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You know when you read something that is so funny that it makes you snort out loud in a totally inappropriate setting like your office? 'Cause I know you all read Go fug yourself at work during your afternoon coffee break...
Don't say I didn't warn you. It manages to be witty and pack in a serious amount of pop culture all at the same time. Love it.
Does that give you a good visual while I struggle to find time to understand the inner working of my new camera? (and the fact that I seem to have misplaced the old point-and-shoot).
I saw Aimee's picture of her fruit leather on flickr and had a wild craving for the stuff. We weren't allowed to have fruit roll-ups as kids and as a result, I developed a taste for the real fruit leather my mom bought at the health food store (blueberry was/is definitely my favorite). We had a couple of mushy apples in the fruit bowl and several blood oranges leftover from an eyes-to-big-for-the-stomach moment at the market. I greatly dislike mushy, mealy apples and when they've passed their crispy dipped-in-peanut-butter prime, I usually make a batch of applesauce. This time however, I thought I'd do something a little different.
I threw the raw chunks of two peeled apples and two blood oranges into the bowl that goes along with my immersion mixer, pureed them into an orangy mash, and spread out the mixture evenly onto a silpat. Popped the whole thing in the oven set at convection at 70°C (approx 150°F) and three hours later, I had fruit leather.
I'm not entirely convinced that all of this was worth the effort to make a 12 in x 8 in sheet of fruit leather that was eaten in about 10 minutes but it was certainly tasty, even though it looked like that plastic gag vomit you buy at a joke shop.
The blog may have been quiet over the last seven weeks but that does not mean we haven't been busy.
There have been:
1. Decadent meals, my most favorite of which was a rabbit ragù with polenta
If you can get past the "bunny rabbit" issue and flashbacks to the infamous rabbit skinning clip from Michael Moore's documentary on Flint, "Roger and Me", rabbit is another great white meat that is both low in fat and high in protein. Personally, I believe it is best eaten stew style because it does have a tendency to dry out. In France, rabbit is an economical alternative to chicken although the New York Times article linked above does note that rabbit is no longer widely available in the US and therefore expensive. At my local market butcher, I purchased a whole rabbit for 10€ and when combined with the ragù sauce, made approximately 10 portions. We ate the ragù for two nights and froze the rest in individual portions. It makes for easy meals during the week!
2. Kitchen nightmares
The kitchen has undergone some substantial changes over the last month and after great battles with Vogica, the high-end cabinet maker that we very stupidly selected to design our kitchen (that should get its own post!), our handles were finally installed two weeks ago. Anyone who did the math would realize that was nearly 9 weeks after the kitchen was first delivered! Never again...
We returned the overhead fan after realizing post-installation that the dimensions of the fan did not correspond to the dimensions on the manufacturer's website. We bought it from Mistergooddeal because their advertised price was 250€ less than a competitor -- only they bought a lot from Fagor which did not correspond to the manufacturer's dimensions and failed to mention so on their website. To our great surprise, they offered to take back the fan. Two months and many calls to their hotline at 34cents/minute (which never fails to surprise me in France!) , they finally came to pick it up last week. Now we have to wait another 30 days to get the same fan ordered from a different store.
3. Knitting
Those of you on Ravelry may have noticed that I finished the February Baby Sweater. As many Zimmermanics have noted, this is a fun and easy pattern once you decipher Zimmermman's "pithy" instructions and makes an adorable baby cardigan.
It will be shipped off tomorrow to little Molly who hopefully hasn't outgrown it already...
Details:
Pattern : Elizabeth Zimmermann's February baby sweater from A Knitter's Almanac (6 months size)
Yarn: Louet Gems Opal in Aqua (two skeins) and Rowan RYC Cashsoft DK in cream (leftovers)
Buttons: from Entrée des Fournisseurs, rue des francs bourgeois, Paris
And my Charlotte's Web shawl is patiently waiting for the ends to be woven in and to be blocked. I am dying to get my hands on lace wire blockers but cannot imagine how much it would cost to ship them to France.
