Category Archives: for ELLE

Alms, alms for the…

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 Today I present you with a guest post by my very own M. Yes, it’s true nepotism rears its ugly head. Guilty as charged. Add it to my list of reasons I know I’m turning French!

This weekend my best friend and I spent two days, one of them in the pouring rain, walking around Paris asking for money for an association for blind people. We volunteered to do this through school, having no idea what we would be dealing with: French people. 

        The multitude of excuses we were given cannot be put into words. The “I’m in a hurry” coming from someone smoking a cigarette, leaning on a wall were quite common as well as the simple but efficient “Non!”.

        The best would be when people would reply, with a strong French accent, “I don’t speak French”. We simply looked at them with huge smiles stating that it was no big deal. None. At all. The thing is, that’s what I do when trying to avoid people coming up to me on the street asking for money or selling something. What these poor strangers didn’t know is that not only are we both perfectly bilingual in French and English but we have also been studying Spanish and Chinese for several years. We were therefore ready for any type of excuses thrown at us. However, French people don’t always need excuses

        The best remains those who easily ignored our existence, walking off slightly elbowing us. 

        Some busy women or bored men would kindly smile, give us some change and walk away in the middle of our speech, one we had perfected throughout the day. 

        One young, obviously not poor woman laughed at our request saying she had no change and still asked for one of the stickers we were giving out. We didn’t know how to say no.

        We did however get a few positive responses. To try to make it slightly more fun we would quizz those who dared talk to us for more than thirty seconds. One of the questions we would ask was “Which superhero was blind- Batman, Daredevil or The Hulk?” (the answer; Daredevil). A young guy in his twenties answered “It’s obviously Superman seeing the way he dresses”. After being on our feet for a few hours we decided to take a little rest and sat down at a café. The waiter, impressed by our work, gave us 4 euros without us even having to ask. 

        Surprisingly, the most generous were the tourists. They seemed genuinely interested, which was quite a relief after hours of rejection. 

        Overall, we never stopped badgering people no matter how rude or dismissive they were and walked away with almost 200 euros to help the blind.

Friday@Flore

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Well folks, I am afraid that Friday@Flore has called in sick today. After a week of running around like chicken with my head cut off, standing out in the rain for Paris Fashion Week shots, juggling Back to School night and spending sleepless nights coughing up my left lung, I simply can not sit out at a café terrasse under a threatening grey sky.

BUT, hey, we’ve got a chicken with its head cut off, so lets use it and make some chicken soup! I made some earlier this week and frankly, it was the best I’ve ever made, which is actually saying something because with my Jewish roots, good chicken soup runs through my veins.

At the market I got 2 leeks, 2 small onions and 8 carrots. Grandmère French had just sent up a batch of fresh thyme from her garden, I’ve already got dried bay leaves and the butcher prepared a Baugrain chicken for me by taking out the innards (Did I want to take them home? Non, merci, you can keep them, but do want the neck) and cutting it into 8 pieces, minus the head and feet.

At home I cut the greens and roots off the leeks, then chopped each large white stalk in half. No matter how long I’ve lived in Paris, I am still lazy Californian so I don’t peel the carrots, I just chop them in thirds. Coins would be more elegant, but then they’d be over cooked. I skin the onions and cut them in 1/4s.

 

The prep work done, I throw the bird, veggies, 2 bay leaves a small hand full of grey sea salt from our trip to the Ile de Ré, the fresh thyme and about ten whole pepper corns into the stock pot, which I then fill with water. I put it all on the stove top at medium-high and go back to bed for forty minutes.

 

When I return to check on the soup it is with a large spoon so that I skim off all the grey scum that comes up from the chicken and the fat that is now floating on top. I adjust the heat, get everything down to a low simmer and go about my day.

Before serving I usually take a pair of kitchen tongs and remove the thyme, as well as the skin from all the chicken bits. Put into a bowl an serve steaming hot.

