I didn’t clue in that Sir Renaissance hadn’t booked the Loire château vacation as planned until I realized that we had passed Versailles and were heading West. Will you think me very spoilt if I tell you that my eyes pricked with disappointment? It’s okay, I think I’m spoilt too. But he explained his reasoning. He thought the Loire Valley… Read More
Archives for October 2010
Sowing the Lawn
A week and a half ago, we decided to sow some grass. We hired our friend Olivier, who is a pro, and were glad we did because there are all sorts of things about successfully sowing grass that we didn’t know. Like you need to plough the earth, then rake it even, sow seeds very heavily on the borders where… Read More
The Shudders
One of the pleasures of living in France is opening up the windows each night to close the shutters (les volets) tight and protect the house from cold and attack, and then opening the windows back up again in the morning to open the shutters and let in the bright sunlit morning. It’s bracing. It can be minus 20° and… Read More
Birthday Leg of Lamb
Yesterday was Sir’s 43d birthday and it just coincided with an old friend’s visit to France so I made leg of lamb. It was a hectic day, as you can imagine, because Petit Prince was home from the crèche and the house (in it’s customary tipsy topple shape) needed to be cleaned from top to bottom. I made a moelleux… Read More
Gluten-Free Brownie Moelleux
What do you do on a day like today? Yeah, I bake too. This is my recipe for a brownie moelleux. A moelleux is a french chocolate cake that is crusty on the edges and gooey in the middle. It’s pronounced « mo-el … and then the ending sounds like the vowels in the word could – mo-el-(and think could without… Read More
Two Stories from the War
In America when we hear stories of the War, and by that I mean World War II, we hear stories of our brave young men going off to a strange country to fight against tyranny, or we might hear of Jewish families that escaped from Europe to start their lives in a place where they would not be persecuted. But… Read More