Food, France, Loire Valley, Paris, Restaurants, Wine

La Saint-Valentin

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As my 9-year-old nephew in Sydney pointed out to me yesterday when I mentioned Saint Valentine’s Day to him, the “Saint” has disappeared from Valentine’s Day in English. Francophiles may wonder why it’s “la” Saint-Valentin and not “le”. Well, like all feast days, it’s short for “la fête du Saint-Valentin”.  Hence the feminine for what looks like a masculine.

Back to the day itself. Relationnel, who is a real romantic, arrived with a bunch of roses at lunchtime. He had taken the afternoon off so we decided to go to a couple of depôt-vente and find some things to furnish and decorate Closerie Falaiseau, our new house in Blois. The temperatures have risen since our previous excursion last Saturday so my hands and feet weren’t completely frozen this time. There is a website called www.troc.com that now has 190 second-hand shops in France so we chose one about three-quarters of an hour from the centre of Paris in the western suburb of Orgeval.

We found quite a few goodies, including a coffee grinder, a long-handled bed-warming pan, a set of pewter jugs, a coffee pot, some scales and a Moustier fruit bowl in troc.com and a new expresso/cappuccino machine and a steam iron in another place called Cash Converter, also a chain, which has a lot of musical instruments, hi-fi equipment, small appliances and other household goods. We learnt that you can see the items for sale at troc.com on-line and even reserve them. We’re going to see if we can get some dining-room chairs that way.

We got back to Paris just in time for dinner at La Bastide Odéon, which specialises in cuisine from the south of France. As we were walking along towards our destination, I suddenly saw a restaurant which looked as if it had towels rolled up on the tables outside.  How very odd! I was trying to imagine what sort of Valentine’s celebration was in the offing there when Relationnel said they were blankets for people to sit outside. The blankets even have the name of the restaurant on them – Le Comptoir!

Our restaurant didn’t have a terrace with rolled-up blankets so we sat upstairs.  Relationnel thought he had discovered a new venue but in fact we had eaten there once before with friends from Canberra and enjoyed it. The tables are fairly spread out but there was a lot of noise in the room next door which we weren’t too thrilled with. At one stage, two of the people came out and Relationnel immediately recognised Robert Badinter, famous in French history for having successfully abolished the death penalty on 9th October 1981. After that, we didn’t mind the noise!

They had an excellent set menu for Valentine’s Day at 49 euros per person, starting with champagne and a little sweet pepper (piquillo) stuffed with goat’s milk cheese (very tasty). It was followed by a choice of two entrées – creamy scrambled eggs with black truffle or carpaccio of sea scallops with spicy avocado, sauce vierge (which just means olive oil) and horns of plenty (excellent) – and a choice of two main courses – grilled fillet of bass with candied lemon, creamy risotto and sea shell bouillon (which we didn’t take) or roast rack of lamb (extraordinarily tender), mutton stew gravy (sounds better in French – jus de navarin), eggplant caviar and candied tomatoes (they didn’t look very candied to me).

For dessert, you could have a soft-centred chocolate cake (moelleux au chocolat) with chestnuts and condensed milk ice-cream (all very tasty) or candied pineapple with lavendar honey, fiadone (a Corsican soft cheese dessert) and brown sugar biscuit ice-cream (speculoos) (Relationnel’s choice).

A bottle of wine per couple was also included in the menu. We could choose from two wines – a pouilly fumé sauvignon from the Loire Valley or a côtes du Rhône. We took the red, which we regretted afterwards – not because we didn’t like it, but because it was 15° !!!

As we walked past Le Comptoir on the way back to the car, we noticed that all the outside tables were taken and everyone had their blankets around their knees.

La Bastide Odéon, 7 rue Corneille, 75006 Paris, tel 01 43 26 03 65, contact@bastideodeon.com, www.bastideodeon.com, M° Odéon lines 10 and 4, RER Luxembourg, open every day. 
 

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Food, Paris, Restaurants

The Dry Tree

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Well, it’s not really called The Dry Tree but L’Arbre sec. You’d think that a translator could come up with something better, wouldn’t you? But in fact, it has an historical reference that the more learned amongst us will no doubt know. It’s also called the Solitary Tree and was first recorded by Marco Polo somewhere in the wastelands of northern Persia. So, since my culture does not quite extend that far (unfortunately), I think I can be forgiven for the poor translation.

