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...