Quick Foie Gras Burger

Perhaps all I really need to do for this post is translate the text of the ad. The rest of it sorta speaks for itself...

The Quick Foie Gras burger

Quick'n Foie Gras
Block of Foie Gras from France

GOOD RESOLUTIONS CAN WAIT

With the Quick'n Foie Gras good resolutions can wait!
A real slab of French foie gras delicately pan fried on a pure beef burger with onion sauce and lettuce on a whole wheat bun with split wheat. Here is a good way to prolong the pleasure of the holidays, at a low price!

Indeed 2€90 converts today to $3.86. I would worry about any steak and foie gras that cheap.

Checking things off the list

My New Year's resolution is to have a more positive attitude about life, and specifically this adventure in France. I know that things are what we make of them, and I know I don't want to look back on this time with regret. So I just have to buckle down and do the things I'd hoped to do. Easier said than done but here's a start.

One thing I've wanted to do for a while is make another set of Clotilde's Napkins. I say 'another' because I made an orange-themed set and immediately gave them away to Michele, the mother of Eric's best guy-friend Malo. So I ordered some more fabric and my sister brought it when she visited in September and then it sat for four months. Let's say it was marinating.

The finished product

What finally brought the project to fruition was an antiques market in the Marais. I always hunt down the antique linen stall and continue my quest for white-on-white bed linens with my own monogram (have to keep it challenging or I'd bring home too many beautiful pillowcases and linen sheets...) In that stall was an alphabetical box of labels that had been manufactured to mark one's clothes back when garments were sent to a communal laundry. Here is my set of "CT" initials:

Antique garment labels

They just happen to be the perfect size to 'label' my napkins. It makes me happy to mark them as my work, since Anonymous was a Woman. (note, I do not consider these to be masterpieces of American art, just my own pretty napkins).

Napkin labels are sewn into the existing seam. Doubled over there is no raw edge.

To add to our lovely tablescape we have these pretty napkin rings. They should be redundant since the point of the mismatched napkins is to ensure that each person has his or her own print, but since we already had 'Madame' and 'Monsieur' rings I include them in the photo.

The labels came in a gross (144 labels, what was happening with the metric system back then?) so I have plenty more for plenty more napkins. But that will be a much later project.

Plenty more labels!

While I was sitting here sewing these, on Sunday January 13, 2013, I got a text message from my sister. Her water had broken and she was sitting in a hospital bed awaiting the arrival of my nephew Edward. I finished the sewing thinking of her labor and chatting with her when she was available. Now I can't look at these napkins without thinking of him. Edward's birthday napkins. I suspect this is another set I will be giving away....

A "Triple"

French apartments come unfurnished. And by 'unfurnished' I mean there is NOTHING there, I think that even the door knobs are optional. We used to wonder why all the apartment listings had photos of the toilet. Now we know - that is, sadly, an optional feature! Our current apartment has no lights, and certainly no appliances (but it does have a toilet). 

I have gotten a fridge, and a washing machine, but we're still living without a stove or oven. That's ok, it's summer, right? Time to eat lots of salads.... It's amazing how often one actually uses the stove.

So I'm shopping for stoves and discovered this crazy contraption - a stove, oven, and dishwasher all-in-one. They are never cheap, even second-hand, so I don't think I'm going to live my new dream of washing my dishes in the compartment underneath my oven, but I do think that would be a crazy-Euro brand of awesome.

Staying In Touch Long Distance

One of the big challenges about being over here is feeling isolated - I can have wonderful times and wonderful French friends, but my history is living 6 hours behind me and without that I do feel lonely. It's hard to be relevant when one is so far away... As a means of keeping in touch two of my sisters and I have decided to have a little recipe club. Each of us chooses a culinary "theme" she's interested in exploring and contributes it to the pool (need not be an ingredient, could be a technique or anything). Then we all spend the month working on and trying out recipes that have something to do with that theme. Hopefully we'll email about them, discuss them, send photos, whatever. Honestly, hopefully we'll just continue to be important parts of each other's lives...