It’s actually one of our neighbourhood restaurants, called La Taverne de l’Arbre Sec, on rue Saint Honoré, better known (at the other end) for it’s exclusive shops. We mainly go there to have côte de boeuf, but it has other things such as rumpsteack and sea scallops Provençale, with prices ranging from 14 to 25 euros. They have a good choice of vegetables which is great for those of us who are not natural skinnies – gratin dauphinois, home-made ratatouille and home-made chips. I chose the ratatouille of course, even though my côte de boeuf probably took up half the plate, so I was not exactly obeying the 1/4 protein, 1/4 carbs and 1/2 vegetables rule.

The service is unfailingly friendly and the clientèle is French and local, usually in the 20 to 30 year age group, but we don’t let that bother us, obviously. You can get wine by the glass, pichet or bottle. They have a covered terrace in the winter, one side for the smokers and the other side for the non-smokers, which is unusual. It’s very old and dark and atmospheric with lots of rough timber beams. The room downstairs has a vaulted ceiling.

When we were leaving, I asked the owner, Sylvain Lemarchand, if I could take a photo for my blog. He told us that he was very admirative of people who wrote blogs that other people could benefit from, and gave us his cheesiest grin!

La Taverne de l’Arbre Sec, 109 rue Saint Honoré, 75001 Paris 01 40 41 10 36
 

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History, Paris

Powerwalking to the Pont Neuf – Part 2

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Town hall, Romanesque tower, Saint Germain l'Auxerrois

It’s not that I’m doing any powerwalking at the moment. It’s too cold. Today, the temperature got up to 1.5°C and there’s sun, but it’s still a little chilly in the Tuileries Gardens and along the Seine with that Siberian wind blowing through. But I got a little side-tracked last time before I got to Saint Germain l’Auxerrois which is connected by a very tall belfry to the 1st arrondissement Town Hall that Black Cat thinks is a good wedding venue.

17th century vestry pew

It was built in the 7th century in what was to be the centre of Paris up until 12th century and was the first Christian basilica. I’m sure you know what the difference between a basilica and a cathedral is. It took me ages to understand. A basilica is simply an important church building designated by the pope as having some special spiritual, historical or architectural significance. As far as hierarchy goes, the basilica is higher up on the scale than a cathedral.

 

Ex-voto pillar

So the oldest surviving part of the church today is the beautiful 12th century Romanesque tower. Most of it was rebuilt in the 15th century. Because of its location, it became a favourite with the royal family after the House of Valois returned to the Louvre Palace in the 14th century. You can still hear one of the bells, called Marie, struck in 1527. I think it’s great that bells have names. We visited a very interesting bell foundry on Lake Annecy one rainy day last summer.

Moorish-style poor box

Anyway, Saint Germain l’Auxerrois has had a somewhat checkered existence. When they renovated it in the 18th century, they took out the jubé (you have to go to Saint Etienne-du-Mont in the 5th to see one now) and some of the original stained glass windows. During the Reign of Terror (7th June 1793 to 27 July 1794 when Marie Antoinette was beheaded), it was converted into a place to store fodder, a printing works, a police station and even a saltpeter works to make gunpowder. Despite several other attempts at demolition, it was eventually restored by Viollet-le-Duc, who was also responsible for renovating Notre Dame, and returned to the Catholic church in 1840.

 

Poor box for the curé's charities

Then about twenty years later, they started tearing down the delapidated buildings around it and threatened to demolish it again. Fortunately it was defended by Baron Haussmann who suggested drawing inspiration from the church to build a Town Hall. So they designed an identical façade with an adjoining flamboyant gothic style campanile.

One of the finest pieces inside is a monumental 16th century Flemish altarpiece in one of the northern chapels showing the passion of Christ, a gift to Louis-Philippe in the early nineteenth century. There’s another altarpiece from the north of France made of sculpted wood with painted doors in the southern ambulatory, depicting scenes from the life of Mary.

