February

As anyone who does not shop at the hypermarchés here in France is aware, the pickings are rather slim in the winter months from local producers at the market. Although we do buy certain imported fruits and various fresh herbs no doubt grown in hothouses, I do still frequent the market get what I can from the local sellers. I imagine that before market logistics got to where they are today, people still ate well in Lyon and all through the Rhone valley through cold winters.

Recipes come in from Burgundy, the Limousin, Auvergne, specialties from Grenoble, and the upper Rhone Valley and the Alps, some even just floating in on the mist of the culture in general. What they have in common is that they elevate the most basic of winter vegetables to simple splendor. Every year a handful of good ones are added to the list. The great thing about these recipes is that they’ve been around long enough to spark stories and debate about their origins, yet as a rule are simple to execute. Some are as easy as bacon and chicory in winter salads, others involve a bit more lore. I love the hunt that comes with digging out all of the juicy details of a regional recipe.

Living in the modern world, during certain months we do resort to imports to stay healthy, of course. Last week I was drawn to a Carrefour circular that had been stuffed in our mailbox, because I have a particular weakness for mangoes, and my légumier at the Martinière Halle sells them at a pretty high price. Ripe, juicy, imported, yes. A ray of sunshine in the winter months. My favorite way of avoiding rickets. The ones he sells are small and sweet, ripened exactly to the day. “When do you plan to eat it, Madame?” he asks, and chooses just the right one. The price at Carrefour was precisely 1/3 of the price of my neighborhood specialist’s mangoes, so I decided after all to make a trip to the store. The last time I went to the hypermarché was April of last year.

I slogged in coat and gloves through the shopping mall, up two escalators and through security at the entrance of the store, then hiked through house wares to the escalator that would take me to the mango section. Indeed they were there, at the price advertised, and two women in robes and matching headdresses were shuffling through them, picking them up, squeezing them, and pitching them like fast balls back into the bin. Unacceptable. Rock hard and dark green. Shouldn’t I have guessed?

From our local vendors, rutabagas, turnips, cabbage, carrots, and tasty winter greens like chard and chicory bring their heft and earthy flavor to the forefront, in addition to leeks and endives, very popular around this time of year. Bins of apples carefully stored since autumn are ready for cooking. Of course there are plenty of eggs and the hens that lay them, the larder is stocked with dried nuts, fruits, and our stock of spices, and we have the basic tools and ingredients for sauces and savory pastry of all kinds. The butcher brings out some aged sausages and cured meats as well as the first tender veal and lamb. The cheeses coming from summer milk are coming into their own. We have many choices there.

The method to good seasonal eating in winter lies in seeing the beauty and variety of possibilities in winter’s vegetables. The best thing to do is to begin with a vegetable, no matter how humble or simple, and concentrate on as many of the possible ways that people have passed down ideas through the generations to prepare it. Many of the interesting regional and country dishes don’t include a whole lot of meat, depending on the region and the time the recipes became standards.

Sometimes great inspiration comes from the memories of others and other times, but most of all it comes directly from the thing itself. Go and look at it. What seems plain can be packed with flavor and nutrition not to mention being fun to cook. Seen through the cool lens of low winter light we can find a certain inspiration in this produce that we don’t find at any other time of year.

Top Secret Chocolat

What is Chocolate Nirvana and how is it achieved?

When I was going through a particularly turbulent adolescence in the early 1980s, my mother and I bonded over what she called "chocolate nirvana" in the front seat of her beige Ford Taurus station wagon. Like many mothers of teenagers, through my stilted life lens, she was one of those boringly dependable figures in my life who rarely ever revealed that she had any weaknesses at all, except through these little flashes that had hit us very rarely, over the years, like the sun through beveled glass. When I was going through the "crise", she took the old school approach – no comprehension between us. Mom has since allowed us to see the more human facets of her personality, and I appreciate her friendship now and love her in all of her complexity. But at the time, she was my perfect mother, and regretfully for everyone involved I was not.

