The BUN-anza

Dated retroactively to August 2011:

After a gruelling 9 exams in 2 weeks... 7 in 4 days, my final exam had been written and Canada Day was around the corner. My brilliant idea to celebrate initially involved a rather long pub crawl through the Canadian (and other) bars of Paris, to culminate in a large after work party at la Roseraie boasting Canadian (perhaps not delicacies, because Canada's not particularly famous for anything delicate in comparison to France) specialities.

However as most of my plans go, I forgot to invite everyone early enough... and my preparation for the Canadian "feast" at the end of the tour ended up taking all day... thanks to the buns.

The buns... ahh the buns... thinking that mini burgers would be more fun than big ones (and less expensive for more of them) presented one problem, president's choice does not exist here, so there are no slider buns easily available. I therefore decided to make hamburger buns that I could size accordingly.

The result was positive, but perhaps a little amusing. The process went as follows:

 

Step 1: warm the liquids

 

Step 2 : prepare the yeast and sugar

  

Step 3: add warm liquids to the yeast and sugar and allow to react.

Step 4-6: add flour, separate into buns and allow to rise

Step 7: bake...

  

Apparently I over estimated a little on the quantity of recipe to buns... They served as good snacks for Lyaz for a month!

The Sandwich

One of my favourite things in London and is to this day the first thing that I look for upon returning to London is a crayfish and rocket sandwich from Pret a Manger. More commonly refered to as "Pret".

On one occaision while browsing the wonderous aisles at La Fayette Gourmet I found Crayfish... so you might imagine I was immediately inspired to try to recreate my favourite London lunch break!

  

And it was such a fulfilling experience, however not the same as the real thing!

  

Someday soon I will make it back to the UK. Upon writing this entry, I did notice that Pret has been exported to the states, or at least to NYC. Unfortunately with the name like Pret, and being based on a rather french idea of lunch, (meaning the fresh sandwich thing is pretty much everywhere here) I don't think it'll be rocking Paris anytime soon. For the time being, I'll have to stick to the DIY crayfish and rocket sandwich. 

Not too shabby, but definitely not the same!

The Visit from Caroline

A very good friend from University, Caroline, came to Paris on her way to do a pilgrimage through Spain (I might clarify that she's not in the least bit religious, but was following her mother's advice for an incredible adventure). As such her first day here we bought lunch and ate it by the canal. 

 

 

Caroline's stay most unfortunately fell in the middle or my first round of exams. Although thankfully it was after the bulk of the significant exams, so I had a bit of time to relax, and needed it!

 

While enjoying our lunch, or more specifically while digesting a bit and trying to clean ourselves up after our lunch (lebanese wraps are very juicy!) the adjacent bridge began to open. While I have watched many locks and a lift bridge here and there in operation (thanks to my father's insistance), I had never seen a swing bridge open.

 

Apparently, it was therefore very important to document it in photographs. Unfortunately just after I took this photo, my camera's battery died. So for further documentation, one would have to refer to Caroline's photos! 

The Surprise Flowers

Well the time has flown and since my last post, (The Groundwork had been written in May I just forgot to hit post) many things have happened. Many things of which I had meant to post however circumstances did not permit and my patience and attention for the most part was elsewhere. 


Beginning with the second round of exams and following through my visit home to Canada. In any case, I will now attempt to catch up to myself!


When we arrived in the appartement there were a few random things left on the balcony. Among these forelorn objects were some rusty bits of oranmental metal, a couple of old pots, a 1/4 of a bag of clay balls meant to cover the soil in your pots for added moisture containment and some very dead stocks in a pot. Having arrived in August I didn't attack the balconies directly as it was too late to do any serious gardening, and my resources felt a little stretched already with the move and all the other expenses that go along with a new appartement. 

In any case, a few months later, in the moderate climate that stuck around until about october last year, the dead stocks turned green and the leaves started to grow. 

This spring I was extremely excited to see a bud pushing itself up. It's perhaps a little hard to see here, but there's a little nubbin coming up through the v of the leaves.

