Category Archives: Australia

Australia, France, Loire Valley, Paris

Gardens I Have Known

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I spent my first 9 years in France living in a flat and biding my time until I could have a house and a garden again. It finally became a reality when I was pregnant with Black Cat and Leonardo was nearly 2 1/2. It was a funny sort of a garden, 10 metres wide by 30 metres long, but typical of the area which used to have a lot of orchards with espalier pear trees. I was into organic food then and we grew apples, hazelnuts, black currants, red currants, tomatoes, strawberries and, best of all, raspberries which the kids loved to pick for dessert. We also had the most wonderful old style rose bushes with the most divine scent.

Before I had my own roses, I didn’t particularly like them but the garden had an enormous variety and I took immense pleasure in picking them to give to my friends who didn’t have gardens. There was a lovely yellow one which started out pink and a red rose whose petals felt like velvet. I was so sad when we grew a hedge of thuya bushes for privacy and it crowded out most of the roses. We realised the damage too late.

 

When I divorced, I had to give up my garden but I was lucky enough to find a ground floor flat with a small garden that we gradually turned into a mass of flowers. We had trumpet creepers and clematis, hollyhocks and azaleas, columbines and delphiniums, irises and forsythias and even a lilac bush, all of which would all suddenly appear after winter. Every year in November we’d plant lots of tulips, jonquils and hyacinths, tiny pansies and cyclamens. We had lilies of the valley for May Day as well.

In the summer, we’d plant masses of busy lizzies, geraniums and nastursiums. Our hanging pots were filled with petunias and begonias. Just thinking about it makes me nostalgic! Then we moved to our apartment in Paris overlooking the Palais Royal gardens. We couldn’t even have window boxes at first because it’s a listed monument. But I finally convinced Relationnel into letting me have planters on the sills of the French windows that you can’t see from the other side.

So you can imagine how much I’m looking forward to our new house in Blois. I can’t wait to see the shrubs come into flower and discover all the different species in the garden. The little wood at the back is full of daffodils and primroses and even tiny ground orchids. I know there are hollyhocks because I’ve seen the leaves but no one has mentioned any columbines or delphiniums. There’s a climbing rose on the front stairs but it looks a little lonely so I’ll have to see what company I can find. And I can’t wait for the wisteria to bloom in April!

Accommodation, Australia, France, Travelling

Our First Home Exchange

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The idea of a home exchange first came to me when a French friend told me that her stepson and his Australian wife were going back to Melbourne to live. I consoled her by saying she and her husband could visit them for longer and at less expense if she did a home exchange. I even recommended a website I’d been told about: www.homeexchange.com. And it has an iPhone app as well. The next thing I knew she had organised a 6-week stay. I immediately set about persuading Relationnel to do the same thing despite his reluctance in the past.

We were planning our next holiday in Australia to include a family reunion in Armidale. During our absence, friends from Canberra were to stay in our apartment in the Palais Royal in Paris for part of the time. They recommended that we go to Tasmania so we organised a 12-day exchange in Launceston and Coles Bay including a car. Our exchangers will be using Paris and our new house in Blois as well as our second car while they are in the Loire Valley. We then started receiving other offers – Victoria, Hobart and Adelaide – so we set up some non-simultaneous exchanges as well, some of which won’t be redeemed until our next trip in 2014!

Palais Royal Gardens

With Blois and the Palais Royal combined, the possibilities seem endless. I thought that we might appreciate a break in sunny Spain before the final signature in Blois in mid-March.  Miguel, who lives in Madrid, had written earlier on to see if we were interested in a swap over Christmas but we were having our bedroom ceiling repainted, so I contacted him again to see if there was a weekend in March that might suit us both. Bingo! We bought our airline tickets, arranging our flights so that he would arrive in Paris before we left and thus exchange instructions and keys.

The next question was how to get the apartment ready, especially for a short stay of four days. Should I empty the fridge or just leave a couple of shelves? What about sheets and towels? How about kitchen essentials? Our Adelaide exchanger, Kathy Stanford, a fellow blogger (Femmes Francophiles) is much more experienced (she uses www.homelink.org) and offered to share her “instruction manual”. It provided me with a good base that I could adapt to suit our particular situation (and country).