In the meantime, I started a scarf for my friend Nathalie and so far, I think it is the most beautiful thing I have ever knit
Pattern: Muir from Knitty
Yarn: Malabrigo lace in colorway Pearl 10 purchased at Leslaines.com
With smoky amethyst beads
Unfortunately, between bar review classes for the French bar and the difficulty of knitting with beads in the metro, my progress has been slow, to say the least.
4. Being thankful for things going right
Ribbit and I have had a string of bad luck. Between the problems with the kitchen, the Turbo going out on our car (and 1500€ later, we didn't go to Budapest for New Year's as planned), and then the clutch going out on the car we borrowed from Ribbit's parents, and custom's seizing the boxes of wedding china shipped from the states, I was starting to think we had la poisse. But last Friday, things began to look better, the sun was shining, and I received an email from French Customs that if I would send them our marriage certificate they would detax my boxes, and Mistergooddeal sent an email saying the reimbursement check was in the mail and then...Ribbit called to tell me that good fortune happens in threes and tonight just happened to be a 130 million euro jackpot. After work I bought two flash tickets and won €9.60 (net win €5.60). I guess we might not have the poisse after all....
5. Going green
This seems to be a popular topic around blogland. Being from Oregon, thinking green comes naturally. After all, Oregon was the first state to pass a Bottle Bill and I remember paper recycling cans in all our elementary school classrooms. In France however, it is a little more challenging. We assiduously recycle our paper, plastic, glass and aluminum in the bins at home but have more recently switched to some Earth-friendly cleaning products. Andie is a great inspiration to all who may be thinking of making the switch.
Baby steps...
When our old laundry soap ran out, I stopped by the local biocoop and bought a sack of soapnuts (noix de lavage). I had been curious about these little nuts since I saw them in the cleaning section of the BHV. They grow on trees in India (and Nepal and other Himalayan countries) and have been used for centuries in Indian homes. They contain a natural cleaning agent called saponin and I have been pleasantly surprised with the results. I loathe detergent smells and in the past was resigned to purchasing expensive, perfume-free laundry soap. The soapnuts leave no residual smell although you can add several drops of essential oils onto the bag containing the nuts to fragrance your laundry. However, my favorite part is how soft the clothes come out. Previously, I refused to use fabric softener because of the perfumes and the residue it leaves on clothes. But now even my towels are fluffy when they used to be hard and scratchy! (I sound like an infomercial, but this stuff really is great). Apparently, you can also simmer the soapnuts (used and unused) in hot water and create an all-purpose cleaner. But the best part is the price - at the local biocoop on the boulevard Voltaire, one kilogram of soapnuts costs 12€ and is good for approximately 100-150 loads depending on the temperature of your wash!
I also replaced our paper towels with washable microfiber clothes and bought a cloth dust-mop to wash our hardwood floors.
Next up...after my exams are over, I am going to try to make some of my own cleaning products with baking soda, white vinegar, washing soda formulas that are so widely available on the Internet.
Any other tips for being more eco-friendly?
On my way to work last week, I noticed this sight in the heart of bo-bo land, on the corner of the rue Oberkampf and the avenue Parmentier. What was it? A funky sock atop a cross-walk signal? A random act of knitting? I shrugged it off in that blasé Parisian way that all foreigners must adopt to fit-in and continued on my way.
Over my morning coffee, I scanned my bloglines feeds and came across this picture on JuJu's blog. It looked like it had a similar street ethos as the creation on my corner - could it have been the work of the same masterminds? JuJu identified hers as the work of the Knitta Please gang who came to Paris on the occasion of Bergère de France's 60th anniversary.* Read more about it in Les echos (sorry French only). Sounds kind of commercial for a soi-disant gang of knitters but is very cool and creative in its ésprit none-the-less. This is not your grandma's knitting...
When I showed Ribbit the knitted graffiti on the way home from dinner the other night - he just looked at me and said "you crazy Americans".
