's and 60's. I was totally captured by the images of people not usually in the spot-light. We went right at opening time on Sunday morning. The line gets very long any later than 11am.

It's fall in Paris, too. These scouts were having a great time playing in the leaves in a park behind the Notre Dame church. 10 meters away, there were girl scouts running relay races. I wondered why the two groups were separated.

This tea house was desperately empty. But we didn't walk by at peak tea time, either. Despite the gray day, it was warm enough to sit outside to eat or drink, which we did.

I always like this funny fountain by the Pompidou center. A burst of color in gray Paris.

Like any other tourist, even after all these years in France, I love seeing the Eiffel tower at any angle.

Tomorrow, I have photos of some of the edible things I saw. One is even a little risqué :)

vegetable soup

2011-11-08T10:11:00.002+01:00

vegetable soup, a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

On Sunday, we had lunch in Paris on Ile St Louis at a very small restaurant called "Le Relais de l'Isle". Score! It was a great choice. Go early or reserve because there are not many tables. We all chose off of the menu of the day. This vegetable soup was as good as it was pretty.

Today I am cooking down a whole Cinderella pumpkin to make and freeze the purée for future pie, gratins and soup. I may try and make a soup like the one pictured. We thought we detected pumpkin, tomato and...lots of cream :)

I have one daughter home sick this morning. Not very sick, just not well enough to go to school. So pumpkin soup will be just the right thing for her at noon. What's cooking with you?

waiting in Paris

2011-11-07T12:24:00.000+01:00

Looking up the Champs Elysées from the Place de la Concorde

We had a nice whirl-wind weekend in Paris, all possible because of the fast TGV (train) that only takes about 2.5 hours one way. We got on the train at 10am in Avignon, which is only slightly farther from our house than the train station in Aix is, but with much more available parking. Note to the higher powers that be: triple the size of the parking lots at the Aix TGV station please. At 12:30 pm, we pulled into the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris, just in time for lunch. Yipee :)

I went and stood under the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde to wait for our friends who had just flown in from Denver. While standing there, my husband had the time to take our suitcase to our hotel behind the Trocadero in the 16th arrondissement. (I had the time to go to the W.H. Smith bookshop while waiting, too :). I also had the time to almost get pick-pocketed by a a young girl. Her ruse: she dropped a shiny ring at my feet and then tried to distract my attention by asking me if I lost my jewelry. I think she was attracted to me because I was alone, relatively isolated...and talking on my cell phone. My purse was closed and after she took a look to see that my phone wasn't the latest, hottest brand and that I had a good grip on it, she took off.

While still waiting for our friends and my husband to come back sans the suitcase, an American couple handed me their shiny, fancy Blackberry so that I could take their photo. Hint of the day: don't do that if you really like your telephone.

My husband made it back to the meeting spot before our friends showed up. He told me that our hotel was very, very nice. We don't usually stay in very, very nice hotels...but our frequent flying friends offered us some of their Marriot points and we ended up staying in the Renaissance Trocadero. I've never had four rows of pillows on the bed and guest bathrobes to wear with matching hotel slippers. Too bad we were only in our room from 11pm to 9am...which is why we don't splurge on hotel rooms. But it was very nice! Maybe I'll start putting chocolate on my pillow here at home...

Here are two more photos I took from vantage spot at the Place de la Concorde while waiting. Everyone did show up and we headed off for lunch and a lot of walking, talking and photo taking. I hope you all had a nice weekend, too.


The Madeleine

The Eiffel Tower is in the distance

A piano player on Paris street corner.

2011-11-06T15:54:00.000+01:00

--- Envoyé depuis mon mobile Orange

Paris today

2011-11-05T18:08:00.001+01:00

--- Envoyé depuis mon mobile Orange

Umbrellas and socks

2011-11-04T11:04:00.002+01:00

I had to make an emergency run to the grocery store and buy an umbrella this morning. I let my 13 yo take the last functioning one I could find to school with her this morning because she has to walk home when she is done. And to say that it's been soggy in Provence is an understatement! I just hope she remembers to find her umbrella-less sister and shares the umbrella with her on their way home. No guarantees on that one, though. They both tend to prefer walking home with their own friends rather than with each other.

I did wonder where all of umbrellas went this morning. I could have sworn we had more. They must have disappeared with my sock singles. I had stocked up on a bunch of cheap IKEA umbrellas a while back, but I suppose those all broke and got tossed. All I could find this morning at the small grocery store in my village was an expensive Isotoner umbrella. I splurged, because tomorrow we are going overnight to Paris (raining there too, I think) to meet a couple of old, good friends from Denver. They will be in Paris just that weekend so we are obliged to go :)

I've printed out a list of wine bars, a restaurant (La Cantine du Troquet) and one photo expo (Diane Arbus) I want to go to while there. My husband laughed when he saw the list of wine bars. He said that we might not have time to go to all of them. I answered back that my list covered all of Paris so that depending where we were, we would be able to find a good spot for food and drink.

Bon weekend mes amis. I am going to try and post from Paris to keep this NaBloPoMo roll going.

back to school

2011-11-03T09:14:00.000+01:00

I managed to get a long dog walk in this morning before the rain starts up again. I think benefits of the long walk just got canceled out by the warm baguette I bought and ate (once back home) slathered with real butter, though.

I've been conducting a little dog therapy for my scared-y dog. Duffy has developed deep fear of the veterinarian and the dog groomer. These are both places we walk by often and whenever we get close, she panics, tries to run away, pulling me in the opposite direction. So now, I bring a few pieces of cheese and lure her past the houses of dog torture. It works. She'll happily eat her treat sitting right on the front steps of the dog groomer's place, making me think that maybe the torturing is all in her head.

My human girls went back to school this morning after their fall school break. This vacation is always around the time of the All Saints holiday on November 1st. Now onward towards Christmas vacation. I just realized that I took Thanksgiving day off from work. Not on purpose, November 24th is not a holiday in France. It is the day that I have to take my 13 year old to the orthodontist. But since I do have the day off, I am going to try and do some cooking for that holiday and maybe even find some other willing American(s) to come over and share in that feast.

I read over on a friend's blog today about feasting and everyday cooking. It's true that on most days, we just eat simple food. The girls eat lunch at school, and with both parents working and getting home late, supper is usually some sort of vegetable with pasta or rice, grains or potatoes...But if an occasion comes up and we have the time, it's always fun to have a feast to share with friends.