 

I might add, I still wasn't sure, what, exactly was going to come out of these buds. My original thought was that it was an iris, but I had no real idea. It was a mystery plant, and any flowers at all were a lovely surprise.

 

 

Unfortunately I didn't get to appreciate the flowers all that much as the blinds are most often closed on that balcony, and studying for exams did not permit much quiet reflection out the window.

It was still very exciting that the surprise plant that we inherited came back so completely!

The Groundwork

The Preparation of Lyaz's Dinner started with the julienning, the chopping and the cutting of various ingredients. I forgot to take photos of it all, but here's what I did record. First of all, I have to say that the garlic was fresh.

  

It was the freshest garlic I have ever seen, it was so moist. I'm thinking of putting the rest of it in the oven one evening to bake.  I'll have to make sure I don't have anywhere to go in the morning, and also find a REALLY fantstic loaf of bread.

 

Not only did I julienne a number of carrots, green onions, but also half a celery root and zested 3 lemons. Lucky I have a mandolin, or else the julienning would have taken me the entire night!

 

The filling of the fish was julienned green onions and lemon zest. I rubbed the cavity with salt, and freshly ground black pepper then a handful of dried thyme. Unfortunately although I had bought fresh thyme it never made it into my bag, so I had to resort to the dried thyme in the cupboard.

 

this is the stuffed fish, before I tied it up and placed it on a bed of carrot and celery lightly sautéed with butter and garlic. How can you go wrong with a base of butter and garlic?

The Tea for One

This may seem a little sad out of context. I am in fact supposed to be studying so I thought I'd indulge in some soothing and enjoyable tea, where that thought took me was to moroccan mint tea and then the entire production sort of snowballed into a post.

That being said, tea for one is really not as lonely as the title may indicate, as it was only meant to be an accompaniment to an activity that can for the most part only be undertaken successfully by one!

In any case, my tea for one...

 

The tea pot, or rather coffe pot to be precise, came from Sally Jenkins. The teapot that goes with it is still in the cupboard at mum's house. I assume she uses it fairly often. While I was studying at home I used it all the time. It's just nice to have a steady flow of tea that doesn't get cold that quickly and that you don't have to fill up every 10 minutes.  

Bringing over my 'tea set' was kind of amusing, as I put it all in my carry on. (I didn't really feel like putting silver that is so obviouse in my checked luggage.) The coffee pot, the sugar pot, the creamer, and a third small pot which I assume is for the used teabags, however I usually use it for the spoons, all came over in the carry on, wrapped in tea towels and wedged between books and a corian cutting board. (It wasn't really within regulation carry on weight, but no one weighed it.) Along with the menage was a ziplock filled with silver tea spoons. The spoons caught the eye of the xray man and he had to verify that there were no knives among them. So he opened the bag and looked through everything. Interestingly enough, it was the corian cutting board that caught his eye. And he took down the information on the back of it (Sol-Cor) so that he could show his wife, whom apparently wanted to redo her kitchen.

In any case, the first cup of tea was a little more like sugar water than tea, but while writing this post I have gone through about 3 cups and everyone had gotten better!

Green tea and fresh mint, how can you go wrong?

The Birthday

Here it comes, more food... !
For Lyaz's birthday I decided to give him a nice dinner.

Aside: I had intended on framing the print of roman north africa that I had given him for his birthday last year, but the lady insisted that she did not sell premade frames, a pile of which were sitting in front of me, and to which I made reference, and that she only did custom jobs. These custom jobs took 15 days and the prices that she quoted me were between 110€ and 85€ for which I was supposed to be thankful that she was throwing in the "very nice, extra special bevelled matting" for free. I didn't have the gumption to tell her that I could buy a piece of matt for 5€ and I have a bevel cutter at home (unfortunately for me it's in canada). I did however walk out after telling her that the budget was only 50€ a price that is still high for something that I could do (given I had my tools here) myself for a little under 20€, but at least imagineable.

