La Vie Cevenole/Leven in Amsterdam.

Parti...

2012-01-25T23:03:00.000+01:00

How are you? It's, um, been a while.

A couple of holidays have rolled by, and I just can't seem to have the kind of spare time I had in the countryside. But here are some images to give you an idea of what I have been doing.

I did spend Christmas and New Year's in France, but we had absolutely no access to internet the entire time we were there. Five different France Telecom technicians came to the house, to no avail. Grr.

It was pretty frustrating, particularly since I actually did have time for a change, between seeing friends and cooking. But at least there were these pretty Dutch amaryllis to admire. I coulnd't decide whether I liked the flowers or the curling stem ends better. Don't those look spectacular? Reminds me of Martha Stewart and her ilk soaking sliced radishes to turn them into roses...

I visited Arles, with its Salon de Santons (an expo of handmade figurines made for Provencal themed Nativity scenes), its Roman ruins, and its van Gogh postcards.

(And yes, it was this beautiful pretty much my entire stay in France.)

The decorations were all still up, of course, even though a good number of the restaurants were closed for the holidays.

There was still lots of fun browsing to be done, including at a well-regarded bookshop filled with exquisite literary editions (lots of poetry) and witty, well-designed children's books: Actes Sud. The bookstore, with its over 40,000 well-chosen titles is also the headquarters of a well-regarded publisher. Definitely worth dropping in, even if you can't actually read French, as they have scads of lavishly illustrated art and photography books.

I spent hours just wandering, with no particular goal.

I resisted buying the tourist claptrap, even though these soaps did look as though they would make nice gifts. I love the Dutch word for crap and clutter, it fits here: prullaria, pronounced like an aria.

After this we headed north toward Eparnay, center of the sprawling Champagne region.

We stayed overnight at a lovely chateau. As one does.

After the dining, time for the wining. Or rather the stocking up of wine.

The highlight of our visit was to L Huot Fils, whose entry-level Champagne has been gilded with three stars (the highest possible rating--as well as a coup de coeur title) by the discriminating reviewers at the Guide Hachette.

Their three-star Champagne, the Carte Noire Reserve, is all the more impressive considering it goes for well under 15 euros a bottle.

We were given an in-depth, personal tour of the property by the owners, with detailed explanations about the history, exacting process and stringent requirements for making Champagne. In the image below, the bottle is being held up to show the sediment gathered at the bottom and yet to be removed. Above, the wine bottles are minutely turned the old-fasahioned way, but they also have machines these days: finding enough skilled labor is increasingly difficult.

These third and fourth generation vintners were as charming and welcoming to strangers as one could possibly imagine. We were able to taste the full range of their wines, in between swapping jokes and stories. When you go to this region, by all means, visit a big-name producer, but don't miss out on the smaller, well-regarded spots such as this one. They are making exciting, accessible, affordable wine, and all it takes is a call a day in advance...for a highly enjoyable morning.

After that, all you have to do is open the Champagne you've bought, and celebrate with finesse and no end of pleasure.

I wish you a happy 2012--newly become the Year of the Dragon.

Turning firewater into holiday gold.

2011-11-28T01:09:00.001+01:00

For the last twenty-five years Amsterdam has hosted a major art, antiques and design fair: PAN.

This year's collection is particularly strong. (The torsos above are actually carved into the wood.) The fair manages to be inclusive and exclusive at the same time, with contemporary pieces shoulder to shoulder with antiquities.

In the ever-growing list of things I should have done but didn't: I didn't take note of the artists. But you can enjoy these snaps anyway, right? Don't judge me, I had two (increasingly impatient) kids with me...

This artist's name I did get, however: Zhuang Hong Yi makes gorgeous, often ambitiously large-scale pieces using Chinese newspapers, rice paper and other traditional materials to create heavily worked, airy looking pieces that somehow manage to bridge the creative divide between his native China and the West, as he has lived in Holland for many years.

If you come to Amsterdam, I do suggest you check out his and other artists' work at Galerie Katwijk, in the heart of the canals and on the periphery of the antiques district.

I miss our chickens. Can you tell?

I do wish you could have been there, to better appreciate the scale and detail in these works. The painting below is taller than me. Which isn't saying that much, but still. The faces are very intriguingly rendered.

Alongside these works were more classically rendered pieces.

Like this affecting portrait, with the wonderfully worked white space all around, and the neat signature dead center at the top.

A bit on the traditional side for me, but some gorgeous silver. For your dining room, perhaps?

This is the first painting by Corneille (a founding member of the COBRA postwar art movement) that I actually really like. And I have no idea why. But you can see more of his work and many others at the COBRA museum, also here in Amsterdam.

These porcelain bugs were over a foot long each. There had to be over a hundred, and each one was unique. Cool in a odd way, right?

But I love owls most of all, especially stylized ones like this Art Nouveau one. No idea where I would put it, but I'd definitely find a worthy spot.

This painting made me laugh out loud for its chutzpah and humor. It is the real'er than real depiction of a kroket in a coin-operated automat. What is a kroket you ask? It's bastion of the crappy-but-alarmingly-addictive-late-night-snack kingdom. It is gravy, rolled in breading and deep-fried, in the flavor of your choice. Well, if your choice is a meat, or maybe shrimp.

There are absolutely scrumptious up-scale versions of the kroket, believe it or not. Only they don't come out of a machine. Like most nearly anything edible, they do taste better when they aren't made on an industrial scale. (I don't know whether they still offer it, but the McDonald's here used to offer a McKroket Burger. You know, to fit in with the locals.)

After visiting this giant show, I needed nothing more than to settle down, out of the cold weather. And make something myself.

This time of year, a fire just feels right. All the better to plan out the Thanksgiving menu.

I will spare you the hemming and hawing over the choices, the browsing through cookbooks and online, and cut to the fantastic ending: this sumptuous Bundt cake. Oh, please do make this cake this winter, for the holidays, for me. Take apples, a bunch of booze (bourbon, whiskey, rum, take your pick, it'll work), well-toasted pecans, a big handul of candied ginger, and an indecent amount of sour cream. You will get awful close to the best Bundt cake ever.

Thank you so much, Melissa Clark. I have fallen in love with my Bundt pan again. Of course, if you peek at the recipe below, you'll see you don't have to have a Bundt pan to make this.

The New York Times' Apple Bourbon Cake

Serves fourteen.

2 sticks unsalted butter (226 grams), at room temperature, plus more to grease pan
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (315 grams), plus more to dust the pan
3 tablespoons (30 grams) plus 1/2 cup (80 grams) bourbon or rye whiskey
1/2 cup (90 grams) candied ginger, chopped
1 3/4 cup (330 grams) light brown sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons (8 grams) baking powder
1 teaspoon (5 grams) baking soda
1 teaspoon (2 grams) ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon (1 gram) ground cardamom
1 teaspoon (5 grams) fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 cup (227 grams) sour cream
1 tablespoon (15 grams) vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoon (5 grams) finely grated lemon zest
2 medium tart apples (454 grams), peeled, cored, and coarsely grated
1 cup (120 grams) finely chopped, toasted pecans
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon (20 grams)

Heat the oven to 165C/325F. Grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan. If you don't have one, you can use two (nine inch) loaf pans instead, or even two (eight-inch) round pans; keep in mind the baking times will need to be reduced accordingly. In a small bowl, combine 3 tablespoons bourbon and the chopped, candied ginger and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat together the brown sugar and butter on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes. Then beat in the eggs, adding one at a time, until thoroughly incorporated. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the remaining flour with the baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg. In another separate small bowl, whisk together the sour cream and vanilla. Add the bourbon from the ginger mixture, reserving the ginger) and stir in the lemon zest.

With the mixer on medium speed, add the dry mixture and sour cream mixture to the wet mixture in three additions, alternating between the two. Fold in the ginger, apples and pecans and combine thoroughly, and fill the prepared pan.

Bake until the cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out dry, about 1 hour 10 minutes. If you made the cake in loaf pans, you'll need to start checking for doneness around 45 minutes. If you made the cake in eight inch round pans, start checking even earlier, at around 25 minutes. Cool in the pan about 20 minutes, then run a paring knife around the sides of the pan to release the cake if necessary; allow to cool, flat side down, on a wire rack.

As the cake cools, blend the 1/2 cup granulated sugar and 1/2 cup whiskey in a small saucepan over very low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the lemon juice and take off the heat. While the cake is still warm, flip back into the pan and make a few slits on top with a paring knife. Pour half the bourbon-sugar mixture over the cake. When the cake is fully cool, flip it and pour the rest of the glaze on the other side, then flip once again to serve.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Of mice and (wo)men.

2011-11-23T00:51:00.001+01:00

It comes down to bread and butter--a very, very fine thing when you can get your hands on a loaf of Solognot. My favorite local baker roughly slashes rectangles of this sesame, linseed, and sunflower seed-studded dough, and the result is light years airier than the usual French multigrain. The addictive flavor lingers and lingers, needing nothing more than a smear of unadulterated butter. And maybe some chestnut honey.

I had time to consider bread and butter, because for nine days of my fall break, it did nothing but rain in the south of France. Whole villages were flooded. Dozens of roofs were ripped off by a freak mini-tornado in a nearby village, and hundred-year old plane trees (sycamores) were uprooted. Our house was mercifully unscathed, but we lost electricity for a good while and our internet connection for even longer.

Regardless of the hail and the raindrops, we made time for visits with good friends who pressed so many tasty gifts upon us. So delicious...and such a pity I couldn't carry all those jars back with me to Amsterdam.

Before we could blink it was already time to fly back to Amsterdam.

After having spent the time we did seeing our friends, it was a more than a bit difficult to leave despite the inclement weather. I now feel the distinct, equal pull between two worlds, two homes. The Country Mouse and the City Mouse both live in me.

The children also feel the differences, little losses and gains. We try to balance it all out.

Lucky for us Amsterdam is an easy city to love, already stocked with a number of favorites, in the form of people, places and tastes. I may not be able to get my hands on a Solognot in Amsterdam, but I can get a mean baguette at a couple of spots, such as Le Fournil (more on that bakery with cult-level status another time).

And there's always the ultimate in profoundly simple and satisfying local comfort dessert: the rijstevlaai from the Limburg region.

This is a sumptuous rice pudding in a yeast-raised, cake-ish crust. It will cure nearly anything, including a serious jones for the faraway countryside. My more culinarily ambitious Dutch friends throw up their hands in horror and dismay at my praise of something so darn proletarian, but honey, it's just so darn good.

And no, I have never made one myself. That is the problem with having a halfdozen excellent bakeries within walking distance. (And I tell myself the walking hither and thither cancels out the calories. Right?)

On Saturday mornings I roll out of for the neighborhood organic market. Ridiculously pretty.

Breads all in a row, some of which are even labeled bread (in Dutch).

And, again from the Limburg region, the most adorable raspberry tartlets you could imagine. They taste even better than they look, and they are absolutely packed with raspberries.

All of these are pure, simple pleasures. I had the unexpected pleasure of enjoying an evening a scosche more haute gamme. Da Vinci's kitchen is headed by chef Margo Reuten, the only woman to figure among the ten best chefs of Holland for the last decade. Crowned Gault Millau's Chef of the Year 2012 for Holland, Ms.Reuten has two Michelin stars as a result of the magic she works in her kitchen, which I was able to visit. The dishes she creates are sometimes nothing less than breath-taking; she says she is still striving to add a third star.

Did I mention that I forgot to bring my camera?

I borrowed an iPhone to take photos of the ornate dishes, but the atmospherically dim lighting spelled my photographic doom, with the theoretical exception of these images. The one above is a detail of a magnificent, translucent vase by the bar.

The first bite I had was with a fine champagne. It was a savory marshmallow made of red beet and lightly dipped in pure cocoa. You can see three of them resting upon spoons in the last image.

After those came these extraordinary spheres filled with an intense but light cauliflower panna cotta. Topped with gold leaf, natch.

The evening continued in this most pleasurable manner, with one sensual, unexpected combination of flavor and texture leading to another. I couldn't get over the order and calm of her kitchen, having seen all the insanely intense professional kitchens on televised 'reality' shows. Her kitchen hummed with pristine good humor and equilibrium. And what a treat to watch these guys set to work. For the Amsterdammers reading this, there can be comparisons made between her cooking style and level to Ron Blaauw, who also wields two Michelin stars--although I have the impression she cooks with perhaps a touch more discretion. All in all, a memorably hedonistic evening.

Just goes to show you, there are distinct advantages to being a City Mouse as well.

Roundabout.

2011-10-26T02:05:00.002+02:00

We're back in the south of France. We seem to have brought the inclement weather of the north with us, too. Doesn't matter. We are back in France.

While we were busy settling in the city, things kept happening here. For one thing, it kept not raining, for a long, long time. In between tut-tutting the Sahara-like lack of humidity, my friends managed to make me fairly jealous by announcing the laughably warm temperatures. It remained high summer--til the day we arrived.

I really don't mind the rain here, even though it means spending more time indoors. Our capitalist Monopoly skills are being well sharpened, the deck of cards is seeing some serious use, and there is a lot of ~~gossiping~~ catching up to be done with neighbors and friends over fragrant cups of homemade herbal infusions.

The leaves are just now beginning to veer off into the more eye-popping shades. We are monitoring the subtle changes, all the while making little berets for our fingers using the acorn caps scattered everywhere.

Fall break, as you can see, is a very busy time around here.

There is dog-walking to be done, perfect pumpkins to be located (harder than you might imagine) and hot chocolate to be made. If you actually live in the Gard, you know it isn't hot chocolate weather just yet, but the kids don't care. A rich hot chocolate is exactly the kind of beverage you reach for after you've rolled a half dozen times down a slippery, damp hillside, dressed in a plastic garbage bag.

And now we're smelling some of the first smoke of the season, as people are finally able to burn their longstanding piles of brush without the fear of setting off a forest fire. The piles burn slowly, sending up signals most of the day. Sometimes you can barely distinguish between the woodsmoke and coiling mist. Next to our own smoking pile is my vegetable garden, such as it is, is down to a single basil bush, long gone to seed.

We're here, we're happy, even if I missed the harvest for these little crab apples, which is a small pity as I would have loved to have put away some jelly. Tart and sweet belong together. As for the berries: the only ones left are a few straggler raspberries, a startlingly deep,waterlogged red. I also missed the walnuts, once again nimbly harvested by the painfully shy squirrels.

Beyond missing much of the garden harvest, I haven't been cooking all that much lately, either: we've been scoring invitations left and right. The upside, beyond eating great food made by someone else, are all the little discoveries in other people's homes. Just look at the new little quilted house I found at my friend Monique's place when I came by for lunch. She has made, filled and attached it to this old door to keep out the chilly cellar draft.

Warm drinks, bonfires, dogwalks. Nothing mind-alteringly important going on here, simply the small, concurrent shifts that move us from one season to another. We seem to have the space needed to better contemplate those minor details.

Having just arrived over the weekend, I took the usual exit off the highway, we went through the usual toll booth and came up to the usual landscaped roundabout. My ten year oldvsai, with unfeigned, profound affection: "awww...a roundabout!" There are very, very few roundabouts in Amsterdam. In France you can't get away from them.

Sometimes leaving helps you see more.

Platform heels, baby.

2011-10-07T00:20:00.001+02:00

What a weekend.

I have some smart friends. Some of them are clever enough to live in more friendly places, climatologically speaking. In one friend's case, home is Milan. And for one perfect weekend, I too was a Milanesa. (Well, I pretended to be anyway.)

At base, I'm not a shopper, never really have been, but boy, Milan could convert a girl. First of all, there are the innumerable culinary treats.

Here are two different kinds of beautifully stuffed peppers.

And of course the porcini--I am definitely a funghi girl.

You look at fresh pieces like this and you immediately want to make risotto. Or you do if you're a Milanesa. Like me. This past weekend, I mean.

I cracked when I saw the rhododendron honey. Never even seen that one before. But then I thought of the jar, broken en route, honey seeping into the stitching of my brand-new, perfectly fitted, taupe leather gloves (because you have to buy gloves while in Milan, it's the unbreakable rule). There are really only two specialty shops for the aficionados, one of which is Sermoneta. I resisted buying the jar: gloves combine poorly with honey in a carry-on, even if the honey in question is rhododendron (which would taste like what exactly? Blueness?)

Even in Italy, you can't get away from beautiful French things. I know, don't judge a book by its cover, etc, but I fell a little bit in love with this canister. It made me dream.

We also browsed the G. Lorenzi, family-owned cutlery shop, founded in 1929 and a Milanese landmark. Lorenzi is known not only for every possible permutation of a knife, but also for highly specialized items in bone (an orange peeler anyone?) I couldn't afford the truffle slicers I admired, although surprisingly there was a whole range possible. I even saw some lovely shoe horns in bone for as low as 5 euros.

As I don't need a shoe horn or a filigreed pasta knife, I settled for some toothpaste: they had toiletries to go with their leather toiletry cases. We're not talking Crest, mind you, this was Marvis toothpaste. One of their most popular flavors is Jasmine mint, but there is also ginger mint, and even licorice. I chose cinnamon mint (too bad they don't offer chocolate-flavored toothpaste, as they do in Japan). In Milan, Marvis is a fraction of what it costs beyond Italy's borders. And now, I'll undoubtedly feel that extra touch Italian, just by brushing my teeth. Right?

What do you think of when you think of Milan, besides risotto and maybe osso buco? Money. This is the northerly business epicenter of Italy. There is money. Combine Italian men and money, and you seem to get Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Ferraris. Sometimes five red ones, all in a row, as you can see below.