Okay, time to go. I am going to try and post everyday this month as an unofficial participant in NaBloPoMo. I've never succeeded in posting everyday for the whole month. Maybe this year?

my wormy olives

2011-11-02T09:49:00.000+01:00

Here's the olives I spent the past 2 days picking. We have just one tree and because of the way it grew tall and close to the chain-link we share with the neighbors, I have to climb a ladder (or up in the tree) to do my time consuming picking by hand while hanging periously to a branch. I've seen professional farmers wrapping sheets around their olive trees. I think that they then give the tree a big shake and the olives fall right off. I don't see how I could do that. Half of my sheet would have to go through the neighbor's yard and probably, most of the olives would fall off on their side of the fence anyway. As it is, I hope the neighbors don't mind my olive tree that hangs over on their side. It does give them some privacy. We live in such close quarters. Our yards are separated by a vine covered fence that runs the length of our small backyards.The vine has grown thick enough that we can't see into their yard anymore. Well, we can't, but our dog spends most of her days with her snout stuck through the vines, spying on our neighbors. They have a cat and a dog and a 2 year old boy that have totally captured the interest of our dog. I think that before the neighbors complain about our olive tree dropping olives on their side, they may protest about my dog's head being a daily part of their lives. I wonder if they'd let me come over and take a photo of that?

Faucheur/Faucheuse *

2011-11-01T09:47:00.000+01:00

Halloween 2011

This is what my 11 year old wanted to be on Halloween. She drew the model of the costume she wanted and French grandma did a great job in creating, even though she said sewing on black cloth with black thread wasn't very easy. My daughter did her own make-up, inspired by the 6 year old neighbor who had come trick or treating early in the day, right in the middle of the afternoon. We did get more trick or treaters when it got dark out (at 6PM...we switched time last weekend). But then my husband and I went out to eat and left our 13 year old in charge of giving out candy until she went to stay overnight at a friends. Judging by the empty candy basket, she must have had a lot of visiters, either that, or she and her friends ate all the candy bars. That is a possible conclusion.

I have been picking olives for the past 2 days. I may stop now. The olives have worms, someone at our dinner party last night said it is because of the exceptionally warm September we had, giving the flies more time to lay their eggs. Whatever...it's gross, especially when I also heard that the olive oil coop is still taking olives picked from trees (not off the ground), worms or not. I'm not sure that is true, but just the idea of fresh pressed worm juice is probably going to make me throw mine away in a compost pile. I'll take a photo of them before I toss. My wormy olives are pretty.

* Grim Reaper

What's cooking du jour

2011-10-29T20:03:00.001+02:00

Blueberry muffins à la Betty Crocker

My 13 year old and I spent the afternoon cooking. She has a cookbook for teenagers and chose a lemon curd recipe from that to make today. Tomorrow morning, I'll make pancakes to go with her lemon curd, which was very good according to our taste testing. The official jar is now cooling in the fridge. While she was doing that, I made these Betty Crocker blueberry muffins. When I stirred the blueberries in, the whole thing turned blue. I guess I didn't drain my frozen berries very well. Now cooked, they look a little grey, but the taste tested missing muffin was good. Verdict: ugly, but good. For supper, we are having a pasta with a fava bean creamy parmesan sauce. I can already tell you that my 11 year old will be asking for the sauce on the side...as in the other side of the planet. But we keep on trying. Bon weekend mes amis :)

Halloween in France

2011-10-28T09:30:00.001+02:00

Today I'm taking the girls to French grandma's house for some cousin time and to take advantage of "mamie's" sewing skills.

Mamie used to be a seamstress and taught Home-Ec sewing in a Catholic middle school for awhile, a long time ago. Over the years, we have used her as our official pant hem-mer, clothes re-sizer, hole fixer...But today, we will be asking her to make a grim reaper Halloween costume out of 2 meters of black cloth I bought at the fabric store.

Halloween is not nearly as big of deal here in France as it is in America. And what costumes there are, are scary, gory, horrific...there are no cute Sponge Bob's walking the streets trick-or-treating for Halloween candy. Although, 9 years ago (back when I had a say over what she wore) I dressed my then 2.5 year old up in a cute unicorn costume my mom sent from Sam's Club USA, and she won my village's costume competition. On cuteness, I think.

My now 11.5 year old has been invited to an overnight Halloween party and a scary costume is the "costume de rigeur". There are not a lot of Halloween parties in Provence. The one my daughter is going to is being hosted by another Franco-American family, perpetuating American traditions outside the USA borders. My daughter and her half-American friend will be surrounded by their French friends happy to have a reason for a party. But I can guarantee you that none of them will be dressed up as a princess.

fairytale squash

golden nugget

So my cute ex-unicorn is going to be transformed into the grim reaper today. Now, if only I could find a pumpkin. I may have to carve a different kind of squash again this year. In France, squash are for eating and American style pumpkins don't really have much flesh, so you don't find them for sale at the farmer's markets. And there are no such things as pumpkin patches where people go to choose pumpkins just for carving, not for food. In France, it's easier to find a Fairytale pumpkin or a golden nugget squash for me to try and carve. But these squash are flatter with much thicker flesh, making carving hard and not leaving much room for a candle inside. I'll take photos of costumes and pumpkins once we get them done this weekend.

upload problems

2011-10-25T07:39:00.000+02:00

Please excuse the technical difficulties...I'm having trouble linking to photos on my Flickr account. I don't know if I'll be able to fix it today. I have to take my 13 yo to an allergy doctor this morning so we can try and get to the bottom of her sniffing, itching and sneezing. She gets terrible hayfever in the spring and our family doctor had us wait until fall to go get her tested. It's pouring rain here today, which will make our outing to Aix extra fun. And then I have to go to work, where I don't have much to do and I don't have access to the internet. Which is why I just placed an order with my dear friend Amazon.fr. I'm off to try and fix the photos one more time, otherwise, it will have to wait until tomorrow.

Our Sunday Hike

2011-10-24T08:56:00.009+02:00

Here's the start of our hike into the Gorges de Régalon. We did the 9km round trip, adding a few kilometers because we got lost.

As you approach the gorges, the trail narrows and the rock walls get higher and higher.

There are passages where you have to do a little rock climbing. We had to lift our dog twice. I am not sure that you are supposed to take dogs on the trail that goes directly through the gorges. This is hunting territory and dogs can disturb the not so wild life (I say not so, because raised birds are released here to be hunted). Or maybe if there are a lot of people, the mix of dogs and tourists wouldn't be good. We weren't the only ones walking our dog here yesterday (even though at the end of October, the trail is mostly free) and we always kept her leashed up except during one dangerous descent.