The first time I was enlightened to her secret weakness for chocolate was much earlier, in the mountains. But just as I'd forgotten that snowy day in an onslaught of worries of cup sizes, makeup, tails dyed which shade of pink, how I was going to raise the cash for my next pair of pastel colored leggings, dozens of vacuume cleaner belts as bracelets, braces, and fine thin hair that just would not stand up on end without gasoline, she sprung another glinting hint at me at a traffic light somewhere near James street on the east side. She instructed me out of the blue that the idea was to fill your mouth to capacity with chocolate in order to completely overwhelm the senses in a wave of chocolate flavor. In a stupor I forgot to blame her for ignoring my weight loss attempts and was sucked into her instruction.

The goal was to weather the little crunching that came after the jaw had worked through a mouth stuffed completely with plain M&Ms, holding thin Ford Musgrove lips together in order to not God forbid let any M&M juice drool flow down our chins as we tried not to laugh. She had to pull the car over into the muddy slush on the shoulder after crossing under a railroad bridge to pull herself together, before merging back into the traffic. These little flashes gave me hope that she was human. At that time, in the dawn of my womanhood, plain M&Ms were just about the pinnacle of the chocolate experience available in the slushy salt-cracked streets of Syracuse New York.

Since that time, my relationship with my mother has grown, and so has my understanding of her love of chocolate. I always try to bring her the best of the best now, she must enjoy it sparingly for health reasons, and she eats it pure. We have enjoyed chocolate together from just about every country it is produced.

There is eating chocolate, and there is cooking chocolate. I didn't really get it until I came to France, and realized that all of the best tasting home cooked chocolate recipes from the French specified chocolate with the lower percentages.

Why? How can you get a better tasting fondant au chocolat, cake, mousse, etc. from a chocolate containing a lower percentage of cocoa? How can the cocoa content affect the end consistency of a dessert? I dove right into cooking home desserts here in France and by sheer empirical experience had every reason to maintain a die hard faith in the "dessert" chocolates, especially formulated for cooking. It is not just a marketing ploy. I have tried all grades, and have concluded from experience that it is a shame to waste the eating chocolate for cooking. Using haute gamme chocolate usually ends up with dense heavy results, and the flavor balance of many baked desserts is lost by using it. "Dessert chocolate" melts better, makes a more stable ganache, and its flavor comes through betterwith melting and cooking. It makes a better tasting sauce. People choose chocolate with a cocoa percentage of 60-65 percent for the best cooked chocolate desserts. If you don't believe me, conduct a test, and get back to me.

I have done tests with all of the common cooking chocolates available to me here in France. The winner on all counts comes from a company called Ethiquable, and is a product of equitable commerce, coming from the Dominican Republic. But that’s just a bonus. In my opinion, this is the best dessert chocolate available. If you live in Lyon, you can purchase it from the equitable commerce shops, one upstairs at the bookstore “Raconte Moi La Terre”, at the Ethiquable Gourmande shop at la Halle Martiniere, etc.


There are those recipes that you transmit immediately without hesitation to all of your friends, and there are the recipes that you hold like an ace in the sleeve. There are recipes that project such classic beauty that everyone assumes they have the personality of a historical figure, difficult and complicated. When you bring a beautiful classic dessert to the table, and your guests have no idea how simple it was to prepare, do you do need to make an effort to hammer in just how simple it is? With profiteroles au chocolat, I do not feel that need. I bask in the glory of their deceptive simplicity.

Home-made profiteroles au chocolat. This dessert is not about chocolate overload, it is about choosing the absolute perfect setting to leverage the taste of chocolate to the hilt by presenting it just so. There is a reason why they call this dessert profiteroles au chocolat and not "ice cream stuffed choux pastry served with sauce". The reason is that this dish begins visually and virtually with chocolate, takes you on a tactile journey right on through, starting and finishing with it on the palate, stating it's theme and summary in the perfect words, rebelling against it for a moment with convincing sumptuousness, and telling us in plain words finalement that this dessert is, as the spoon scrapes the dish, once and for all, about chocolate.