So this month is the début and the project doesn't even have a name but the contributed themes in no particular order are: parsnips, leafy greens like chard, and lentils.

Best-loved recipe contributions and suggestions for what to call this virtual cooking club are most welcomed!

Finally really in Paris!

It's old wisdom that new parents should have a standing babysitter night so that they can get out regularly and remember the life they had before baby. It's also pretty standard for new parents, for reasons of fear and financial stress, to ignore this advice. Finally, with Eric almost 11 months old, the nanny stayed late and we got to go out to an entire meal without the baby. It was divine, in every possible way!

We went to a very small bistrot, reservations essential, in the 9th, called Bistrot Lorette. It is the number one rated restaurant in Paris on Trip Advisor and I can see why - warm, welcoming, filled with love, it looks like it's just two men - one working the front and the other working the kitchen. My sister and her husband are visiting so as a foursome we each found a different item on the set menu that appealed, and so we got to taste the widest possible variety of their offerings. I hope to update this post with the photos they took of the meal, but in the meantime I can say that Doug's foie gras was the outstanding appetizer, for pure quality of ingredients, while I was still very enamored of my beet carpaccio with smoked salmon and little bricks of goat cheese (meaning they were wrapped in what seems like one sheet from a stack of phyllo dough and pan fried).

For our dinners the sea bass I had with whole anis seeds is an idea I want to bring home and try to re-create. Daddy had a guinea fowl and I would have liked to know what the special treatment of that was but he just quietly and quickly ate it all. It must have been good!

For desserts we were blown away - from fruit to chocolate, each plate was perfectly balanced and *special*. We left the restaurant having fallen back in love with Paris.

I won't lie, moving to Paris has been a hard adjustment. So much has changed in our lives so quickly. New roles as parents, new country, different language, it's been a lot. I was chatting with a work colleague about how much I value my job for so many reasons right now, and one more reason is that it's pretty much the only thing that hasn't radically changed in my life recently. It occurred to me later I should have included Daddy in that category, but with his new job and new 3 hour commute each day our relationship has changed immensely too. This dinner out helped me remember who we had been, why we love(d) Paris, and affirmed that we can simultaneously be the people we were and who we want to become.

Louvre!

We had our first family night at the Louvre last night. It was good fun. Eric slept for the first bit, which was good because it was a bizarre exposition by J. M. G. Le Clézio. We couldn't find a major theme to the exhibit and I'm gratified to learn that there was none, it was intended to be a throwback to the 'cabinet of curiosities'.

When we got upstairs to the French paintings there was a concert going on. It was an amazing soprano accompanied by a single guitar. I'm not one for opera-style music in general, but this was magical. She saw Eric and smiled and sang for him... he had awoken and couldn't take his eyes off her. Daddy and I settled in on a bench and enjoyed the rest of her singing. It appears that others were waiting for a turn, or perhaps they'd already performed. We moved on to the next gallery when this lady and her guitarist had finished their set.

In the next galleries Eric was enthralled by Tête de Lionne, laughing out loud several times while we were looking at it together. Then he wanted to walk. And walk. And walk. Good thing is, at the Louvre that's no problem! Mommy and Daddy eventually got tired so we let him just flop on the floor and pull himself up on the guard rails. That's when things got funny because some tourists thought he was more fun than the French Paintings and they started playing with him, taking his picture, etc. Eric had no fear whatsoever and was happy to have these strange women play with him and help him stand.

After our time at the museum we walked over to Pompidou to a creperie we like. It's simple and easy and child-friendly (though they don't have high chairs, no one does). Daddy got the menu with a crepe complet and a sugar crepe. I got the Brestoise, which had cheese, mushrooms, potatoes, tomatoes, etc. in it.

Then, thrill of all thrills, Daddy walked Eric home and let me take a Velib'! Oh it was glorious floating through Paris with the wind in my hair! I'm a mommy now, about to turn 35, but riding along alone some teenage boys called out to me from their car. This old lady was secretly thrilled...

It was a nice evening!