Late Bloomer

Every garden is basically its own micro-climate. In our little crook of mountain, the season seems to run a couple of weeks behind many others we see along the route as we climb in altitude. I waited the longest time for the cherry tree to bloom. I went out every day and examined the swelling buds, hoping for something to happen when I spent my time there. It was kind of like I was hoping for a sign of some kind. Wouldn't it be nice, I thought, if the tree would bloom while I am here. It would be like a word, a promise.

Waiting is numbing, and it is like a hand across my mouth. I wait for the cherry blooms to fold out. A flash of fear while I pitch my will like a stone and wait for a return. Maybe, somehow, I have made bad choices, done something wrong, never giving the seeds I put in the ground a chance. Maybe something happened and somehow also the tree in the garden has died.

I finally had to go back down to the city, sending my will over my shoulder one last time, to see if the blossoms would spring open before turning my back on the dark barren branches. In the city, friends are gathering, shaking off the winter chill, meeting outdoors, and visitors stream through. Cousins, sisters, relatives near and far call and we meet. We sit in the square in front of Cafe Perl, sipping red wine under a fragile shower of rich pink petals floating down on the breeze.

Daily work takes on an urgency again, discussions resume, calls are returned, notes are sent. Lists begin to fill out. The rhythm of the season is pulsing in the city, the river valley churns through its blooming process. I am still waiting inside.

Back up there, with wisps of chimney smoke and cool breezes cutting through a new frank strong sun, stronger than before, blooming was like a fan had been snapped open at the opera. We arrived and there she was, the diva, tall and fluffy, booming, there in her position of power. She speaks. See? You could have waited. It would not have killed you to wait.

The tree was full of big balls of fluffy pale flowers. I thought the blooms would be more pink, but I am happy, wondering what the apple blossoms will look like. One by one, things will fall into place.

Easter Dinner

Easter Dinner is usually at our house, since Aude's husband's grandmother lives in Lyon and they like to visit at that time with the kids. Count my youngest sister-in-law who is a hat maker here, and that's all it takes to get my in-laws all to convene at our house for Sunday dinner on Easter.

I was explaining to Loic that ham is a classic where I come from, and we'd been looking around for one we could roast at home. Sometimes you see them around the holidays in grocery stores in the rural areas. The ham you get here usually is only sold by the slice at the butcher. The idea of presenting a whole ham at the table is a bit odd to my French family, and they weren't buying it, but I knew that they would love a honey roasted ham pierced with cloves if they saw one coming to the table.

We decided to get up early and get to the market where we know a farmer who raises pigs and also lamb and mutton in the Bugey. His meat is really the very best, and I usually order my lamb shanks from him. We headed down the market straight to his stall and there was already a line. He could not help me with a ham, so we decided on lamb, which is a classic for Easter in France. Since I was expecting 10 at the table, I decided to get 2 racks of chops and to tie them into crowns and roast them simply, with fresh rosemary and bay tucked into the tie and garlic pierced between each bone in the fleshy part of the chops.

As the main vegetable, I served young tender spring asparagus and steamed cauliflower, both steamed and then finished in the oven with a touch of butter. We followed the main course with a salad and cheese, then a cognac spiked apple crisp with Chantilly.



In France, something that always delights me is the "friture", little fish made of chocolate. The children were very well behaved about their chocolate, obediently taking only a little bit while their mother and grandmother tucked the rest back into the package and put it away.

We got into a discussion about chocolate, and I mentioned that it was not something we normally had when I was growing up, except at certain holidays, so Easter was like a chocolate feeding frenzy for us kids. We wouldn't let anyone touch our candy. My father-in-law told us how he had chocolate milk every morning during the second world war, because it was meant to fortify and nourish the children, and that they also got a piece of bread with chocolate tucked into it at snack time in the afternoon. I joked that it must have seemed rather ho hum when the American soldiers rode into town tossing chocolate bars from their tanks at the end of the war! Yves looked at me with a blank stare and then Brigitte explained that since his father was a dentist, they often got many things like chocolate and meat throughout the war because much of his work was done on a bartering basis. He said that when chocolate was passed out as a rare treat at school, he would give his chocolate to another child because he already got it at home. I asked if he told them it was because his father was a dentist, alluding to the idea that chocolate is bad for your teeth. He just looked at me again with a poker face. He takes his chocolate very seriously indeed.

Nettle Beer - Take One!

It started a long time ago, when I was having a strange confusing week, and I was positively shocked by my horoscope in the Beijing Scene, a free paper that was available at expat frequented junctures around China's capital. All kinds of unlikely events and situations had been coming about at the time. Accidents, near misses, strange gusts of wind. That morning, a lightbulb violently exploded not 20 feet from me, in a lone retro street lamp in silhouette near where I picked up a taxi every morning to go into work. My regular taxi stopped, I got in, and I flipped back to where the horoscopes were.

Scrolling a creamy pink 20 something manicured fingernail down the page to Leo, I read what Rob Brezsny, my horoscopist, says. It began with: "Are street lamps exploding as you walk by?" My eyebrows raised in interest at that point. It was one of those instants that burns into your mind forever even if you don't realize it at the time. Snug in traffic while a pollution pink sunrise beamed past my right shoulder and then slowly panned across the faded interior of that rusty yellow LADA, driver turning north on the second ring road in Beijing on my way to the office, I read that things were going to turn out marvelously alright. And they did.