After a rather frenetic morning on the day we were going to Madrid, I now know that we need to have some spare room in our cupboards to be able to easily free up space for our guests. We had decided to buy extra sheets and towels so that there wouldn’t be the problem of changing our sheets before we left and finding enough clean sheets to make the bed when we got back. But just storing all this extra linen takes up space we don’t really have. Fortunately we will be able to transfer a lot of things to Blois which is much bigger. That should make things easier in the future.

Courtyard in Madrid

Next time, I will specifically leave a tray with kitchen essentials that don’t need replacing and indicate food in the fridge that our exchangers are welcome to use. For just a few days, it’s rather silly to have to buy oil and vinegar, tea, coffee, butter and sugar, for instance. Miguel left us a basket of fruit which I thought was a great idea. I regretted not having done the same. I put clean tablecloths and serviettes in our usual drawer in the living room but it would have been much more sensible to leave them on the table as he did. I also forgot to put the remote controls for the TV in an obvious place.

The other thing I think is essential is to have a blown-up map of the local area and indicate the closest supermarkets, grocery stores, bakeries, restaurants, pharmacies, etc. We didn’t find the supermarket in Madrid until the day we were leaving! When you don’t know a country and language well, it’s not always easy to find such basic commodities. I’ll also take along some Earl Grey tea bags with me next time. I strongly believe in “When in Rome, do as the Romans”, but not for breakfast!

I’d love to have feedback on your home exchange experiences, particularly any advice you’d like to give a new home exchanger. Oh, and I nearly forgot to say that we found it a very positive experience and are looking forward to the next six we’ve already organised over the next year. Relationnel totally regrets his former reluctance!

www.homeexchange.com (which turns into www.trocmaison.com, www.intercambiocasas.com, www.scambiocasa.com, www.haustauschferien.com, etc. depending on your language!)
 
www.homelink.org (not always easy to follow, but you can sign up as a visitor to consult the listings without joining)
 
www.homeexchange50plus.com/ (a newcomer but promising because of its speciality)
 
http://www.lovehomeswap.com/
Australia

Who’s Kevin Rudd?

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After living in France for more than 35 years, I’m not sure I really know who I am any more. I mean in terms of nationality. When we go back to Australia on holidays, I feel a bit odd because I don’t know how things “work” any more. It always amuses Relationnel that I can’t recognise the coins. Here I am, with my Australian accent, saying to the person at the cash desk, “Is this a dollar? Is this 10 cents?”. Sometimes I actually get congratulated on my excellent English! I just say “thank you”.

But the funniest experience was when we were up in North Queensland in August 2009. We were staying in Cairns in a big hotel opposite the esplanade. I’d noticed all the barbecues along the waterfront but had no idea how to use them. So I asked a table of Australians about our age if they could show me how they worked. A lady very nicely came and explained and off we went to buy some steak.

We were eating away, having shown some young Koreans how to use the barbecue as well,  when the same lady came over to see me. With great excitement, she showed me her digital camera, “Look! look who it is!”. But I can never see anything on those tiny screens anyway and it was already nighttime. “I’m sorry, but I can’t see it very well”. “It’s Kevin Rudd!”, she said, bubbling over with the thrill of it all. And you know the punch line already, because you’ve seen the title of the post. What was my response ? “Who’s Kevin Rudd?”

She looked at me in utter bewilderment, “Aren’t you Australian?” “Yes”, I replied, smiling sweetly. “Oh”, she said. “Well, he’s the Prime Minister”. Then, regaining her lost excitement, “He just stopped by and had a beer with us!” “Ah”, I replied, “That’s very nice”. She went off rather dispiritedly. I’d obviously put a damper on the occasion.

As we were leaving, after being visited by a friendly curlew, a group of young Germans stopped us and said they’d been told they couldn’t have alcohol on the beach and wanted to know whether it was really true. “Well”, I replied, “it seems that the Prime Minister just came by and he had a beer. So I don’t see why you can’t!”.