PLEASE NOTE / Next week I’ll be posting photos from Paris Fashion Week EVERYDAY / This is NOT turning into a fashion site, being sick for 12 days (and counting) has created quite a back log with my workload, and I need a mini-break. Stay tuned!!!

Chicken soup

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Being sick this past week has reminded my of our arrival in Paris over a decade ago. The girls were 5 and 9. One of them had strep throat, but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you which one was sick. The French call that being a mère indigne. But the thing is, I had caught a lingering case of pneumonia while doing the expat marathon of shopping for apartments, schools and music teachers earlier in the month. Then I had returned to SF and spent the remaining two weeks packing. To say I was out of it would be like saying the French like cheese.

In addition to our (lack) of health, it was cold outside, with an unusual amount of snow and freezing temperatures plaguing the region and confusing our California internal thermostats. We needed chicken soup and we needed it, like, today.

It was time to buy me a bird. The challenge being that every other time I had visited Paris, I had been a sworn, devout vegetarian. I had had a hard time walking past butcher shops, much less entering them. But Mom-mode took over and I was soon in a local shop asking for a poulet.

“What kind would you like” asked the butcher.

I wasn’t sure I’d understood through my pneumonia induced haze. There were kinds of chickens? I’d had no idea. “Uhh… a dead one?” I hesitated, “and, well, maybe you could take the head off, remove the feet and do something about those feathers? Oh, and, is Madame ok?” There was a lady sniffing quietly in the background.

“Well, do you want one from Bresse, or a yellow legged or a red label?” he insisted, ignoring madame.

“I don’t know, nothing fancy, my daughter is sick and I need to make her some chicken soup.”

“Well, you should have said so, you don’t want a poulet, you want a poule!”

I was learning butcher-ese!

Suddenly Madame began to wail hysterically so I went directly to the source and asked her if everything was alright. That was when I learned that butcher’s wives can go somewhat mental when they learn that their adult son is a vegetarian, as madame had learned during lunch earlier that day.

Papa butcher carefully selected the lamest, cheapest bird he could find and started chopping as he explained that soupe au poulet wasn’t really French, that I may find all the chicken fat makes my kid feel worse instead of better, and that I really should consider making a proper vegetable soup. WOW. No wonder his son had become a vegetarian, he wasn’t exactly selling me on my dinner plans.

That evening I looked it up, there are nearly 50 different varieties of chicken in France, and each variety has its particular culinary strengths. Many countries only have one variety, the US has about a dozen, including the now famous Leghorn (bonjour Foghorn!). Only the Germans come anywhere close with 24 different breeds. Which explains so much about the French military reputation (oops, sorry that is VERY unPC)

 

This post is late

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Please excuse my self, Sylvia Sabes for being late with the Findingnoon Monday post. Her dog ate it on the way to class.

Yes, folks, only four five (darn, time really does fly, at super sonic speed en plus) months of posting and I am already coming up with lame excuses for being late. Particularly lame, as I don’t have a dog and I haven’t been out since Friday. That is because I am at home in bed sick, and I’ll give that as a truer excuse as to why I simply zapped and did not get this post up before the iPhone buzzed noon. Thank heavens I’m not depending on any wayward mice or pumpkins to get me from A to B, or I’d be stuck at the palace gates!!!

The worst part about being sick this weekend is that it was GORGEOUS out and I had to watch it all from behind double paned french doors. AND I missed the best fashion week show of the season…. Jean Paul Gaultier. Ughhh…

On the plus side, I live in France, and France has the highest prescription drug rate in the world. I’ve got meds. Some really great meds. When friends and family come to town, they like to stock up on some of the French cold medications, because they seem to be more effective than the stuff they can get at home. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know that Fervex is a big favorite with our visitors. Its a powder you pour into hot water and sip until you fall asleep for the night, which usually happens before the mug has been drained. The taste is horrid, but I think people love that pleasantly stoned feeling it gives you. The skin under your nose has rubbed off from constant blowing? Who cares, you feel greeeaaaat!!! And the constant drip from the tip of your nose suddenly becomes a source of childish amusement.”Look, kids, Mommy’s nose just went splash!”