In any case, being that the framing was out of range, dinner was the gift I settled on.

Although it was not possible to do it the night that I had originally intended, I got it on the table for the next morning when he got home from work!

Menu

Entrée

Shellfish Platter

(shrimp and whelks with lemon mayonnaise)

Salad

Fresh Leafy Greens 

with tomatoes from france and avacado (from who knows where)

Plat

Whole Wild Bass 

baked in a papillotte with julienned carotte and celery root

Cheese Course

Tome de chèvre

and

Epoisse

Dessert

...

(after all that I didn't make a cake, I am rather ashamed of myself, 

however, I will make one after exams for the both of us)

All in all I will admit that it wasn't my best showing, but one might say, that for a mid exam meal, it wasn't too bad!

He slept well afterwards, which is the most important thing at 8 in the morning!

The Flower Day

 I bought flowers for my flower boxes, and flowers for Lyaz's birthday...

 

I finally have colour on my balconies! YAY... 

 

Somehow this doesn't look like my apartment... but those are my photos, and I like it.

The Ethos

I started looking back at some of my posts about/during my thesis and realized how utterly bland and mundane I've gotten in terms of my material. For what I'm in the middle of, my expressions give no indication.

But who wants to know about the Constitution of the 5th Republic and all its ins and outs? or why people vote the way the do? This I ask because there are very few people who ever last longer than about 5 minutes when I do talk about it. The glassy eye film drops down and they just sort of smile and nod for a while, and then excuse themselves politely.

That being said, I understand that it doesn't make for very interesting banter, unless you're in the same program in which case, I have had some great conversations. Unfortunately I myself, as much as I do find it extremely interesting, have been battling my inner architect for the last few months.

If I could do anything I wanted this summer, no matter the cost, I would buy a tiny little apartment, well, 9m2 or more, renovate it and rent it. I feel like I'm in trouble, the itch is there, I need to design. Even if it's only what tiles to lay, and how to fit the kitchen in... I NEED to design. And even more so, I need to get my foot on this property ladder thing that everyone keeps talking about. The only catch is that, that is a dream for if I had no limits. As it is however, a limited line of credit and a lack of formal employment sort of puts a KY-bosh on the entire dream, and on any personal projects as they all seem to cost a chunk of money.

That being said, there is one last avenue that isn't quite the price of an apartment, but might fuel the eventual acquisition of such. Gotta get back to art. It has been a while and the last piece that I did, I take little pride in, as it was done simply to fill the space on our wall...

 

I finished it in an afternoon and used some of the left over plaster from my efforts in our old bedroom for the texture and the only three colours of acrylic paint that I own... for the time being...

The Spring is Here

I have been meaning to update the blog for a while. I did in fact update it yesterday, but prior to yesterday, I had collected up a few photos and stories of other events in my life, outside of my personal eating habits. 

One in particular, was the arrival of spring.

 

Of course, what comes with spring? but Daffodils also known as Jonquilles, and in the spirit of Canadian bilingual packaging, I like to refer to them as daffodil-jonquilles. Kind of like Clous-nails. (according to my father, my uncle always thought that clous-nails were a certain kind of nail, due to the bilingual packaging... my dad said it was my uncle, but I wouldn't be surprised if he also thought the same thing for a while.)

In any case, no city streetscape is complete without the pigeons. Here are pigeons in the daffodil-jonquilles!

 

Interestingly enough, pigeons do have a purpose! 

(This is a little point that I picked up from my french class.)

Because they are scavengers and are so prolific in the city, on the sidewalks and around all human activity, there is, in the end, very little consumable refuse left on the streets. With the lack of scavengeable food left on the surface, the rats tend to stay below ground and not bother the general populus. 

So there you go, pigeons are good for something : they keep the rats at bay.

I am however not a particular fan of pigeons. They are rather unpleasant creatures. But that is just my humble opinion. I do think that I would prefer to see pigeons than rats loitering in the squares!

