Almost a year later!!!

I can't believe I haven't written on this blog for almost a year now! Time really flies. It has been an exciting year though. Who would ever have thought last year that Barack Obama would now be our president-elect?!? I wish I could make a fast trip back to France and tell all those confused French how we really can pull a rabbit out of the hat when we absolutely have to here.

I also wish we could stop with the crisis management style!! Why do we, as a nation, have to hit bottom before we finally come through and do the right thing?

In the past year I have worked as a poll worker here in California in three separate elections. A presidential primary in February, a regular primary in June, and a general election in November. The November election was very moving. The precinct I work in is very diverse. So many voters were downright teary-eyed when casting their votes for Obama. Everyone is very hopeful even though the country couldn't be in a much bigger shambles.

Aside from that, life continues au petit train train. My father-in-law is adapting to life as a widower, although he still misses his Helen (as we all do) terribly. D is enjoying teaching more and more although he's also very excited about his research on that "other" greenhouse gas, methane. My son I is seriously contemplating buying a house in LA (silver lining to the crummy economy). My folks are doing remarkably well, still living well and independently at 84. All of our respective siblings are also doing reasonably well. So no complaints and deo gratias it will continue.

I will be fixing salmon the way M did in Aix this weekend. I will use swiss chard instead of sorrel, and will compensate for the lack of oxalic acid by spritzing generously with lemon. But the rest will remain the same.

Next week I will make my favorite provencal daube. This is a recipe I picked up in Saveur years ago and just the best:

Daube de Boeuf (Saveur’s version of a recipe by Franck Cerutti of Don Camillo in Nice)

(Serves 4, double the recipe to have more leftovers)

Ingredients:

½ oz dried porcini mushrooms
2 lbs beef chuck, cut into 2” pieces
salt
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and diced
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 large plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and roughly chopped (ok to use canned)
1 stalk celery, diced
1 bouquet garni (1 bay leaf, 1 sprig flat-leaf parsley, and 1 sprig thyme, tied in a bundle with kitchen string)
1 tbsp flour
2 cups dry red wine
freshly ground black pepper

Process:

1. Place mushrooms in a bowl; pour in boiling water to cover, and set aside.
2. Place meat in medium bowl and sprinkle with salt.
3. Heat butter and oil in a large, heavy pot over medium-high heat. Brown the meat in batches, leaving plenty of space between pieces so they brown evenly. Transfer meat as it browns to a large dish; set aside.
4. Lower heat to medium-low and pour off all but a bit of oil and butter.
5. Add onions, carrots, garlic, tomatoes, and celery and stir with a wooden spoon, scraping brown bits from the bottom of the pot until vegetables are coated with oil, about 5 minutes.
6. Return meat to pot and add bouquet garni.
7. Mix flour and half the wine with a fork in a small bowl, making sure there are no lumps.
8. Stir into pot with the remaining wine.
9. Cover and simmer over low heat for 2 hours.
10. Drain, rinse, and roughly chop mushrooms, reserving liquid.
11. Strain mushroom liquid through a coffee filter or paper towel; add to pot with the mushrooms.
12. Simmer another hour.
13. Remove bouquet garni.
14. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

I like to serve this daube with polenta, but you can use noodles or potatoes also.

I'll probably pick up a frozen dessert at Trader Joe's as they have started offering some that are very much like the one's at Picard. Now if they could only come up with frozen flaked herbs like Picard! Much too much to hope for frozen sorrel anytime soon though, and my sorrel won't thrive as long as we are experiencing this drought.

So now you have a new recipe, even if it's not Christmas dinner worthy!

Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year.

Christmas in Tennessee

It's so nice to spend Christmas with family. This was the first time in many years that I had been able to spend Christmas with MY family. Our son came out from LA to be with us and it was wonderful all around.

We always go to the Children's mass at the church on campus even though all the children are much too grown up now to play angels, or shepherds, or wise men, or Mary or Joseph. It's still a treat to see the next generation take on the production.