You can see a place if you click on the image of 9km trail we were supposed to be following yesterday, called the Mayorques. That's a farm where we somehow got lost and headed off into some wild nature on a hunting trail, rather than the official hiking trail. By the time we turned around, we'd added another couple of kilometers to our hike and we barely made it back to the car before nightfall. I think what fooled us was that we were not the only people heading off in the wrong direction. The farm was in a big open field and the trail signs were vague in pointing you the right way. The first trail you come upon is not the right one and we should have known better because there were no markers. Eventually we stopped, along with another couple and retraced our steps and found the marked trail. But another couple was adamant that they were going the right way, so we left them. This morning, we woke up worried about them, because after nightfall, this hike would be very dangerous because of cliffs and several passages of rock climbing you have to do on the official trail.

between a rock and a hard place

2011-10-23T21:02:00.002+02:00

P1010757, a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

A photo from our hike today in the "Gorges de Regalon".
We got lost and barely made it out before dark.
But we did, barely.
More photos tomorrow.
I hope you all had a very nice weekend.

raw carrot soup

2011-10-19T09:36:00.000+02:00

Carrot Soup

I made this soup for myself yesterday. I didn't even try and serve it to anyone else in my family, I know them better than that by now. I started out using my food processor and switched over to a blender, but the soup never got perfectly creamy smooth. I don't mind a little texture, but my girls would. Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup hazelnuts blended in 1 1/2 cups water.
3 cups carrots, cut into chunks
1 apple, peeled, cored and sliced
1 tbsp raw honey
1 tsp ginger (I grated in some fresh)
salt and pepper to taste (I used 1/4 tsp salt)
blend it all together until smooth

Instead, for my girls and husband, I made carrot risotto. I guess I was in the mood for carrots. I didn't follow a recipe for that. Here's a photo of the end result and what my 11 year old does with vegetables that can be picked out of a dish.

carrot risotto smiley face
eating the actual carrots is optional

Blending in in France-updated

2011-10-18T09:52:00.002+02:00

One of my blogging friends has a daughter coming to France as an exchange student and she was wondering about some tips on how to not commit any faux-pas, or how not to stick-out as an ugly American.
My first answer would be to say that most French don't see Americans as ugly. They are pretty curious about any American that has made the effort to learn a bit of the French language and has come to France to experience some of the cultural differences over here.
But here is a small list (geared towards a teenager) of some things that are different in France that you might want to consider if you want don't want to stick out too much:

French people don't wear old sweat pants or pajamas to the grocery store or school.
French teenagers do wear slim jeans, baggy jeans, any jeans with sweatshirts to school.
Supper in France is late, which is why most school kids (and adults :) have a 4-5pm snack called a "goûter".
You probably won't be served milk with your meal except for hot chocolate for breakfast or a snack. (I hope you like cheese and yogurt).
The French eat using the fork with their left hand and knife with their right hand. But it's not an etiquette set in cement, either.
When out shopping, the French say "bonjour" to the employee or sale's person upon entering a store and they say "au revoir" when they leave the store, even if they don't buy anything.
The French kiss once on each cheek to say hello or goodbye. But some regions of France, like Avignon, have a 3 kiss etiquette. Generally, you will be informed of how many times you have to kiss when you are new to an area :)
The French do not give big bear hugs and pats on the back to greet each other. The French do hug, but not the pats on the back. And the hugging is only between people who know each other well.
Sometimes, the French will shake your hand, instead.

I'd love for my American blogging friends to leave their suggestions for my friend's daughter in my comment section. I think the most important thing to remember when traveling is that if you are unsure how to act--watch to see what your French friends do. "The French tend to be very gracious when someone is demonstrating a desire to learn about their culture."

Saturday lunch in France

2011-10-16T15:25:00.000+02:00

Armenian restaurant Avedis
place des Carmes
Avignon

On Saturday, we met some of my in-laws in Avignon for lunch to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. He chose this Greek/Armenian family style restaurant. We had a very good lunch. The menu was 21€ and the first course was a big mixed plate of Greek/Armenian-type starters (hummus, smokey eggplant purée, tarama, stuffed grape leaves, etc...). For the main dish, you could choose one of several kebabs (fish, beef or lamb). The kebabs or brochettes as the French like to call them, were huge and had side-dishes of several salads (lettuce, grains, carrots...). For dessert, I chose the plate of Oriental pastries. It was a smart choice :) Mmmmm, baklava, loukoum, etc...and all that honey dripping off the pastries.

dancing after lunch

It was very filling which is maybe why these ladies at another table got up to dance after their lunch... to the oriental music playing in the background. Even though the restaurant says it is Greek/ Armenian, we tasted a touch of Turkey and Lebanese in the food and music. During the week, the lunch menu is only 13€, which is a pretty good deal in France. It's not a fancy restaurant, more a family style diner. I would go back.

Sunday's fyi: My husband's paternal grandfather was an Armenian born in a part of Turkey that was protected by the French before moving to France, a long time ago...which explains why my married name has an oriental twist to it.

Scarecrows in France

2011-10-14T21:13:00.002+02:00

épouvantail

Boo, yes I'm still here.

Epouvantail is how you

say scarecrow in France.

I saw this not very scary specimen at my town's market this morning. He was made by a group of school kids (not my girls). He is guarding what was once a patch of vegetables planted by several primary school classes. I hope they had a good harvest! After working the booths at the middle school's PTA elections, giving blood and picking up my new French ID card, I didn't have time to shop the market before going to work today. I just had time to buy some sautéed noodles and vegetables from the Chinese chicken lady (I bought a rotisserie chicken for my family for supper tonight).
And I thought I wasn't going to find anything to write about, but this kind of counts as a post, n'est-ce pas?
I'll try and catch up with you tomorrow. TGIF mes amis :)

Saturday sums it up...

2011-10-08T09:37:00.002+02:00

Fun with kids:
My 8th grader got her free, yes FREE, laptop computer at school yesterday. Several programs are already installed, like Windows7, OpenOffice, a French Encyclopedia, etc...All the 8th graders in our county (the Bouches du Rhone (13) department) also get a USB key with mega memory capacity. Her middle school, and many others, have web-sites now where, amoung other things, each class and teacher posts homework due for the week. This is a great tool in helping the kids organize their free time between studying, sports and goofing off. The first things my daughter transferred to her computer were her photos, her music and...Facebook. She's a good student, so I'm not too worried about her getting completely distracted by that time sucker. This morning, I woke up to find her on the old family laptop. When asked why, she said she didn't feel like turning hers on. Go figure. But what I want to emphasize here is how great an idea I think this is that the our county invests this much money in their children. Go Bouches du Rhone.

Fun with dogs:
This week was also a week where my dog decided to be ill, because of course she's doing it on purpose. Duffy sleeps in a sun-room, and we woke up several mornings to find poop everywhere. It's probably my fault. A couple of weeks ago, we ran out of the expensive dog food, so I just got a small sack of the cheap store brand (which my dog greatly prefers but it triples the volume of poop she creates) and then this week I switched back to the expensive brand that is "highly digestible"...meaning, less poop, normally. Except my great switcheroo seems to have knocked her intestines out of balance. Or maybe she ate some weird dead animal she found on one of our walks. Whatever it is, I am so done cleaning that mess up. I've given her rice for a few days now and she's back to eating normally. You didn't want to know all that, did you?