The Salad

A very close friend introduced me to my love of beet salads last year, and now they are just such a treat. However yesterday a few of my ingredients were missing...

Yesterday's Salad

So with the remainder of the MASSIVE beet I made my dream salad today.  Notice the sprouts and goats cheese, and of course a nice chunck of fresh bread. Lyaz picked it up on his way home this morning. Sunday's are certainly a pleasure!

Today's version

I used a simple mustard and olive oil mix as a dressing. Paris is apparently getting to me; my mustard consumption has increased dramatically in the last few months!

Close up

Oh and today I shredded or 'julienned' the fennel, as best fennel can be julienned instead of just slicing it, which in my opinion made a huge difference!

The Breakfast

So I don't normally eat anything very exciting for breakfast... see my comments about nutella vs. jam. However on this Sunday morning I had occasion to want something more. So I went about making a rather bobo version of a egg mcmuffin... except I didn't have any processed cheese on hand, nor did I find any English muffins in my cupboards, or bacon per say...

It's a little more than eggs on toast, and just a little less than eggs benedict (I definitely did not have it in me to start hollondaise from scratch, not for myself at least, and Lyaz was down for the count as soon as he walked in the door at 7:30 am.) 

It was good, and I had a little ketchup on the side... guilty pleasure. I'm from NORTH AMERICA where we take our ketchup seriously!

The GRANDE Mosquée...

My french professor is particularly keen on giving us foreigners a good grounding in what is french this term, and as such decided that we should all do an exposé. So my partner and I hmmm-ed and hawed for a while and ended up choosing "La Grand Mosquée de Paris".

All in all it is quite a comlexe and certainly worthy of a longer visit than we gave it, however weekends are preciouse and somehow I don't think I've quite earned the time to go to the hammam, although I would dearly love to!

In any case, we visited the mosque and the tea room.
The mosque was beautiful.

The minaret can be seen from a distance, maybe not as far as the eiffle tower, but it is certainly an impressive symbol.

 

I kind of eavesdropped on a guided tour that happened to be going through the main courtyard at the same time as we were, and he mentioned the three balls on top of the minaret. Apparently there are a few ideas on what they represent, but he couldn't give a definitive reason. One of the suggestions was that they represented the 3... I maybe sould have payed more attention to that part. But do note the green in the mosaiques as green is very important to the muslam religion. Most notably it represents vegetation life and water, to a group, of which the vast majority, for a significant period of time lived in the desert. 

This is above the door from the main courtyard to the patio. Every surface has an ornate decoration that is made even more impressive by the stark contrast between it and the plain white walls that surrounds it.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the tea room and restaurant on this visit, as my appetite kind of took control once I crossed the threshold, and the flury of the crowd made me forget my initial intent to observe. The crowd mentality took hold and it was eat or be eaten... or rather in this case, push or starve.

Balzac once wrote something along the lines of "Parisian society will welcome you with open arms, but if you aren't there, you won't be missed." Which can be said for the Paris of the XIXth century and also of today's. The city is definitely taking its tole on my psyche, and Balzac's words repeat in my head daily. It is beautiful and vibrant and very stylish however everything is a competition, and if you don't step up, you will be forgotten in the wings.

Makes for a very tiring lifestyle.

The Couple

What a couple... !?

Not much to say, just thought I'd share our most flattering "passport" photos. (We followed the machine's directions exactly.)

The Issue with Jam

I know I wrote that my NewYears resolution was going to be to eat more Jam. So far, I have not made much progress with this. Every morning during exams I ended up eating a piece of bread with nutella, instead of Jam.

Nuts.

The preparation

Well, christmas was set, and I realized I had a lot to do in 4 days, as well as going to the airport to get my mummy. So first things first, I decided to reorganize the living room, I mean, dining room.

I started by moving the christmas tree and the table and went over the space about 10 times with the vacuum. A necessary act as the christmas tree that I got for a "good price" had dried out almost completely by that time and everytime it was touched (or moved for that matter) a branch worth of needles would fall on the floor.