For the men and women who aren't into cars, there is ample choice of design furniture. Ceccotti furniture stands out in particular for an extreme purity of line, craftsmanship and sensuality, classical with an art collector's twist. Think I exagerrate? Go to their site, check out the Manta desk, or the Bean desk, or any of Lazzeroni's dining chairs. Really, to touch the silken lines of a Ceccotti piece is to gently and irrevocably fall in love. (Below is a dress boy, weirdly lightweight and perfectly formed.)

And of course there is the fashion. Here are some Pucci scarves adorning the shop entrance.

We spent a lot of time wandering in and out of shops, looking at the latest collections, admiring the fabrics and the exquisite cuts, but when I arrived home, I realized the food images dominated. Quel surprise. You know by now that my stomach is where my passion lives. These are marzipan fruits--with brown spots for authenticity.

Of course there was the obligatory gelato stop.

The single most divine dish of the weekend? Tough call, but most likely a simple bowl of fresh burrata, a kind of creamy mozzarella, combined with cherry tomatoes and good pesto.

We walked off the burrata by strolling deep into the night, as one does when one is from Milan: in heels, laughing, talking and generally carrying on.

City sunday.

2011-09-27T23:02:00.001+02:00

Pretend this is my front door. Open it and come inside.

Take a seat, have a cup of tea. Brush aside the fallen petals from the tulips, try not to think of the encroaching autumn. Brush aside the last remaining cake crumbs, try not to think of how quickly little boys become big boys.

Because, yes, my sweet son has had another birthday. All puffed cheeks and curls, he struggled to blow out all six candles on his Lego cake at once. I wonder what he wished for. I myself wished he knew more children his age here, so that I could have thrown him a proper birthday party, the kind that knocks me into next week with tiredness.

What do you do when you've just moved, and your child doesn't yet have his or her circle of friends? We decided to go to the movies. My kids have been to the movies three times before in their lives, so it is a real treat. The film was at an Amsterdam landmark, the Tuschinski theater, continuously running since 1921, with exception of one recent renovation.

I could imagine Vincent Price designing a movie theater like this. To call it lavish is a serious understatement. Even today, there are still private viewing boxes--and love seats. (I found another photo on Flickr of the interior, here.)

But the splendid photo of the foyer, below, was not taken by me. (It was posted, uncredited--boo!-- here.)

I neglected to take photos of the outside which, if anything, is even more outlandishly Art Deco, in keeping with the stringent demands of the original owner. Unfortunately, being a Polish Jew by origin, he and his entire family were murdered by the Germans during the war.

His Tuschinski is still standing, however, perfect where it is, kitty-corner to the flower market, and where all the big-name film premieres are held in Holland.

The Tuschinski would be decidedly out of place in the planned Ijburg, built upon artificial islands, where the buildings look more like this. [The 'j' in Ij is silent.]

This is where I found myself this past Sunday, in order to take part in Elle Decoration's annual Inside Design Amsterdam. There were loads of designers, artists and furniture companies scattered across the airy islands in cool loft spaces in such a way that you sort of wandered from one striking arrangement to another, without ever feeling crowded by others.

I liked these pieces shown by Ilse Crawford, former chief editor of the English edition of Elle Decoration, and now herself a designer under the aegis Studioilse.

Interesting rough-yet-smooth, ultra simplicity of of these bowls. What do you think? (Note, I did not say they were practical...)

Look closely at this display of preserved flowers. Can you think of anything much more exquisitely diaphanous? I couldn't stop peering at these from different angles.

I also loved the concept and craftsmanship of this low coffee table by a pair of young Dutch twins. Who comes up with an idea to glue together pencils then cut them like a slab of wood--leaving the ends sharpened? Tweelink, that's who. They also made a dinner table out of coloring pencils, and the sides had more of a rainbow effect.

There were a lot of pieces to admire by both the up and coming and the established, but for sheer monumentality and vision, I'd say the prize goes to Barbara Broekman. This piece below is 4.2 meters by 3 meters, and is a composite image of "Good" as drawn from the masterworks of Rubens, Veronese, Tiepolo and Caravaggio.

Essentially, it is a giant collage (with a companion piece, "Evil".)

The piece is made up of inter-connected panels, each measuring sixty centimeters by sixty centimeters. And that pixielated effect is because it is a Jacquard-woven cloth.

When you finally put your nose up to it, you begin to suspect that this involved an awful lot of work. I have no idea how she managed the scale and variety of color, but it did involve the skills and machine of the Textile Museum in Tillburg.

If you are reading this from Holland, you can see one of Barbara Broekman's pieces at the Frozen Fountain, a contemporary art and design gallery in Amsterdam well worth visiting. If you love tapestry, explore Broekman's beautiful site to see some of the many works coming out of her atelier--and how she makes them. And finally, you can also browse a preview of Inside Design Amsterdam in the October issue of (Dutch) Elle Decoration if you want more. I didn't want to overwhelm you with photos, so I only selected a few.

After all that hard work of strolling and gawking and head-cocking and lusting (my breath was completely stolen by the B2 kitchen concept from Bulthaup--do check it out), I was ready for a cup of coffee in the sun. Dispensed from a three-wheeled mini-truck. Overlooking the little harbor on Ij-lake.

When I can watch bridges go up for boats on any given day, I know I am in Amsterdam.

There are worse ways to spend a sunday.

Settling in.

2011-09-20T00:20:00.000+02:00

KLM's little ceramic houses of Amsterdam, filled with genever (gin).

This won't be the first time I bite my tongue to keep from ranting about the weather, but the inclement, roiling skies made it that much easier to focus on making our apartment a home.

Being back in the city means a move away from the countrified ways we'd developed (and enjoyed) over the past three years. Now we're shifting back into a more familiar city mode. Sometimes this meant unpacking things that had been in storage for too long.

Other times it meant shopping. I do not like looking for clothes, but browsing my way through home goods is another enchilada entirely. This elliptical table below is from Ikea.

I love a bit of blending of styles, too. Here's an inherited Artifort midcentury classic paired with a French antique find. I found that carpet a few years ago, the colors are luscious and those soft, firm nubs feel heavenly underfoot.

These fish traveled 1300 kilometers in a Mini. They were no doubt at least as relieved to be out of the car as we were. They went from our kitchen in the French Cevennes to our kitchen here in Amsterdam. The chickens weren't allowed to come...

I indulged myself in the kitchen: when we first moved from Amsterdam to France, I schlepped most of my kitchen supplies down there. This go-round, they've mostly stayed behind in France. I am loving the lines and heavy-duty bottom of this pot I got at HEMA, the Dutch version of Target. (Check out this clever page from their online store. Give it a second to kick in...)

Here is a tall, asymmetrical wooden pepper grinder I got from, you guessed it, Ikea. Ten euros--and it grinds like a charm!

My splurge was this spoon rest. I needed a spoon rest. I just didn't need an Alessi spoon rest. But aren't those curves fine on this new Alessi spoon rest?

Essential in Amsterdam: a coatrack. Faint echoes of the Dutch Piet Mondrian don't hurt.

We have all started to find our bearings.

And we know what to do when the sun finally decides to make one of its brief appearances.

First we double-check. (That's my neighbor's terrace, below. In sun.)

Then we make a dash for it.

We do crazy, lovely things like taking off our raincoats. Even better, we have a picnic in the backyard. My friend Azumi was the hostess this time.

The spread was absolutely Japanese, and absolutely delicious. She claimed it was really very basic and simple to make. That was when I asked for the chicken recipe. Azumi was right. But so am I: this version of the Japanese standard will hit the spot, whether for a casual picnic or a satisfying weeknight dinner.

Azumi's Picnic Chicken Teriyaki

Serves four.

700g chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces

3 tablespoons shoyu (Japanese soy sauce)
3 tablespoons mirin (a sweet Japanese cooking wine)
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil with lemon flavour, or sesame oil
1 shallot, minced

Combine all the ingredients in a sturdy plastic bag, rubbing the marinade thoroughly into the chicken. Let chicken rest it in the fridge at least an hour.

Heat the pan with a bit of olive oil. Pour all the ingredients into the pan. Cook the chicken over high heat, until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Lower the heat and continue to cook until it until the sauced chicken is nicely browned.

I'm singing in the...

2011-09-13T01:20:00.000+02:00

Living in the wide open spaces of the countryside cuts you down to size. You feel appropriately insignificant, mother nature in her extremes is writ large and subject to inexplicable whimsy. Moving to the bricked-in spaces of the city creates this pulse-quickening sense of expansiveness, all those languages, accents, skin colors, eye shapes, extraordinary personal histories, the swerve of social history evident in heroic buildings, the ringing trams, clustered bicycles--and mmm, those bookstores. All that potential and hectic activity give the impression that we, as individuals, really can blaze our own trails. It simply took tasting hummus heaped onto sesame-speckled bread rings from a local Turkish market to realize I've just plain missed certain things.

Summer, in the rain.

But first I had to get used to stoplights again. By this I mean the stoplights keeping me from places I just have to get to by a certain time. Because being in a hurry is a near-obligatory sub-clause of city life, and everyone's in a hurry here because we're all late because half of the transportation infrastructure in Amsterdam is under construction. I only wish I was exaggerating.

The convertible mini cooper, in the rain.

Maybe you can't take the city out of the girl, not even after three years in what came tantalizingly close to southern French heaven. (Oh, don't make me think of that garden I had to leave behind.) Here, there's just a rain-sodden terrace (a real luxury, should the un ever choose to shine again). But the heels rise, the pants (and everything else) are tighter, and the wildness is found not beneath the scrub oak but rather in tribal-looking makeup and in that jaunty, sharp-hipped confidence of the (young) Dutch. Who are neck-twistingly taller than me, I must add.

The traffic, in the rain.

Good grief there's a lot of energy that gets burned in a move, lots of things happening at the same time and going in different directions. Health insurance, a smooth transition for the kids, a coatrack (for all the raingear and coats in August/September). My thoughts are as jumbled as my files. Meanwhile, my to-do list is longer than a Dutchman's leg--and growing. So this is partly why I haven't had really special photos to show you. But it's been raining here, too. A lot. More than usual. The rain barely pauses, and then only to switch to Chicago-style gusts of wind, because a proper Dutch day has all four seasons. And then some. And oh, dear, I'd forgotten how to dress for this ongoing climatogical change; me and my silly, filmy, country summer wear. But it's coming back to me. And so is my affection for this laid-back, at times grouchy (can you blame them with this weather?), always engaging city.

Kyrie eleison.

2011-09-08T01:12:00.001+02:00

After a matter of days in Amsterdam, we had to return. It's hard separating, whether from a person or a place. You find yourself going back to that familiar beauty that drew you in the first place.

In stark contrast to the Amsterdam I've thus far experienced this year, Paris was at her seasonally appropriate best: 30 degrees celsius (86 degrees fahrenheit), long rows of tourists with their feet in the fountains, and city streets alight. Top down, music playing, we were nevertheless in Paris for a seriously good reason: a friend's wedding.

The wedding was familiar and exotic all at once, being held in the Russian Orthodox tradition. Imagine squadrons of Parisian and Russian women in over-the-top hats and perfectly fitted, fancy summer dresses--and sky-high heels. Their companions faintly overwarm in their suits. And all of us standing for the full length of the service, which lasted an hour and a half. There are no seats in a Russian Orthodox cathedral, and the Alexander Nevsky on rue Daru in the 8eme arrondissement granted no exception to this rule.

The two priests, one old with solemn eyes and a full, square beard, one a strapping young tenor, chanted the entire service, in a sort of Gregorian manner. They were draped from neck to ankle in heavy, golden vestments, absolutely covered with embroidered religious motifs. They led the bride and groom's procession into the church, where the couple stood upon an immaculately white piece on cloth laid upon the Persian carpeted floor. They held a golden chalice, from which the couple drank. And then came the crowning, which involved eight male members of the wedding party. Four men behind the bride, four behind the groom perspired in their morning coats while taking turns to hold the golden crowns a steady few inches above the heads of the bridal pair. All this with song and prayer ringing in the air (the choir was hidden but sang in a sort of call and response throughout the prayers and crowning); the acoustics were powerful and somehow intimate. And there was gold and intricate designs and carving everywhere.

The couple drove off in a wine-red 1950s convertible Dodge Coronet (with Washington state plates!) We cheered, and that evening, we drank an awful lot of Champagne.

You are what you eat--and the company you keep.

2011-08-16T02:30:00.000+02:00

My life in the south of France is measured by basket. Basket after basket, creaking under the weight of perfectly ripe produce and locally made goodness, redolent of earth and sun. Here are some of the marchands who have filled my baskets and larder, year in and year out.

Erwan is a traiteur extraordinaire, and my go-to guy for years now. He sharpened his knives and his wit in the brasseries of Paris for years before heading out to the province for fresh air and friendlier people. He makes a magnificent cured, roasted turkey, more tender than you can believe, rubbed with herbs and unlike anything I've ever had, anywhere else. He makes lots of things, fine free-range roast chickens, paprika legs, seasonal specialties (like Camargue beef), a mean sausage. I could go on, but his turkey (on the bone) is what keeps me coming back. He calls it jambonette de dinde, and he is holding some in the photo. I so wish you could taste a morsel.

Guillaume has an excellent selection of organic fruit and vegetables, with less familiar varieties mixed in with the standards. All grown locally. Right now, his white peaches are heady, perfumed and juicy beyond any singing of it. I tried to get him to pose holding his superlative golden beets. As you can see, he refused. With a smile. I think he only agreed to a photo because I asked so nicely. In Amsterdam, I am going to miss his produce something fierce.

Louise and her husband offer organic vegetables--white and green asparagus in the spring, onions, potatoes and mushrooms later in the season--but it is her tiny, deeply flavorful wild blueberries, and her wild blueberry tart that have really made her name. I can't keep track of how many children they have, there are more than four, and they all go together into the mountains to pick these blueberries. She said we've maybe one more week's worth, then blueberry season is closed for 2011.

The queue was as usual, way too long for Christophe, my neighbor and one of my main cheese sources. You can see him in the background. He makes long, meandering trips to cheesemakers he knows, returning with treats from the Lozere, the Basque Pyrenees, and points well beyond. When he isn't selling cheese and sausage, he is playing petanque--in the summer anyway. The rest of the year, he hunts wild boar. His Basque Tomme de Brebis, a ewe's cheese from the mountains, can make you temporarily lose the power of speech. I kid you not.

If you have been reading me for awhile, you may be familiar with Claudie. She is a pelardon queen, with a very loyal following of customers; I have made pilgrimages to her farm to watch her and her husband turn goat milk into the signature cheese of our region. She gives me eggs and extra cheese, I give her plants from the garden. And cookies.

Jean-Louis is a fifth generation butcher who slaughters and cuts all his own meat, from the entire animal. In France, more and more meat is prepared at large slaughterhouses, then shipped to butchers, who simply make the final packaging for sale; people with Jean-Louis' depth of skill are a dying breed. Jean-Louis makes sausages, pates, and cures his own ham. In winter, he makes his foie gras from his own ducks. To do this, to get to the village markets and set up his wares, he wakes up at two in the morning and goes to bed at seven in the evening. Conscientious and proud, he provides written details on the provenance of all his meat. There is always sedate classical music playing in the background at his truck, and he is always impeccably dressed--note the pristine, personalized apron and red tie. He chats up his regulars with a charming elegance, swapping recipes and vivid anecdotes. I give him a pot of my chutney, and he gives my kids yoyos and generous samples. Once he retires (not long now), his business will close: his children are not interested in his metier.

These people are as much the Cevennes as the sycamores in the village, the dramatic views, the cigales and the crows stealing my figs. It just wouldn't be the same without them.

I'll be seeing them all again, during the next school holidays.

In the air.

2011-08-09T02:32:00.000+02:00

A lot of what I do in the summertime is about capturing the best moments. It's all about distilling--reducing and preserving the essential--whether I'm cooking a batch of deeply ripe raspberry jam, bottling fruit liqueurs or making chutneys, for which I'm now using the Reine Claudes that are so weighing down the plum trees in the garden. Memories, to be opened at a later date for the taste buds, the eye, the nose, the mind.

I suppose in many ways I've tried to do that with this blog. Coming on three years now, I've gathered together some fine moments, many of which still glow in my mind's eye as brightly as my neighbor's newly pressed picholine olive oil. And while I've enjoyed every season to the full, this summer seems more memorable than usual.

Leaving'll do that to you, bringing the things, people and places you most value into blade-sharp focus. Call it a sort of early-onset nostalgia. As an expat and dyed-in-the-wool nomad I really try not to put off the important stuff--carpe diem and all that jazz--but there is always the latent awareness that another move could shake things up once again. This time, the siren call of my husband's work imposes; so for the past month I've been simultaneously living it up and preparing for a return...to city life.

I'm moving due north. For the first time ever, I'm going back to live in a city I already know. If I sound fairly cavalier about leaving the sunny south, it's because I know we'll be back in France--and regularly. (We have to: we're keeping the farmhouse.)

Care to explore Amsterdam with me? I'm leaving in two weeks.

Or you could drop by and help pack some boxes...

Going to the sea.

2011-07-28T00:35:00.001+02:00

Heading to Cassis seems to have turned into an annual tradition of sorts. There are worse things.

This time, I avoided all the highways. It took most of the day to get there, but it was magical. We went through the tiniest Provencal villages, through big cities (Nimes and Marseille), and above all through the rolling, endlessly changing countryside.

The fruit and vegetable stands, with their hand-lettered signs, were up and running nearly everywhere. The cigales were screeching away; we knew this because the top stayed down the entire trip.

