Mon Anniversaire!
Yesterday was my birthday, and though I have no pictures here are the highlights:
1. present from my dad in the mail
2. a million messages from friends wishing me happy birthday
3. finding a new (and very steep), tucked away staircase up to the sacre coeur. it was dripping with ivy and beckoning for a photograph (i should have learned to keep my camera with me at this point)
4. lighting a candle at the sacre coeur to honor the memory of the amazing woman who gave me life
5. lovely friends arranging a last-minute soiree
6. the sweetest birthday letter from my mister that poked my heart and prodded tears
7. a lovely nightime walk home with mister koupal
thanks for a beautiful birthday!
boats and pebbles and moules
Dustin surprised me with a trip to Normandie this last weekend. All he told me was “be packed by two” and away we went! Only two hours north of Paris, it’s different world, slower, moving at the pace of the white cows that we passed on the road.
some favorite things: camembert flavored ice cream(!!! seriously yummy), moules + frites with mariniere sauce (white wine and parsley), the cluttered lines of ships’ masts against a backdrop of wood-shingled buildings, organic baked camembert, pebbly beaches and my love all to myself without the pull of work to distract.
my mister did good, lovely and amazing.
The Finer Things
This week I’ve been sniggering to myself over French words in advertising that, untranslated, work out to completely hilarious words and phrases in English. Yes, sometimes (often, even) I have the sense of humor of a pre-pubescent boy.
So, if you’re in the market for a good ass plate, I know a guy:
Or, if you’re looking for a cable box that can tune in to channel POO, freebox is having a special:
The Hangover at La Defense and Crazy Belgian Ladies
Sunday was beautiful - a respite from the terrible heat that plagued Paris last week - a heat that had me scratching at the walls and hallucinating and wavering between nearly passing out and actually passing out. I’m not used to humidity. Thank god it’s over!
But, a new week has begun and to celebrate Dustin, his cousin and I trekked out to La Defense to see a movie. First we took a beautiful walk through our little neck of the suburbs, across the pont de saint-cloud, where we caught a quaint little tram. This lovely little tram (such a nice change from the stinky, piss-riddled, rat’s maze of a metro) took us on a pleasant journey through other quaint eastern suburbs all the way up to La Defense, where my husband sometimes works. I’d never been out there, so had never seen La Grand Arche, which turned out to be far more impressive and spectacular than I had imagined. A huge, white, arch-like structure standing guard over a panoply of Modernist office buildings and business hotels. It may not sound pleasant or interesting, but the area surrounding La Grande Arche is something like the emerald city meets Logan’s Run - a modernist fantasy land built of glass, iron, and conrete. Oddly magical.
Amidst this glass landscape lurks a vast shopping mall, which boasts something like 230 shops and a dome-shaped cinema. This is where we viewed that comedic masterpiece “The Hangover.” Okay, not exactly a masterpiece - actually quite stupid - but it did make me laugh. a lot. (i think partly i have the soul of a dude in his early 20s). And that laughter was such a lovely break from what had been an oddly stressful (worrying about peeps in my homeland, missing mama something fierce) and miserable (did i already say how hot it was?) week.
On the way home we got off a stop early and crossed the seine on a beautiful pedestrian bridge that led right into the bois, walked through the bois all the way home, where we ordered pizza and settled in for a puffy amiyumi video countdown on a French Channel called “no life” or “geek TV.” yes, we are indeed geeks.
On a completely unrelated note: I’ve been trying to quit smoking (again) and made it through all of yesterday when today I had to break down and get a pack. Afterward, as I was walking down the sidewalk enjoying the fruits of my failed will-power, a woman with strongly slurred French approached me and asked if I had another cigarette. Then on hearing my accented French she asked if I was visiting, I said no, but she didn’t seem to register this, and then she asked me where i was from - i replied america, so when she thought she had received an american cigarette she leaned forward and kissed my shoulder! I was shocked, but i thought it was somehow sweet, too? I mean, she was so happy from such a simple thing, I didn’t bother telling her that I had just purchased it from the tabac across the street. It made me oddly happy to make a drunk, slurry, half-crazy Blegian lady so damn happy.
(photo courtesy of http://www.thelocks.eu)
I Gave In
I finally bought a cookbook in french. I don’t know why I put it off so long, insisting on trying to translate my beloved vegetarian cookbooks from Cali into French ingredients and measurements. It’s exhausting to look from cookbook, to ingredient, to computer (for using a measurement converter), and back to the cook book again. And nothing every turned out right. Changing cups into grams is tricky business and not for the culinary faint of heart, such as myself. So, this last weekend I took myself down to the local fnac (kind of like if Best Buy sold books) and searched tirelessly for a usable vegetarian cookbook.
This was no easy feat. The vegetarian cookbooks aren’t even considered proper cookbooks and so are not to be found in the “cuisine” section of the store. All I found there were books about vegetables prepared to accompany meat. Vegetarian cuisine , it seems, has yet be considered as proper food and so instead is relegated to the dusty stacks of “specialty diet” books, along with low-carb, no-carb, no wheat, and all-fruit cookbooks. *sigh*
But thankfully - THANKFULLY - I found a great book (see above image from Fnac website) that is easy to use and super yummy and concerned with getting vegetarians their proper nutrients. So last night I put it to the test - cooking up a hearty batch of “galettes de corgettes” (or zuccini patties) accompanied with ratatouille. And let me tell ya, it was SO much easier to cook from a book whose ingredients I can excpect to find at the market and in measurements that I DON’T HAVE TO CONVERT!!! yay! cooking was suddenly so simplified! And they turned out right! hearty and filling and nutritious (though next time I would add in a dash of my smuggled Bragg’s). phew! Next, i’ll tackle the Feuilletes aux tomates et au pesto. yum.
Don’t Get It Twisted
I’ve twisted my ankle again. This happens nearly every time I wear any - ANY - sort of heel in Paris. The sidewalks are old and wobbly, and the cobble stones jut out at odd angles, and they lay in wait, patiently, silently, to grab my ankle and pull me down. I don’t know how these French ladies and their stilettos do it - just poise and practice I suppose. Maybe this is just another of their magical powers.
Anyway, this is the third time it’s twisted - and I wore my favorite summer platforms out for about 20 minutes running errands. I was so happy to be wearing my summer platforms again, feeling like the old me, the california me, strutting my 70s style, sunshine coaxing new freckles to blossom on my cheeks, than - BAM. My ankle gives. I almost go down, but rectify the sitch quickly. Glancing around to see if anyone noticed my near-collision. Only the old man in the horlogerie seemed to turn his gaze my way. So, there you have it - twenty minutes on a slanted sidewalk and that’s all it takes for miss Marya to develop an unsightly limp.