There is also a pulpit built in 1635, an organ from Sainte-Chapelle, a beautifully carved vestry pew made for Louis XIV and his family in 1684 and a wrought iron gate built in 1767. You’ll find a 13th century statue of Saint Germain d’Auxerre in the Virgin chapel and a 16th century statue of Mary the Egyptian.

Holy water font

But what I like are the ex-voto pillar with all the thank-you plaques to Marie, Notre Dame de Bonne Garde (Our Lady of Safe Custody), the Moorish-style poor box with its mosaics, the cherub holy water fonts, the curé’s poor box and the beautiful flamboyant gothic door near the sacristy.

 

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Family, France, Paris

No Oysters on Sunday

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I think our cold snap this year has even reached the news in Australia. February is always the coldest month in Paris and we usually have a couple of snow falls during the winter but the temperatures rarely go below freezing. But we’ve just had two weeks in Paris with minus 2 or 3 degrees throughout the day and much colder temperatures at night.  We’d actually been having a very mild winter so the cold snap took everyone by surprise.

Brainy Pianist alias Michelin Man

Brainy Pianist, who desperately wanted to see some snow, was searching for somewhere to go and I suggested Strasbourg so he and Thoughtful went there last weekend by train. It didn’t snow in Strasbourg – at minus 12°, it was too cold – but they saw a lot of snow on the way. Brainy Pianist, looking very much like the Michelin man, was dressed in long johns, two pairs of jeans, 2 T-shirts, 2 jumpers, 2 pairs of socks, a neck warmer and a scarf, two beanies, one with ear flaps, and rabbit-fur lined gloves he’d had the good sense to pick up in Rome after he read my post! He hadn’t thought to take a second pair of gloves, but Thoughtful did! Plus they were both wearing anoraks of course.

Thoughtful alias The Terrorist

It’s snowed in Paris since, to Brainy Pianist’s delight because he missed the first snow fall when he was in Strasbourg, but there wasn’t a lot so it didn’t stay on the ground for long. The Palais Royal Gardens looked very pretty though and the water in the fountains next to the Glass Pyramids at the Louvre was all frozen over. But the cold has persisted.

In winter, I usually just wear wool mix trousers, socks, long-sleeved shirt and wool mix jacket when I go out, with ankle boots, parka with a hood, long scarf to keep the hood in place and rabbit-fur lined gloves. When it’s minus something, I add a pair of tights. My hands get very cold though. I have a pair of thin silk gloves somewhere that have obviously disappeared at the moment, just when I need them!

Me, not Black Cat

Black Cat turned up for afternoon tea yesterday in a summer dress with a cardigan over it, thick tights, long boots, coat, hat, scarf and gloves.  Looking very chic as usual. She’s even got special iPhone gloves so you don’t have to get freezing hands when you answer your phone. I need some too. She immediately took off the cardigan because our apartment is overheated, usually 23°C with the radiators off because of the hot water pipes from the central heating. The water has to be hot so that the apartments on the lower floors are sufficiently heated (we’re on the fourth floor). At her place, though, they have electric heaters, which are expensive to run, so she always has to keep a jumper on. Plus her Australian flat mate is always opening the windows and turning off the radiators and forgetting to turn them back on, particularly in the morning.

Directoire chest of drawers

Yesterday was the coldest I’ve been in a long time. We went off to a dépôt-vente in Nogent sur Marne looking for more furniture for the house in Blois. It was minus 2° both inside and out! I don’t know how the people can work there. We bought a directoire chest of drawers with a marble top. Despite the gloves, my hands were completely frozen by the time we got back into the car which, being a Volvo, doesn’t heat up very quickly. You’d think the Swedish could do better than that! Our Renault Scenic is almost immediately warm.

I went to the market this morning to buy fish and eggs. We bought everything else from the supermarket yesterday because last week’s fruit and vegetables were damaged because of the freezing temperatures and the ground’s so hard now you can’t dig anything up. The fish don’t seem to mind the cold. I felt sorry for the fish mongers though. They have to clean and gut the fish. No oyster man. Last week we ate inferior “fines de claires” instead of “spéciales” so this time, we decided not to have oysters on Sunday. Sigh.