Then we all gather at my parents' house for a reveillon. This is completely traditional and woe to the one who might consider varying the menu (other than to add some foie gras to the mix!). There's always smoked salmon, there's always quiche, and there's always "salade exotique." Salade Exotique is a composed salad of boston lettuce, thinly sliced tomatoes, avocado, hearts of palm, grapefruit, and olives with a classic vinaigrette. And of course, champagne to celebrate the new birth.

Christmas dinner, however, is more open to creative juices, at least in Tennessee. This year we had honey-baked ham and roasted winter vegetables. Pies for dessert. Very tasty.

The day after Christmas my back went out. I mean, I was scraping something off a plate into the trash and then I couldn't get up! I guess three months of sleeping on those beds and then packing and standing in line all caught up with me. Thank heaven Knoxville can claim the world's best chiropractor. If you are in Knoxville and you need your back adjusted, do call on Williem Kelley.

He works on the UT football team. He's that good. He's open at 6 AM and will take walk-ins. We were long-time buddies from when I lived in Knoxville so he didn't need to do a lot of diagnostic stuff on me. He knew exactly what to do. I walked in there bent in two and left standing upright. I went back the next day for one final adjustment before we left for California. I knew I had to be a beast of burden one more time, this time with the dog in tow, so I couldn't risk my back blowing out again. It worked.

We left on the 29th to return to Oakland. We drove the "Katrina" car back to Atlanta. We determined that this was a "Katrina" car because a) it squeaked in ways we had never heard a car squeak before, b) the speedometer was all fogged up behind the plastic shield, c) it was registered in Louisiana, and (last but not least), d) it belonged to FEMA!!! We figure it spent some time under water.

This last leg of the trip was blessedly uneventful. The dog got to Oakland in one piece and our friend D met us at the airport. We were so happy to see her. We got home about 11 PM and crashed. The house looked great and it was good to sleep in our own bed again. We were finally all the way home.

Coming Home

Wow, it's been a while since I had time to write. The last time I wrote here was just before we left France. It took me two days to balance all the suitcases to make sure that none were over 23 kg. That's the limit airlines give you for overseas travel. It's less if you're traveling in Europe! The only way to accomplish this was to pack a bunch of stuff in our backpacks and computer cases. (And at this, my friend J kindly brought back a suitcase full of clothes when she went to visit her daughter, my other good friend, in California.)

So we left Montpellier on December 21. Europcar actually had someone meet us at the airport at 5:30 AM so we could drop the car off. I cannot recommend them enough. If you are going to be in France for more than 17 days, then get hold of Kemwell and lease a car! You get a brand new car, cheaper rates, and great service!

Now, Friday, December 21 is the weekend before Christmas, right? The plane was booked solid, and one would expect that Air France would have staffed their desk accordingly, right? Wrong! There was a skeleton crew on staff. After all, people are entitled to their Christmas vacations right? The result was that the plane got off the ground an hour and a half late. We had expected to have a 3-hour layover at Charles de Gaulle, but now we were limited to an hour and a half. This turned out to be just barely enough to catch our transatlantic flight!!!

For some reason the concept of streaming has not yet caught on at CDG. You have a planeful of people who have to get on the plane. There is no jetway (something about a roof collapse) so all these people need to be ferried to the plane by bus. Obviously, more than one bus. Ok. So everyone is jammed onto about 5-6 busses. These busses do not have any seats, everyone stands. Does the first bus leave to get to the plane to empty its load? No. They wait until all the busses are full then they leave, convoy style, to get to the plane. (No, we did not cross any runways on the way to the plane.) Once there they let people off the busses in parties of 5-6 at a time to load them on the plane!!! All this makes for a lot of standing in packed lines where you absolutely cannot put anything down and we were loaded down like pack mules. It also makes for short tempers after a while.