Midway through it was quite a mess. Along with the laudry that was still drying above the radiator.

The more or less final product, however, one might notice that there are a few chairs missing. Thankfully we have an incredible chair supplier, that has a relatively endless store of old bar chairs in his basement. The only problem is they have to be cleaned before they can be considered proper enough for use. Which I ended up doing christmas eve day. ALL DAY. and it went something like the following.

This was prior to the shower being turned on. It had been dowsed with an cleansing product usually used on tiles, and in the kitchen. Extra super heavy duty grease fighting cleaner. And this is what ensued...

Isn't that a wonderful colour? This is about 15 years of cigarette smoke coupled with 3 years of basement dust and grime running off the chair. The rinse and repeat method was implemented three or four times for each chair, and every time the same colour came off, well not the last time.

We are now the proud posessors of 10 rustic solid wood chairs.

For the space we have we may be considered a little chair heavy, but it's always good to have seats. In more ways than ever, I find myself taking after my mother. She has a very large collection of chairs. SHE however also has a basement to store them in, when they are not needed. We, however, find ourselves with chairs in every corner !

The Flight...

I realize I've made a few references to all our stairs. I figured it might help if I illustrated exactly what I was refering to. So looking down from our 6th floor landing looks like this.

From this point begins my day, or our day, or whose ever day it is. This image expanded, equates to...

6xthis!!!

I must say though, apparently there was at one time a plan to put in an elevator... but I just don't see where it would go! there's not alot of extra space in this stair well. It's pretty much a single file affair.

I should also clarify, that this is not meant as a complaint, it is by the grace of these stairs that I can eat ice cream, and wine and not gain much weight. Well it is this and the running I do in the metro, and I guess the fact that I walk everywhere. Funny not having a car is good on two fronts, great muscle toner and doesn't burn fossil fuel!

The Resolution

I mentionned that perhaps eating more Jam would be a good new years resolution... but I think I've got an even better one... Keeping up to date with my blog!

Oops!

There's still the story of my setting up for Christmas Dinner... just not enough hours in the day!

The cupboards

This has got to go quick quick... I'm currently procrastinating, which I've been doing all morning, and really needs to stop, but all of a sudden I've become quite agitated at how negligent I've been since september! (I'm also a little conscious of a difficulty of spelling in english... erg...) In any case, a long time ago I bought some lovely big glass jars on ebay, they arrived and I rearranged my kitchen cupboard. The following photos tell the story of that afternoon.

Although presented like that it doesn't sound that interesting, I had fun doing it, and documenting it.

It arrived one day... and so I carried it up my 6 flights...

 They had come all the way from Nancy, in a superbly packed box, and they were...

Perfect... alas, one soldier was lost on the journey...

In any case, the 11 that remained were washed and dried, and thus the process began!

 

The cupboard prior to the overhaul was a mess of plastic containers and plastic wrapping, although there was already the beginnings of the collection of bonne maman jam jars, reappropriated for kidney beans and peppercorns. Hopefully this collection will be added to, however for the moment I think the capacity for jam has been exhausted! Perhaps that would be a good new years resolution, I'm still looking for a resolution that I can appreciate, keep and benefit from! More jam seems reasonable, no? 

The organisation process and the purging of plastic...

And thus the final result, which is very similar to how it looks now, REALLY, even 3 months later! Although the bamboo shoots had to been thrown out along with the peanut butter... the best before date on the bamboo shoots was december 2009. (a good exemple of why you should be very consciouse when packing your kitchen cupboards in a move) The peanut butter didn't have any best before date on it, but it tasted kind of funny, and I couldn't remember buying it, so it went as well, which means there's a little more space... but not that much!

So welcome to the story of my kitchen cabinet. And now I must get back to my revision of constitutional law and the history of law in France since the Roman Empire... oh ya.. nothing much, just a few centuries!

GAH!