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Family, Lifestyle

The Travel Itinerary

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Working out a travel itinerary has become my most time-consuming holiday task. That wasn’t always so.  When I was young and adventurous, I used to set off with a backpack and follow whoever knew when the next bus, train or boat was leaving. Or just stuck out my thumb. It made it very simple. There was always someone else at the other end offering a room and a bath. I usually slept in those shared dorms which even back in those days could be co-ed. I accidentally found myself in one on my first honeymoon, but that was because I didn’t know you had to ask for a letto matrimonial. There were six single beds. Fortunately, we were the only ones there.

An unforgettable trip to Malta (in lieu of Australia because I stupidly thought it would be easier) when Leonardo was four months old put an end to such spontaneous travelling.  Although he was fully breastfeed and theoretically transportable with my trusty baby sling, he was still a hefty little fellow and a light sleeper and I arrived home more exhausted than when I left. Somehow, travelling wasn’t the same any more. The spontaneity no longer seemed appropriate.

And once Black Cat arrived, travelling, except for our 3-yearly trip to Australia, became synonymous with camping.  Not that that was really a piece of cake. The kids loved it, but I spent most of the time getting sand out of the bed, cooking on two gas rings, washing up in a communal kitchen, taking showers with the kids, shopping for food and peeing outside the tent at night in the hope that no late revellers would go past.

My first real holiday since my pre-Malta days came when I took 12-year old Black Cat across France to Heidelberg by car. She was a model companion and we played it by ear. The only slip-up was that I had forgotten to take her passport with me. However, we decided to take the risk and cross the border at some little place whose name I can’t remember. No one came near us. We had a lovely time, having breakfast at the hotel, picnicking at lunchtime and eating out at night. We always seemed to find a hotel without too much trouble. We stayed in Reims, Strasbourg, Metz, the place I can’t remember, Heidelberg and Colmar. And when we’d had enough, we went home.

After I met Relationnel, we used to rent a holiday house for a week or two at a time, usually in Brittany, and take the four kids with us. We always went shopping in the morning by ourselves and finished off with a bowl of cider afterwards. We came home one day and were immediately confronted by the elderly couple next door. They told us that the “older ones” had been attacking poor little Thoughful and they were about to call the police.

Brittany in the summer

Mystified, because the four of them usually got on like a house on fire, we said we’d look into the problem. It turned out that they were all inside, pretending to have a fight with their pillows, screaming as though they were really hurt, Thoughtful louder than any of the others. We had to make them promise to behave themselves while we were out. I hate to think what the neighbours would have said if they’d known we were a blended family !

When Relationnel and I were finally able to go on holidays on our own, we would choose a country, book the first hotel and take off in the car, stopping wherever the mood took us. But as we always travelled in the summer and there weren’t any mobile phones in those days, not to mention the fact that I have become fussy about where I sleep since my backpacking days, it didn’t seem to be such a good idea any more.

Now, we plan everything beforehand. We work out the itinerary together and I book the accommodation. It does take a lot of time, but it certainly makes life much easier once we’re on our way. Now that you can check out the internet, consult Trip Advisor and see what the bloggers have to say, there aren’t too many bad surprises, although it’s amazing how a photograph can be so completely different from reality!

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Lifestyle

Little Bo Tweep

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In Twitter Twitter Little Star, I explained about the basic uses of Twitter, but since then, I’ve been learning lots of new things. I’m no longer a #tweep and am now a #twitterian, having joined the #500tweetsclub. Soon I’ll be a #tweeting machine.

Let’s take it one at a time. Now tweep can actually mean a few different things. It’s a combination of Twitter and Peeps to start off with. Peeps, I discovered (talk about not knowing ANYTHING) is short for people, but you probably knew that unless you’ve been living in the wrong country for more than 35 years.

But sometimes it can be more specific. One of my followers tweeted to his “peeps and fans“, including me. So I asked him what a peep was: “Ah, well peeps is my definition of people living in Paris and fans are tweeters interested in Paris but not living here :)”. So, I’m his peep. Hmm. He did check it was OK. Not sure what Relationnel will think about it though.