We do manage to get off on time. Thankfully the flight was uneventful, but hardly restful. We arrived in Atlanta at about 3:30 PM. Now here's a good one. In Atlanta, if you are arriving from a foreign flight and it's your final destination, YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH SECURITY AGAIN!!!! Never mind that every person getting off the plane went through security already to get on the plane in the first place! It took us over two hours to get out of the airport!

I had anticipated that we would be too dog tired to drive 4 hours north to Knoxville, TN. I made reservations for us at the Holiday Inn in Cartersville, GA. We were so glad to get there! We had a nice light dinner at the restaurant on the premises and then hit the sack. I had forgotten what a comfortable bed felt like! Our beds at the apartment in Montpellier were basically upholstered bags of cotton batting. No springs, no foam, nothing. I think this is supposed to build character, somewhat like the Brits sleeping with the windows open in the dead of winter. Anyhow, this bed was GREAT! We had thought of getting up at 5 AM and heading on up to Knoxville, but we slept in to 7 AM! Woke up refreshed and clear headed. Breakfast, included in the price of the room, was actually a real buffet at the restaurant with eggs, and sausage, and grits and everything. Just wonderful.

By 8 AM we were on the road, anticipating seeing my parents, my sister and her family, and our pooch who had been left in the care of my wonderful sister. We drove up to my parents' house as my Mom was walking the dog. We stopped the car and D rolled the window down and called to the dog. He almost jumped out of his skin! And then he saw me. It is so gratifying to feel loved that much by an innocent animal! We were home, or almost...

Snow in Montpellier!!!

It actually snowed this morning. Quite a bit to be honest. It was just beautiful. We took a couple of photos, but snow photos never really come out right. I'll let you be the judge. One is for esthetics and the other to indicate how much snow we got. Of course it's all gone now, just a couple of hours later, but it was certainly beautiful while it lasted.

I put on the CD of French Christmas carols, well, Christmas carols mostly sung in French. There are some traditionals, some you hardly ever hear any more (including the Legende de Saint Nicolas which can scare the living daylights out of you if you think about it) and some foreign, like White Winter with a charming French accent. It's produced by the Psallette de Lorraine and directed by Pierre Cao and I think you can download the songs if you like. I'm a dinosaur in that I don't have an MP3 player so I still buy CDs. Also, I wear a hearing aid so there's really no question of getting those earbuds in my ears.

Anyhow, the countdown is on, did a preliminary packing today and we can't get one more thing into those suitcases. The space is ok, it's the weight I'm worried about. I just hope they cut us a bit of slack. Wish me luck.

Testing our new cards at "Les Bains"

Last night D and I decided to take our new credit cards out for a spin. We decided to eat at a real adult restaurant instead of some hole-in-the-wall student dive we knew we had enough cash for. So we looked online and found "Les Bains." Well, let me tell you it was wonderful!! First of all it's situated in an old public bath. The whole central part of the restaurant is undoubtedly where the pool was. In summer I'll bet it is pure heaven there. Just enough trees to offer shade in a lovely terrace. All the former changing rooms surround the central terrace and have had the lateral walls removed to form lovely intimate dining rooms. Because of the layout, it allows for the non-smoking areas to truly be removed from the smoking areas. This is the first time we have enjoyed a meal out where we didn't have to leave early due to awful smoke. Our waiter said that they couldn't wait for the no smoking law to take effect (January 1, 2008).

The menu was excellent. D chose a carpaccio d'espadon (swordfish) marinated in lime juice and coconut milk. Then he had a gigondin d'agneau with puree de pommes de terre. I had an escabeche of saumon with a mesclun salad followed by veau with a gratin dauphinois. All of this was wonderful of course. This chef is intelligent enough not to attempt anything in the way of fresh vegetables (other than salad greens) at this time of year. The "fresh" vegetables to be had at the market are subprime. (I haven't bought a single haricot vert because they're all pruny.) So he works with winter vegetables to make them sing. The portions were appropriate although we both left some meat on our plates because we really couldn't eat any more.

