Not quite a birthday weekend in Paris, but it sounds a lot better than, working remotely from France for one week and I happen to be in Paris for my birthday. Fortunately, or unfortunately, with the internet/WiFi/VPN one is able to work anywhere.
So, yes, I am managing to work, what makes it difficult is a clingy-jet lagged child. Finally, after 4-5 days, she’s not so clingy and is playing well with her cousins. She’s looking up to her cousine, wanting to do things like her. For example, this morning, her cousine was granted a spoonful of nutella post-brekkies. Next thing I know, Mads wants “like cousine”. Ugh. A spoonful of nutella isn’t what I had in mind for her brekkies, since she only had hot chocolate. I suppose anything goes chez grandparents.
an assortment of saucisson...
Friday evening, I managed to take the RER from Le Pecq to the 7th to meet S, family & friends for dinner at Chez L’Ami Jean. L’ami Jean is a tiny Basque restaurant in Paris’ 7th arrondissement and definitely not a place for vegetarians.
We started with plenty of saucisson, two small casseroles of pate campagne, some jambon, and a jug, yes, a jug, of cornichons. There were so many options on the menu, S & I made it easy on ourselves and ordered the menu for two: cote du veau. For some reason, I had scalloppine on my mind, so I was a bit overwhelmed when a small cow was presented on our platter. Our meat was accompanied by sauteed spring veggies and the most sinful mashed pureed potatoes I’ve ever had! Unfortunately, I’m not one to say non to dessert, so I opted for strawberries, but I did get to try the drinking chocolate that someone ordered and regretted not getting one of my own.
Chez L’Ami Jean
27 rue Malar
75007 Paris
Dinner was followed by a lovely walk from the 7th to Opera – passing such sights as Pont Alexandre III, Place de la Concorde, Place Vendome, Longchamps, John Galliano, Cartier, Hotel Costes, Buddha Bar and the like and a late RER train ride home.
Come Saturday evening, I was too tired to make the trek for a Parisien birthday dinner, so we opted for dinner in Saint-Germain-en-Laye at La Feuillantine. It was a small restaurant, charming and chic at the same time and food was SO good! Turns out Saturday was a popular night for birthday celebrations – 3 other people were celebrating their birthday, too! I guess, La Feuillantine is the place to go for your birthday. We started with an amuse buche of pureed lentils and chorizo (yum!). Followed was foie gras cooked in a vanilla-mushroom cream sauce for S and a feuillantine (puff pastry) with green & white asparagus, grapefruit, and prawns, with, of course, a citrus cream sauce for me. It was here that I noticed this was the second resto to serve us non-white flour bread – which was nice, seeing that I probably met my carb intake for the year in the past couple days. Our entrees were just as tasty – yes, there’s more! – lamb shank (I think) with couscous and fish baked in parchment with baby spinach, proscuitto, fresh goat cheese and a (salty, for me) thyme au jus. To finish, an Ile flottante on green matcha and a chocolate-raspberry dessert. (Sorry, no pictures of the food here!)
What a wonderful start to my thirty-something-th year!
I was taken aback to see that Maureen Dowd borrowed the blog post title that had been stewing around my noggin for a while.
I have yet to sign up for a Twitter account and am (gasp!) even contemplating doing so…but I’m hesitating. Do I really need membership to yet another online “social” network of sorts? It’s difficult enough keeping up with the blog, fbook, flickr, yelp, kaboodle, polyvore…and do people really need to know what I’m doing at any given moment?
(But am I happily surprised that the Bay Area NBC affiliate sports page has “published” my photo! Sweet!)
Anyhow, I digress…If you’ve seen Wall-E, you can understand my hesitation. Lack of human contact and being tied to a device/gadget (though my new one, does come in handy!). Besides, my husband argues that I won’t sign up for Twitter as it’s not mainstream enough.
I dunno, what do you think? Should I tweet? Or should I stay tweet free?
To satisfy my need to make lists (with pictures!), I’ve put together a list of my favorite 10 choses (things) in my kitchen.
- Round Dutch Oven – The work horse of my kitchen. From soups to roasts to easy, peasy Chile Verde, I think this is must have in all kitchens. I love it so much, I invested in the 9-quart oven as well!
- Stand Mixer – Making cookies, cakes, whipped cream and even pizza dough has never been so easy.
- Slow Cooker – Manna from heaven for working moms. With some quick prep the night before or the morning of, a wonderful & healthy family dinner is yours.
- Prep bowls – for your mise en place, it makes cooking and baking move a lot quicker
- Rasp grater – for perfectly grated citrus zest, freshly grated nutmeg. It grates even onions, ginger and…yum, chocolate.
- Santoku knife – i heart my santoku knife
- Mandoline – not made for slicing soft items (like eggplant; ask about the stitches), but made for perfectly sliced potatoes for a gratin or dauphinois.
- Ceramic baker – I use this baker for everything: lasagna, brownies, casseroles. Probably the 2nd hardest working horse in my kitchen.
- Rice cooker – I am no longer an Asian without a fancy pants rice cooker. It takes a bit longer than cooking rice on the stove top, but so far every batch of brown rice I’ve cooked in it has come out nice and fluffy!
- Peeler – for easy peasy peeling, this Swiss peeler rocks!
Apparently, miracles just don’t happen at Xmas.
As Mads was getting dressed for Easter festivities, she asked, ASKED!, to wear her Cinderella undies!
After months and months of putting the undies out, her refusing and putting on pull-ups, finally, undies. Still, there were a few accidents, but, she wore her undies for most of the day. (After her 3rd accident, I caved and let her wear her pull-ups, not good, I know.)
She even wore them this morning. Maybe a little peer pressure at day care will help things along…
apres egg hunt