So, now from peep to tweep if you’re still following all this. A tweep is a person you’re following and who’s following you.  But it can also be a Twitter user who’s new to the game and hasn’t made many tweets and is therefore the lowest of the low on the Twitter scale. If you’re at the top, you’re a twitterian. You can say, for example, “Thanks to all the tweeps who RT my last tweet” which means “thanks to all the lovely people who retweeted my last tweet”.

From tweep, we move to “tweeple” who are people who use twitter. So peeps and fans are tweeple as well.

A bit more on hashtags.

I received a tweet with #FF which I thought meant Fan Friday but Andrea tells me is Follow Friday (see comment), which is much more logical! This is when you tweet several people at the same time to suggest that they mutually follow each other! Took me a while to work it out. I’m waiting for Friday so I can use it myself! What are your favourite hashtags so I can learn some more and really earn the title of twitterian?

I’ve discovered a couple of new iPhone apps as well. Viber is the first. It’s like What’s App except that you can send text messages AND talk for free to anyone who’s got the same App (iPhone or Android), so long as you have a wifi connection ;

Then there’s instagram. To quote the publisher, it’s “a free, fun, and simple way to make and share gorgeous photos on your iPhone”.  I haven’t discovered all the ins and outs yet, but it looks fun. I already use the PhotoShop Express App which makes posting photos on Facebook and Twitter much easier. The photos below demonstrate what you can do with instagram. The second photos are the “sunny” and “black & white” versions.

Original photo taken with my iPhone

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Dieting, Food, Lifestyle

How I lost 20 kilos after 50, for good – Part 4

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Two weeks ago, in part 2, I told you about my visit to Dr Séjean, a touchy-feely encouraging nutritionist from Martinique. She basically told me to cut out all wheat-based products for three weeks and divide my plate into four: ½ protein, ½ carbs (the contents of a Chinese bowl) and ½ cooked vegetables (cooking and storage tips in part 3). The result was astonishing.  I’d lost 2 ½ kilos and 4 cm from my waist and tummy! She’d also told me to note down everything I ate. Of course, this in itself caused me to modify my diet. What’s more, it hadn’t seemed difficult at all because there wasn’t anything I wasn’t allowed to eat (apart from wheat). I could still have côte de boeuf and oysters on Sunday.

Many of you have talked to me about your weight problems since the last post and one of the main concerns seems to be binge eating. Once I started the diet, I no longer had a problem with that, but as I explained in part 1, I had been listening to hypnosis tapes for a few months and I’m sure they were extremely effective. However, it does seem that making sure you get enough protein, particularly at breakfast, can definitely help.

There are various ways to combat the urge to binge. First, you need to analyse what’s causing the problem.  Most people binge from stress so you need to find a way to destress yourself. Relaxation cassettes, yoga, exercise, cycling, soaking in a hot bath, having a shower, going on a buying spree, having a cup of tea – there are all sorts of things you can do instead of eating. It takes one month to change a habit, Leonardo tells me, so if you can get past that first month, you’re halfway there. One method that I had found useful in the past was to go and sit in a comfortable chair if I felt the urge to raid the fridge. I’d close my eyes and breathe deeply, thinking zen thoughts. After a few minutes, the urge would disappear. Most of the time.

And one thing to remember – it’s not because you binged one day that all is lost. If you really want to lose weight and not put it back on, you have to be nice to yourself. OK, so today you ate all those biscuits or foie gras or whatever. But tomorrow’s another day. In fact, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life! Pretty good, huh? It means you can always begin again.

Coquilles Saint Jacques

Doctor Séjean looked at the list of what I’d eaten during the previous two weeks and noticed that I didn’t eat much fish. What I like is seafood (especially oysters on Sunda and coquilles Saint Jacques), reef fish and salmon, not those insipid white fish you find in France. If you have to add beurre nantais, there doesn’t seem to be much point in eating bar (bass) instead of entrecôte. However, I had tasted raw fish in the form of capaccio in Venise the year before and figured I could give it ago.