I’ve been keeping up more with Australian politics since then. I know who Julia Gillard is. She’s a woman after all. And she and Rudd have both hit the French newspapers! Not that either of them can rival with Marine Le Pen and Sarkozy!

Australia, France, Lifestyle

What Language Do You Dream In?

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Sometimes people ask me what language I dream in. I’m not sure that I really dream in any language but I guess it depends on what the dream’s about.  I’m a translator by trade and when you’re working with two languages all day, you don’t necessarily know which one you’re speaking, let alone dreaming. I can remember once being asked by the tax department to come and fix up my GST  cheque which contained an error. I went in and looked at the cheque carefully for a few minutes but still couldn’t see what the problem was. They pointed out that the amount was written half in English and half in French!

When I chose to leave Australia and live in France, I didn’t really know what I was going to. I only knew what I was leaving. I’ve never looked back and never been homesick. That doesn’t mean that I don’t miss my family. I do, especially now that I have four nephews in Australia. But I love living in France. One of the things I like best is that you have greater freedom to be yourself when you live in another country and speak another language. You’re not bound by the same traditions and restrictions. To start off with, you don’t necessarily know that you’re doing something different.

I don’t mean that I want to be outrageous. I just want to be able to act spontaneously without having to worry about what other people say. Once I was in Townsville in the summer and was wearing a fuschia-coloured dress. I was told that it was not a summer colour and that I shouldn’t wear it! I was told in France that I had could only serve rice or potatoes with fish and that rice was never served with red meat, only with veal.  In a meeting or a class in France, you’re supposed to put your hand up when you want to talk. None of this spontaneous discussion that goes on in Australia. But I’ve noticed in staff meetings now that some of my French colleagues are following my example.

Expressing emotion is very different here. If something goes wrong, everybody gets excited about it. They drop everything else they’re doing and try to solve the problem together. Leonardo who’s just moved to Australia was telling me about an incident in his first job there. A problem occurred and his team was supposed to be looking after it. Two hours later, the boss called them in and got very angry because they hadn’t found a solution. Leonardo didn’t even know there was a problem. He was mystified because he hadn’t felt any vibes despite the fact that he was working in the same room as the other people involved.

Yet, at the same time, people never interfere in other people’s lives. I once hadn’t seen my neighbour for several days yet her cat seemed to be prowling around. Since she was depressive, I was worried. I went to see the real estate agent who was selling her flat and he came and checked there was nothing wrong. As it turned out, she’d just gone away for a few days. Relationnel thought I was interfering but I was relieved to know nothing had happened to her.

Another thing I like is that when there are differences in customs and attitudes, you ask yourself why. And that must surely help you gain a better understanding of people and life in general. It certainly makes you more tolerant and open-minded. Some traditions were developed for reasons that are still valid today, while others no longer make any sense. When you have the experience of two different cultures, you can choose the best of both worlds!

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Australia, Dieting, Food, France

How I lost 20 kilos after 50, for good – Part 3

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Fresh vegetables and polenta in zip locks

Do you remember in Part 2 that my nutritionist said that I should divide my plate into 4, with ¼ protein, ¼ carbs and ½ cooked vegetables? Well, I haven’t heard anyone say, “I don’t like vegetables” or “It’s too much of a nuisance to make vegetables”, which is surprising when you see what most people actually eat. And restaurants are certainly not into serving vegetables, not in France anyway unless you also go to the more expensive restaurants.

I like good food and will occasionally get pleasure out of spending hours in the kitchen, but it’s not something I like doing two or three times a day. Everyday cooking, in my opinion, is boring. But vegetables obviously don’t appear out of nowhere. In France, we have Picard, of course. This is a concept that doesn’t seem to exist in Oz, to Leonardo’s great disappointment because he’s very keen on whole leaf spinach. It’s a frozen food supermarket where you can buy practically anything, including unadulterated vegetables, and that’s where I got my best vegetable idea from.