Fun(not) in France:
On Thursday, a train conductor was attacked by a crazy guy on a train going from Lyon to Strasbourg. Shortly afterwards, train traffic in France came to a grinding halt, as a nation-wide strike took effect. The train conductors were protesting their lack of security on the trains. I can understand that. There are a lot of evaders trying to take trains in France without paying for a ticket and they don't want to be caught, which presents a risk to the conductors. As this was going down, my workplace had a bus load of people ready to go to the train station. I watched as they all filed back off and heated up their I-phones and Blackberry's...looking for plane tickets instead. I think they all found alternatives to their travels and the bus ended up going to the airport instead of the train station.

Fun today:
My girls have church youth group this afternoon. It's a once a month meeting and because they are both in middle school this year, they will both go to the same youth group. Youth group lasts all afternoon, and then they go to Saturday night Mass before coming home. While the girls are gone, my husband and I are going to try and tackle a few things on our to-do lists.

Voilà, c'est tout. Bon weekend mes amis.

Dynamic view

2011-10-06T09:13:00.001+02:00

I like the new dynamic view option Blogger is now offering, BUT...
where did all my sidebar widgets go?

If I can't figure out how to make them come back, I'm switching back to old Blogger.

update: I switched back, kind of, I'm fiddling around for a change of lay-out to go with the change of seasons.

photo du jour

2011-10-04T10:09:00.002+02:00

Duffy looking for the perfect stick.

I sure am enjoying this Indian summer. I just got back from my morning jog/walkfast with my perfectly paced partner, Duffy. This is on the little road behind our house that goes off into the woods. My dog runs wild circles around me while I try to jog to my goal destination. The forest service has cleared away some of the pine trees lining the road, releasing wonderful piney perfume that mix with the odor of the wild rosemary and thyme that grows everywhere here in Provence. I planted a rosemary bush in the front of my house and I highly recommend that plant to anyone that doesn't have a green thumb. It just grows and grows, even when you forget to water it for...let's say...a month, or more :)

Can you see the rosemary and thyme?

I wish I could share the smell of Provence with you this morning. It's much better than the smell I woke up to in my house. I came down stairs and found that the dog had let herself in, she can do that if we forget to lock the doors. She bumps her muzzle on the door handle to open it. She had been sick in the night, out in the sun-room, and apparently the odor was offensive even to a dog's nose, so she let herself in. I went on my jog just after that quick clean-up. It's a good thing for Duffy that the world outside smells so good this morning.

Provence, depending where you are, smells like herbs and pine this morning. What does your world smell like?....my world is about to smell like "choux fleur" cauliflower :)

Friday

2011-09-30T10:46:00.003+02:00

I drove my car down to the Friday morning market in the center of town, but couldn't find a parking spot, so I came back home.

I then leashed up my dog and walked back to the center of town, stopping by the radiologist's office to pick up my 13 year old daughter's X-rays but they weren't ready, so I walked back home.

I see this all as a sign from the greater powers that be...I shall now drink more coffee and eat more cake before attempting to do anything else. The next thing on my list is vacuuming and mopping and I am in no hurry to do that.

In other totally unrelated news, France's First Lady, Mrs Carla Bruni Sarkozy is supposedly in the hospital having her baby. Or at least, one whole floor of a chic Parisian clinic has been said to be blocked off. Carla just recently stated to the press that France wasn't interested in her and the President's baby. And so far, there have been no news leaks. Maybe France is not interested, but this American in France is. I wonder how long it will take before news on the first baby leaks out to the press?

coffee filters

2011-09-28T21:46:00.001+02:00

So this morning I went to the grocery store with the the title of this post on the very top of my mental list of things I had to get.

So what is the one thing I did not come home with...

You guessed it...the title of this post.

Tomorrow morning is going to present a small dilemma in this household. Paper towels make a great substitute, right?

In other earth shattering news, I have a new oven.

I haven't baked a thing in months. About two years ago, our house or somewhere very nearby, got struck by lightning and most electrical appliances in our house got fried. The insurance company only paid for the computer on our old stove to be replaced, but it never worked well after the big ZAP. This summer, the replaced computer gave out, too. And of course, nothing was under guarantee anymore, so last weekend we broke down and got a new stove.

And the very first thing I baked just this very afternoon?

Coffee cake to go with the coffee I won't be having tomorrow morning.

Monday

2011-09-26T12:06:00.001+02:00

future mushroom soup

I did find some mushrooms on Friday and I'm just getting around into making soup this morning for tonight's supper. I work every afternoon, so I am trying to cook in the mornings. My house smells like coffee and sauteed mushrooms this morning. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Yesterday, our neighborhood had a block party. Lunch started at noon, and at 7pm many neighbors were still "à table"...sitting around the tables set up at the end of our cul de sac, ready to slip into happy hour. I think I may have the greatest neighbors ever. We are a mixed bunch, all ages, many different backgrounds, etc...but judging by the nice afternoon we all had, we all seem to get along pretty well. Several of our retired neighbors now participate with "marchons vers l'école"...they help walk the younger kids to school. It's nice that so many neighbors know each other, now. This block party has been organised by some dynamic friends for a few years, and I hope the tradition continues for a long time.

Yesterday, I brought chili as a main dish and Rice Krispy bars as a dessert. I have lots of left-over chili, there was so much food as everyone brought something. But I don't have any left-over cereal bars. I think I'll make those again for Halloween next month. Homemade treats are still accepted here in France. Halloween isn't such a big deal, not as many kids will come ring our doorbell and the ones that do are kids we know, so they will accept unwrapped candies as a treat.

Time to go mix my soup :)

mushroomless mercredi

2011-09-21T09:48:00.000+02:00

I went to the small market in the village down the road from our's and there were no mushrooms for sale today. That Jamie Oliver mushroom soup recipe I printed out will have to wait until Friday when my village has it's bigger market. Hopefully mushrooms will be found then.

Look what I did find this morning: topinambours or Jerusalem artichokes. I haven't decided how I'm going to prepare them yet, maybe mashed...I'll let you know.

roots

feeling fallish

2011-09-20T10:31:00.001+02:00

I'm just back from jogging in the woods with my dog and I have to say that the weather is gorgeous! Just a month ago, it was already too hot to jog at 9am and now, c'est parfait. And hey, that means I've been doing this jogging thing for at least a month, now. What do ya know!

This morning, I took my camera hoping to find something photogenic to share with you. The only thing that really caught my eye was the weird man crawling out of some bushes. I knew something was up when my dog stopped dead in her tracks and was giving a far-ish away bush a stare-down. Normally, there are no hunters allowed on Tuesday mornings, so I'm kind of hoping this guy was looking for wild mushrooms to eat and not little red riding hood (I had on a red sweatshirt this morning).

I don't know how to pick wild mushrooms that will not poison me, so I stick to what they sell at the markets. Once, my old neighbor gave me a bag of mushrooms that he grew in his cellar. I made them up into an omelet and later that night at band practice, my whole world turned technicolor. So, I don't take mushrooms from neighbors anymore, either.