Fresh fish at the market

I soon discovered that most fish is overcooked, particularly in restaurants and that when it’s raw, it’s delicious. Also, it doesn’t smell out the kitchen. I’d ask the fishmonger on the market each week for the freshest fish and had soon tasted practically everything tartare, sprinkled with a bit of lemon and olive oil. And after about a year, I started liking it lightly cooked as well. Now we buy different types of fish on the market on Sunday that we eat at each lunch and dinner until Tuesday night. I mainly like mackerel, limande (lemon-sole), rouget (red mullet), carrelet (plaice), lotte (monk-fish) and turbot, and I dislike colin (hake) and cabillaud (cod).  I prefer bar (bass), dorade (sea-bream) and tuna uncooked. I deep-freeze fresh salmon and defreeze it and cook it in the microwave. It’s really easy and delicious when it’s not overcooked. So I guess that I now eat fish at about half my meals.

Foie gras with toast

But Christmas was coming up and I was a bit worried about putting back on my newly-lost kilos. Dr Séjean told me not to worry, that I should just make sure that if I drank alcohol, I always ate something with it. That was a surprise but she explained that the food absorbs the sugar whereas if you just have a glass of wine by itself, you store the calories immediately.  She said that if I ate foie gras (as if I wouldn’t!) I should have it with toasted bread and, generally speaking, if I was going to have bread, I should have it toasted whenever possible because that way, it doesn’t have a bloating effect.

Wild mushrooms on toast for apéritif

We were planning a few côtes de boeuf of course but she advised me to eat them with vegetables and not just potatoes, for example.  She reminded me not to forget the carbs and said I could re-introduce wheat-based foods after another week. But in the meantime, I’d got used to eating quinoa and polenta so I wasn’t really missing the wheat very much except for home-made fresh bread. Another thing she told me is that I should have at least 2 tablespoons of oil a day.

Having recharged my batteries, I took another appointment for a month later. Watch out for Part 5 and let me know how it’s going!

Polenta recipe
 
Polenta is really simple to make. You boil 2 cups of water in a saucepan then add 1/2 cup of polenta stirring quickly with a whisk. It thickens almost immediately. Pour into a recipient (such as a Ziploc) until it’s solid then put it in the fridge for a couple of hours. Tip out onto a board and slice horizontally so that it’s about 1 ½ cm thick. Cut into large squares. Cook in a little oil until the outside is brown and crisp. 
 
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 3
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 5
How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 6

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Food, French customs

Crepes Recipe for Chandeleur

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A little bit late, but here it is! Chandeleur or, more popularly, “la fête des crèpes” is held on 2nd February, 40 days after Christmas. One explanation is that it celebrates the presentation of Christ at the temple of Jerusalem but it seems there are pagan origins as well. Its name derives from the expression “festa candelarum”or “candle day”. It seems there’s also a tradition of holding a coin in your hand when flipping the crèpe that will guarantee prosperity for the coming year.

In any case, everyone loves crèpes so any excuse is good!

Ingredients:

250 g of flour (I use wholemeal)
2 or 3 eggs 
1/2 litre of milk

The trick for not getting lumps in the mixture is to put the flour in first, then the eggs. With a wooden spoon, break the yolks and mix the eggs a bit, then add enough milk to be able to mix it all to a thick, but not dry, paste, then add the rest of the milk in stages. If you don’t add enough milk the first time, you get lumps. I don’t add sugar to the mixture, but some recipes do (about 100 g sugar for 250 g flour).

Add a teaspoon of oil and stir. Then add a bit of water so that the consistency is right. This will depend on your flour and number of eggs. It has to be thick but runny at the same time. You can readjust the texture after the first crèpe. A lot of people in France think the mixture has to “rest” for hours beforehand but it’s only because they don’t know how to make it without lumps. Leaving it for hours takes the lumps out.

It’s best to use a flat crèpe pan but a frypan still works. I now buy Teflon because it’s so much easier even though it gets a lot of flak these days. You just have to replace it when it gets scratched, which won’t happen if you flip the crèpes. One of the problems with the regular pans is that the bottom has a tendency to to rise up in the middle after a while and the crèpe doesn’t cook evenly.