They have these plastic bowl affairs, a bit bigger than a Chinese bowl, containing three or four different vegetables e.g. broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, or peas, zucchini, broccoli and cherry tomatoes, or carrots, green beans and cauliflower. It has a transparent plastic seal so you can just put it in the microwave for a few minutes and, lo and behold, there are your vegetables, all ready to eat.

 

Doesn’t sound very appetising? You’d be surprised how tasty they actually are. One of the problems with vegetables is that they’re often over-cooked. And a half a plate of carrots or zucchini or green beans is sort of boring. Combining a small number that you can vary at each meal and cook to perfection solves that problem. Buying them from Picard though is expensive and time-consuming at 1.40 euro for 250 grammes so I looked around to see what else I could find.

And I did! Ziploc freezer containers by Albal are the answer. These are square plastic containers with expandable lids that contain just the right amount of vegetables for one person and can be washed in the dishwasher. On Sundays at the market, I buy a range of vegetables (whatever’s available) and store them in my green bags. I bet you don’t know what they are. My mother discovered these many long years ago and I stock up on them whenever I go back to Australia because you can’t buy them in France. The funny thing is, I haven’t found any Australians who know about them!

According to the blurb, they “contain natural ingredients which slow down the ageing process of fruit and vegetables by allowing them to breathe more easily. This process decreases the rate of ripening and preserves freshness, vitamins and flavour”. You use a different bag for each type of vegetable. You then expell the air by pressing on them and seal with a twist though I prefer those coloured clip-things you buy from Ikea. You can also wash out the bags after use and keep using them until they get holes in them. This is important if your stock comes from the other side of the world!

I could do one of those with and without ads, but I wouldn’t like to waste my broccoli. You know how broccoli goes brown then yellow almost as soon as you buy it? Well, you can easily keep it in a green bag for a week without it changing colour. It’s quite amazing. That way you only have to shop every 8 or 10 days and still have a store of fresh vegetables in your fridge. By the way, it takes about 4 minutes in the micro-wave to cook one container of cut-up vegetables. You have to slice carrots very thinly, zucchini into 1/2 cm slices and the cauliflower and broccoli into 2/3 cm pieces.

These taste better than the photo would have you believe

The other way I like cooking vegetables is in the oven. For example, I cut up a couple of eggplants, a few zucchini and and two or three capsicums into chunks (aubergines, courgettes and bell peppers for the non-Aussies), put them all in a large baking dish with a few teaspoons of olive oil and lots of thyme, then into in a 200° C oven. After half an hour, I stir well, then  put the dish back in the oven, stirring every 10 minutes (usually another 30 minutes) until the vegetables are cooked.  Delicious hot or cold. Also works for potatoes, sweet peas and real pumpkin (as opposed to the sort you find in France).

Happy vegetable cooking!

The Natural Skinnies and Us
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 1
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 2
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 4
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 5
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 6
Australia, Cycling, Food, France, French customs, Loire Valley, Paris, Wine

A to Z in the Life of an Aussie in France

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Enjoy my A to Z and don’t forget to click on the links for more …

A – Aussie: How else could I begin? Aussies come from Oz or the Land Downunder where I was born and bred.

B – Blois: In the middle of the Loire Valley, where we’re in the process of buying a house built in 1584 which we’ll be renting out as self-catering holiday accommodation until the NEW ADVENTURE in my life starts in June 2014.

C – Cycling: Our favourite activity from April until October in France and wherever. Next trip: Paris to London once they’ve completed the bike route for the London Olympic Games.

A bike path around the city of Innsbruck

D – Down Under: Not the Land, but the book by Bill Bryson. Full of clichés, but most of them are just so true! And a good read any time.

E – Early bird: Which I’m not, but it’s the only way to beat the tourists and I hate standing in line! And that’s what siestas are for.

F – Foie Gras: One of my very favourite foods and that I now know how to make.

G – Garret: Where I thought I was living when I first moved to France, even though it was just a room in a third floor apartment.

H – Home Exchange: Our new way of holidaying. First stop Madrid and lots of exchanges planned for Australia, some simultaneous, some not.

I – iPhone: Something I’m crazy about and which can certainly make life easier on holidays. Perfect for Twitter and Facebook too.