We stopped for lunch and a wander in Salon-de-Provence, made memorable by its remarkable fontaine moussue.

The fountain dates from the sixteenth century, and the lime deposits from the water have made over time a natural sculpture covered in moss and fairy-light, fern-like vegetation. Underneath the mushroom-shaped limestone, water drips constantly. It is hypnotic, a cave in the making, in the bright light of day.

The animation of the cities has become a bit unfamiliar and exciting for us, so it was also a pleasure to drive through them. But I had a specific idea in mind: I was willing to risk hitting Friday evening rush hour in Marseille for the sake of D559. Also known as La route de la Gineste, D559 runs from Marseille to Cassis, above the deep, rocky coastal inlets, and across the windswept limestone clifftops and plateau. It is not to be missed.

See the tiny houses in that valley? Breath-taking terrain, every inch of the way, and then, after the nth hairpin turn, Cassis and its golden rockface swerve into view.

This was the view from our room, taken by my five year old while I was having a well-earned shower.

I have written about Cassis before, here and here and here, so the basics about this charmingly low-key port have been covered. But there are always lovely spots in Cassis to admire--and photograph.

To better see some of the detail of this gorgeous Ferris Wheel, you can click on the image. My son's in the St. Exupery/Le Petit Prince airplane...

In the center of the photo below, two men are sea jousting (you might have to click on the image again to better see). Each standing on a fast-moving boat, the opponents are trying to knock one another into the cold water using lances. Sea jousting dates from Ancient Greece and Rome, and has been played in port and river towns across France since the time of the Romans. Provencal sea jousting (joute nautique) is considered the most aggressive of the various versions. These days, even women have begun to joust, according to the national federation.

I watched from the balcony, and decided I'd rather stroll around looking at boats rather than falling off them.

Once back from Cassis, my kids spent the day at our neighbor's place. Building a hut in their dry riverbed was the main order of the day, but the children also collected pinecones. Arriving on the tail end of their foraging session, I was able to grab a couple of cones.

These cones are from a very large, mature umbrella pine, and you can see the seed pods are tucked back in between the scales. While this wasn't the greatest year for pine nuts, there is still nothing finer than to dislodge the seed pods, and, using a small stone, crack open the seed pods and eat the creamy colored pine nut within. Fresh pine nuts have a slightly resinous, almost eucalyptic flavor, far more intense than anything found in a store. They taste simply spectacular, which perhaps explains why I have never been able to get anyone to collect them for anything other than their own immediate consumption. If you are lucky enough to get your hands on some fresh pine nuts, or you choose to go the storebought route, I have just the recipe. I found it in Real Simple magazine years ago, a simple riff on Italian biscotti ai pinoli, which I slightly tweaked; it is devoured by kids and adults alike. I haven't made it lately (hence the lack of a photo). Let me know what you think. I'd love to post a photo of your cookies, so do send me one if you try the recipe.

Biscuits au pin de pignon (Pine Nut Drops)

Makes about 40 cookies.

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons agave or corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 1/2 cups raw pine nuts

Preheat oven 190C/375F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Beat the butter, brown and granulated sugars, corn syrup, and vanilla for two minutes using an electric mixer. Add egg and beat until combined. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda and spices. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually add the flour mixture to the egg mixture.

Shape the dough into tablespoon-size balls. Spread the pine nuts in a low dish. Roll each ball in the pine nuts, pressing so the nuts adhere. Place the balls two inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until just lightly browned at the edges, about 12 minutes. Cool on the baking sheets for five minutes. Transfer the cookies to wire racks and cool completely.

Heat.

2011-07-16T17:23:00.001+02:00

Where have I been? Doing everything and nothing.

Coaxing the lettuce and tomato patch through this extended dry spell and the children through the sudden expansiveness of no-school.

Picking berries (raspberries, the first of the blackberries, and now the last of the black currants and white currants), pulling weeds, blowing up inner tubes, sweeping the second round of wisteria blossoms from the terrace. Summer gives meaning to the terrace, after the long cold of winter and spring’s uncertainty.

Taking the kids to the creek or the tree-shaded, dreaming river. Building huts is pretty high on their list. Wading, racing homemade boats and stirring up the mud ranks high as well. I’m reading whenever I can. And next week, it’s the beach for all of us.

We are very much in the here and now. Spring and fall, really anything before or after, have receded vaporously, and the present is all we know, this baking summer just short of eternal.

In the evenings, there are parties with neighbors, charming fellow bloggers and concerts. There was once again Bastille day, with hundreds of kids walking to the fireworks display, each holding a paper lantern at the end of a bamboo pole, to form a flowing, bobbing candlelit procession. There is something distinctly magical about a retraite aux flambeaux. Long live this kind of French tradition.

What we are not doing: we are not sleeping indoors. The stars, random satellites and waxing moon beckon, and we sleep on the terrace, laid bare to the night’s cool, uneven breath. We fight closing our eyes, looking instead for patterns in the hushed sky.

There is once again the warm, musky smell of summer skin. There is the sensual act of driving barefoot, toes curled around the pedals, sand drying and falling away. In the kitchen, the wide, square terracotta tiles are blissfully cool to the touch.

During all this doing and not-doing, there is always the background music of the locusts holding their lacy wings tightly against themselves and screeching ever higher, until something startles them and you find yourself in a pool of silence, with only the swallows’ zooming trajectories to break the fragile surface.

There are several nests tucked in around the house, and the mothers and fathers are kept busy teaching the little, uncertain birdlets to fend for themselves. The little ones huddle together, then hurtle off raggedly into the air.

My children are stretching their wings and growing too. They and their friends pad barefoot across the burning tiles of the terrace to dive and arch through the bracing poolwater, skin gleaming, seal-like, spangled with light.

We are at summer’s apex. Which happens to be a mighty fine time to make a particularly luscious, warm potato salad.

Salade de pommes de terre (Roasted Potato Salad)

based on Trish Gray's winning recipe

Serves 8-10 as a side dish.
1 kg. new potatoes, such as the all-purpose Mona Lisa variety, unpeeled and quartered/chopped to bite-size pieces
1 tbsp. olive oil
4 green onions, thinly sliced (both green and white parts)
4 tbsp. chives, finely chopped
¼ c. good-quality mayonnaise
2 tsp. fresh rosemary, very finely chopped
¼ tsp. black pepper
½ tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Toss unpeeled, chopped potatoes in oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place in a roasting pan and bake until nicely browned.

Meanwhile, combine green onions, chives, rosemary and mayonnaise in a large bowl. Once potatoes are done, toss in bowl while hot, until potatoes are thoroughly coated. Season with salt and pepper. Serve warm.

On n'est pas à Lourdes ici.

2011-06-20T23:38:00.000+02:00

I can't make miracles, even though I can now say I have been to Lourdes, the second most visited place in France after Paris. Years ago, in Reims, famous for its own cathedral, I was treated to an extraordinarily bad hotel experience. Following my outraged complaints, the manager lifted his shoulders in a Gallic shrug and declaimed what is now the title of this post. In other words: "we can't make miracles here."

It has been absurdly busy here in the countryside. Cherry season, regrettably brief, is already heading out the door. There is dark cherry sorbet in the freezer by which we will remember it. There is also a new store of raspberry/blackcurrant jam in my pantry; the kids started cheering when they saw me making it, as we always go through that the fastest.

The strawberries in my garden are long done and gone; I may have speeded up their departure by not watering them even once. Oops. The garden is roaring ahead anyway, and pruning is an on-going process, especially among the roses.

A procession past the pick your own, giant prayer candle shack.

In between the cooking and the canning, there has been a passel of end-of-school-year activities. Recital concerts, horse events, school outings and such.

Getting holy, healing water from the source. In bulk.

Oh, and the pool's open for the season. Boy, is it open.

Taking a moment to savor the holy water. Many queue to wash their feet.

There were twenty-five kids in my pool. At once. Diving, giggling and splashing well into Saturday evening. Others questioned my sanity, but it was an unqualified blast. I even introduced these ten to twelve year olds to rice krispie squares. Yup. (Ever try to get a kid to taste something they've never had before?)

The rice krispie squares were the only non-organic food on offer...and they devoured every single last one of them. Actually, they ate everything on offer. And guzzled grenadine like there was no tomorrow.

Selecting the holy design for the pressed eurocent.

Then there were birthday parties, potlucks and barbecues to attend.

I gave the last reading at the library for the school before the summer, too. We had a goûter to celebrate the year's worth of reading. Feeling a bit old-school circa 1950s, I made pineapple upside-down cakes. They went over very well--with the adults anyway. Marbled chocolate cupcakes saved the day for the kids.

Sadly, I most definitely missed last week's red lunar eclipse, the 101 minutes of which I should have had a good view, given our clear skies. The moon was behind a mountain though, and lacking a babysitter, I was loathe to traipse off into the night looking for it.

All this to say it's getting tougher to find the time and mental space for writing in this pell-mell season. I may have to skip another week, too. Forgive me?

At least I took photos of some of the dizzying assortment of religious tchotchkes (or bondieuseries) for sale in Lourdes.

When we reached the grotto where Mary is said to have appeared eighteen times before little Bernadette, I was very surprised to see a photo of Nicolas Sarkozy among the more personal images (left, upside down). Someone is praying for the poor guy.

Just beyond the grotto, there were prayer candles beyond any counting of it, touching in their simplicity. All those troubles, hopes and dreams...rendered more poignant by the innumerable wheelchairs and stretchers on hand.

There were entire vats filled with the melted and rehardened wax of candles.

After all the crowds, queues, fervor and emotion, thank goodness there was the corner cafe cum fast food joint, for a pick-me-up and convivial chat.

Cruising Biarritz.

2011-06-08T00:11:00.002+02:00

I had a fling this past weekend. I'm still catching my breath.

I love the Cevennes, and not just a little. But we've gotten to know each other, and well, things have gotten very comfortable between us. Perhaps even predictable. I mean, Biarritz it's not.

I don't know what I was expecting before I headed west. Atlantic coast, Northern Basque Country, the birthplace of pelota (or jai alai, as it's called in the US--remember that jai alai shot in the Miami Vice opening sequence?), check, check, check. My expectation: a slightly petrified resort town, maybe even chic-er than thou. I mean, it made the shift from whaling town to resort rockstar status when Napoleon III built a little cottage for his Empress Eugenie way back in 1855. Okay, it was a ginormous villa, which is now a ginormous five-star hotel on the Grande Plage. Anyway, assorted royals and the merely monied have been flocking to Biarritz ever since.

Today, turns out the chic bit is still very real. Parts of the old center seem directly lifted from Paris' 16eme arrondissement. Grand perhaps, but not by definition a good thing in my book. However.

Biarritz is Parisian chic modified, transposed on the rough, spray-soaked Atlantic coast and nicely populated with surfer boys. This is something in a softer register. The vibe is relaxed cool.

And yes, this is the perfect opportunity for some gratuitous surfer shots.

I think I'm ready for a camera with better telephoto capability, don't you? I was blushing too much to get shots of the closer-by, drop-dead fine fellas passing the rugby ball. Not only is Biarritz billed as the surfing capital of Europe, but rugby is very, very big here, with the home team, Biarritz Olympique, regularly taking home the national title. This in a place where there is a municipal pelota court on every other street corner.

This is a detail of the door leading into the cathedral Napoleon had built for that most-loved Eugenie. In the process she was eventually named a saint--in this, her own cathedral on the rocks anyway.

Unlike Frank Sinatra, I did not stay at the Hotel du Palais (Eugenie's old digs), but I still splashed out:

This was the breakfast table.

And boy, did we get lucky with the weather. In the Cevennes, il pleuvait des cordes (it rained ropes, i.e. a heckuva lot).

Meanwhile, we cruised around, stopping for dinner in St. Jean de Luz, a nearby village (dramatic amounts of shaved local ham were involved). All in all, picturesque to the nth degree.

The sea was sedate, and so was the village tempo, shops closing up for the night as the bars and restaurants filled up.

People were having drinks out on their terraces as well. I loved the mosaics I kept seeing with the swirly Basque cross symbol, indoors and on building facades.

I did not get any beautifully stripy Basque linen; I dearly wanted the gussied up VW van, though.

I experienced a twinge of envy when seeing this wisteria, so old it had a proper trunk. Makes our wisteria here at home seem outright anemic in comparison.

I window-shopped avidly at Maison Adam, which is, by all accounts, the place for macarons, since the mid-1600s at any rate. You can see from the link these are not remotely Parisian-style macarons, either. I can't tell you how they taste because the shop was closing. But I can tell you the peppers hanging above the sign are made of ceramic, and are a colorful nod to the nearby town of Espelette, famous for its AOC registered chile.

As my daughter is horse-mad, we went to a hunter competition at the Club Hippique in Biarritz. Some lovely, perfectly done-up horses on hand, more of that Basque red and pure white around us, and loads of that relaxed Biarritz cool.

I can tell you now, I'll be back to savor more Basque charms. Impossible to do otherwise,

even if I still come home to the Cevennes...

Led by the nose.

2011-06-01T03:14:00.001+02:00

You can't tell from this image, but I had to swallow several times on the way here, as my ears were popping. I live in the foothills of the Cevennes. The Lozère is the mountains for me, and several times I found myself well above 1,000 m in altitude.

Agrandir le plan

Smack-dab in the middle of this Languedoc Roussillon map you see the Parc National des Cevennes, 1,500 square kilometers straddling the départements of the Ardèche, the Aveyron, the Gard (where I live) and the Lozère. In the middle of the Parc--and the Lozère--is the town of Florac, population about 2,000, where I stopped for lunch and a good wander.

This is the kind of place to which nature-lovers can't help but be drawn, tucked into a valley between high, wide plateaus. It's also a good stopping point for those who love hairpin turns and panoramic views. A lucky someone had an old Triumph I couldn't help but admire; it fit right in to the laid-back, slightly lost in time feel of Florac.

Many come for the fishing as four different rivers and streams come together in Florac, offering a lush quantity of trout, if local menus are anything to go by.

The house on the motionless water on the left is actually a restaurant with a divinely situated terrace, overlooking the canal. It's where I had wanted to eat--La Source du Pêcher. I had heard quite good things. Unfortunately, I cavalierly failed to make a reservation, and seeing as it was Mother's Day in France...well, the lovely-sounding menu went untasted. Another time--and outside seating a must.

Beyond the hikers and fishing aficionados, lots of motorcyclists head this way for the aerial, twisting turns of the ancient route of the Corniche des Cévennes, used by the King's soldiers way back when they were hunting down the Protestants, or Huguenots.

Just a bit farther north-ish and you are in Gorges du Tarn territory, a dramatic, fine place to be, as long as you aren't in a hurry. Get yourself stuck behind a truck on these narrow lanes and you're waiting a while indeed. I'll admit to having had a touch of vertigo. Some people welcome the slowness, if not the trucks. In a couple of weeks the transhumance will be underway, slowing things down even more, as goats and sheep in the thousands head to summer pastures well above the hotter lowlands.

As you reach the Gorges du Tarn, you also pass Ispagnac, a little village girded by picturesque low-scale orchards and known for its cherries and strawberries. This is where they still have communal meals on long tables in front of the medieval church, under the sibilant, swooping circles made by dozens of swallows. Just earlier this month, they enjoyed the annual tête de veau.

The local roofs are eye-catching with their roughly-shaped slate tiles, unknown in the lowlands, where rounded terre cuite rules the day.

I think I could fall in love with a mountain place on the strength of that sort of roof alone, warm and smooth in the spring light.

The roses are in evidence everywhere--and they have a rich scent.

But the perfume that really drew me to the mountains in the first place came from two sorts of local broom.

There is the more common type (cytisus scoparius), which grows rather sparsely around my house, and is considered a nuisance plant in some countries (despite its herbal and practical uses). But there is also what is called by some Provence broom (cytisus oromediterraneus), which hugs the ground more closely and can cover entire flanks of mountains in the Parc. The scent is intoxicating, almost a sort of golden jasmine of the mountains. At this time of year, the air is swollen with that perfume. People drive with their windows and nostrils wide open to take it all in.

I know I did.

Going south.

2011-05-26T00:51:00.002+02:00

Oh, life's so hard: this was the view from the breakfast table over the weekend. A friend's house, on the Catalonian Costa Brava, due south of the border (three hours drive from Montpellier), well north of Barcelona. Intensely restful, transparent waters, good times. I won't even get into how juicy sweet this melon was.

I will say that now, while it's still spring, is really truly the best of times to visit this rugged bit of Spain. Now, before you're crushed under the collective weight of the relentless sun--and summer visitors. This said, even in the sardine can that Spanish tourist season often becomes, the northern end of the Costa Brava remains appealingly full of simple pleasures. As the budget flight-enabling Girona airport was relatively recently built, the coast was never ruinously over-developed--nor was it converted into a teenage rendezvous for disco trance and debauchery. That bit of extra distance between the northern bit and Barcelona helped as well...

You can come to the Costa Brava to follow in the traces of Chagall, Picasso and native son Dali. You can come for for the kiting, kayaking and golfing. You can come for the secluded coves and nude beaches. Or you can come for the history.

Minutiously restored, medieval Pals is an inland village that was once a port town, this before silting permanently altered the coastline, as also occurred in France's Aigues-Mortes. While worth wandering in the off-season, I've been warned by the locals that Pals becomes tour-bus central come summertime. It's not hard to see why.

I found this little shop in Pals, a brief paean to Spanish foods. And don't even get me started on that bellota ham.

In the Gothic church, if you should so desire, you can get your prayer candle...from an automated dispenser.

That was the first time I'd seen that anywhere, let alone someplace with medieval origins.