Usually you wake up the next morning feeling fantastic (and dreadfully embarassed). I did not. So I called SOS Medecins at 21h on a Friday night. Dr Uzan was at my door a mere 45 minutes and within an hour I had ‘scripts for a full blown sinus infection, laryngitis and the beginning of a bronchitis. A three for one. It was like I’d won the cold/flu season lottery.

So now it is Monday, this post is utterly daft and I am off to find me a chicken to make my chicken soup. Stay healthy everyone and avoid me like the plague, I’m contagious!!!

French Food for real folk

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Picard roast veggies - still frozen!

My family teases me that I never cook, I only prepare. Ok, it’s not really teasing, more of a relentless nag, but they have a point. While I love a great meal and refuse to eat junk, there are simply other things I’d rather be doing than spending hours in the kitchen making dinner. Anything really, even cleaning bathroom grout with my toothbrush. I manage by preparing very simple meals with the best, most convenient ingredients I can find. In Paris, that means I shop at Picard a bit too much and I get most of my fruits and vegetables at the local primeur, or a market when I have the time, because I don’t mind spending hours shopping (ahem… for a meal).

Recently I prepared a fast, easy meal that my family never gets tired of (they get tired of a lot of my dishes). Here is the recipe which is a really big word to say, here’s what goes in the pot/casserole;

At Picard pick up 2 packages of their frozen grilled vegetables (ok, I know, not from the vegetable guy, but they are 100% vegetables, nothing else added).

crottin de chèvre

At a cheese shop, or a local grocery store I select a large chunk of fairly mild tasting cheese (about 250 grams, or 8 oz) and a bunch of herbs that goes well with the chosen cheese du jour. For example, if I get a ball of mozarella, I’ll probably grab a bunch of basil, herbes de provence are fantastic with some goat cheese and piment d’espelette spices up a mellow comté or Petit Basque. The more cheese you use, the tastier the dish, but less cheese looks nicer on your waist, so I try to strike a healthy balance, usually buying too much cheese because I know the rats at home will eat away at it eventually.

Pick up a baguette on the way home.

et voilà...

Preheat the oven to about 170°c (350°f). Open the Picard bags and slice up the frozen veggies into wide strips. Throw them into a casserole and season with the herbs and some salt and pepper. If the cheese is soft, like a chevre, cut it into rough slices. If it is hard, like a swiss cheese, shred it or shave it off with a vegetable peeler.

Tuck the cheese bits into the veggies, drizzle olive oil over the top and throw it all into the oven to bake for 40 minutes, to an hour.

I serve it in bowls with the fresh baguette I picked up one the way home and a cool glass of white.

NOTE – this dish is fantastic when served as a side with grilled cod or a little lamb’s rib.

For dessert, a bowl of fresh fruit. There were cherries at the market when I photographed this meal. And because this meal is ultra light, there is always a chocolate bar (or 6) waiting in the cupboard for a second dessert. Exactly like a 3 star restaurant. Really, how dare my family complain?

 

Feeds four and makes great left overs!

10 signs I am francisée

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1/ I know that franciser* is a word. Further more, I know that its a verb and I can conjugate it without looking in Le Petit Bescherelle, because I know it is in the 1st group of regular verbs (those that end in-er). It comes up when you get your French citizenship and they give you the opportunity to francisé your name. “Yes,” I yelped, “I’d like to be Coco. Coco Chanel.” “Oui, mais non.”