J – Jam-packed: The metro at peak hour so why not take the bus instead and be a real Parisienne?

K – Kilos: The 20 I have lost and never intend to put back on!

L – Loire Valley: Land of kings and queens and castles. Our future home. Less than 2 hours’ drive from Paris.

Chambord in the Loire Valley

M – Mushrooms: Our second favourite activity after cycling, from April to December. But next year we’re heading for Provence in January to check out the truffle market!

N – Natural skinnies: The people who don’t ever have to lose 20 kilos.

O – Oysters: Another of my favourite foods, especially on Sundays – “spéciales” with fresh homemade bread and a lovely cold bottle of Sancerre.

P – Palais Royal: My home for another two years and for the last seven. Right in the middle, with a view of fountain from my balcony, directly above Miss Bibi!

Q – Queensland: Where I was born, in the tropics, a true-blue Banana Bender!

R – Relationnel: My very French husband whom I cycle, pick mushrooms and travel with. Among other things.

S – Summer time: The very best time of the year, when it’s still light at 11 pm and the days seem to go on forever.

T – Tuileries Gardens: Where I power walk, lunch with friends and Relationnel, and watch the sun set over the Louvre.

U – University: Where I’m still teaching translation, despite the sad lack of equipment and outdated installations.

V – Vélib’: Paris’ rent-a-bike system that’s immensely popular with Parisians and great fun along the Seine on Sundays when the road’s closed to traffic.

W – Wolves: To be found in the Palais Royal only when it snows.

Snow in the Palais Royal Gardens in December 2010

X – Xtraordinary: What everyone in Australia thinks my life is, what with living in a Royal Palace and speaking French all the time, but they don’t know how hard it really is!

Y – You-tube: The very best way to learn anything these days, particularly all that new technology and how to set up a blog.

Z – Ze only way most French people know how to say “th”, including Relationnel, giving them a highly recognizable accent.

 

Australia, Australian customs, France, French customs, Lifestyle

An Aussie in France on My French Life

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Corner of the Théâtre Royal

I’m delighted to have joined the My French Life team of contributing authors, photographers, interviewers and talented people who live all around the world.

My French Life /Ma Vie Française – online magazine & global community of French & francophiles – Connect, Share, Inspire, Aspire, Learn…

Local  Events/Réunions monthly in Paris & soon elsewhere   –  7 every month in Ville de Melbourne, Australia

Click here for my introductory post.

“Maybe it was the Latin mass that started it all. I loved chanting away in a language that wasn’t my own even if I didn’t know what I was saying. So when I started to learn French at high school, I was delighted. And it all fitted together so well, just like a puzzle. I actually liked learning verb tenses and vocabulary. I even talked to my dog in French! We had a TV programme at school about a family of four that lived on a barge on a French canal. From Townsville suburbia, it looked like paradise”. Read more

Australia, Australian customs, France, French customs, Lifestyle

Washing Machines I Have Known

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I grew up in North Queensland with one of those enormous top loading agitator washing machines that could wash huge loads in record time. We had a drip dry cycle which meant that the machine stopped after the last rinse and you could remove whatever you wanted, such as a drip-dry shirt, drain it on the draining board over the huge aluminium sink next to the machine, put it on a hanger and then hang it up under the house (our house was on stilts), dripping water over the concrete floor and yourself in the process. All of which was of no importance because the water had disappeared within an hour. You didn’t even get your shoes wet because you were bare foot anyway.

This is not my mother! Photo credits : see link below

 

 

When we went on holidays to the Island, we stayed in Kooyang Flats which had a laundry down the back with a wringer machine. My sister and I were coopted into helping Mum with the washing. We loved turning the wringer and it was really quite a game, provided it didn’t last too long. Except for Mum of course. She must have hated it! Back breaking work for the woman who actually had to wash clothes for six people when she was on holiday, knowing that her huge agitator machine was sitting idle at home.