The cobblestone paths and steps are ideal for casual strolling, and the inhabitants make it look less mineral with heaps of plants, their flowers tumbleing from balconies and hanging deep and long from windows.

The zoning laws here are thankfully strict. It remains all sunsoaked, golden and ageless as result. If I had more than a weekend (darn educational system with its rules!), we would have done more exploring--at the very least in the nearby walled village of Peretallada, apparently just as exquisitely medieval and also built on and of stone.

But, really, a family weekend at a beach house on the coast really must involve a bit of beach, yes?

The summer sun seemed to have set up shop.

We wandered, we ate, the adults drank too many cortados, potent Spanish version of a noisette, or expresso with just a bit of milk. In my over-caffeinated, near ecstatic state, I decided my favorite beach (we explored three) was definitely ultra-cosy little Tamariu.

You come to Spain not only for nature or history or even food, but for the people themselves, who in some ways differ markedly from their (often cynical) French neighbors. They are certainly distinct from the reticent, modest Protestant Cevenols. This too was a breath of fresh air.

The rest of the weekend we played.

And there might have been some crema catalana-flavored ice cream at the farmer's market, too. What, you say you've never tried to make this flan, custard cousin to crème brulée? Do something about this, pronto. It'll help bring sunny Catalunya to your own table.

Traditional Crema Catalana

Serves four.

6 egg yolks
200g sugar
3/4 liter milk
1 cinnamon stick
1 large strip of fresh, organic lemon peel
3 tablespoons cornstarch

Beat egg yolks until light and smooth, then whisk in three-fourths of the sugar. Bring milk--with cinnamon stick and lemon peel--just to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Remove and strain into a bowl. Whisk most of the milk into egg mixture. Dissolve the cornflour in the remaining cold milk and add to egg mixture. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and return the pan to low heat, stirring constantly until it comes to a boil. Remove from heat and pour equal measures into four small heat-proof dishes (ideally ceramic cazuelas) and allow to come to room temperature before refrigerating. Just before serving, preheat the broiler. Sprinkle a bit of sugar on top each serving and caramelize by placing the dishes first in a ice and water-filled shallow pan and then briefly under a hot broiler. Remove as soon as the sugar has browned nicely. Enjoy...

There are flies in paradise.

2011-05-20T00:44:00.002+02:00

I can't get my heart to stay put.

I'm very much here, in my garden (update to follow, bien sur), but theres a shadow part of me off revisiting things, six time zones away. Because after the pleasures of Washington, D.C., you see, came a few truly big-city thrills: we took the train to New York City.

And I promise, New York City--for my purposes Manhattan--is an awful lot of fun with young-ish children. You too, can bring your tykes, have a reasonably cultural experience, and not lose your mind. Ladies and gentlemen, mothers and fathers, here are eight winning strategies:

1. Ride the Staten Island Ferry. Yes, Virginia, some things in NYC are still free. The kids have room to move, things to see--like a certain famous lady that was an outsized gift from France. And, hey, the kids're on a big boat. Each ride is a half-hour long, leaves from Battery Park (so the view of Lower Manhattan's top-notch). Once you get to Staten Island, you walk off, and then get back on again. Windbreakers are a pretty good idea.

2. Enjoy the view from the Empire State Building's 86th floor observatory. Having been before, I didn't actually go up; my daughter took the panoramic photo. Buy tickets ahead of time online (even day-of is fine), it'll reduce your time in queues. Prepare your children for time in queues. Bring pencil and paper to play tic-tac-toe while in queues. But do it in spite of the queues, because it's just plain cool to be up that high--metaphorically and in fact: again, bring a windbreaker.

3. Go native, take a break. If the weather's fine, grab some picnic fixings and head to a nearby park, where the tots can let off some steam and won't have to look both ways before springing forward. As of this printing, parks are still free. And there's a lot more on offer than 'just' Central Park if you find that too far away or too full. Some of them, like Fort Tryon Park (which contains the lovely Cloisters Museum) in upper Manhattan or Hudson River Park (midtown to lower), are a day's outing in and of themselves. These are parks with some jaw-droppingly gorgeous views.

4. Alright, I am so not a zoo kind of girl, so it feels odd to suggest this, but spend some time at the zoo. Not necessarily the well-regarded Bronx Zoo, but the (perhaps) more conveniently situated Central Park Zoo. Stroll through the park to reach the zoo if you have the time.

It's a small zoo (a plus for little ones and parents with limited patience), well-curated, with poetry and science sprinkled liberally throughout, and the animals still have room enough to hid away in their spaces. The polar bears and (reclusive) snow leopard were a particular hit, as were the exhibitionist seals...

5. Go to the MOMA. Yes, there is the Children's Museum of Manhattan and the Children's Museum of the Arts, but this is an art museum that will knock the socks off both the big and little people in your bunch. At the MOMA, there are made-for-kids gallery talks. There are workshops for four to eleven year olds that explore art techniques and ideas through hands-on practice. Remember to register in advance. And don't skip a browsing kind of wander through the museum shop, where kids can see and touch sublime (sometimes sublimely funny) design objects. Doing so was one of our highlights and prompted an interesting discussion about how objects are used and how they can be better designed...

6. Take them to an afternoon show. If you're ready and willing to splurge, a Broadway musical is a truly thrilling way to introduce them to live theater.

7. Take the subway. If you've the time and they're not too tired yet, take that (subway) train to Coney Island. Quick, before they tear down all the good old tat in the name of bland-ification. If you don't have the time, take that train to to the High Line instead. Section Two's nearly ready to open...

8. Stay with family. See, this makes everything else easy-peasy. If you've neither friend nor family in Manhattan, consider an apartment rental (they come in different price brackets!) for a decidedly more cosy, relaxed experience. Shopping at the local grocery, you'll get to pretend you're actually a local, and the kids can feel more grounded.

Just writing all those possibilities out makes me feel giddy, but the garden here in France is doing everything it can to seduce me. Balmy breezes, saturated color, birds all a'twitter (and woodpeckers a'knocking), the bullfrogs in chorus, the works.

With every year, I'm loving roses more (and resenting them less for their high-maintenance aphid and disease magnet tendencies). Aren't these ones lovely? They're now blossoming in the garden of my 78 year old friend and fellow choir member, an unreconstructed bundle of sass, wit and wisdom. She has a lovely little space she putters in every day, kept company by her donkey...I'll put up some pictures of my own roses in the coming days.

And--news flash--this just in at our place: strawberries. In bloom.

And in fruit. Sweet Jesus, are these good. Little, and all the more succulent for it.

We're already eating garden salads.

And the tomatoes are under construction.

A certain kind of heaven, yes? But there's always something, and in our case right now it's flies. An unreasonable, crazy-making amount of the buggers. Glomming onto any warm surface--window, car seat et al. They are everywhere, and it embarasses me. It makes me do ugly desperate things, like hang sticky tape in my otherwise pleasant kitchen, where I stand around with friends and pretend I don't hear the periodic buzzing from stuck-fast flies.

Lacking a definitive solution, the most effective distraction technique/escape for me is to mull over recipes. And I have just the one in mind for if you have unsolvable issues of your own, because while in Manhattan, we happened to have a most delicious Venezuelan meal while staying with family...

According to my brother-in-law, absolutely everybody knows how to make arepas in Venezuela. He learned how from his grandmother. Photo caveat: Venezuelans normally only use HAN brand fine-ground white cornflour, but he had to use a blend of white and yellow, which resulted in somewhat denser cakes. He sliced the finished hot little corn cakes like a pita and stuffed them with shredded beef which had been slow-cooking much of the day, then blended with chopped red peppers, onions and super-secret spices. So. Good.

Almost makes me forget about the flies.

Venezuelan-style Arepas

Makes six arepas, to be filled with shredded meats, scrambled eggs and cheese, black beans...

2 cups white, fine-ground corn flour (Harina PAN brand flour if possible)

2 cups of water

pinch of salt

Pour flour and pinch salt into a medium sized bowl and mix with hands. Add water and combine with your hands until mixture is thoroughly and evenly blended, adding more flour or water as necessary. The dough should form a ball easily, with no major cracks.

Take a small handful of dough and form a ball. Patting and turning it, like a kid busy with Playdough. The smooth, finished disk should be about one centimeter (half an inch) thick and about six to eight centimeters in diameter (3-4 inches). Continue to make disks with the remaining dough until there is none left.

You can keep any leftover dough wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for three to four days.

Preheat oven 110C (225F). Heat a teaspoon of oil in a heavy frying pan over medium heat. Place several arepas in the pan. For the desired crunchy crust, keep the heat at medium. Once browned, about five minutes, turn them over and cook the other side until browned as well.

Once arepas are nicely browned, slide them into the oven, near the top, for about 15-20 minutes, depending on the oven. You'll know they're ready by tapping them with a knife: they should sound hollow.

Best when eaten right from the oven, the arepas should be sliced and filled with the toppings of your choice.

Americana.*

2011-05-14T23:03:00.003+02:00

My Dutch husband loves a lot of things about the US.

He loves the existence of newspaper dispensers, and their honor system. He loves that people, out on the street, open the machine's door--and take only one paper. This would be completely unworkable in Europe, according to him. Way too many Europeans would head off with the whole stack of papers, just for laughs. Or to sell. Or the dispensers themselves might be more or less artfully dispensed with.

There are a lot of things to love about America--one of them being how much more feasible it is to have decent Mexican food. For my first lunch stateside, a friend and I made our way to a little mom and pop place in Washington, D.C., that serves up made-from-scratch yumminess. Under those unassuming slices of radish topping the tortilla on the left are chunks of unbelievably tender, stewed lengua. To date, this is the only way I'll eat beef tongue, because it is so darn good.

We dawdled in the serene, oddly compelling courtyard at the National Portait Gallery, designed by Norman Foster. The courtyard made the annual list of Conde Nast Traveler's Seven Architectural Wonders of the World. Additional big plus: because the Gallery is located in Chinatown instead of on the Mall, it is a far more uncrowded place than one has a right to expect for a free, world-class museum. I loved the Edward Hopper paintings, and this portrait of poet Walt Whitman. 'Sing a song of myself' indeed. This younger museum-goer seemed more taken by the iconic photograph of Michael Jordan, though.

Raising American children overseas, I am sometimes struck by how little they know of American history, or of America period. I don't know why this startles me: I experienced that same expat distance myself as a child. So while this trip was primarily about spending time with family, it was also an excellent opportunity to explore America's past and present. With this in mind, we were off to the Museum of the American Indian. This, one of Washington's newest buildings, is a very cool space. And conveniently located next to the Air and Space Museum, wildly popular when I was a kid and, I can now confirm, still crazy-busy today.

To try something a bit more sedate, head sixteen miles hike due south of D.C. past Old Town Alexandria, and you can find yourself walking through the entrance of Mount Vernon, George Washington's well-loved home.

The guides are sweetly enthusiastic, and relate all those details you never stop to consider about daily life in the mid to late 1700s. Cooking was a different kettle of fish. There seemed to be a lot of roasting on the spit. There was a separate room for hanging meat (i.e. letting a fresh kill bleed out). And, by the way, I will never complain about doing the laundry again.

But, to be honest, within sight of the lazy Potomac River, ensconced in a porch chair, the less pleasant stuff (like, say, the fact that George was one of several slave-holding Founding Fathers, despite his rhetoric) can't help but recede. And you're left with contemplative admiration for the particularly fine-looking pecan trees in his back yard.

We missed Mount Vernon's Spring Wine Festival which starts this week, but the kids enjoyed seeing the farm anyway. I tried to avoid boasting that I could identify the beef breed and could artificially inseminate the females if I had to...Respect.

You may get a notion that I'm more carnivore than omnivore, but I had a number of cravings to answer to while stateside. And yes, one of them just happened to be BBQ. So I headed further south, dragging my family along with me.

Thanks to tips from the food-savvy, I knew where to head for hickory-smoked pork, superlative coleslaw and hand-sliced fries. If you're dubious about 'cue, its shady past (or my passion), you can learn more about it here. Or you can sample the all-American tastiness at Post 401 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, as I did.

There's more to do in Fredericksburg than scarf down slow-smoked meat, though. For starters, it's a college town (home to the University of Mary Washington) so there are the obligatory scads of quirky coffee shops.

Fredericksburg's Old Town is above quota as far as antiquing goes, and you can indulge your own passion for funky vinyl, charming (and over-priced) bait buckets, Civil War memorabilia...or the very American art of scrimshaw.

If you are feeling inexplicably peckish after that BBQ sandwich, you can sidle up to the lunch counter at Goolrick's Pharmacy, claimed to be the oldest continuously running soda fountain in America, with a 1912 start date. Get a strawberry malt for the kid in me...I mean, you.

You'll need to walk off that oversized malt shake, but there's more than enough charm to distract you.

A second walkabout may be in order after having a Goolrick's BLT sandwich. Fact: I cannot make myself a BLT in France without special ordering sliced bacon from a butcher. In France, lardons are the pork currency of the realm. Don't get me wrong. Lardons are wonderful, yes, but you simply cannot make a BLT with them. You can make a BLT salad with them though, and this goes a long way.

In fact, I think that recipe will have to fill in as today's recipe, because I haven't yet gotten the exact proportions on my mom's laborious and crab-intensive soup. While it's too early in the season and the crab traps are still on land, she pulled out some superb broth she'd frozen from last summer, when it was actually ho-hum to pull out a trap loaded with a dozen crabs after just a couple of hours sitting in the brackish baywater. Frankly, I don't think most of us can afford the amount of crab it takes to make such a rich soup. I will say there are tomatoes, celery, cilantro and Vietnamese noodles involved.

I miss my mom.

To be clear: I can heartily recommend escaping the bumper-to-bumper traffic of Northern Virginia for the splendid, Sunday-drive kind of countryside due south.

You could find yourself chatting up a bluegrass musician who's played in a band since 1951, including one performance for Elizabeth Taylor, back when she was married to former Virginia Senator John Warner. Said musician might just serenade you, warbling hillbilly gospel and Patsy Cline on the Appalachian dulcimer he made himself. That's when you'll learn that this instrument is the only one invented in the United States; the banjo's from Africa, or at least that's what the banjo-player told me.

After that, you'll follow the signs...

...and be back in time to taste dad's catch of the day: twenty-plus pounds of striped bass.

For dessert: watermelon flavored Hubba Bubba. Because the French don't have that, either.

* My apologies to those who wrote comments on this post. This post, along with all the original comments, managed to disappear completely AFTER being published. Unfortunately, Blogger (my blog publisher) was having problems and they removed people's posts to resolve it. Only they didn't restore mine or its comments. I had to reconstruct this all over again...

P.S. To taste more of Virginia's sounds, click here.

They're back, just as I'm leaving.

2011-04-22T23:23:00.000+02:00

I'm readying for a family trip as it is now spring break here in the south; just a matter now of finding the time to throw the right clothes in a suitcase, to water all the potted plants--and not just most, to give away the eggs, to close the heavy shutters...(I'll be back in the second week of May).

With still no rain in sight, they're raising the low water-table alarm on the radio but somehow the more seasoned plants aren't yet the worse for it.

This climbing rose's buds are smaller than the nail of my pinkie. In bloom, they open to the size of my thumbnail. The blossoming has begun, but once in full swing it becomes a delicate, slightly fluttery curtain.

The first irises of the season in my garden are these lushly purple ones, who colonized this valley well before we came along...

Even the shiny knoblets of baby figs have emerged, swaying in the fiercely un-spring light. The growth season is accelerating, and the sage in particular has the pedal to the medal. The bush below is already well in bloom, and I've clipped some of the blossoms and tossed them in our salads. I try to trim some herbs before they flower, to keep the plant focused on leaf growth and maximum flavor, espcially those that have bolting tendencies, like cilantro and basil. But that's later. Right now it's the sage and thyme. And what to do with all the cuttings?

I've hung lemon sage from the ceiling to dry, and the thyme is spread in a baking pan. Both can be used in hot winter infusions, with a dollop of honey, to soothe a sore throat. Some herb is set aside for cooking, of course, but a lot is given away.

Flavored oils are another way to make use of that first garden bounty. The oil is warmed (not too hot, or the oil can lose it's extra-virgin awesomeness, get cloudy and have a kind of cooked taste). The herbs are bruised with a mortar and pestle, and the two get to know one another over a week or two at room temperature in a sunny window. This time I added cracked coriander seeds to the thyme oil, and white peppercorns to the sage, but the herb alone can develop deeply and satisfyingly intense perfume. The oil can be used to flavor pastas, soups, as a marinade for meat or vegetables, even a few drops in the salad dressings can make a salad a touch more special. I make more than I can use, and exchange it with neighbors, who drop by with overflowing baskets of vegetables come summer. To make your own, ensure your herbs and seeds are bone-dry before adding to the bottle; this could mean rinsing them in the early morning after picking them, then bottling the oil only in the late afternoon, for example. It's best to keep these oils in the refrigerator if you have the space (because those herbs still contain potentially mold-promoting moisture). Ideally, you finish your oils within three or four months, before the flavors have faded.

We're a hop and a skip closer to summer: the swallows have returned. I know this because while I was bending over some savory sage shortbread today, two of them hurtled into the kitchen. Look at the long tail on this little fellow.

I'm still planning to freeze some walnut-sage pesto, but in the meantime, a Pélardon and sage shortbread cookie is just the thing to partner with a cool glass of white wine. And maybe sitting on the terrace will lure those rainclouds this way...

Biscuits apéro à la sauge (Savory Sage Shortbread)

Makes about 30 small cookies.