Profiteroles au Chocolat
(serves 4)

Profiteroles au chocolat can be whipped up in the course of dinner preparations very easily. The recipe is not fussy in the least, there is nothing to master, nothing to worry about, and it takes very little time. You can make the choux paste in 5 minutes and work on other things as they puff up into golden pouches, let them cool while you prepare and serve dinner, fill them with ice cream just before serving, and have them on the table in the blink of an eye.

Make the choux paste. This is the exact same recipe as gougères, without the savory spices and cheese. On the evening you plan to serve them, as a first task before getting dinner started, get these in the oven. It takes no more than a 5 minutes.

½ cup water
50 grams or 5 tablespoons of butter
¼ teaspoon salt
75 grams or 2/3 cup flour
a grate of fresh nutmeg
2 eggs

Mix the flour and nutmeg, and have it ready in a cup.

Put the butter and salt into the water and bring it to a rolling boil.

Add the flour all at once, and stir it briskly with a wooden spoon until the dough separates from the sides of the sauce pan.

Off heat, roughly stir in one egg in the same manner to incorporate it fully, and then the other.

It is impossible to mess this up. Put the dough by teaspoonfuls onto a papered cookie sheet. Give them a little personality with the shapes, and the puffs will better take the chocolate sauce. Bake at 210C/400F until golden and puffed. Let the choux pastries cool enough to handle, slit a hole in the side of each one, and let fully cool.


Just before serving dessert, take 15 minutes to fill them with ice cream and make the chocolate sauce.

Use a disposable pastry bag or a ziplock with the corner cut off to pipe ice cream into each cooled puff. Cut the end rather large, small enough to fit into the end of the puff, but large enough to effectively squeeze them full of ice cream quickly.

Set them in the freezer to keep them from melting while you make the chocolate sauce:

1 200g. bar of dessert chocolate (60%)
¾ cup water
30 grams or 3 Tablespoons butter
1/3 cup whipping cream

Melt the chocolate along with ¾ cup water in a bowl suspended over simmering water, stirring from time to time. (you can fill the puffs while the chocolate is melting.) You do not need to hover over the chocolate, and you only need to stir it enough to mix the water and melted chocolate. When you are ready to serve dessert, remove the bowl from heat, whisk in the butter in, and add the cream. If the sauce thickens more than you like, add a few tablespoons of water and return to the heat to liquify.

Put the ice cream filled cream puffs into dessert dishes, and spoon the hot steaming chocolate sauce over them. Serve immediately.

This post was written for Sugar High Friday, a monthly blogging event in which bloggers, given that they can pull their act together in time to do so, produce a dessert following a group theme. This month's Sugar High Friday desserts around the theme "Chocolate by Brand!"

Sunday's Tartiflette

In the past few weeks I have been looking through the recipes I gathered through the first winter as a newlywed here in France in my first Kitchen Notebook. There are some real oldies but goodies that we go back to every year. Recipe number 18 is one such recipe, an absolutely delicious potato dish that uses a specific cheese from the Savoie region, the Reblochon.

At the ski and hiking station towns in the Alps, especially when there’s a snow problem like we have this year, you'll find would-be skiers wandering through the ski stations looking for something to do. This year is bound to be a banner year for the local cheese co-op. We made a cheese pilgrammage to the town of Thones which has a Reblochon creamery, with more description of the co-op there.

The ski town co-ops are usually found in the heart of the ski station or not far from it, and is the place where local farmers with troops of the right kinds of cows (Abondance, Tarine and Montbéliarde in the case of Reblochon) that have eaten the right kinds of things throughout the year bring their milk. Creamery produced Reblochon de Savoie produced on site is the Cooperative cheese you can find in these local shops. You can identify the creamery made cheese by the little red label on the cheese.

Reblochon de Savoie which has been produced directly on the farm from only one herd is marked with a green label. It is produced in much smaller lots, and can be more expensive. One of the main differences with this cheese is that the milk, being direct from the milking, is warm from the cow when the natural rennet is added. Most farms which are certified to produce Reblochon cheese from their single herd’s milk do it directly from their twice daily milkings, thus produce two small lots per day.