Tomorrow morning at the market, I will get some mushrooms. I'm craving mushroom soup. And, I'll take photos of the great variety for sale this time of year in the south of France.

Bonne journée mes amis :)

a short shoe soap opera

2011-09-18T09:38:00.001+02:00

Looking for shoes for girls with skinny skinny feet and fixed ideas about fashion, is no easy feat (lol).

On Saturday morning, we drove to the outskirts of Salon and went to ChaussLand, a big Payless Shoe store kind of place. Out of the approximate 500 models they had on display, none fit or pleased my budding fashionistas. We did end up with an extra long thick cable-knit gray scarf for my 8th grader there, though.

From ChaussLand, we drove to downtown-land to hit the boutiques and specialty shops. Judging by all the people milling around and the absence of parking spaces, I could tell something was going on. After climbing up out of the abyss of a parking garage, we ran into some friends coming out of the Grevin Wax museum. They asked us if we were there for the "Journées du Patrimoine". Aha, so that's what's going on. Ever since I stopped working in the Tourist Office, I've been out of the loop on all the events going on in my region and all across France. This weekend in France is kind of a national historical monuments open-house weekend. Getting in to museums is free. I told our friends , that no, we weren't going to see the wax replicas of famous people, that we were on a hunt for shoes.

But we didn't find any shoes in Salon, either. We did find a shirt and a sweater with cool elbow patches. Hunger sent us home for lunch. And knowing that we had a date for the movies later that afternoon in Aix, we figured that we could look for shoes there.

So, a couple of hours later found us wandering all of the pedestrian streets of Aix, looking for shoes. We saw some in the very first shop we stopped in, but thought that we'd better do some comparison shopping first. Let it be noted here, that if you actively hunt down every single shoe store in Aix, you will have walked several kilometers by the time you are done. We were happy for the movie break and time spent sitting down at the cinema. By the way, we saw the "Guerre des Boutons"...the Button Wars, the version by Yann Samuel with Mathilde Seigneur. Did you know that two different movies about the same book are set to come out at the same time here in France? I think there is some sort of scandal about industrial spying in the French film industry because of this...I don't care too much about that, but we did like and recommend the version we saw.

After the movie, we walked back to the very first shoe store we stopped at in Aix. My 6th grader got the cutest pair of red suede ballerina shoes. My big-footed 8th grader didn't find any shoes that she liked this weekend. But she didn't seem too upset about that as she stated the fact:

"It's okay mom, I can just wear your shoes."

assemblée générale

2011-09-14T11:05:00.001+02:00

Last night, the little jazz band I play in had it's "assemblée générale. I'm not sure how to translate that, maybe by board of directors' meeting. We are a non-profit association that does have a little bit of money we have to manage, money from city and county subventions and revenues from concerts. Non-profit means that we don't pay ourselves. The money gets re-invested into the group for things like speakers, microphones, uniforms, sheet music, etc...

Once a year, all members of an association have to get together for this meeting where general issues are discussed and sign an attendance sheet. A certain percentage of the members must be present or any decision taken is not valid. Two elected officials from my town's government were also present at last night's meeting. I think they like to see where and how the city subvention money they allotted us is used. Partly in exchange for the subvention, our little jazz band is present free of charge at many of our town's social events. But mostly, we just like to take advantage of any chance that we get to play in public.

After last night's meeting we had an "apéro"...snacks and drinks. This is very typical of French meetings...after the work, the reward :) Last night, everyone brought something to eat and of course, we had way too much food. I made pitiful brownies. Pitiful, because my oven is dying, and while the brownies were baking, I think it did die. The brownies were only half-cooked, but I took them anyway. I served up the brownies that were more cooked around the edge of the pan, and just left the gooey mess in the middle of the pan. When the "apéro" was done, we all pitched in to clean up. I took a rag and was washing down the tables. When I went back into the kitchen, I found several of my band-mates with spoons in their hands, eating the gooey chocolate mess in the middle of my brownie pan.

This, I find very typical of the French, too. They are "gourmand"...lovers of food! But there were so many better dishes to eat last night, they could have left my mess in favor of the magnificent left-over "Ile Flottant" a friend's wife made. Imagine a giant punch bowl filled with English cream, and floating in the middle, a mountain of sweetened whipped egg whites...I know that's what I'm imagining right now. Miam miam!

Rabbits, take cover!

2011-09-11T08:35:00.000+02:00

Gunshots woke me up.

Wild rounds of artillery.

Rabbits, take cover.

Apparently, French hunting season is open. This effectively ends my Sunday morning jogs with my dog, for my dog's safety...and mine. We live on the edge of town and I like to jog/walk in the woods behind our house. But every Sunday morning for the next couple of months, these woods will be full of camouflaged hunters trying to get that pesky little rabbit (or wild pig, or pheasant...). The hunters supposedly have a strict code of rules they have to follow, but on the first Sunday mornings, there are so many of them out there and they do seem trigger happy. I wouldn't want them mistaking me or Duffy the Dog for big game. We're taking to the streets...

no honk zone

2011-09-09T08:55:00.003+02:00

Here we are, already on our first TGIF of the back-to-school season. My 8th grader has confirmed the independent liberties she's taken and is walking to and from school with a group of friends. My 6th grader still wants me to take her in the morning, but I committed a ~~major~~ minor faux-pas yesterday morning when I pulled up in front of the middle school. I saw one of her best friends, so I honked my horn a couple of times to get her attention. That worked. I got the friend's attention as well as the attention of the 500 other kids waiting for the bell to ring and the doors to open. I was immediately reprimanded with a :

"MOM! DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN!"

She laughed about it right afterwards, so I don't think her psyche was permanently damaged.

French middle school is a little different than what I remember middle school to be like in the USA. MY 6th grader's schedule is not completely full, so she doesn't always have classes from 8am to 5pm. My 8th grader does, except that she has one Thursday afternoon off every third week when her science class divides up for lab work.

This morning, my 6th grader doesn't start until 10am. But that will be true only every other Friday. And this is only a small example of the confusing scheduling I am going to try and have to remember. My girls will help me out by posting their schedules on the refrigerator. And every school morning, that's where you'll find me standing, sipping coffee, trying to understand French middle school schedules.

Market Stash 6

2011-09-07T10:25:00.000+02:00

beets

heirloom carrots

today's stash

Hi! I'm just back from the market in the village down the road from my town. The girls have school on Wednesday mornings now, so once they are off, I am going to try and go to this market each week. I like this market because it's smaller than my town's (I don't love being in crowds) and there are several organic vegetable stands whereas the bigger market in my town only has one. Today I got:

purple potatoes
heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes
eggplant
an orange turnip
swiss chard
three types of carrots
cucumbers
a butternut squash
a rotisserie chicken with baked potatoes (not pictured)

I haven't decided what to do with it all, especially the orange turnip which I bought just because it was cute, but I'll keep you posted :)

routine

2011-09-06T10:30:00.001+02:00

smoked trout and avocado verrines

Here are some of the verrines we made for the Sunday birthday lunch. We smashed a couple of avocados with some lemon juice and salt for the first layer. Then we mixed half and half of regular cream cheese with garlic herb cream cheese and a little water for the second layer. The third layer is diced smoked trout and we topped it all off with some chopped chives. My cheap child labor doesn't chop chives as finely as I would like, but they are so fun to work with that I'll accept their artistic contributions. We also made a tomato/cucumber verrine and 5lbs of mashed potatoes to go with the roast lamb, but then ran out of time for any more verrines. We did do gazpacho verrines, but I cheated and used store bought. The Spanish brand we can buy is very good.