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup freshly, finely grated oldish goat cheese, like Pélardon (I used my Microplane)
3 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh sage leaves or 3 teaspoons dried sage (I've only ever used lemon sage, which is milder than regular sage)
1 tablespoon honey or brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch-thick pieces, room temperature
salt for garnish (fleur de sel or coarse salt)

Combine all ingredients but the butter in a food processor. Add chopped butter; using on/off turns, process until dough comes together. Mix as little as possible; over-mixing will result in too-crumbly shortbread. Divide the dough in half. Shape each dough piece into log, wrap in plastic wrap and chill until firm enough to slice, about an hour. Cover one of the logs with aluminum foil and pop in the freezer, for when last minute guests arrive.

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Slice the remaining dough log into 1/2 cm-thick rounds; place on sheet, sprinkle sparingly with salt. Bake until cookies are golden, with just-browned edges, about 25 minutes. Cool on racks.

The judgment.

2011-04-19T01:25:00.008+02:00

First there's the band, then there's the burning.

Actually, first there's the makeup. Mothers and fathers, dipping into trays of facepaint, turn a few classroomsful of tykes into shooting stars, black holes (!), astronauts, rocket ships and aliens. All the while, the drumbeats and singing grow more persistent and compelling as the musicians approach the school.

We just celebrated carnival this past weekend here, due to the vagaries of the French school holiday system. Next year, it'll be a month earlier. But this year we danced and threw confetti, made faces and took photos of our children under a June-worthy April sky. The theme was the universe, give or take a planet.

I was intially dubious about the little black holes, secretly pitying them in their dreary garb. With their dyed T-shirts ripped into long strands, they resembled depressed--perhaps even seasick--octopus. But of course their teacher had a plan. The five-year old black holes held hands with the stars and the astronauts, coiling their way through the crowd. Every time their teacher yelled "Big Bang!" they scattered in all directions, their costumes swirling away from their bodies. And then they would all return to orbit her beaming, painted face.

Confetti got everywhere. Some of the village matrons threw candy into the air. Everyone enjoyed the percussion, with the exception of my son the astronaut, who decided it was Too Much and that he definitely did not like dancing. But he went along anyway, solemn eyes, paper helmet and all.

Earlier in the week, it felt like high school again, only with a better soundtrack: we parents were creating the two and a half meter high alien, this year's unlucky Pétassou, which you can see here on the float, being hauled by tractor.

An Occitan (Langue d'Oc) word, Pétassou is derived from petaç, which means a strip of fabric used in piecework. In a few rather forgotten parts of the Cévennes, one can still find a designated village person who capers about at carnival time dressed as the petassou, fully disguised from head to toe and draped in colorful rags. This person, a sort of comical, teasing bogeyman, has special powers, as legend would have it, to cleanse the village of its year's worth of bad luck and accumulated sins. This rather pagan ritual has been celebrated--with all sorts of attendant symbolism--since at least the Middle Ages. Or, as a friend put it "depuis la nuit du temps" (since the night of time).

Today, in many parts of southern France, the ritual of Pétassou has evolved into something a bit more Guy Fawkesian in approach. An effigy is made, who represents all the things that went wrong with the world in the past year. The older children shout accusations, point fingers--and condemn him. This time, one girl yelled about having to leave to go to junior high. Another blamed the Pétassou for her father being in a wheelchair. The accusations can be highly specific or quite general. There was blaming over the war in Libya, the tsunami in Japan--and global warming. Regardless of the charge, the ruling was the same: burning, no chance for appeal. Next, the cardboard rockets and other costumes were dumped on the brush and branches, then the fire is lit. A Pétassou in effigy still feels pretty pagan.

After the bonfire, I tended the drinks table at the school cafeteria. Really, I should call it the bar. This was an experience to be filed in my "Only in France file": along with the organic juices and iced tea, I was serving whiskey cokes, wine, beer and eau jaune. At school. The last beverage is a simple cocktail, pastis on the rocks with a generous splash of water, which magically turns the clear amber alcohol creamily opaque.* It's an acquired taste, which many around here seem to have fully acquired. It also makes for limber dancing.

Le pastis, c'est comme les seins : un, c'est pas assez, et trois, c'est trop. (Pastis is like breasts: one isn't enough, and three is too much.) --Fernandel (vaudeville actor and singer from Marseille)

*If you're intrigued, make an eau jaune and add a bit of red Grenadine syrup, to make a cocktail Tomate. And let all your sins and disappointments be burned away, whether literally or figuratively.

Witchery, in and beyond salad.

2011-04-13T12:34:00.001+02:00

The plum and cherry trees have gone green, releasing their petals in impromptu, lavish showers that would make a wedding planner weep for joy. The wisteria has now picked up the slack.

Defying expectations, the rain clouds stay away. While it looks and smells like spring, it definitely feels like summer. Just a couple of days ago, my neighbor's thermometer read 30 C (86 F). In the flammable south of France, in weather like this, a mind turns to fire prevention. We have no lack of water, but our water pressure is not superb, and should there ever be a fire, we'd be very hard-pressed to provide the firefighters with the necessary fire-extinguishing quantities. Which is where this Monsieur comes in.

In the French countryside, no well is dug without a water dowser's sanction. This particular water witch has a sterling reputation, and charm to spare. Originally a healer with thirty year's experience, he has been finding water for the last twenty years. Apparently it is common for dowsers to have healing capabilities (the things you learn!). This Monsieur turned to water dowsing not too long after his name was published without his consent. Described as one of the 100 most skilled healers of France--you can now find that information online--he was besieged with visitors, a number of whom were sent by 'regular' doctors. He was busy from morning til night, laying hands on people who patiently queued to see him. He treated people for everything from the rather mundane, such as plantar's warts, to the more serious, like alleviating the side-effects of radiation therapy. He would even help people by telephone, like those with serious and not-so-serious burns.

He explained that it's simply about sensing magnetic energies. After a while, the work with people became too much for him, and he turned to water, which he found less demanding. To find water, he uses two copper rods, as well as two kinds of pendulums. He turns first in a circle with the pendulum with his arm outstretched to determine which direction to go, waiting for the pendulum to begin rotating. Once he has determined the direction to take, he heads off rather briskly, with his rods held horizontally parallel. (He stopped using forked branches after the wood kept scraping his palms once it 'responded' vigorously to the presence of water.) The metal rods turn in toward each other and cross once he passes over a source of water. Once the point of water is established, he determines the depth of the water using either his wood or his metal pendulum.

Freshly dug parsnip, carrot and salsify (for with the spring lamb roast).

It's a fascinating process to watch whether or not you are a skeptic. The way he holds the smooth, round rods makes it unfeasible to turn them by design. I know this from watching, but also because he had me--and my husband--try it for ourselves. It's very peculiar to feel the rods move on their own. With us, they didn't move with such assurance, but they very definitely moved, crossing over one another. He then set me up with the pendulum. Nothing happened. I couldn't get it to move one jot, no matter how hard I concentrated. Then he laid his steady hand on my arm, and the weighted pendulum started turning in a smooth, wide circle...

Of course he has a good sense of local geology, and his general knowledge must come into play, whether consciously or unconsciously. He doesn't believe any of this process is magic, but rather a tuning in to the natural magnetic properties of things. Watching him, though, you do get a glimpse into something that seems not entirely explainable, something that seems--at least a little bit--magic.

Kind of like this salad, which will amaze you with its lightness, and its lush, addictive blend of flavors. It will please you here and now, when you're looking for something both delicious and healthy, and well into the barbecue'n'picnic days. The interplay of crunch and juice, of mint, orange, fennel and mild, pre-soaked onion? Quite simply bewitching.

Salade de fenouil à l'orange (Minted Orange, Fennel and Red Onion Salad)*

Serves 6.

1 scant teaspoon whole coriander seeds
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
2 tablespoons Banyuls vinegar, Sherry vinegar or other good-quality white wine vinegar
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium red onion
1 large fennel bulb
3 large oranges (navel or other variety with few seeds)
1/4 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves

Heat a dry small heavy skillet over medium-high heat, then add and toast coriander seeds, stirring, until fragrant and a little darker, about two or three minutes. With a mortar and pestle, grind coriander to a coarse powder. In a jar, combine coriander and remaining dressing ingredients. (Dressing may be made in advance and chilled, covered).

Using a very sharp knife or mandoline, slice onion crosswise into paper-thin rings, then soak the sliced onion in a bowl of cold water, for about 15 minutes. Next, prepare the oranges: cut a slice from the top and bottom of each orange to expose the flesh, then place cut side down on a cutting board. From top to bottom, cut away peel and pith, then cut oranges crosswise into thin slices. While the onion is soaking, move on to the fennel: tremove any stalks from the fennel then slice bulb crosswise as thinly as possible. Finally, drain onion well.

Arrange orange, shaved fennel and onion on the serving plate and top with mint. Shake jar of dressing to emulsify then drizzle over salad.

* From Gourmet magazine, February 1995 issue.

That first scoop.

2011-04-06T00:55:00.002+02:00

I had to make a trip down the coast to Marseille to renew my daughter's passport. Really, it was very little duty and a whole lot of pleasure. The weather played along, so we had the top down and I turned up the (freshly downloaded) songs I'd listened to when I was about ten years old, and we both sang the refrains at the top of our lungs. Safety Dance, anyone?

We had to come during the consulate's opening hours, which meant playing hookie from school. Luckily, a lovely friend generously invited us to bunk at her place (that first image is taken from her terrace, and my daughter took the second image).

Once the regulation ID photos were taken at the photo shop, the hand raised ("do you solemnly swear...") and the papers signed, we were free to wander the city. Said wandering of course involved a look-see of the Vieux Port, where locals come daily to buy their bouillabaisse ingredients. I'm just too soft: the ornately, intricately colored octopus with their ageless, staring eyes made me sad.

After lunch at Le café des épices (at 4 rue du Lacydon, right next to the Vieux Port), which continues to offer a reliable, refined meal, we had the rest of the afternoon wide open.

We decided to climb up into the neighborhood called le Panier, or Basket. Think of all that climbing you do to get up into Paris' Montmartre. Same thing in Marseille's Panier. And same working-class village kind of feel. In the middle of the Panier is the 17th century edifice built for the city's very poorest, La Vieille Charité. The four-story hospice buildings encircle a serenely baroque chapel with an egg-shaped dome, considered one of Marseille native Pierre Puget's masterworks.

I think we could have lingered there all afternoon. We virtually had the place to ourselves. Everything glowed and time just fell away.

Since renovated by Le Corbusier, the tranquil hospice now houses a number of municipal museums, including the museum of Mediterranean archeology. But instead of visiting the museums, we had ice-cream cones at the cafe in the square, it was that warm. Though the nights are still cool, it's been ice cream weather here at home, too. I've even caught myself sweating in the garden--in my summer gear.

This was a providential excuse for cracking open David Lebovitz' encyclopedia of ice cream, sorbet and granita recipes, The Perfect Scoop. As I'm a fiddler, I did make some modifications to his green tea ice cream, one of which was a handful of chopped dark chocolate. Enjoy! (And Delana, I promise the next recipe'll be light as a feather, in keeping with swimsuit season...)

Glace au thé vert et chocolat (Green Tea and Chocolate Ice Cream)

adapted from David Lebovitz

Doesn't serve nearly as many as you'd think.

1 cup (250 ml) milk

3/4 cup (150 g) sugar

pinch of salt

2 cups (500 ml) heavy cream

5 teaspoons high-quality matcha (green tea powder)

5 egg yolks

1/2 cup (100 g) dark chocolate, fairly finely chopped

Warm the milk in a saucepan with the sugar and salt. Pour some of the cream into a bowl, whisk in the matcha thoroughly, then add the remaining cream. Place a fine strainer on the bowl and set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Continuing to whisk, slowly pour in the warmed milk mixture. Pour the egg and milk mixture back into the saucepan.

Over medium heat, reheat the egg and milk mixture, stirring and scraping constantly with a heatproof spatula until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. The custard is ready when you can run a finger across the spatula and you can see the trail your finger leaves. Pour the finished custard through the strainer into the cream and matcha mixture. Whisk the strained mixture very vigorously to dissolve the matcha. This can be difficult, but you can always strain the mixture again if necessary. Chill the mixture completely in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker following the manufacturer's instructions.

Oldie but goodie.

2011-03-27T21:45:00.001+02:00

Along with spring come the showers.

Today's rain is a break from the end-of-winter pruning I'd left until almost too late, the first, easy weeding, the carrying out of the potted plants that wintered in the little glass greenhouse. We lolled over a terrace lunch yesterday, time itself gone elastic in the overbright sun.

This type of weather, where everyone and the dog simply linger, reminds me how I've always liked to make meals that provide a maximum of flavor with a minimum of effort--all the better to enjoy that aforementioned lingering. With that in mind, I once again made the first properly 'fancy' dessert I ever learned. Over the years, I've varied and added to the spices in this recipe for novelty, reduced the sweetness, served it in single portions and as one whole tart. The ingredient list is blissfully short, but it is a dish that can't help but impress. Fully ripe bananas, a smidge of cold butter, a touch of (preferably not stale) spices and a jaunty marmalade for complexity--all come together for a dish that is significantly greater than the sum of its parts. Having preheated the stove, I assemble the tart before serving the cheese course. Preparation takes perhaps five minutes. Maximum. The only potential splurge is the ready-made puff pastry, or pâte feuilletée upon which all those ingredients rest (though here a puff pastry crust's just under 2.50 euros, give or take). Of course you could make your own puff pastry, but in those earlier days I never would have. Now, I just don't make the time, given the general quality of store-bought puff pastry, the gardening, and the rest of the things life brings.

Tarte fine à la banane (Banana Tart)

1 round of (pre-made) puff pastry, or pâte feuilletée*
3 fully ripe bananas, sliced diagonally
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 scant teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 scant teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 scant teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon cold butter, cut into bits

3 tablespoons citrus marmalade (lemon/lime, or orange)**

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.
Place the rolled out dough on a baking sheet lined with baking paper (aka parchment). Arrange the banana slices casually on the round, leaving a wide margin for the crust's edge. In a small bowl combine the sugar and spices. Using your fingers, sprinkle the mixture evenly over the bananas. Dot the bananas evenly with the bits of butter and slide the tart into the preheated oven. Tart should bake for about 30 minutes, or until the pastry is nicely browned.

While the tart is baking, in a small saucepan melt the marmalade, stirring occasionally, remove any bits of citrus zest. Remove tart from the oven, brush the tops of the banana slices with marmalade, and serve.

* In France, pâte feuilletée Trésor de Grand Mère HERTA is widely available and reliably good. Outside of France, try to find a product made with butter if you can.

** If using storebought marmalade: in France, you can find Rose's Lemon & Lime Marmalade, which is nice; in Holland, I used Tiptree/Wilkin & Sons, which I prefer.

Vernal color.

2011-03-22T14:08:00.007+01:00

Across the little valley from our house, this hillside doesn't exactly jump up and down and bugle Spring now, does it? The early morning air's still crisp here, and the evenings no warmer for that enormous perigee moon we got to admire over the weekend. (Did you know we'll have to wait another 20-some years for another one like it?)

And yet, and yet. That pale yellow in the foreground is actually brand-spanking new. Closer to hand, the signs are everywhere. Our Marans hen Blackie ended her dead-of-winter break from egg-laying yesterday with a pointy flourish.

The neighbor's ewes, fatly, exuberantly pregnant, are clearly enjoying the spate of bright and mild weather. Another week or so and they'll be nuzzling knock-kneed sheeplets.

The goats have just had their babies (you can still see the remnant umbilical cord hanging from the one baby's belly). My own babies got their turn at feeding; perhaps only in France does a runty goat kid get fed from a wine bottle...

My kids have been only too pleased to throw caution--and their coats--to the wind. The garden is doing much the same. In the little orchard, one of the apple trees is already a-flutter with a million white blossoms. The lone, untamed forsythia, grape hyacinths, primroses, rosemary, and daffodils are open wide to the bright days and returning birds. There's even a ground-hugging, pale blue haze in the fields, where the wild oregano and thyme're in full song. And this, here below, is the flowering quince--in bud a couple of weeks ago--now gone mad with color.

Meanwhile, as clear as a bell tolling and in far more sustained tones, the violets have been signaling an end to winter's worst. You can see thickly massed clusters of them across the fields and under the skeletal trees. With two willing children and an open-ended Sunday morning (after the dew's dried and before high noon, to capture the most of their fugitive scent) you can pick and pick these little beauties--and still have more left to admire. NB: I'm no expert, but I believe these are common wild violets, as opposed to sweet violets, which have a more floral fragrance.

If you can pick three full cups worth of these, you can make a delicately scented flower jelly with the wildest, most jewelly of colors. Forget any unfortunate experience with violet-flavored food or drink you may have had. Almost without a doubt those were made using over-the-top synthetic violet flavoring. Food--or kirs--flavored with real essence of violet shouldn't taste like you've eaten Grandma's guest soap. Real violet tastes of something more primal, green, a something fleeting that somehow manages to linger evocatively on the tongue.

As of this weekend, I've discovered that over a mascarpone-slathered slice of brioche toast, there's nothing finer than a dollop of this particular jelly. (In this season, anyway. Come summer, my vote's for little wild strawberries...) But whether you have it over a scone, a baguette, or challah bread, deepen the ethereal violet fragrance by drinking a violet-scented tea. I brought back a black tea from the Cha Yuan teashop in Lyon. It is flavored with violets, roses, orange blossoms, and a touch of caramel, they named it 'Composition of the Sky' and it is Really Very Good.