Service was terrific. Just the right balance so as to create a sense of attention but not hovering. So, D and I heartily recommend "Les Bains" to anyone staying in, or visiting, Montpellier. It's situated in town at 6 rue de Richelieu just behind La Comedie. To phone for reservations call: 04 67 60 70 87. If you're taking the Tram, take the blue line and get off at Comedie. You're 3 minutes walking distance from the restaurant. Be warned though that if you're counting on the Tram to get home, it runs about every half hour after 9:30 PM. We ended up just walking all the way home even though it was cold. We were happy we did.

We have them!!!!

We have our credit cards!!!!!! They have been activated and they work!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have one week left of our stay in France. It took 71 days from the day we walked into the BNP Paribas bank to open an account to the time we took possession of our credit cards. Actually these are not credit cards, they're debit cards. It's not like we were borrowing money from the bank or anything, we just wanted to have normal access to our own money.

To anyone planning on a stay in France I urge you, DO NOT do business with the BNP Paribas bank. In case you didn't read the previous post(s), it also took 5 weeks before we were able to get hold of our checkbook. Our only means of access to our own money was to physically go to the bank and withdraw our money. When you consider that they open at 9 AM, take a 2-hour lunch break, and close at 5 PM...

Now I will hunt for santons on eBay.

The diner au fromages

First and foremost, we still don't have the GD credit cards. Called the bank (BNP Paribas, don't EVER do business with them!!!) today figuring they should be there. But no. They were supposed to have been ordered last Monday, but instead they got ordered last Thursday, so of course they aren't there yet. I've just decided to quit trying to sleep.

In the meanwhile, visiting J in Brignoles was fabulous!! First of all we got a great tour of the town itself, the markets the shops, etc. Perfectly charming town and so much fun to do the market with someone who has lived there for years. She knows everyone and stops to say hi and introduce us. We met one older gentleman who was very quick to tell me Vive l'Amerique. He doesn't have any patience with people who criticize America when Americans were the ones who liberated France in WWII. I don't quite buy the never criticize bit, but it was heartwarming nevertheless.

The afternoon was spent visiting some local villages in search of santons. I found a couple that were quite nice and a real bargain. Snapped them up right away. We visited Sinan, Cotignac and Le Val. There was a good santonier in Le Val but his santons were too tall for my set. I still need an Aveugle, D wants a Maire, and I have noticed that there is a Tricoteuse out there that I really think I should have. I also need a Mireille. The Fouque Arlesienne is just not that appealing. My problem now is that I have a creche that is 6 centimetres and so many santoniers work at 7 cm. Oh well, just makes the hunt that much more fun.

Ok, ok, about the dinner. J went all out. She invited a number of her friends and it was a treat to meet them all. They are all just as fun and upbeat as she is. Then she and her friend went to Cannes to buy cheese. They came home with over 50 different kinds!!! See the picture here of the cheese section at Carrefour. I think she got one of each!! Of course it was delicious. Her friend M brought a really special thing though. She brought a brie stuffed with black truffles! You stuff the brie with truffles a couple of days before the feast so the truffle fragrance permeates the cheese. Then you bake it so it all runs together. Outstanding! Her other friends also each brought something to add to the festivities. DH got a whole evening of total immersion in French as none of them spoke much English. It's beginning to click!!!

The thing with a diner au fromage is that you don't have to slave in the kitchen. You just put the cheese out (J had covered her table with rush mats and so just put the cheese directly on the mats). A few bowls of grapes, slice some bread and there you have it. You have to prepare everything several hours ahead of time since the cheese needs to come to room temperature.

We had a decadently rich cake for dessert. It was all I could do to get 2 mouthfuls down. It was fabulous cake, but so rich I was afraid I would get sick if I ate anymore.

We hit the sack at about midnight and awoke at 8:15 the next morning. J sent us home with a couple of gorgonzolas and a munster (not the same stuff we get at home, believe me!) A good time was had by all.