As I told you in a recent post, my experience with washing machines when I moved to France was somewhat different. Initially, I just used a laundromat. Speed Queens are used worldwide I’ve discovered. My first machine was a front loader tumble machine and I’ve never had anything else. It was in the kitchen though. I was horrified the first time I saw a washing machine next to someone’s fridge. There’s no real reason it shouldn’t be there, but it seemed strange. There are three basic reasons for this: practically no one in an apartment has a laundry room, the bathroom’s usually too small and you need a water connection.

I always made sure I washed the clothes when Leonardo was awake because he used to sit mesmerised in front of the machine the whole time. We didn’t have a TV then. He’s always been mechanically minded. I like to think that I was partly responsible for that. If you’ve ever used one of those machines in France, you’ve probably wondered why the cycles are so long. My normal 40° cycle is 1 hour 17 minutes (my current machine has an electronic display) and the 60° cycle is 2 hours 15 minutes. Well, the reason is very simple even though it took me ages to discover it. They are all connected to a cold water supply so they have to  heat up the water which obviously takes time.

When my parents used come to my place on holidays in the winter (I was living in a house in the suburbs of Paris at that time with a sort of back veranda next to the kitchen that had very handy lines that I used during the summer months), they would insist on drip drying their clothes. The only thing they didn’t seem to be able to quite comprehend was that, number one, it was cold outside which meant that it would take days for the clothes to dry, and number two, the dripping water didn’t magically disappear the way it did in North Queensland. I didn’t have any drip-dry clothes myself.

But there are other types of washing machines in France that I have experienced when on holidays in the country. They are top-loading tumble machines. Inside, there is a drum that revolves clockwise from the back to the front of the machine which means that the drum has to be tightly closed or the clothes will fall out. It comes with a unique opening/closing system where you have to match up some catches that are not easy to identify, then press on a not-always-obvious button. Of course few people really know how to manoeuvre the closing system and the opening has to be in the right place for you to do so. When the machine stops, the opening is usually at the bottom of the machine. Then as you take the clothes out, you can be absolutely sure that a baby sock will slip down the side of the drum, unbeknown to you, and cause the mechanism to seize up next time the machine is used. This is not necessarily your baby sock of course. You may just happen to be the next guest. For a long time, these machines were incomprehensibly the most popular in France. They still are to a certain extent because you can get ones that are 40 cm wide instead of the usual 60, a big boon in small bathrooms and kitchens. N’est-ce pas Leonardo?

Kooyang Holiday Units, 13 Hayles Avenue, Arcadia, Qld 4819, 07 4778 5570
Photo credit (not my mother!): http://www.yourememberthat.com/media/10392/Wringer_Washing_Machine/
 

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Australia, Family, Food, French customs, Wine

No Boxing Day in France

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Unfortunately, there is no Boxing Day in France. We had to pack up everything in Normandy and leave last night which was very sad. I couldn’t believe how much stuff we’d acquired in just over a week! There were all the Christmas decorations for the tree and crib and table of course plus the holly from the forest and mistletoe from the apple trees. But we also went to two other dépôt vente places and came away with all sorts of wonderful things for the new house in Blois, including a lovely old 5-branch ceiling light that Relationnel managed to drop when putting it into the car for the return journey – fortunately it didn’t shatter and the crack shouldn’t be too noticeable when it’s attached to the ceiling. We didn’t buy the Australian guitar or the aggressive GI!

When we got home to our apartment in Paris,  it all had to be unpacked of course which was complicated by the fact that the bedroom ceiling had been repainted during our absence. A few months ago, large drops of water suddenly started to appear on the ceiling above the bed. Apparently, the gutters on the terrace of the flat above us were blocked up. By the time they were unblocked, the paint was peeling off in large flakes. So all the bedroom furniture was in the lounge and we couldn’t put it back until we got the curtains back from the dry cleaners today.

Gathering holly

To console ourselves, we finished off our home made foie gras that turned out to be the best we’ve made yet (must have been because I dropped the iPhone in it during the process) accompanied by the delicious compote de fruits vieux garçon (bachelor’s fruit compote) we made on Saturday (recipe below – requires expertise in making caramel which I do not have but that fortunately Relationnel does) and the rest of the Pierre Adam Kaefferdopf gewurztraminer 2006. There were even a few slices of pain brioché au miel left to go with it.  Followed by smoked salmon, lychees and Rozan chocolates with our coffee. A nice way to end off Christmas day.