After you or your children (yay, child labor!) have painstakingly gathered all those de-stemmed blossoms, you'll be a bit disappointed to watch them collapse to less than half their space under the steaming hot water. Fret not, seal the pot: they give and give as they're steeped. By morning there's a murky, midnight blue water to be strained from the exhausted clump of flowers.

This liquid is blended with pectin and boiled just enough to ensure proper jelling--the flavor is too easily cooked away. (I'd actually wanted to try this with a no-cook pectin, only I couldn't find any at my little supermarket.) Likewise, go easy on lemon or citric acid, unless you want lemon jelly with a touch of violet.

I'll admit, this is slightly finicky work, but you're repaid in spades: in the pan, that murky color magically changes with the addition of lemon/citric acid to something so splendid the sight alone makes it all worthwhile.

And you, you get to taste the first jelly of spring.

Gelée de violettes (Violet Jelly)

Makes about 4 small jars.

4 cups untreated, cleaned violet flowers, bitter stems removed
3 cups water
40 g pectin (I used Alsa Vitpris, a dry, no-sugar, pectin/citric acid blend*)
4 cups sugar
coffee filter

Heap violets in a mason jar. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil and pour over the flowers. Close the jar tightly and allow to steep at room temperature overnight or at least 10 hours.

The following day, sterilize four or five (to be safe) smaller glass jars and their lids in boiling water for ten to fifteen minutes in a large pasta pot. Remove the pots and lids using tongs and allow them to dry upside-down on a fresh paper towel.

Strain infusion using a coffee filter (or a very fine strainer). Resist the impulse to press down on the violets, as this results in a cloudy jelly. In a very large saucepan, combine the violet infusion and pectin until very nearly dissolved. Bring this mixture to a full boil. Add the 4 cups sugar. Stir and bring once again to a full rolling boil for one minute--not a second under, not too many over. Undercooking will result in a runny jelly, while overcooking will destroy the delicate flavor of the violets.

Remove pan from heat. Thoroughly skim off the foam. Ladle jelly into the hot, sterile jars. Close lids tightly, turn upside-down and allow to cool fully at room temperature.

* If your pectin contains no citric acid, you'll need to add your own to help the jelly "set": a squeezed half-lemon should do.

Finding your way home.

2011-03-14T16:09:00.003+01:00

Sometimes four chickens, a rabbit, two goldfish and a Weimaraner named Dakar aren't enough.

Years ago, I made a decision to pack up and move far away from pretty much everyone I knew. It wasn't that astonishing, in some ways I was just following in the footsteps of my wandering parents. As a child, I spent a good deal of time moving, back before fax machines--let alone the Internet--even existed, when mobile phones were closer to science fiction than reality. Seems Neolithic now: I remember letters tooks weeks to reach their destinations, and phone calls (at least from where we were in Africa) were ridiculously expensive. I think somebody in the family had to die, or a gasoline explosion had to happen--in our own back yard--for us to use the telephone to call back to the US. So my parents were by necessity (and eventually habit) less connected to family than I can be today.

Mistletoe, found in Burgundy and further north, taking over a tree.

Bless whoever came up with Skype; what a windfall for us nomadic types! I’m especially glad for my kids, who would otherwise see their American grandparents far too rarely. And while technology goes a long way, it doesn't go quite the distance for young'uns. Luckily, they are able to see their Dutch grandmother more often, usually every couple of months, but still. I can't get enough of that interaction between the old and the young.

It helps so much to have a few good friends, both for me and the kids; here in France, two people have really made a particular difference. Older friends, they have taken on the role of Mamie and Papie to the kids. They lavish them with attention, and have really become the French grandparents my two didn’t realize they had. They live in Bourgogne, and treat any time we come to visit as a virtually uninterrupted feast from our arrival to the last frantic waves goodbye. Mamie’s food is always unpretentious, flavorful and filling.

One of the dishes we adore (especially with a cracking fresh green salad) is this thin version of a Franche-Comté classic, the tarte au Comté. The tart is made with what is one of the most popular cheeses in France. As Papie grew up in a cheese shop, he could describe to the kids in great detail the arduously physical process of making Comté. A wheel of Comté tips the scales at about 40 kilos and is about 50 cm in diameter, and 5 cm high. It takes about 500 liters of raw milk to make one single wheel of Comté. The milk can only come from montbéliarde or simmental française cows who have one hectare of fresh mountain pasture per animal.

Despite all the work involved (or maybe because of), this is a cheese often enjoyed prepared in dishes well beyond the cheese platter. One of these days, for example, I will definitely get around to making a certain Soufflé au Comté I've bookmarked. Until then, it's Mamie's tart for us all, big and small.

Tarte au Comté (Savory Comté Cheese Tart)

Serves 8 as a starter.

1 pâte brisée crust, rolled out and refrigerated*
3 eggs
2 cups (250 g) Comté cheese, grated
1 cup (25 cl) thick crème fraîche**
1/3 cup (10 cl) milk
freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 400F/200C.

Fit the crust into a pizza pan: as the filling is on the thin side, you don't need much height on the sides. Refrigerate until ready for use.

Beat the eggs in a bowl, and add the grated Comté, and crème fraîche. Season with salt and a generous pinch or so of fresh-ground pepper and nutmeg. Pour the topping onto the crust and bake until lightly browned, about 45 minutes.

* There are a lot of versions of pâte brisée out there, but here's a good tutorial, and here's another recipe I also like, for a very manageable crust.
** I know, I know, this isn't diet food. Moderation in everything, people, including portion sizes! If you can't easily find crème fraîche where you live, you can easily make your own.

It's pretty much all about the food.

2011-03-10T01:02:00.009+01:00

I'm home again, with a (borrowed) camera full of fine, city memories, of the kinds of spaces and things you just don't stumble upon in the countryside. Sure, we have cheese, just not so many bloomin' kinds, and certainly not a Glendal Porter from Ireland, made using, you guessed it, porter beer, and looking more like a marble imitation of a cheese wedge than the real, flavorsome thing. (I can confirm, it is seriously tasty, albeit a distinctly different, sweeter kind of Cheddar.)

I've been to Lyon before, actually more than once. It's one of those places within fairly easy reach of my back 'o' beyond home, and some of my favorite people make Lyon their home. So when I can get a TGV ticket for less than twenty euros, it's hard to resist.

As this part of France is in the middle of spring break, the city was full of children, big and small, which both livened up and softened the street life a notch.

The weather was superb, further contributing to general friendliness and ease. Thus, despite my clingy cold virus, I wrapped well, headed out and mingled.

This is the public, neighborhood school my friend's daughter attends.

Here's a detail of the cast iron door, including mail slot. With such a grand old exterior, you can't help but imagine that wonderful kinds of learning take place inside...

I ranged further afield this visit. In the Croix-Rousse, a neighborhood up on a plateau overlooking the rest of Lyon, you can find some very large-scale murals, like the one below (more than 1200 square meters) called the mur des canuts, or wall of the silk workers. In the 19th century, heyday of textiles, the Lyon canuts were clustered in the Croix-Rousse, then a separate village boasting a population of about 40,000 master workers by mid-century. Lyon was the first industrialized city of France, and the 120,000 plus workers struggled--with eighteen hour workdays--until the canuts finally revolted, which eventually led to ground-breaking changes.

Their working conditions are a pretty far cry from today's legally imposed 35 workhours per week.

There are a number of museums where I could have learned much more about the history of the textile industry, but my heart wasn't in it. The sunlight was far too alluring and being outside just felt too good.

Beyond those old churches, the city parks, the squares, there is all that (absolutely vital!) window-shopping to be done. The French call that faire du lèche-vitrines; literally, to do some window-licking.

In what is dubbed the gastronomic capital of France, you really do find yourself licking your chops, at the very least: all those delicacies, so artfully placed on display...

I spent some time exploring the 6th arrondissement, and boy do I have an address for you: le 126, rue de Sèze. Go to Le 126 for lunch or dinner if you possibly can. Yes, that's a firm but friendly order.

After working in some of the better kitchens under lauded chefs (le Bec, Gagnaire and the like), Mathieu Rostaing-Tayard went rogue: started a small place of his own, with a kitchen he describes as "big enough to turn around in"--under three square meters--where he turns out seasonal dishes that are high on daring taste pairings and big in both portion and flavor.

My lentil soup starter had fat slivers of foie gras, crunchy baby shrimp--and raw red onion. The main course was slow-braised veal on a bed of toasted spelt with both sweet braised and raw shaved fennel, as well as a defining anchovy butter, which gave the comfort dish real zing. Dessert was a very pink blood orange sorbet over pistachio cakelets and warm, gently honeyed, candied carrot, all judiciously sprinkled with the tiniest bits of orange rind and something else unindentifiable but certifiably delicious. All this for a bare twenty euros. Thinking back to those tastes and textures, it's a certain steal. The wine list looked good and is praised by the august Gault-Millau, among others. I avoided alcohol, as I was (am!) still under the influence of that damnably persistent cold.

That's the chef there, on the left. Yes, Mathieu's as fresh as he looks: 27. I hope my surprise didn't show overmuch when I met him. If you're up to practicing your French and having a giggle, you can watch him online, at 23--eons ago!--transforming the fairly random contents of a generic twenty-something's kitchen cupboard (kid's cocoa cereal, candy bar, pickles...) into a pretty intriguing three course meal.

Smoked salmon in dill on left, roe pouches on right.

The meal I had at le 126 only stoked my already-strong intent to visit the Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, in the 3rd arrondissement. Going to the Halles could be described as a pilgrimage to a culinary temple...Open from Tuesday to Sunday, this covered market really does have the very best of the best. Absolutely impossible not to gawk as you wander among the 60-some sellers. Three Michelin star-wielding Paul Bocuse must be pleased with his haute namesake.

In fact, I was slow to put this piece together because I'd taken far too many pretty pictures of food (finished and unfinished) at the Halles. And it was so hard to reject all those images of dazzling foods.

For example, at the Halles there's a shop called Ciao Ciao that specializes in Italian delicacies. Logical enough. But we're talking the most spectacular selection I have ever seen in France. Real burata cheeses, one truffled, a half-dozen pecorino sheep cheeses, one having been cured and wrapped in hay, and well, if I go on any more I'll end up posting some of those photos too, and that might be a bit much on the photo front. So.

These cheeses here? Just a minuscule fraction of the choices on display.

Parenthetically, if you find yourself in Lyon anywhere between the first of January and Mardi Gras, you shouldn't forego a taste of fried bugnes. There are two kinds, the moelleuses (tender) and the craquantes (crispy). My money's definitely on the craquantes, shown below.

If you want something special and hands-on, culinarily speaking, consider treating yourself to a cooking class at the Halles with another Michelin-starred chef, Philippe Lechat.

Among other dishes, we made briefly-baked scallops with hazelnut butter caps in a pumpkin emulsion drizzled with taste-making, cold-pressed pistachio oil. I brought some of that amazing oil home with me; impossible not to.

Dessert was diced, caramelized apple with toasted gingerbread croutons and coconut espuma (foam), topped with a glaze of pan-reduced vinaigre de miel, or honey vinegar. Complicated, overblown descriptions, maybe. Simply delicious, definitely. Of course we ate what we made...During the process, he volunteered cooking tricks of the trade, and taste combinations for across the seasons, using the techniques we'd learned. All of this was in French, bien sûr.

I don't know how Lyon would feel as a non-French-speaking visitor to Lyon. I imagine that as anywhere else, knowing the language does go a long way toward enhancing a visit. But even if French doesn't roll off your tongue, there's certainly enough to see, taste, touch and smell. And beyond the food, Lyon remains a fun, accessible city, with an excellent public transport system that keeps everything human-scale.

As for having such incredible, rich foods within easy reach and still staying svelte the way French women seem to, well, I have a little theory.

In Old Lyon, so many of the buildings are historical monuments, where lifts can't be installed. The residents, like my girlfriend, climb flights and flights of ancient stairs, with all their groceries, their babies, their briefcases and their XXL Louis Vuitton satchels. Every single day of the week, at least twice daily.

It's the built-in, original Stairmastaire. Have mercy, was I ever footsore at the end of each day. Happy, but footsore.

Why I'm not here.

2011-03-01T21:44:00.002+01:00

I place nearly all the blame on Banff.

(Photo: World Tourism Place)

More than a decade ago, I was here. And yes, I can confirm, it really is that absurdly beautiful. My boyfriend, who would eventually become my husband, had been invited, and I got to tag along. It was winter, which meant skiing. Did I mind? Nooo. Could I ski? Sure, I mean, the basics. A little. (Not too much chance of that living in Africa, I neglected to add.) It was just the four of us, and since the Canadians and my boyfriend were experienced skiers, it was tactfully suggested that I take a refresher course to begin with. And off they went to the black diamonds, whatever those were.

Since I could ski, the basics, a little, the ski instructor evaluating my apparently killer moves on the bunny slope decided to promote me to the class above beginner. My weakly bleated protests--but I'm happy here!--were cheerfully ignored. You'll be fine! So off we non-beginners went, up the mountain, past the bunny slope beginners. And up, still higher, on the swaying chairlift. I looked down happily at the tops of the pine trees, the glinting snow, the tracks left by the wild animals. I tried to be in the moment. Then I tried to remember the poster that showed how to get off the lift. I asked the person sitting next to me. Her advice and my will proved lacking: I got off but it was by no means the standard exit, unless you call eating snow standard. Once standing/sliding on my skis again, I took one look downhill, and my stomach lurched ominously. Most of my internal organs went off to hide in my new, extra-thick socks.

The chairlift had dropped us off at a heinously precipitous point, where the well-worn, very narrow trail hugs the mountain until it finally widens out again--and swoops downward. I only made it through that narrow part by staring very, very hard to my left at the rising mountain, and practicing some hard-core denial. I can testify fear of heights can appear quite suddenly at any age.

The group ski instructor had gone ahead, impossibly far down, and we were to join him. No one was ready for it. Everyone was so polite. After you. No, please, after you! Finally there were three. And then there was just me.

I simply could not move forward. The instructor waved at me. I waved back, limply. It was too far to yell, so finally he left to follow the rest of the class, and I was on my own. I hoisted my legs up to get those mile-long skis pointed in the right direction (the chairlift! home! my bed!). However, the right direction included passing that steep drop-off. My entire body locked up with the first glance. Preternaturally vivid images of me defying the laws of nature, flying out into the air, and returning in a half-circle to hit the mountain-splat! ran in a continuous mental loop. I finally got moving by taking off the skis, so that I wasn't sliding anymore, and was thus more firmly attached to the ground. I crept back, whispered to the raised eyebrows of the lift operator that I needed to get down the hill, on his machine, without wearing skis. He had to stop the chairs for me, and then I got to have my ride of shame, with all the good folks going up the hill on the chairlift rubbernecking at the sunglasses-wearing fool going down the hill on the chairlift. Holding her skis.

When I finally got down to where I was to meet the others, my legs shook. For an hour. But I had time to recover, and when they finally swooshed toward me in a blaze of flying snow and adrenaline and breathlessly said, How'd it go? I chirped, Fine! Good! Once in the privacy of our room, I melted into a quivering, snotty-nosed mess. Buzz-kill, even if we did have a corner fireplace, little carved moose on the mantel and radiant heating under the slate floors.

(Photo: Discover Holidays CA)

We later had drinks here, at the Fairmount, very posh, and I was all chatty to avoid the more obvious questions. And really, Banff is full of charm, with some surprisingly top-shelf Japanese restaurants to boot (they get a good number of Japanese tourists).

I hear the skiing's wonderful.

It hasn't gotten any better for me since then, though not for lack of trying. [Insert various images of me struggling downhill here]. This is why I'm on my own and packing. My fearless children and husband are off skiing, and I get to have some me time.

Okay, add a few years on the girl (not that many!), subtract the hotel (I'm apartment-sitting), eliminate the petit café avec le beau gosse (husband might not be impressed), and change the city.

I'm taking the train to Lyon.

Lemon springs eternal.

2011-02-27T21:12:00.006+01:00

Remember last April, when my daughter and I were candying violets? The violets are once again everywhere. The garden doesn't keep a calendar, it feels what it feels, and right now, here, it's all about the warming touch of the sun and a breeze that could be described as nearly balmy.

Seems hardly believable to see the first signs of spring on the tail end of grim February, but the garden appears to be as ready for the close of winter as I am. The leaf buds, beginnings of flowers and general greenness are spreading like a virus. (I myself have been coughing my way into my third week of a cold. Isn't it lovely how children share everything, even their school-incubated, upper respiratory messes?)

Even if I'm dragging, there is enormous solace in the bright light and lengthening days. I think our rabbit and chickens, who live outdoors, would absolutely agree. As the hens are still laying, the kids collect three eggs a day, and I'm on permanent watch for good egg recipes.

Unfortunately, there's otherwise nothing of great interest in my garden or at the farmer's market, if you don't count root vegetables.

Except. Nearly forgotten in my little orangeraie, the citrus trees have wintered, and they haven't been idle. At this very moment, my Meyer lemon treelet is draped in sun-drenched fruit, as is my regular lemon tree. I also happened to have a couple of Bergamot oranges in the fruit bowl...

So here's my quantitative reasoning:
Eggs + lemons + almost spring-like weather = the perfect time to make lemon curd.

I wish I'd known to send a Valentine to David Lebovitz, blogging pastry chef and author extraordinaire. He so deserves it. You see--thanks to observant reader Nadège--I tried his lemon bar recipe, and I just haven't been able to stop making it. It involves using the entire lemon, rind and all, to get a lemon bar with a gorgeously complex, mouth-filling pucker and richness. It is such an excellent way to make a lemon sing. I've tweaked the recipe a bit: I brown the butter that goes in the crispy crust to really amplify its savor, and I've also upped the lemon factor. I find one Bergamot orange and one standard lemon work best, though I received praise for the Meyer and regular lemon combo as well. I know, a lemon bar isn't a traditionally French recipe per se, but really, it's just a "fun-size" tarte au citron, n'est-ce pas?