With creamery produced cheese, the milk that comes in from local farms is put together once daily and brought up to cow body temperature before they add the rennet, although like the farm produced cheese, it is not pasturized. Some farmers take some of their milk for farm production of Reblochon, and send the leftover to the co-op. Under both conditions, the milk comes from specially raised and fed cows with living conditions that are specified under the AOC.

Like most traditionally produced cheeses, the flavor of Reblochon cheese varies throughout the year. The cows for Reblochon producing herds eat herbs and grass in the open air throughout the warm months, and have a specially AOC controlled diet in the barn during winter.

The differences in flavor really depend various subtle differences in method between the cheese makers, located within strict geographical boundaries, but most of all the conditions during affinage. Your local fromagère can have a lot to do with how the taste develops.

Choosing farm-produced Reblochon will not necessarily give you a better flavor, but it may taste a bit different from the co-op cheese in the same town. The conditions for production are strict enough and so similar that both farm and creamery produced Reblochon have the same wonderful rich creamy tangy flavor redolent with the pastoral goodness we find so typical in this cheese, and the differences are sometimes not discernable. We never hesitate to stop at the co-op and buy lots of creamery Reblochon, because co-op produced cheese is still excellent, not to mention the price – about half of what it costs from the fromager in the city.

We serve Tartiflette in winter, with a salad and crusty French bread. This is truly a one dish meal, and it’s very easy to prepare.



Tartiflette

Potatoes to fill a small gratin pan
1 medium onion
200 grams (6 ounces) of smoke and salt cured pork in any combination: poitrine fumé or the best smoked bacon you can find, smoked bacon plus salt cured Savoie ham or Southern style country cured ham. Just get what’s the best cured pork available to you.
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons fat: butter or duck fat
Salt and pepper
1/3 cup crème fraiche epaisse or heavy whipping cream if you don't have creme fraiche
1/2 cup dry white Savoie type wine
1/2 of a Reblochon de Savoie
Fresh parsley



- Peel the potatoes and cut them into slices.
- Roughly chop the onion.
- Heat the duck fat in a heavy skillet and add the onions, bacon and ham, and sauté gently for 3-5 minutes.
- Add the potatoes and continue to sauté for 5 more minutes.
- Add the wine, give the potatoes a stir, cover, season with salt and pepper as desired, and let simmer and steam in the wine for 10 minutes more.
- Grease the gratin pan with duck fat, crush the garlic clove, and rub the garlic clove all over the inner surface of the pan.
- Reserve the remaining garlic for another use (the vinaigrette for the accompanying salad, for example).
- Add the crème fraiche to the potato onion bacon mixure, and transfer it to the gratin pan.

- Slice the Reblochon in half with a sharp knife flat wise, and place the two pieces on top of the potatoes, rind side up.


- Place into the very hot oven and bake for 10 minutes at 250C or 550F
- Turn the heat down to 200C / 400F and bake 10 more minutes
- Turn off the oven, and leave the dish in the oven without opening it for another 10 minutes.
- Serve hot with a salad, crusty bread, and the the wine you cooked with.

Blanquette de Veau ... for Bux

No dish is prepared with more tender simplicity than a Blanquette de Veau. It is French food to soothe and comfort palates of all ages. Slow simmered veal belly and sometimes the addition of lean shoulder meat is slowly simmered and served in its own sauce which has been thickened and enriched by simple classic means. The result brings us gently back to the present.

The real blanquette de veau is made from veal belly / breast meat only, but these days we also add lean meat, and sometimes mushrooms or onions. The skin, cartilage and bones from the belly cut gives this dish a special silky richness all its own. If your butcher cannot get you some veal belly, don't despair. Being slow simmered, whatever cut you use will turn out soft enough to melt in your mouth and the white sauce will remain very flavorful.