My scales told me this morning that we’ll be eating grilled fish and chicken and steamed vegetables for the rest of the week … in preparation for New Year!

Compote de fruits vieux garçon 
 
Ingredients : 1 apple, 1 pear, 6 dried abricots, 6 prunes, 6 cl of port wine, 80 g of honey. 
 
Peel the apple and pear and cut them into 1 cm squares. Chop the dried fruit into 5 mm pieces and soak in the port wine. The recipe doesn’t say for how long but it was probably about 20 to 30 minutes because I was using the only large saucepan for something else. 
Put the honey in a large saucepan and caramelise. You have to use fairly high heat. Quite suddenly, it all froths up and this is where the expertise comes in. If you cook it too much it burns. The trick is to squeeze in some lemon juice at just the right moment to reduce the heat and stop the caramelising process. I did the squeezing. Relationnel said when. 
Then you add the apple and pear and cook for 3 minutes followed by the dried fruit and port. You let them stew for at least 20 minutes at moderate heat, stirring often to prevent sticking. 
You can keep it for a week in the fridge.
Australia, Croatia, Family, France, French customs, Slovenia

Christmas Tree’s Up!

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When I was a child in Townsville, our Christmas tree was an athel pine. Well, I think it was anyway. You certainly couldn’t buy fir trees or go out and cut them down in the forest as Relationnel and his father did when he was little. After a while, my mother got sick of all the mess from the athel pine and decided, to our great dismay, to buy an awful looking imitation tree. It was also tiny.

So when I had my own children in France, we used to buy a real fir tree until the first year I spent Christmas on my own after my divorce. I had decided not to have a tree that year but felt so miserable on Christmas Eve without my kids or a tree that I went to the local hypermarket and bought a pretend one. These days, they are far more realistic than the one Mum bought. Black Cat and Leonard were not impressed though.

When we started coming to Le Mesnil Jourdain for Christmas, there were no more excuses for not buying the real thing. First, there is always a vendor in Louviers, second, they sell Nordman trees that don’t lose their needles and third, there is plenty of room for a big one. Last year, it snowed so much that we nearly missed out because we were housebound for two days. By the time we got back to Louviers, the vendor had packed up and gone. Fortunately the flower shop in the main street still had some left. This year, it was the first thing we did when we got here. I love the system. First, you choose your tree, then they put it through a Christmas tree packaging machine and it comes out the other end in netting so that it’s easier to transport.

Black Cat is coming this afternoon so we’ll decorate the tree together. The male element (as my father used to say) likes the idea of the tree but are not even remotely interested in decorating it. All our decorations have a story, starting with the oldest, two little Chinese lanterns a friend brought back from Hong Kong when I was in high school and that I kept safely until I had my own tree. Several of the decorations were made by Leonardo who is an origami expert and one by Forge Ahead when he was little. All the others come from our travels.

We try to bring back something for the tree from each place we visit. We began in Rottenburg in Germany after we discovered the wonderful Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas store. I could have bought the whole shop! The decorations are absolutely fabulous. Our latest acquisitions are a flamenco shoe from Seville, a traditional heart from Croatia, a pendant key ring from Bosnia Herzogovina and a violin from Innsbruck in Austria. We seem to have forgotten about Slovenia! Black Cat also adds to the collection whenever she can. This year she brought us back a lovely hand-painted bauble from Sweden. Friends who know about it contribute as well – we now have a little plaque depicting the French quarter in New Orleans.

My favourites are two baubles from the decorative arts museum next to the Louvre, the one Black Cat brought back from Saint Paul’s in London, the beautiful ruched egg a friend made me, Leonardo’s origami unicorn, Thoughtful’s king on a reindeer and the crib inside a glass bauble.

 

 

 

It’s a good thing we’ve bought a house of our own in Blois – we’ll need a truck to transport everything soon!

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