And today, I have the empty champagne glasses from the party that I need to hand wash and put away. I'm feeling a little blue looking at the empty champagne glasses. Maybe because school started again and my oldest, the 8th grader who started this morning, wanted to go with her friends and didn't want me to tag along. The middle school is only a 10 minute walk from our house, so me going along isn't really necessary. She gave me a big hug and kiss goodbye and bounced out the door, happy as can be. My 6th grader, who started yesterday, let me tag along (discreetly), maybe because this is her first year at the middle school. She was a little nervous. But her day went well.

So that big step is done. Back to school. Back to work. Already dreaming about future vacations while washing those glasses....

hit me with your verrine ideas

2011-09-01T09:08:00.001+02:00

I have a bit of cooking I need to do this weekend, so I am perusing the Internet for recipes. We are celebrating my husband's belated 50th birthday with all of his family coming over Sunday for lunch. It was also one of his brother's 45th birthday, so we'll be celebrating that, too. My mother-in-law is bringing a roasted leg of lamb, her specialty, but I think she wants me to make verrines for the starter course.

Why would I think that? Because my husband came home from her house yesterday with a big bag of empty verrines that she sent me. To fill, I imagine. Hint taken. That's okay with me , really. Verrines are fun to make, and the girls like to help me fill them.

I don't know how to say verrines in English. Cups? Shot glasses? In any case they are individual servings of just about any imaginative combination of ingredients commonly found in salads, dips, or fancier starter courses. You can serve desserts this way, too. Now, I'mm off to collect ideas...

Oh, to add to the planning, I have a concert to play about an hour before all of our guests arrive. So, the fact that I can prepare the verrines ahead of time is a big plus. The concert is to animate our town's forum des associations, the day all the clubs try to attract new members. It's the day to pick out your kids extra curricular activities. So, a busy weekend ahead!

If you have a good idea for a verrine, let me know.

Italy 5: the end

2011-08-29T09:33:00.000+02:00

date dial on the Villa Barbaro

Some of the points of interest we chose to visit while driving through the Venice and Vicenza provinces of Italy were several of the Palladian villas. These villas were the agricultural villas of the Venetian aristocracy. If you are a fan of architecture, you'd love visiting these villas. Our girls mostly liked running through the lovely gardens of these splendid summer homes, especially the maze at villa Pisini. I was skeptical at first (thinking the maze would be easy), but I got totally lost and I had to have guide-help-out from my laughing girls who made it to the center watch-out tower long before I did...

We stopped at the Barbaro villa above on our way to lunch in Marostica.

giant chess square in Marostica

Every other year, there is a giant live chess tournament in the square. The next one is in September 2012. We were just happy to find a shady place for our lunch. It was hot out! From here, we drove to Pavia where we stayed the night. The next morning, we visited the Certosa of Pavia. Our visit was guided by one of the monks that live there. The visit was in Italian, so my husband translated (a little) but I mostly just tried to soak up the ambiance of this amazing place. Photographs were totally prohibited, so I respected that...almost, I did take one shot outside. Lots of people inside were trying to take photos, making the monk pretty mad. Have you ever seen a mad monk? They regain composure quickly :) I can understand his wanting to preserve the spectacular paintings inside.

Certosa of Pavia

That's all folks. Vacation is done. School starts next week in France. My 6th grader starts on Monday and my 8th grader starts on Tuesday. Here we go...

a question: Do my photos take too long to upload when you look at my blog?

Italy 5: pane

2011-08-25T09:09:00.001+02:00

On one of our first lunches out in Italy, we had this bread basket placed at our table. Hungry bread loving monsters that we are, we dove right in. But the first bite of this pane came as a surprise, it was unsalted. Our French tongues are used to salty baguettes, so the bland bread came as a surprise. But the more we nibbled, the more we liked it. And this Italian bread was very good at soaking up the pasta sauce left-over on our lunch plates. Delizioso!

Italy 4: Venice, Murano, Burano

2011-08-24T10:40:00.005+02:00

Here's a slide show* from our Friday visit in Venice, Murano and Burano. Next time, I think I will head straight over to the island of Burano. We arrived there late in the afternoon and I loved the colors and the people there. I would have liked to have spent more time, Burano seemed less tourist-trappy than many parts of Venice. For example, I bought a bottle of water in Burano and paid 50 cents for it and while waiting for our boat back to Mira at the Fusina stop in Venice, my husband paid 7.5€ for a draft beer and the waiter tried to tell us he couldn't give us change...which we eventually got after haggling and almost missing our boat. Anyway...you can recognize the Burano photos by the vibrant colors. Now, I want a purple house, too! I do love Venice and the small out of the way side streets, but maybe bring a picnic and your own drinks and save your money for the gelato :)

*click on the arrow to start the slide show

Italy 3 - Ravenna

2011-08-22T10:08:00.003+02:00

Mosaic inside the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna

hot and tired inside the Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna
my hatted 11 year old

Good tourists get "gelato" ice cream rewards

On a hot Thursday, we visited the four main mosaic sites in Ravenna, Italy:

Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna
Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna
The Mosaics of the Mausoleum of Galla Placida, Ravenna
The Mosaics of the Baptistery of the Arians, Ravenna

This visit is a great way to walk (and walk and walk) throughout a beautiful city. The photos I took don't do justice to the beauty of the mosaics and in some of the sites, photos even without the flash, were not allowed. While enriching ourselves culturally, I couldn't help but notice all of the good sales going on in all the name brand Italian clothing and shoe stores. I told the girls that after all the mosaics and lunch, we could go shopping. Little did I know that on Thursday afternoons, all those shops were closed. I lost any accumulated mom bonus points I had that day. Even I was pretty disappointed at missing out on those 15€ Geox tennis shoes. Why are stores closed on Thursday afternoons in Italy?

a tower in Ravenna

After one last look around In Ravenna, we headed north to the "agritourismo" we rented in Mira, on the Brenta river near Venice. "Agritourismo" are like bed and breakfasts, in a rural setting. You sometimes have a little kitchen, but we just had two, very comfortable rooms.