Just like my kids--and David--I like to share. I'll keep my cold, but you can have the recipe.

Barres au citron (Lemon Bars, adapted from the recipe by David Lebovitz)

Makes one 20 cm/8 inch pan, or about 16 bars.

140g (1 cup) flour
50g (¼ cup) sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
115g (8 tablespoons) browned butter (a.k.a. beurre noisette)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 lemons, organic (1 regular + 1 Bergamot/Meyer...)
200g (1 cup) sugar, superfine/castor *
4 ¼ teaspoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
45g (3 tablespoons) butter
3 large eggs, room temperature

Powdered/confectioner’s sugar

Begin by making the beurre noisette (the process is described here). Pour from pan into a small, pre-cooled dish and place in refrigerator to cool.

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). As David recommends: “Overturn an 8-inch square pan on the counter and wrap the outside snugly with foil, shiny side up. Remove the foil, turn the pan over, and fit the foil into the pan, pressing to nudge the foil into the corners”. Set aside.

Combine the flour, 1/4 cup (50g) sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, vanilla and 8 tablespoons beurre noisette in a bowl, stirring until you have a smooth--if sticky--dough. Spread the dough evenly in the foil-lined pan, using your hands or a spatula, filling the corners thoroughly (and being careful not to rip the foil with your fingernail as I did the first time). Bake for 25 minutes, or until a deep-golden brown.

While the crust is baking, melt the 3 tablespoons of butter and set aside to cool. Cut one lemon in half, remove all the seeds, and cut the lemon into chunks. If using a Meyer lemons, note they have lots of teeny sliver-like seeds, be sure you've removed them all before dropping the pieces into the food processor. Juice the remaining lemon, and cut the remaining, empty rind into chunks. Put the chunks of lemon in a food processor along with the extra-fine sugar* and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, and let the processor run until the lemon chunks are pretty tiny. Add the corn starch, salt, and 3 tablespoons (45g) melted butter, and blend until smooth. Lastly, add the 3 eggs and blend until just combined; try to avoid letting the mixture get too foamy.

Remove the crust from the oven once fully baked, reducing the heat of the oven to 150C (300F). Gently pour the lemon mixture over the hot crust and bake for 20-25 minutes or just until the filling is barely set (it should no longer jiggle when shaken). Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Place the pan in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to ensure that the curd is fully set. Lift the whole, baked lemon treat out of the pan by carefully pulling the foil. Cut the bars into squares or rectangles. Sift powdered sugar over the top just before serving.

These bars will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for three days.

* Make your own extrafine/castor sugar in seconds: just pulse regular sugar a few times in a food processor before adding the lemon chunks and juice.

What I'm reading.

2011-02-22T00:32:00.005+01:00

I write about my life in the Cévennes, because I am quite happy here, whether visiting or living here full-time, as I do now.

I tell little anecdotes, such as the differences between the French and Anglo-Saxons when playing bingo. Bingo play as I have experienced it here is far more social than in the US, where bingo halls are notable for a certain dusty kind of stillness. At church bingo in the US, you can hear the glasses of Kool-Aid sweat. In France, it is apparently normal to have to crane to catch the number over the running commentary and chatter.

Image credit: Kraft foods.

When someone wins, the remaining Anglo-Saxons clap and smile (writhing and cursing inwardly--I wanted that George Foreman grill!). The French râlent. This means they complain, or sound off, or whinge and whine. Whatever you want to call it, they are usually very good at it. Someone calls bingo, and there are waves of collective groans, eye-rolling, loud comments about it always being the same people, and then disconsolate, hurried dumping of the pieces back into a pile for the next round. I watched my own daughter engage in this very French behavior, one square shy of a win. She is on her way to becoming a râleuse, and is thus integrating quite nicely, thank you.

In French bingo, called loto, the rules are different; only numbers are called. Our loto reader (caller? officiator?) gave character to every single number. For example, an eight was a "belted zero". Seventy-seven was "the tools of my grandfather". Fourteen was the Sun King. Nineteen was a Renault classic. Twenty-four was the pays du noix, or land of the walnuts (24 being the departmental number for the Perigord). Thirty was home (being the departmental number for the Gard, where we live). There were cultural, historical, musical and pop references I completely missed. All this was ad-libbed, mind you. I've never experienced that full-entertainment experience in stateside bingo. Yet anyway.

I've also never before experienced such bawdy humor at a school fundraiser. The hall was simply packed with people ranging from toddlers to the very seniors and everyone in between. The loto reader--who also happens to be the school principal--defined three as the "modern couple". Sixty-nine? "Ta touffe m'etouffe!" I'll leave you to translate that one...

At the drop of a hat, I could rattle off a number of these sorts of experiences, but it's another thing to tackle your various impressions and experiences, then wrestle them into a winning story.

This is what Rosy Thornton has done to most engaging effect in her latest book, The Tapestry of Love.

Some of us write online and then graduate to books. Rosy, also a Cambridge professor, went the other way around, and volunteers on her site that "there must be something pretty special about a place if you spend a fortnight there and, twenty years later, feel inspired to write a book about it." Indeed.

Her heroine, Catherine Parkstone, does what so many Anglo-Saxons have done--or dreamed of doing: she picked up stakes and headed to the south of France. Specifically, the Cévennes. And that's where the story begins, and where her life becomes richly complicated. She becomes a furniture upholsterer, tapestry weaver and all-round seamstress without taking enough account of the vagaries of French bureaucracy. She gets to know her neighbors through their idiosyncrasies. She falls in love. (In my opinion, her Cévenols, while reserved, are still less reserved than my Cévenols...) Deeply woven through this tale are the traditions, places and spaces that make the Cévennes what it is--beautiful, variegated, a little rough, and seemingly timeless. There is the twice annual ritual of the transhumance, there is the history of the silkworm and silk production, a significant Cévenol industry until the 1850s or so, but the book is also rich in local, earthy detail. Tapestry of Love is filled with delicate, discerning observation, and it won me over.

For more information you can go to her site, where she even provides a few choice recipes you can download.

Full disclosure: Rosy Thornton is a La Vie Cévenole reader.

The modest madeleine, modified.

2011-02-14T21:32:00.003+01:00

By the time the kids were clambering into the schoolbus, the vast fog had already drifted in. It settled across our little valley and onward toward the next village, imposed a dozen shades of grey and upturned the rest of the color palette.

The routine walk later with the dog took on a certain element of magic. Dakar's a Weimaraner, a shimmery, ghostly shadow himself; he disappeared into the wall of fog in half a moment. Rounding a curve of the road, there he was again, bounding into view, wisps of mist curling away at his mad, laughing, young-dog gallop, so utterly in his skin and in the moment.

Maybe that should be my plan for 2011; to be more dog-like in the year of the cat.

The neighbor's horses ignored him, or at least they tried to, and we continued our wet rambling. Today though, I didn't dally overmuch: I had something to hurry home to.

I scored a whole pile of organic blood oranges on sale this morning. You may know my weakness for blood oranges...but, seriously, what's not to love?

In this damp month, too often dreary, weary, the solid dominion of coughs and sneezes, the spectacularly assertive color of blood oranges and their antioxidant-fueled kick keep us going. Doesn't the sight alone of that color and sparkle revive you?

Try telling that to the kids, who're happy to look and smile, pleased with a glass of juice, but whose bellies really clamor for an after-school snack.

I played around with an archetypal (and simple) French treat, adding a subtle citrus twist, and voilà!

Madeleines aux miel et au orange sanguine (Blood Orange and Honey Madeleines)

Makes 24 madeleines. You will need two madeleine pans.

120 g (1/3 cup) butter

180 g (1 3/4 cup) flour

2 large pinches of salt

80 g (1 scant cup) finely ground almonds or hazelnuts

250 g (1/2 scant cup) superfine/castor sugar, divided
6 eggs, separated
2 teaspoons orange flower water

2 teaspoons honey

finely grated, minced zest of 3 blood oranges*

juice of one small blood orange* (about 3 1/2 to 4 tablespoons)

Grease the madeleine molds thoroughly, using softened butter; make sure you get into all those little grooves to avoid any sticking later. Flour and set aside.

Make a beurre noisette (browned butter): melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, swirling occasionally. As the butter begins to foam, it will chortle, snap and pop happily; it knows what's coming. Just as quickly, the little concert will come to a close, to be replaced by a wonderful, deeply nutty scent. The butter's ready when it takes on a golden-brown tone, and you see a light brownish sediment. Remove the pan from the heat--don't delay--because the butter can quickly burn at this point, and the sediment then goes from being heavenly to carcinogenic. Pour the browned butter from the pan into a separate small dish to cool.

Combine the flour, ground almonds, half the sugar and salt in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to high, soft peaks. In a third bowl, beat the egg yolks with the remaining half of the sugar until the yolks are pale and ribbony. Add the browned butter, the flour mixture, the orange flower water, honey, zest and blood orange juice, mixing well. Mix one fourth of the egg whites into the yolk to lighten it, then gently fold in the remaining egg whites, just enough to blend. Fill the molds two-thirds full, and allow the two pans to rest in the refrigerator. The madeleines really need to chill at least one hour, preferably three.

Preheat the oven 350F (180C). Pop one pan in for about fifteen minutes. The little cakes will be ready when the edges are brown and the top springs back gently when touched. Remove from the heat, allow to rest for a minute, then tap the pan on the counter. The madeleines should tumble right out of the pan. Don't forget to pop the remaining pan in the oven...Madeleines are best when eaten the day they're made. Fully cooled, they will keep for two days in an air-tight container.

* Of course you can always use regular oranges, but add in a touch of lemon or lime for a bit more complexity. And keep the finished product out of the reach of any dogs...

Only this.

2011-02-09T21:47:00.002+01:00

My five year old walked by with a poorly suppressed grin. When I checked my camera later, this image was on it. Sometimes it takes a small one to see great beauty.

Of Vietnamese cats and chocolate bulls.

2011-02-08T00:59:00.003+01:00

I've been thinking about writing. Thinking about it while driving, while showering, while feeding the chickens, without ever actually opening my laptop, let alone putting my fingers to the keyboard. It's been a bit busy around here. There's the making and the eating of savory and sweet crêpes, for which Jesus invented Candlemas. Don't quote me, it's only my newest hypothesis. Point is, all in the name of celebrating entrenched local tradition, we've eaten our way through an awful lot of pancakes...

And then the day after we went Vietnamese. As it was the Lunar New Year, or Tết, Babette, the cook at the village school canteen, made an all-Asian lunch featuring "nems," which is what the French call fried spring rolls. Afterward, I spent the afternoon with five and six year olds, lighting incense, playing music, and showing some photos of Vietnam. We talked about new year traditions, we hung lanterns and paper dragons, they colored an image I traced of the charming feline on the latest Vietnamese stamp (while in China it's the year of the rabbit, the Viet like to do it a whisker differently). The kids were so engaged and we had a blast. As if that wasn't enough of a party, this year Tết landed on my birthday. So there was that to celebrate...

And then to top it all, there was chocolate and an awful lot of other sweet things because the chocolate show came to town. To Nimes, to be specific.

There were all the typical permutations of French chocolate, and some less obvious ones, too.

Beyond the making of chocolate macarons, and the covert sampling of chocolate fountains, there was this sculptor, carving on a fine Nimois bull out of premium dark.

And there was chocolate wine. Quite a trick. I actually quite liked the white version, a blend of Sauvignon and Semilion, in which chocolate has been steeped in such a way to impart a distinct cocoa scent and flavor while still looking as clear and light-filled as a standard glass of wine.

We all watched Francis Miot do his art. He has previously been crowned France's best confiturier, or jam-maker. Awarded annually, that title means something here, because there's an awful lot of top shelf jam to be had in this country, and I'm not talking about Bonne Maman. Here in my small corner of the country, an old-school, well brought-up mother or grandmother wouldn't appear on a neighbor's doorstep without bearing something homemade, usually jam...

There were piles of traditional French sweets, like preserved fruit, salted caramels, soft nougat (flavored with wild blueberries!).

There were darling jars of rum-soaked babas. At each stall, I managed to walk away after a sedate sampling of goods. Until I tried the handmade guimauves, that is.

Forget anything you ever thought you knew about marshmallows. Fresh, artisanal marshmallows can be incredible. I never even realized I liked marshmallows until I tasted them in pastry shops. At first, it's all airiness, and then the flavor seems to gently 'appear' in your mouth. It's fairly close to magic.

There was rose, and litchee. Violet, lavender, grapfruit, bergamot, and did I mention coconut with tiny dark chocolate bits? Blackberry, green anise, pineapple, salted caramel, banana, wild strawberry, bergamot, oh I could go on...but I think I'll stop, because there's a sachet of them in the kitchen.

Please don't ask me to share, it's my birthday...week.

Duck, duck, goose.

2011-01-30T18:24:00.003+01:00

Wherever you go, you see, hear, smell and taste things that can bring you back home. Looking at ducks and geese in Vietnam did that for me.

Eating and preparing duck (and to a lesser extent geese) is something I only really learned living in France. The southwest of France is most famous for its fowl (especially in the form of foie gras), but you can find good sources across the country.

Confit de canard is duck that has been very slowly braised in its own fat, after having been cured in salt, thyme, bay leaf...It is impossible to overstate how succulent it is. Confit de canard is traditionally served here in the Languedoc as part of a country-style white bean cassoulet, or stew. I'm not overly crazy about it, to be honest. Maybe I've come across it too much, maybe it's too heavy for me, I don't make it.

But the confit de canard itself, well, that lends itself to nearly anything, especially in the winter. I've even had it to delicious effect in a crisp fried Vietnamese-style spring roll. And the easiest (if slightly time-consuming) modification of a straight-up confit? Rillettes de canard. A farmhouse kind of meat spread, to be eaten like a crostini, ever so yummy with an Alsace Riesling...

It is the dish you make when the sky is unbearably low, while the kids are doing homework, when the sun has set far too quickly, when there are a few confit legs left over from the big dinner with the neighbors (I compulsively make more food than necessary). It is a recipe to be made by taste. To the four duck legs' worth of flaked meat, I added about two tablespoons of duck fat and the same amount of the jellied, flavorsome duck broth.

Also a tablespoon or two of Cognac, a few grinds of pepper, and then everything got worked in by hand.

As the ingredients are kneaded, the texture changes. Enjoy the process: keep tasting and seasoning until it seems about right. There should be just enough fat to bind and just enough extra flavor to amplify the duck's inherent savoriness. The finished meat goes in small dishes covered with a preserving layer of duck fat (which isn't eaten). Keeps for weeks, but think about handing some out to friends and neighbors. They'll be more than happy to spread some on hearty slices of toast.

I actually made these last week, intending to keep them for a good while. But we woke up to snow this morning.

I lit a fire in the kitchen stove, and by the time noon arrived, it seemed like the perfect day for rillettes and a steaming bowl of barley vegetable soup.

After a couple of slices of locally made cheese, we dug into a generous gift of macarons and finished with green tea.

Happy sunday, happy day-dreaming, wherever you are.

My bit of Việt Nam. Part 3.

2011-01-22T01:14:00.004+01:00

I know I don't have to travel. I could have profound, life-rearranging experiences in my own backyard. I think.

It's just that, given enough time, I get this travel itch. If I can't scratch it, which is ~~usually~~ often the case, it gradually recedes, only to return at some later point, more present than ever. It's just one of those things, probably due at least in part to a gypsy lifestyle that began shortly after birth. This persistent itch for change is unfortunately a bit hard to reconcile with my concern for the environment; I haven't satisfactorily worked that negative out yet.

A honey-sweet banana that fits, whole, in my hand.

But making the choice to travel (and I mean as immersive an experience as one can manage) is making the positive choice to break routine--even abandon it--to let in a little uncertainty. And to begin to connect with the unknown. It can even mean re-connecting with the things you thought knew, like your own family. Or a banana.

For me, traveling with young children means helping them to recognize and embrace, at a visceral level, ambiguity. It means directly teaching them that things can mean one thing in a given culture and something completely different in another, for example. It is about being able to show them that the world is actually this gorgeous crazy-quilt of diversity, despite the human race's best efforts to homogenize.

The Mekong River is unlike any river my children or I have ever encountered. From a high Tibetan plateau, it flows through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and finally Vietnam. The tenth longest river in the world, it defines southern Vietnam culturally, economically--and physically--as the fertile Delta continues to expand through sediment deposit as much as eighty meters per year. Many places are still best reached by canal or river.

The Mekong Delta is the flat, coastal 'rice basket' of Vietnam, which is currently the world's number two exporter of rice. In the northern mountains, rice is harvested just once a year, toward the central region twice yearly. In the Mekong Delta, rice is harvested three times a year. As lovely as rice paddies are, cultivating rice is back-breaking, time-consuming manual labor; it is difficult to look at a bowl of rice in quite the same way.

One could also argue the Delta's a bit of a fruit basket, as well. As well as the familiar tropical staples, it's full of fruit I'd never tasted before, like custard apples, and some I'd never even heard of, like milk fruit. The Delta is densely cultivated and pretty densely populated. Unfortunately, it is also regularly flooded, a reality which the locals try their best to work around, but houses can still spend a good while inundated every year.

Another (diminishing) feature of the Delta are the floating markets, where, directly from their houseboats, middlemen peddle produce to sellers who then go to markets on land to resell.