The Blanquette de Veau is recipe number 77 in my kitchen notebook, one I began to prepare for Loic during our first year of marriage. It the first of the many recipes that Brigitte, my mother in law, shared with me at her kitchen table.

Brigitte Durandeau Vanel's Blanquette de Veau

Poitrine de veau (veal belly), about a pound
Cubed lean veal shoulder, about a pound
1 glass of white wine
1 onion, peeled
2 cloves
1 French bay leaf
2 tablespoons of flour
4 to 8 tablespoons of butter
1 large lemon
sea salt and white pepper
optional finishing add-ins: mushrooms which have been simmered seperately, egg yolks (for the sauce), onions, pitted green olives, or sliced poultry quenelles (for an effect much like chicken & dumplings)

- Pierce the onion with the cloves, and place it along with the meat, the bay leaf, and salt and pepper into a heavy stewing pot.
- Add the wine, fill with water to cover, bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for one hour.
- Remove the onion, cloves, and bay leaf.
- Put the flour in a small bowl with one ladle of the veal broth, and mix it so that no lumps remain. Incorporate it into the soup.
- Add the olives, simmered mushrooms, or slices of poultry quenelle at this time, and simmer for an additional 15 minutes.
- Strain off the sauce, and whip the butter into it piece by piece. Brighten the sauce with lemon juice, return it to the pot with the meat, and serve it over steamed potatoes or rice.

My thoughts go to the loved ones of friend Robert Buxbaum. May he rest in peace.

Epiphany

We celebrate Epiphany every year here in France on the second Sunday after Christmas with galettes des rois. Today we celebrated over Sunday dinner with Loïc’s two sisters and their families, and it was our job to bring the traditional puff pastry cake filled with frangipane. We waited in line at the boulangerie to pick pick up our order, and I had a smile on my face thinking of the delicious cake filled with a thick almond pastry cream. Our boulanger does a particularly good job of it.

Loïc specially ordered a bigger cake than we would be serving around the dinner table this afternoon. Since I knew Anne would also be bringing a crown shaped brioche, the Provencal version of the cake called a couronne, an Epiphany cake decorated with candied fruits and castor sugar, I chided him a bit. We've been loaded down with sweets since Christmas. He insisted the cake had to be ordered big, “because, well, because we just do it that way”. I thought he was being a gourmand. I imagined that because he loves this cake more than any of the others that our boulanger makes throughout the year, he wanted to be able to have a second piece, but that’s not the real reason.

The tradition began in the middle ages. After the galette des rois is served around the table, a last piece, often called the “piece for the poor” or “piece for the virgin” is reserved, to be given to the first needy person knocking at the door. These days you’re not often going to get someone knocking at the door begging for food, but if you ever find yourself celebrating Epiphany with a galette des rois, at the table of a French family, keep your eye out – you might see a slice of the cake being set aside, just because. Like many old traditions, many people don’t even know the reason behind the things they do.

There was some mocking of the Lyonnais copy of a Provencal couronne from those who grew up in the midi - although everyone shut up immediately when it was tasted - we all agreed it was delicious.

Galette or Couronne, whichever way you like your Epiphany cake, there is a little surprise hidden in every one. In the olden days, it was a dried fava bean, a feve, which is said to symbolize rebirth or renewal. These days coming from the bakery, it is often a little figurine or santon, collected and traded among children. The person who gets the piece with the feve or the santon is declared the king, and gets to wear the crown. The whole king for a day thing is also said to have been borrowed from the Roman winter feast Saturnalia, a time when the custom was for servants to trade places with their masters.

We throw our little santons in the box on the mantle, and we're building quite a collection. This year I got the santon in my piece of cake, and got to wear the crown. It was a little dollhouse sized statue of Harry Potter, cape flying in the wind.


The cake for the poor, stemming back to the middle ages, the feve, symbolizing renewal according to some, the crown a gesture to the monarchy, there are bits and pieces of stories coming from all directions in this holiday. Although these days it is all about children and the fun and anticipation to see who will get the santon, there is so much more to see in this tradition. It all centers around the idea that giving creates life and giving can elevate anyone from pauper to king. If I could claim any holiday as resonating the most with me, it would be Epiphany.