Italy 2

2011-08-18T09:18:00.003+02:00

Our girls under a giant tapestry in the Urbino castle. This wasn't their favorite part of the visit, maybe you can see that. But the castle is worth visiting if you are in or near Urbino. I like how the girls look so small here. You'll see in later photos, that our 13yo is now almost as tall as I am.

piadina

And here's a photo of one of my favorite sandwiches I had while in Italy, a piadina. The flat bread is made with lard and cooked on stones (correct me if I'm wrong), when made authentically in this Emilie-Romagne area of Italy. I'm not sure my sandwich was prepared that way, but it was good filled with a soft white cheese (what is it? Fontina?), prosciutto and rocket salad.

More photos tomorrow. Right now, I'm off to get back-to-school supplies for my future 6th and 8th graders. School starts in early September here, and we are not ready!

ps I didn't do well trying to eat vegetarian in Italy. But I'm back to trying now. And more excercise, too. I'm trying to boost energy levels and limit funky mood swings this way.

Italy 1

2011-08-16T10:39:00.002+02:00

The first tower in San Marino

Hi! We're back from our Italian road trip.We had a nice time and I was happy to be able to introduce our girls to a country, a culture, and a language that is part of their own background (technically, our girls are 1/4 Italian). We spent about half of the time staying with my mother-in-law's (mil) cousins and the other half, adventuring on our own. Our first stop was in Cuneo a week ago Sunday night. My photos from there are on another memory card, sorry. We arrived in the afternoon, and before maybe the best home-made dinner we had all week, we went walking through the galleries in the old histroical center of that town. It seemed as if the whole town was out for an afternoon walk. And my mil's cousin confirmed that a Sunday afternoon stroll through the piazza and side galleries was the custom. I think I'll talk about the food in another post, but boy did we eat well that night in Cuneo! (okay, one hint: thinly sliced veal with some kind of egg-tuna-olive oil sauce and pasta, of course :). The next day, we drove all the way across Italy to the Republic of San Marino, where another cousin lives. On our way, we stopped for lunch in Grazzano Visconti, south of Piacenza, mostly because my husband had done some work near there and liked the look of this old castle. Once again, the photos are on that other memory card. We arrived in San Marino late in the afternoon, and now you can see a few photos of this area of Italy near the Adriatic Sea.

The village of San Leo

On Tuesday, we visited San Marino "The Republic of San Marino was founded in 301 A.D. and is the most ancient European Republic". Because we were with someone from San Marino, whose father and grandfather, along with himself were/are responsible for the restoration of this town, we were able to have a very in depth visit, right down to the water citerns below the residences of the ancient nobles. Water was a precious ressource, because high up on this hill, there isn't any. So, the important people used to lived right above the water storage tanks. Later in the afternoon, we drove over to the town of San Leo. It's a smaller, less touristic perched village in this Rimini region of Italy. This is where we had our best restaurant dinner (roasted rabbit wrapped in pancetta and pasta, of course :), on the main piazza of the village. We stayed late into the night, long after the dinner was finshed, talking with the cousins. Our girls ran around the piazza with all of the local kids doing the same, waiting for parents to stop their talking :) On Wednesday, we visited the castle and museum in Urbino and saw two paintings by Raphael and several by his father. I don't think the girls appreciated them as much as we did. But they did like visiting the giant stables under that castle. And then next day we drove up along the coast towards Venice, stopping in Ravenna to visit the famous mosaics there...that'll be for another post. Ciao!

The Adriatic sea seen from the San Marino territory.

the sheep lost their shepherd

2011-08-06T16:36:00.003+02:00

The mountains were full of wild flowers last week. They literally carpeted the valleys and fields. But this yellow loner caught my eye on the way up to a lake that was above the tree line. The hike is considered medium difficult, but our two girls were able to do it, no problem...and much faster than me!

We picnicked next to this lake. While eating our baguette sandwiches and potato chips, we could see just across the water, on the greener side an old shepherd making his way down the steep slope with his four dogs from much higher up where he had left his sheep. We could hear the sheep bleating and the bells on their necks, clanging, but the sheep were so high up (and the same color as the rocks) that we couldn't see them.

With my camera, I zoomed in on the shepherd who had seemed to be watching us for awhile. It's hard to see him in this photo, he must have turned around right when I took the photo. He's to the right of his dogs. A few days later, my husband saw a helicopter rescue unit up near where we crossed paths with the shepherd. The news was sad, or maybe not...he had died. But as the villagers started talking about him, we heard that he'd been known to say that he hoped that when his time came, it would be up in those beloved mountains. His last wish came true. He was 83.

Here we are on our way back down from the lake. The shepherd's cabin was just to the right of this trail. I think it is also used by hunters during hunting season. I hiked this same trail last October and didn't see the shepherd that time, only hunters. Now I wonder who will be looking after the sheep. My husband told me that there was also a younger shepherd. I guess he's on his own now.

a small big band festival

2011-08-03T10:34:00.013+02:00

Last night, I went to the Big Band festival, north of Aix. It's going on all week, in case you want to go, too. And Thursday night is going to be Salsa (the dance, not the sauce) night. I'm going to try and find some friends who want to go dancing. Most of the concerts are free and the ones that aren't, aren't very expensive. (Salsa night is 5€ and there are drinks, like a nice cold glass of rosé wine for 1.5€). What made last night even better was that an old American friend was at the concert. She used to live near by and we played in one of Provence's village bands together. She's since move back to the USA to get her PhD in French literature at Yale (insert intellectual envy here). It took a few text messages and help from a mutual friend to be able to find each other in the crowd. But we did it and I sure enjoyed an evening where the conversation was in English and the background music was jazz. Thanks Leeez! (that's how the French say her name). Me, they call me Mayraydeeeet :)

yodel-lay-hee-hoo

2011-07-30T08:33:00.001+02:00

This will be short because I'm already supposed to be on the road, on my way to the Alps to join my family for a few days. The Special K and potatoes were sent ahead with my husband and today, I'm bringing stamps, hot chocolate mix and a bike lock for my husbands VTT. I don't think people in this mountain village would steal my husband's super-duper mountain bike, but unfortunately, random tourists passing through, might. Hence the big lock. I'm not too worried about home burglary as there isn't much left to steal here after the big heist two summers ago. The only gold I have left of any value will be in my ears or around my neck. So there, you nasty thieves. But having shutters and windows broken is always a pain, so we have neighbors doing the neighborhood watch thing.

Okay, I'm off. Either tomorrow or Monday, we are attacking a big climb, up to an isolated mountain lake. My 13 year old said she was up to the challenge this time. I think she will like it and feel proud of herself when she gets to the top. And today, my husband is riding his mountain bike down the mountain to meet me in Embrun, the closest big town. I hope we don't miss each other.