In any case, you need to have the pan very hot to start with. We specifically bought a cooker top with a halogen ring so we could cook crèpes! I used to have gas which is much better. So, you add a little oil to the pan and spread it on the bottom with a paper towel. Using a ladle, pour in just enough mixture to cover the bottom of the pan. This will obviously take practice but, don’t worry, the crèpes will get eaten anyway, even if they’re too thick or too thin! Swirl the mixture rapidly around the pan by tilting it a bit. Some people use wooden scrapers to make them very thin but I’ve never tried. Maybe I should. When the bubbles burst on the top and you can see that the crèpe has shrunk away from the sides, use a spatula to make sure it isn’t stuck to the pan. When the crèpe can slide around easily, it’s ready to flip. With a deft flick of the wrist (don’t you like that description), preferably using two hands, flip the crèpe. Of course, you should make sure that if it misses the pan on the way down, it doesn’t fall into the rest of the mixture.

Otherwise you can turn it with a spatula and when the other side is cooked, you can practice flipping. That way, if you don’t throw it up high enough, it won’t stick to itself on the way down.

When my kids were small and invited their friends over, I used to keep making crèpes until no one wanted any more. They loved the ones with holes. One of Black Cat’s friends used to eat bits out at eye level and pretend it was a mask then eat it bit by bit. I once made them for 2 hours straight at a school fête. It was the most popular stand!

 

Enjoy!

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Australian customs, France, French customs

Freezing cold is relative!

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Place Stanislas, Nancy

As I’ve already mentioned, when a Queenslander says they’re freezing cold, it means that it’s 15°C at night and all the windows are open (can’t close the windows! gotta have fresh air, you know). When the French say it’s freezing, it actually is zero degrees outside. All the windows are closed and the heating’s up as high as it’ll go. It’s all very relative, isn’t it?

A couple of years ago in February, we decided to spend a week in Lorraine, best known for its quiches of course, but also the home of Nancy, one of France’s best examples of art nouveau.  We found an 18th century gîte to stay in about 15 minutes out of the city. It was a bit bigger than we needed (4 bedrooms) but it looked lovely from the photos.

When we got there, it had been snowing and it all looked very pretty. Inside, however, I immediately noticed the cold but sometimes it takes a day or so for a gîte to heat up, especially if no one has been in it for the last week or so. The bedroom layout upstairs was a bit strange – the only en-suite had two single beds, not exactly our idea of a romantic get-away.

The hoped-for warming-up never happened. The kitchen reached a steady 15°, the living room reached a ceiling of 19° and sometimes 20° when the fire was going full blast and we managed 17 or 18° in the en-suite bedroom where we ended up putting a double mattress on top of the two single beds so I wouldn’t have to freeze in the middle of the night going down two steps and across the unheated landing to the other bathroom.

Porte Héré, Nancy

But the coldest place in the house was the corridor between the kitchen and the living room. No matter how high we put the one radiator, it never went above 8°C. Now, 8°C indoors is cold by any standards. We later discovered that the corridor used to be a street running between two houses, one containing the present kitchen, downstairs bathroom and upstairs bedrooms and the other containing what are now the living room, dining room and entrance. It had been covered with a roof to join the two houses together but the question of heating had obviously not been taken into consideration.

Villa Majorelle, rue Louis

When I mentioned to the owner that guests should be warned about the lack of heat, she said huffily that it was the country, after all, what did I expect? Well, certainly not 8°C. We had another problem in the en-suite bathroom, where cold water started to drip directly over the toilet during the night. The owner’s husband came to have to a look then brought a plumber. It turned out that it was caused by condensation due to the fact that we were heating the bathroom (well, wouldn’t you?) when the rest of the upstairs floor was cold!

Rue Félix Faure

That did not however detract from the beauty of Nancy, starting with the very beautiful Place Stanislas, its old quarter with the 12th century Porte de la Craffe and 16th century ducal palace, its 18th century cathedral, its turn-of-the-century Basilica inspired by Sacré Coeur in Montmartre,  and all the lovely art nouveau buildings in the Quartier Saint-Léon, especially Villa Majorelle. The Musée de l’Ecole de Nancy is one of the few museums dedicated to a school of art and is a definite must.

Musée de l’École de Nancy, 36-38, rue du Sergent Blandan, 54000 Nancy, Wednesday to Sunday 10 am to 6 pm
 
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