Life is a Bowl of Scorpions

Long before I ever imagined that I would come back to Europe and to Lyon to make my life in here, I was going through a strangely shiny and buffed rough spot in my 20-something life. I had the perfect job, complete with 1990s double breasted power suits and ridiculously high heels. My straight blond tresses were cut in a severe bob for which I took special trips to Hong Kong to have shaped by an expensive stylist every few weeks. I worked for a Swiss commodities trading company in Beijing, and worked very hard, traveling to Chinese ports and smelters, hard bargaining with the Chinese. I considered myself very lucky and secretly wondered when the other shoe would drop. Inside, I was a bit cautious and maybe secretly a bit too serious about life.

One day, much to the dismay and perhaps the amusement of my colleagues and tragically bored expat friends, I found myself involved with a Chinese rock star with a tattoo in the middle of his forehead. Nights out, he paraded me about the capital city like a trophy and treated me like a rag doll. He was sugar daddy to an adoring fan/girlfriend in every Asian port, many of which circulated through Beijing to visit him. He just couldn't say no. He had no future and a sordid past. He was clearly insane.

On our weekends, we did unheard of things like float down Beijing's waste canals in a rubber boat together. We hung out at the public pool near Tian Tan park. We rode horses and set off firecrackers like kids. We drank warm sake and play-acted various bizarre fictitious scenarios with a group of dramatic Chinese friends. He lived very dangerously. Sometimes these days I wonder if he is still alive.

Anyway, he was a good companion because he was everything I was afraid to be. He forced me to fully live at that time. He was the one who shocked me into reality and dragged me out of the perfectly buffed shell I was in.

He took me to the insect restaurant and ordered a bowl of scorpions. Without fanfare, he muscled me into doing what I really wanted to do anyway - to eat them. It was very strange, my fear, because I was never a person to turn down any opportunity to try a new kind of food. My psyche secretly swelled with the desire to do something like that when I heard the stories by my male colleagues who drank snake blood with customers and the likes. But there it was, this bowl of fried dark red scorpions, claws flaring, tails and stingers poised, waiting before me with a neatly placed pair of chopsticks. I felt myself vacillating between fear and exhilaration.

The Chinese rock star with the tattoo in the middle of his forehead had the perfect instinct for just how far I would go. He knew I would eat one to meet his challenge, and then another. They tasted delicious. Not unlike fried soybeans. They'd been judiciously salted and I enjoyed every bite for so many reasons.

A whole new world opened to me in constantly being challenged in his way. He was my best friend at the time. When I left Beijing, he cried and I just stared at him with the belief he was play-acting in my honor. He was never the one to do what was expected or correct, but at the same time I was thankful he mustered up some tears for me. I could not for the life of me feel any regret or sadness about what we shared or how we said goodbye.

This vision of that moment at the restaurant came to mind when I opened my e-mail this morning, strangely enough. I had a message from Cate at the Well Fed Network. She says that the judges have finally done their work to choose the Top 5 Food Blogs in 18 different categories from a list of all of the nominations made in December. Guess what? Lucy's Kitchen Notebook is a Top 5 finalist in two categories.

Best Food Blog - City

Best Food Blog - Writing

I feel sincerely honored to have been chosen by the judges to hobnob among the top notch. My Kitchen Notebook, being a low profile personal blog that doesn't get involved in memes or round-ups cannot hope to garner nearly enough popular votes to win. That's normal. I made this bed myself. However I'd like to say I'm really grateful to have been presented with such a challenge and an honor - being chosen as one of the Top 5 definitely opens up a whole new world for me. Just finding out I am a finalist is one of those bowl of scorpion moments! Am I going to take that leap and dare to strive for excellence? You bet. A big THANK YOU to the people who nominated me in December.

In France they Kiss on Main Street

Lucas' mom's pralined almonds.