Lexicon:
soi-disant (adj): so-called (although apparently this adjective is not recommended by grammar purists who instead insist that one uses prétendu)
*Bergère de France, for those who don't know, is one of the main purveyors of cheap acrylic yarn in France.
It has been great fun to take in all of the feverish Christmas crafting in the blogosphere - knitting, quilting, sofies every piece more gorgeous than the next.
There is no Christmas crafting at our house, no Christmas at all for that matter, but that doesn't mean that the frigid temperatures don't awake our desire for knitted lovelies. My work schedule has slackened somewhat over the last few weeks and now that we are officially moved into our apartment, albeit still sans drawer pulls, I can devote more time to the gentle arts.
Last weekend I cast-off the Charlotte's Web shawl I sailed through at the beginning of Fall.
I am very pleased with the marriage of the different colors as I made a real effort to avoid the same color families but if you look closely, you'll see that from one skein to the next the second skein picks up on colors from the first and segways into the colors for the next.
I opted out of the cowboy fringe border and decided to play it simple. One of these days I'll get around to blocking it. Now that we no longer have carpeting, blocking something this big is quite a challenge since I'm not allowed to put pins in the mattress. I have also been itching to get my hands on these blocking wires but in these dire times of mortgages and holiday presents, I can hardly justify their hefty price (and she doesn't seem to offer international shipping).
The counters are in! We still have no drawer pulls but at least we have a shiny work top!
Don't you think the counters look like a starry night sky?
Cool features:
Boxes have been emptied and deposited into the recycle bin, floors have been swept, walls washed, mirrors polished...which can mean nothing other than -- we're home!
BEFORE
AFTER
The counter tops have not yet been installed, which means we are also missing our sinks and we must wash the dishes in the bathtub (very practical, indeed) and Vogica still has not come through with the drawer pulls or the baseboards but we used the oven for the first time last night and it is like driving a Ferrari compared to our former oven.
We left our old rented apartment without remorse, except perhaps for the lovely, spacious balcony which looked out onto a tree and flower-filled courtyard and the well-stocked Monoprix grocery store down the street. Nevertheless, I was happy to leave behind my piano-playing upstairs neighbor, the homeless guy who had colonized the sidewalk next to the Franprix (he had amassed so much stuff that a visitor to the apartment asked us "what's up with the brocante at the beginning of the street?"), the neighbor who stole my bike from the interior courtyard of our building, and the endless piles of merde and other trash on the sidewalk.
Our new home is just so great (*sighs*). We live on a tree-lined, albeit noisy boulevard, the metro station is sparkling clean, and the shops, restaurants and bars of the rue Oberkampf are in walking distance, including a fantastic bookstore and a heavenly flower shop.
Moving into a new place is not only having a new space of your own, but it means a different trajet to work in the morning, new smells (I could do without the smell of my neighbor's wet dog in the hallway, however), and new sounds - the avenue, the pitter patter of my upstairs neighbor on the hardwood floors, and even the rain sounds different here - it makes little bingy-plingy sounds as it bounces off our 150-year old window panes.
Lexicon:
brocante (f): a second-hand store for furniture and knick-knacks
merde (f): literally, shit
trajet (m): route, as in my route to work
We made it to mid-week. What a difference two days can make! The maçon and plombier have left and now it is up to the painter to turn this room into a sparkling masterpiece before the kitchen arrives next Friday.
In case you were wondering what the other side of the room looked like, it is not any better, perhaps even a little worse.
If things have been a little quite around here, this may help to explain. We're in week 6 of renovation on our new apartment - and this is the state of my dining room. Renovations are cyclical. You buy the apartment in decent condition then you slowly destroy everything you don't like until the apartment is no longer livable, then you slowly build your way back to something livable, then to something beyond you're wildest imagination. We're in the slowly building your way back to something livable stage right now. By Friday, holes in ceilings should be repaired, walls should be finished, debris should be cleared and floors should be refinished. Wish us luck...
Mid-week photo update on Wednesday for the curious.