With that I introduce you to my nettle beer, which did not turn out marvelously alright this time. It was during this famous writing week in which I was supposed to go up to the mountains and turn out a masterpiece. Instead I put on rubber gloves and scrubbed out nooks and crannies with a bucket of savon noir, embarked on spider hunting expeditions, spent inordinate amounts of time squatting in the garden with my reading glasses on searching for signs of life in the dirt, donned my marching boots for long solitary walks by the river and up into the hills, and executed my grand scheme to make nettle beer. In short, anything to avoid writing.

Don't mark a recipe down in your book, my friend. Do take time to reflect on the following message: Turn that which stings into something good. A faithful reader recounted how a weed whacker is NOT the answer for nettles, because even whacked to dust they still find ways to get us. So, while they are young and still tender and flavorful, find your nettle mojo. Pinch off their tender little heads one by one with satisfaction (wear rubber gloves!), putting all of your fury into this delicate repetitive task. Do this until you have a large basket full, preferably while humming something nice in the back of your mind. Then try to make some nettle beer with them.



I followed a recipe gleaned from an English cookbook and boiled the nettles for 15 minutes, but next time I will boil them longer. The longer the nettles spend in the water, the greener the liquid becomes. In another recipient, you mix sugar and the zest and juice of the lemons with cream of tartar. Pour the nettle liquid over this sweet acidic lemon and sugar mixture.

When I pour the nettle tisane into the acidic sugary lemon mix, the green color of the liquid changes like magic to orange, I am not sure why. After stirring it up and letting it cool a little bit, mix a bowl full of this liquid with brewers yeast, then mix that into the whole. You might not try what I did - don't sprinkle a generous pinch from a cake of baker's yeast on top of your brewers yeast for good measure. When the mix is complete, it goes into a large nonreactive container, and the waiting begins for the fermenting magic to take place.



At first, I didn't think anything was happening and wondered if I should dump it. But at the end of 2 days, it began to foam at the top. The recipe states that it should be put in a warm place undisturbed to ferment, but I kept it in corner in the kitchen, which in afterthought I think stays a little bit too cool. So the fermentation didn't kick off with any gusto. At the third day, hell or high water, it was funneled into bottles. You could smell the yeast, and it actually tasted pretty good.

Three days after going into the bottles I just could not wait to see what was going to happen! We'd invited in-laws to a picnic in the mountains! They were going to partake in a sun drenched wood-fire roasted marinated quail fest under the shade of the apple tree. We had gone up early to build a roaring little hickory wood fire in our homemade fireplace in the garden, to let it burn down to glowing embers by lunchtime, and then laid out the delectable birds to roast. They had been marinating 3 days in an herb and mixed fruit vinegar marinade. In a moment of vain hostess glory, I decided that I just had to gild the lily by bringing out a bottle of my nettle beer to display and then pop open and pour around. Me and my pride.



The bottle didn't want to pop open, and I wrestled with it for some time. Everyone was looking on in curiosity, in fact they began to huddle around as if expecting something great, raising the expectation a notch. Then when it did - WHOOSH! A geyser of Beijing sunrise-orange foam shot straight up in the air and spattered down in a sticky mess over the entire table. So much for the nettle beer. There was some hesitation to laugh with me when this happened. After I mopped off my sister in law and turned my attention to what was left in the bottle, I saw that there was enough for everyone to have a taste. Not only was it not fizzy, but it had a funny tinge to it, something that recalled a distant memory of my grandmother's permanent wave solution. But you know what? I am going to give nettle beer another try.

I think the idea to use raw sugar or honey is an important element of this recipe, something I ignored. Another important step is to ensure I have the proper yeast. Third, I should pay heed to the "warm spot" fermentation technique. The brew must be quite far along in the fermentation process before it gets sealed into bottles. In fact, I think it might be worth my while to monitor it closely, if not scientifically. If bottled too early, it can build up enormous pressure - the yeast, which is capable of doing its work in anaerobic conditions, i.e. without air, converts sugar to alcohol and produces gas which will make it spray over everyone in a shower at its most benign and possibly explode a weak bottle at its most dangerous. Last but not least, and I think my horoscopist would agree, I will never, ever make nettle beer when Venus is in retrograde. Finger in the wind, eye on the stars, it will one day turn out marvelously alright. That is when you will get a recipe with good notes and instructions.

Postcard: Writing

We're holding our breaths at the moment, one of those special times. We thought baby was coming this month, more than a hunch! But alas, it is not to be, this month. These days I am reminded of those long days, hours and minutes I spent waiting to go to Paris, a young woman in love. Waiting for the day of my flight was like starving to death! And when I arrived on the station platform in Paris, having spent the night in London on the way, the moment fell like a drop of water.

A kiss that seemed numbed by emotion, man's hand that takes my bag, that moment was so much bigger than me. It tumbles down and falls away. We smile (did we smile?) and walk along the platform under the arches in the Gare du Nord leaving the moment to part like the sea on either side of us. We left it in the station. Hot dry hands, rainy day. Only when I am inside looking at the pattern stamped into the yellow peeling wallpaper in his studio does a moment come straight to me in a flash, making my eyes sting with joy. One of the many we will share.

Now that it's sure we have at least another month to wait, the emotions are expanding to fill the gap, and there's so much more to think about. I am taking advantage of this kind of nouvelle vague French film kind of drawn out moment ticking by experience and its ability to let me observe - best to write for a few days. I hope you don't mind!