Amour, mama. In the first few days at my new job, I took all of the possible combinations of metro, bus, and tram routes at various points of time in order to find the best way to get to and from the office. It’s quite a curious optimistic feeling, riding along a bus route on a street I’ve never been on, exploring new neighborhoods, knowing that if I find a particular route fruitful, I can take it daily. As the bus rolls though a particular neighborhood, I take it all in, the beautiful old town houses scattered between the 3rd arrondissement and Montchat, the little islands of commercial activity, where there is a bakery, butcher or epicerie along the route in proximity to the stops, places that I can stop off and pick up necessities here and there.

In France metropolitan areas, public transportation is seen a bit differently than it’s seen back in the US, where only the unfortunate down and out and people who don’t have cars must take the bus. Here, it’s definitely used by the masses from upper crust to the underbelly. You’re just as likely to see a woman draped in expensive cashmere shawls lined with fur and bedecked with diamonds as you are to see someone more humble in means and appearance riding on the bus in centre ville. My daily journey takes me on the path from the center of town past the main train station, so the diversity of the population I see on the bus is even more pronounced.

I have taken three different buses, each with slightly different routes, because when you’re dealing with city traffic, the actual direct route from point A to point B can take more time than a more circuitous route through smaller less traveled streets. I have found that what looks to be the most efficient route on a map actually ends up in gridlocked traffic if you leave the office within certain times of the rush hour. Smaller neighborhood routes are graced with stops that conveniently are just next to all the amenities one needs daily like bread, butter, fruit, etc. whereas the central conduits often are surrounded by large squares lined with chain restaurants or sandwich stands and cafes.

Riding by the train station is interesting. I never really thought about it, but it the train station is the place where one is most likely to run into people kissing. It’s really amazing how many times since this began I have seen people are locked in long embraces. She is holding flowers. He’s got a bookbag.

Some young couples stand with their feet facing each other, looking directly into each others faces and aware of only one another. They only bend at the neck as they smooch, a little bit like still wooden dolls feeling the bliss of their stillness in the midst of city movement. Sometimes his hands cradle her head. Some stand side by side and swivel around each other like swans to kiss, intertwining with one another and also with the world around them, swirling into the movement of the hurried world by the sheer chiaroscuro of their adoration for each other, in announcement to the world. Amour mama!

Today I am bedridden, caused by the French phenomenon called the ‘arret de travail’. This is an order from a doctor to stay at home and take it easy. Which generates a paper of which the third copy generates a paper which must be sent by mail along with the second copy to a central depot for papers of this sort. Seems quite complicated, non? I am lying on the couch, with nothing to do but drink water and every so often pop one of Lucas’ mom’s pralined almonds into my mouth. They are like little kisses from a mother. Even if these delicious bites in which the sugar is just the right consistency to resist for a moment and then reveal and mingle with the almond which has roasted in sugar to give just the right tooth within are coming from Lucas' mother and not my own, I am feeling the motherly love with each one. Don't worry, I'm not having too many. Thank you, Lucas' mom. May I have your recipe?

Happy New Year!

My dear friend Fran and her husband came over last night to toast the new year with us, laden with home made sweets from Lucas' mother's kitchen, savory delicacies from their cellar, and wine! We pigged out on all of the traditional New Years eve dishes: oysters, (escargots for some), foie gras, truffled boudin blanc, and a home made buche de noel prepared by Lucas. Fran brought a bottle of traditional holiday milk punch called Punch a cream, which she made with an island recipe, and shared her new years resolutions which include but are not limited to less clutter, more work progress, less fat, more veggies, less sweets, more exercise, daily photos, etc. I decided that I'd only have one - to blog. We were hit with a number of very significant changes and it kind of knocked my planets out of alignment. Short and sweet or not, it really does make things right when I've shared my daily news, so that's my resolution.

Anne & Cousin Fred choosing from the treize desserts, a traditional Provencal Christmas dessert platter

Happy new year! May 2007 bring a whole platter of lovely treats to choose from.