It's easy to see what each middleman has to offer: simply look at what's hanging from the long bamboo pole attached to the boat. Despite how hard they work and how challenging their day-to-day lives are, southern Vietnamese are considered by their fellow Vietnamese to be generally the most easy-going. I can't disagree. We were charmed by their broad, warm smiles.

Speaking of toothy grins, I didn't get the impression that crocodiles are to be found in the rivers or canals anymore. These days they're farmed, and the curious can partake of reptile meat in any number of ways, but their skin is where the money is, of course.

Essentially, we wound our way in a large, uneven circle taking in the pattern of life in the Delta, and making time for visits to a temple or three. This is where I found the most decorative incense.

Incense wafts through any place of any significance, really, and manages to seem utterly perfect and essential to the place and moment. The kids were more tuned into the incense as they had already seen it being made by hand and by machine up north.

Distances doesn't look all that great on a map of Vietnam, but vehicles travel relatively slowly there, due to stringent speed limits and often flood-damaged, poorly maintained roads, so everything takes longer than you'd imagine. Thing is, you really don't see people shaking fists or swearing no matter how backed-up the line is, even in the horrendously dense, motorcycle-clogged traffic of Saigon. After what sometimes felt like a snail's pace, we found ourselves in the small town of Chau Doc, just some forty kilometers from the Cambodian border.

Chau Doc is a fishing town, as evidenced by this prominent statue.

This is where some visitors take a several-day boat trip to Angkor, that extraordinary twelfth century temple complex in Cambodia.

We stayed in Chau Doc to celebrate Christmas. And it really was among the very best of Christmases.

After that, we were off by ferry, to the island.

My bit of Việt Nam. Part 2.

2011-01-17T02:07:00.007+01:00

You might as well have slapped me. Right hard, too. The shift in temperature and humidity was that shocking. And this was Hue, Vietnam's old imperial capital, in the winter. I'd clearly left the wild, mysterious, and cool North far behind.

Hue is where you come to see the ancient Citadel, and the Forbidden Purple City, formerly reserved for the exclusive use of the royal family. Or rather, you come to see what is left of the City after heavy bombing and heavy hand-to-hand combat between the Viet Cong and American armies.

Try explaining eunuchs, over a hundred concubines, oh, and a horrendous war to tots ten and under; it wasn't simple.

Fortunately, the whole area is now a UNESCO site, and restoration works have been underway for some time now, as the government has come to realize the significance (both economic and historical) of the heart of old feudal Vietnam.

If you ever go to Hue, you must take in some of the imperial tombs, like that of the flamboyant, lavish Khai Dinh and the serene, poetry-loving Ming Mang; a view of the latter is pictured below.

But between tomb visits, a visit to the charming temple dedicated to the eunuchs and general wandering, a person's got to eat. Preferably well. Let that be written on my tombstone. My discovery (laugh at me if you were already in the know) was deep-fried banh bao. SO good. I already knew (and adored, in a guilty, fast food kind of way) banh bao, light, palm-sized doughy buns, stuffed with any number of different kinds of meat or vegetables, then steamed. They're pictured below--in this instance filled with a well-sauced chicken and costing 50 cents each (20,000 D being currently equivalent to 1 USD).

Fried ones (pictured in bottom half of the photo) aren't oily at all. They're nicely browned, but don't gleam, not even slightly, with fat. Now why didn't I finagle my way into the kitchen to find out how they got that crispy outer surface and eye-rollingly delicious interior? I may have been distracted by the delicious vats of pho...

For the brief time we spent in Hue, we were regulars at that corner shop. All the girls were waving goodbye on our last visit as we pulled away. I also took a more formal cooking class while in Hue, learning to make Central style dishes, which are clearly different from the rest of Vietnamese cuisine. But more about that another time...

We made our way from Hue to the Danang area (passing by the beach of China Beach fame), and dropping our bags (for a few days) with a sigh of relief in little Hoi An.

There, the boats are painted, as dictated by tradition, with eyes to ward off the crocodiles that once filled the waters.

A former port town with its own deep wealth of international history (everyone docked there, from the Persians to the Japanese to the Dutch), Hoi An is extremely picturesque, with a beauty preserved so carefully it can verge on the artificial. Not to dissuade you, but imagine a Vietnamese, cultural Disney. Because it is a UNESCO world heritage site, there are very strict limitations on what the locals can do. The character must be maintained...And yes, all this justifiable attention means a lot of tourists.

Nevertheless, it is very walkable, very family-friendly, and wonderful for thoroughly checking out the market and various street foods on offer. Not to be missed: the local specialty, cao lau, a thick wheat-noodle dish heaped with pork and herbs, sauced with an addictive, rich broth, and topped with sinfully crunchy, fried crouton-like square bits. Some people go there for the scads of tailors offering made to measure, inexpensive clothes. For me--just as with the local canines--it's (nearly) all about the food.

(As with my cooking class, more on the market(s) later. Promise!)

Before the cloth--especially the silk--gets to the aforementioned tailor shops and stalls, it has to be made.

The poppy seed-like bits seen below are silkworm eggs, deposited by an adult silk moth. After fourteen days, these hatch into silkworm larvae.

The silkworms are exclusively fed mulberry leaves. In our house, here in France, silkworms used to be raised in the attic, as the Cevennes region was a major supplier of silk to the Lyon textile industry, way back before it was dealt a mortal blow by the development of cheap artificial fibers, like nylon. They say that in a roomful of voracious silkworms, the sound of their chewing is clearly audible. I think of that when I'm putting away the previous season's clothes...

Silkworms do nothing but eat for twenty or thirty days; predictably, they grow very quickly. They molt several times.

Then they make a cocoon using their spit glands. The cocoon is made of one single thread.

The cocoons here are from different types of silkworm.

According to Wikipedia: "A cocoon is made of a thread of raw silk from 300 to about 900 meters (1,000 to 3,000 feet) long. The fibers are very fine and lustrous, about 10 micrometers (1/2,500th of an inch) in diameter. About 2,000 to 3,000 cocoons are required to make one pound of silk. " To get that silk, the cocoons are boiled, and several strands of silk are combined to make a single thread.

The threads are cleaned, dyed and then woven into gorgeous, light-weight fabric.

Here, you can see the green thread being pulled through the red threads to make a shimmery length of silk cloth.

The weaving machine is infernally loud and clackety.

Loud enough to cover the grumbling of my stomach, as I consider how reasonably soon I can get back to the market--and what will be on offer.

My bit of Việt Nam. Part 1.

2011-01-11T09:10:00.007+01:00

I'm still a little startled to be home again. I'm not complaining, I've made a soft landing: it's the season for galettes des rois, those flaky puff-pastry discs stuffed with frangipane that satisfy your body as completely as any dessert possibly can. Nostalgia and butter in one mouthful, with that delicate but pervasive almond scent to knock it out of the park. I self-soothe with galette des rois. I get galettes des rois pretending they're for the children, who do indeed covet the charming fève hidden inside each one. But who am I fooling?

(Small pause to thoughtfully finish swallowing).

An airplane can carry your body halfway around the world in half a day, but your spirit gets lost somewhere in the slipstream. We human beings generally benefit from a little more adjustment time.

Where to start with what we did in Vietnam? We navigated the long, skinny country by plane, train, automobile, boat, kayak, motorcycle and bike. We went from the proper cold of the north to the southern Mekong warmth, with a intermezzo in the central region. It is a country of contrasts; I suppose I should just plain begin at the beginning.

We landed in Hanoi. The grand, 1000 year old city of the north is a bit ramshackle but definitely human-scale, the old bits are just ideal for wandering, as long as you're willing to do a little weaving through the flow of foot and motorcycle traffic. Having explored the city for a couple of days, we then took the northbound, overnight train to Lao Cai, a small city on the Chinese border, down the road from the celebrated, rice-terraced trekker's heaven around Sapa (Sapa itself suffers some of the aches and pains of overdevelopment, but the plush hotels can make for a nice respite).

Waking up in Vietnam means having a good shot at scoring the best, biggest bowl of pho (bo), which is a heady, aromatic beef broth dosed with rice noodles, fresh herbs, lime, and some thin slices of beef, which finish cooking in the bowl of broth. This is the true breakfast of champions, truly the national dish, and while it may seem counterintuitive to eat beef in the morning, you really have to give this an a.m. try once in your life. You'll be ready for pretty much anything the day throws at you.

From Sapa, we headed even further north to the remote, unspoiled reaches of Ha Giang Province and onward, through Meo Vac all the way to Dong Van. Some parts seemed visually closer in spirit to the remoter parts of Central Asia than Southeast Asia: extraordinary, sweeping landscapes, with mountains that a child would draw: vertiginous, vertical.

Much of the time, the road was virtually one lane, with a generous amount of hairpin turns. I got some serious vertigo a couple of times. At some points the fjords of Norway came to mind, at others parts of the American West, in some places all jutting granitic rock. We saw at least one river that came roaring out of and down a mountain, having been in that mountain chain for kilometers, racing through a network of caves.

We found ourselves at an open, formal-ish outdoor Communist Party musical celebration for Dong Van Geopark, which has been freshly, officially endorsed by UNESCO as a world geopark (one of just 77 worldwide). Some local Party prominent were onstage, but most of the townspeople chose to pay an entrance fee to the bustling local fair instead, which is a thinly disguised opportunity for more commerce in the form of clothing, foods, etc. On-stage at the fair, there was a guy juggling fire to the tune of the Blues Brothers. At both places we were the only non-Vietnamese, and proved to be a fairly compelling sideshow. The children drew attention and smiles everywhere. Couldn't tell you how many times they were photographed and petted, whole-heartedly embraced by men and women alike, no matter the age.

We visited the gently decayed, pine-ringed palace of the Hmong King, who was installed and propped up by the French, and who functioned as the opium middle man (with his own kingdom of four northern districts) between France and China. Amazing story, though the kingdom lasted only two generations...ending with a ceremonial handshake with Ho Chi Minh. Some of the family who remained got cushy high level government positions, others, disappointed and angry, left for the diaspora.

We stumbled upon the two-day long initiation rites into manhood for a rather awed thirteen-year old of a tribal minority. By stumble I mean we drove by on a remote, precariously steep mountain pass, saw something colorful happening, got out, and then suddenly the masked shaman made me blush very, very deeply when he teasingly went after me, suggestively waving the gourd vegetable tied to his waist. All the watching women of the tribe, standing nearby, enjoyed this mightily. We all formally passed on best wishes to one another before continuing on our way. The little boy at the center of all this just looked solemn.

Still above 1400 m in elevation, we got out of the van to watch some guys hard at work hand-cranking a metal centrifuge to extract honey. They smiled broadly at our frank interest, and we were given honeycomb to chew on (a first for the kids, who shamelessly begged for more) and a teacupful of honey to dip our fingers into. It was very liquid. Hard work anywhere, this particular beekeeper had a tarp tent as he lives 250 kms away. This, perched upon a windswept rock, among the mountain wildflowers and beehives, was his home during the harvest.

I can now say I've held a whole cardamom pod for the first time (at home, I have what are labeled as "whole" cardamom, but are really just "pellets" from inside the ovalish pod). The laughing girl who was selling them--a mere 10 dollars per kilo--gave one to me so it now ornaments my kitchen butcher block. We also have been chewing on peppery bits of cinnamon (good thing given all the garlic we were ingesting), torn from rolled cinnamon bark longer than my forearm. Brought some of that back home too.

On our circuitous way back from the northernmost reaches, we remained lucky with the weather, which was dry and usually clear. The homestays were a highlight. The large thatched wooden home--at least the sort we stayed in--functions as more of a unheated windbreak than a house in any Western sense of the notion, I discovered. This first home was spartan but kept clean by our smiling hosts, with newsprint as wall decor (though I noticed a Britney Spears decal among the cute Japanese girl-stickers below the TV). We ate well (the delicious cooked pumpkin leaves were new to me), and slept upstairs, on the floor, under extremely heavy, dense bedding. Seriously, so heavy; I've no idea what was inside the bright (think Frida Kahlo Mexico kind of colors) velour duvet covers. We slept like rocks in the open upstairs room, but we certainly didn't sleep in: with the rising sun came a cacophony of animal sound, and with those thin walls and floors, we might as well have been in the middle of a zoo. A domestic zoo. I half-believed the chickens, pig, cat, horse and whatever else were just readying themselves to climb into my mosquito-screened bedding. Especially those cackling chickens.

After a tea which they kindly laid out for us in the morning sun, we walked a kilometer to Bac Ha, for the largest weekly market in the entire province, breakfast pho, more cacophony...and a livestock sale to boot. It was probably the most colorful market I have ever seen, packed with vibrantly clothed Flower Hmong, one of the fifty-some ethnic minorities in Vietnam (each of whom have their own distinctive culture, language and traditional dress).

We learned how to make cellophane noodles. We watched hemp being turned into thread, thread being made into cloth, cloth being dyed indigo...We tasted local goat, some amazing peppermint honey, some corn moonshine, and other potent brews. I'll show you some pictures of these, another time.

Then there was the astonishing Phat Diem cathedral, so resolutely Far Eastern and Catholic (courtesy of the French) at the same time; Tam Coc, known by some as "Halong on the rice paddies", where the women row their boats with their feet past surreal limestone mountains; and, not to be missed, Halong Bay itself, the kind of place that makes you breathe deeply and rub your eyes to be sure it's all real, all that exquisitely beautiful. That was where the kids went night squid fishing.

I don't think I should actually admit how many photos I took, but here are a few:

(A technical P.S.: Do you happen to know better quality--and free--video-making/uploading programs? This Blogger/Picasa version takes several eternities, and in the process the images lose all their sharpness...plus, perhaps unrelated, I can't use any of the music on my iTunes.)

Hello 2011.

2011-01-05T12:07:00.003+01:00

Well, here we are, on the virginal cusp of another new year. I'm back home again, the bags are unpacked, the sand and sweat washed away from my clothes, leaving behind just the bright memories of Vietnam.

The jet-lag is surprisingly minimal. The shock to the system is more climatological and cultural. And then there's the business of sorting through all the photos.

But first things first. I would like to wish you and yours a fine 2011, bursting with good health, leavened with laughter, and spiced with a pinch of adventure.

Tell me: what does the year hold for you?

Goodbye autumn.

2010-11-25T16:03:00.008+01:00

The bleached light has distinctly sharpened in the face of winter. The last of the clinging leaves are giving up their paper selves as the cold goes from being an incoming 'front' to something that settles in around the fields, the villages, the houses, our bodies. You find yourself straining to find the last bits of color, natural or not. You tell the children, you tell yourself: there is so much to love about winter--the snap of wind that pinks the cheek; the damp give of the browning leaves underfoot; the clear rush and babble of the full-again brook just beyond the green sway in the field; the Christmas lights twinkling in neighbor's windows; the glittering, shimmering frost in the early morning; the lacy trees stretched bowl-like in the empty sky; the embracing glow of the banked fire in the kitchen corner. What's not to love?

Sometimes, it's a hard sell. That's when you say to yourself: next year, I'm doing it differently. At any rate, this is what I told myself last winter, when I was a.) snowed in with 40 cm of snow outside (with our steep driveway in the middle of unplowed nowhere, it might as well have been 40 meters), and b.) simultaneously bronchitis'ed in with a steadily 40C temperature. Doing it differently.

So now, just as a sleek new winter unsheathes her claws, I'm leaving, for more than a month. Kids pulled out of school, dog at the neighbor's place, the whole kit and caboodle. Between making lists of lists and de-virusing my computer (...) I've also been spending way too much mental energy trying to figure out how I could continue to blog while traveling. I finally realized I can perhaps better spend that time with, y'know, my family, rather than scrambling to find a nearby internet cafe then sitting hunched and closed as a parenthesis, tapping out my missive while trying not to be distracted by the clackety fan. (Oh, the notion of the fan's because we'll be in Vietnam...)

I really think of those extra few hours of non-blogging as a Christmas presents to yours truly.

Because, man alive, these kids, I really have to enjoy them this very moment: they absolutely insist upon growing, and at a speed that leaves me slightly dazed. The little one's plaid flannel pyjama sleeves? Midway up his forearms. My sweet eldest (her face lengthening into something frighteningly close to maturity)? She does things on a horse that make me blanch--circus tricks kind of stuff. Sigh. I'd just like for this time, during which their open faces are still small enough to cup in my hands, to last a wee bit extra. Is asking for time to stretch asking for too much?

So yes, I'm off for a big long month with the family. Cross your fingers that we, all of us, are too thrilled to notice the slight time difference between Alpha and Golf.

Please look for me again in the beginning of January, a few short days after the hangovers wane and the New Year's resolutions to lose weight are declared, after the friends and family have straggled home and you're just beginning to evaluate the possibility of maybe perhaps taking down the decorations.

In the meantime, I didn't want to leave you sitting there empty-handed, so I made you something. Like all things handmade, if it's pretty, it's only the roughest kind of pretty, an assemblage of little moments that caught my eye while I was in New York. The exact hue of a certain sort of daydream, it is the product of wanting something and being lucky enough for it to happen.

I think of you in kind of this way, out there in the ether, my own New York--only in human form.

Maybe you are someone who smiles and laughs at some of the same things I do, and maybe, just maybe, you are also someone who wants to spend a little time with the ones they love, somewhere warm. I wish you loads of smiles, laughs, warmth and more. Happy Thanksgiving, if there's a turkey in your near future. And Merry Christmas, too. (Bet I'm the first this year to say that!) I promise I'll bring along a little bit of Vietnam to show and tell in the new year.