Special K and potato parenting

2011-07-28T09:07:00.000+02:00

My 13 year old daughter has a cell-phone, which is probably typical for privileged kids her age around the world. She earned it by getting top grades for two years in a row. She's number one! (sorry, had to brag). It's one of those phone deals, called a Mobi-Carte here in France, where she recharges points allowing her to use her phone by buying a recharge card at the grocery store, for example. Sometimes she pays for the card with her pocket money, sometimes we do. Either way, she does have a limited number of SMS (text messages) she can send each month. By limited, I think she can send at least 300 a month, which would seem sufficient to me. Not to her, I guess.

While she's been away up in the mountains and I've been at work (which is very, very slow between July 15 and August 15 in France, slow, slow, slow), I've been texting her from my work place. At first, she was answering me, but a few days ago, her responses dwindled down to zero. And then she finally did send me a text message asking me to call her. So I did, thinking she had something important to say to me.

She acted surprised by my call.

"But, you said to call", I said.
"I didn't mean right now", she said.

She went on to explain that she didn't want to ~~waste~~ use up her limited amount of text messages (on me, her mom...she didn't say that part, she's pretty polite that way, but I got it). I told her that I'd just call from now on, but I needed to remember to bring my ear-piece and that she needed to use hers too. After saying goodbye and just before hanging up, she quickly said:

"So, in case I don't talk to you again before next weekend, don't forget to bring me some more Special K, and Mamie doesn't like the potatoes up here in the mountains, so bring her some potatoes from Provence." Click.

I don't know why, but this banal conversation made me smile. She's a good girl and being a parent to a teen is fun so far. I don't need to text her to know that she's fine, I'll just bring a some paper work I need to do to pass time at work today.

summer daze

2011-07-26T08:50:00.001+02:00

Last weekend, we dropped the girls off high up in the mountains for a couple of weeks of fresh Alpine air. The place makes me think of Heidi, that and the fact that we left them up there with their French/Italian grandma. Okay, Heidi was with her grandpa in the Swiss Alps and our girls are with their grandma in the French Alps, but it's almost the same. Right?

French grandmas (the ones I know) are always telling you to take your children up to the mountains. It's good for their lungs. My French doctor even told me that once, too. And when I'm up there, I can see why. The village where we leave the girls is at the far end of a dead-end valley, so there is not a lot of pollution coming from cars. A lot of produce is grown right in the village. And milk and cheese comes from the cows you can watch being milked if you want. The whole life up there seems very healthy. We'll join the girls on the weekends, it's only 3 hours away.

Then, we are going to head right over those very same mountains and slide down into Italy for a small road trip over there. We'll travel across northern Italy, starting in Cuneo (Coni) heading towards San Marino where my mother-in-law has a cousins we'll stay with. We will take the girls to Venice before coming back home to Provence and then it will almost be time for school to start back up again. Voilà. Summer :)

Full moon over "Le Rayol"

2011-07-20T10:32:00.003+02:00

Full moon over "Le Rayol", a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

a view from our Bastille day mini vacation

Snapshots from the off theater festival in Avignon

2011-07-16T17:43:00.001+02:00

These posters greeted us as we came out of the parking garage.
So many shows, so little time...

The streets and cafés were full of people, here near the
Palace Theater.

"Come see my show."

He was advertising a show being put on
by a theater troupe from Belgium.

Shakespeare in the streets of Avignon.

A mime in front of the Palais des Papes.
Not just theater, Avignon is one big party
during the festival.

My future star? In front of the Popes's Palace.

Lauris

2011-07-12T08:11:00.003+02:00

Lauris, a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

While sitting in the Durance river trying to keep cool on Sunday, we had a view of this Lubéron village: Lauris. Every fall, they have a pumpkin festival in this town, with free pumpkin soup for all. The idea of hot soup isn't very appealing right now. I'm perusing my recipes for cold soups. We had gaspacho this weekend and tonight, I'm going to try and do something with all these zuchinni I'm accumulating.

One way we keep cool

2011-07-11T12:52:00.002+02:00

P1010107, a photo by -meredith- on Flickr.

Swimming in the Durance river. This river originates in the Alpes and flows down towards the Mediterranean sea, joining the big Rhone river before that happens. This part of the Durance river sure makes me think of the Platte river back in Nebraska when it is running good. The current was strong and there are places deep enough to swim. We can get access to this river over by the Iscles campgrounds in La Roque d'Antheron (follow the signs for the bases de loisirs). If you are in the neighborhood and need to cool off or are looking for a good place for a picnic, check it out.

We had to keep our dog on a leash because of the water fowl. Duffy, if she could, would take off chasing birds and then may get in trouble in the deeper, fast running water. Or just plain forget to turn around and come back. She even tried to run after a parasailer that floated over us in the sky. Like she was really going to catch him. The parasailers must have been jumping off the low cliffs in the Lubéron and then coming down over the Durance to catch the thermal winds that would lift them back up to the clouds...almost. I tried that once, and seeing them yesterday makes me want to take another leap :)

survival tales

2011-07-08T09:03:00.000+02:00

I survived shopping in Aix on the second day of the big summer sale season. First of all, we tried something new and took the bus into town instead of trying to drive, avoiding trying to find a parking spot in one of the giant, hot, expensive parking garages. And from now on, we will ALWAYS take the bus to Aix. We can walk to the bus stop. It only costs 1€. The bus is air-conditioned. There are buses every 30 minutes between my town and Aix. The bus leaves you right close to the big new shopping area called "Les Allées Provençales". All positives. And one more: I didn't have to spend money on that expensive European gas.

For lunch, we tried a new-ish sandwich, salad place that I'd heard about called "Les Papilles de Laurane". Their link is in English, so go ahead and click. It's a fun new concept where everyone gets a paper menu and a pen. You write your name at the top and then check off what you want. They have several interesting and very reasonably priced formulas/menus to choose from. My goat cheese pastry, salad+tabouleh was only 6.90€, which is very reasonably priced for Aix. Once you've chosen what you want for lunch, you go up to the counter and hand in your filled out menu and pay up. Then when your food is ready, they call out your name and you go pick it up. We were shopping with pre-teens and teens, and they just loved this place. The salads and sandwiches were fresh and very good and the service was friendly, too. There are two indoor casual, picnic or tea room style dining rooms and out-door tables, too. This restaurant is on avenue Victor Hugo, right around the corner from the shopping area in Aix that includes FNAC and H&M.

Now H&M is another story. It was about 90°F yesterday and the store did not have on it's air conditioning. The store was filled with it's usual mobs of people and the lines for the changing rooms were a mile long. Our girls found lots of good deals on cute clothes, but while they were trying them on, another mom and I thought we'd just try and sit on the edge of a table of on-sale clothes, in order to avoid fainting in the heat, you know. A security guard kicked us right out of our spot. It's not like we were sitting on the clothes or blocking anyone view of them. Boo H&M for not having chairs and air for tired old moms. Then, it was time to re-stand in a long line at the check-out. I was so ready to get out of there, I walked away without my change, which to their credit they did run after me. My girls were very happy with their bargains. They don't seem to notice things like the heat and long lines.

Voilà, that's all for today.