2/ I wear high heels. The first thing I did when I learned we were being transferred to Paris, was to try on a gorgeous pair of CFM heels (Prada, emerald green, croc print if you must know). I promptly fell on my ass in front the entire sales team at Neiman Marcus on Union Square, a team of 3 handsome gay men who nearly fell on the floor beside me in mocking laughter. I’d like to see them try and chase me down in a pair of stilettos today. (Now is not the time to remind me of my Vogue Fashion Night Out fall)

3/ I Dress, with a capital D, to take out the garbage. IN my building. I don’t even have to go outside, but I still put on a proper pair of pants and decent shoes, because I know that if I don’t, I’m bound to run into a neighbor. They’ll think I’m sick just because I’m in pjs at 4 in the afternoon (I work from home, clients contact me online, no one ever actually SEES me!!!). Then, I’ll hear about it from my butcher and my baker as they inquire after my health. And if it is a Saturday, Mr French will hear about it, too, and he’ll know I was in my pjs until 4 in the afternoon. Besides, it is no fun answering, “Non, je ne suis pas malade, je suis feignante.“**

4/ I love sitting in the sun. Preferably in a wicker bistro chair on the terrasse of some café as fabulous people stroll by. In California its all about SPF, sun hats and parasols. Who cares about skin cancer, I’m going to die of second hand smoke.

5/ I enjoy a glass of wine with my lunch. Not everyday, of course, but in my past life that was simply unheard of decadence that would have friends signing you up for AA.

6/ My bra matches my panties. At this very moment, even without planning it. I don’t have to plan it because even the Petit Bateau cotton underwear for kids at Monoprix is sold in sets. Recently a US based friend talked about buying plastic wrapped multi-packs of 10, and WHOOSH!!! was that a startling blast from the past. I don’t even know if those exist in France.

7/ Bad teeth. Yup, my teeth are going brown. Blame it on the café terrasse where I sit in the sun. Fortunately they’ve finally started importing Crest whitening strips, so I’ll no longer have to smuggle them in by the case load.

8/ Late dinners. I can’t imagine having dinner at 6pm. I am going to have to start thinking about it, because we are going back for a visit in a month, but the idea just strikes me as so odd. Mr French is rarely even home before 20h!

9/ I enjoyed Rabbi Jacob and several other politically incorrect jewels of French cinema. It was filmed in 1974, and I’d say the main character is something like Archie Bunker on acid. Even more hysterical is Tati Danielle, who kills her housekeeper so that she can go sponge off family in Paris. How is that for a nice evening in with he kids?

10/ I cut in line. I know, BAD Sylvia, Baaad. I usually try to do it respectfully, with pre-purchased online tickets, learning about side entrances, or getting VIP passes, but if all else fails, I walk to the front of the line like the rest of the world does not exist. To be honest, I don’t even think about it, at some point living in this city it just became Darwinian. Survival of the fittest and all that. (non, I don’t do it at the grocery store and I still respect little old ladies, I am going to be one soon enough!!!)

* To be made more French.

** I’m not sick, I’m lazy.

Put a lid on it

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Paris, the City of Love, the City of Lights, the City of Romance, the City of hot, passionate, spontaneous sex. There seems to be a lot of that going on in the city these days, and for the most part, that is a good thing. But with 7 000 new HIV infections in France each year and approximately 40-50,000 infected people who have never been tested, our socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë thinks its time to do something to educate all those teens out there putting themselves at risk. Being a smart man, he is not trying to stop kids from having sex. Parisians have no problem with electing a gay mayor, but introducing the uniquely American concept of Promise Rings would signal an end to any Frenchman’s political career.

So the City of Paris has decided to protect the sexual active and is holding a condom design contest. At first I got all excited about the project, imagining clever designs that would rise to the occasion, but I got a bit a head of myself and they’re really only talking about the packages. 500,000 packages which will be distributed across the city throughout 2013. To participate, the designer must be a Paris resident and over 16 years old. Design concepts are uploaded on the dedicated Facebook page and the wo/man with the most votes wins the right to have their artwork be there for some very interesting moments (if only the wrapper could rap).

If you’re not an artist, you can still log on and vote for your favorite designs. The city is expecting a plethora of preservatif protected Eiffel Towers, capote coated July columns and poteca swathed obélisks. My personal favorite today is probably the Paris Ponts with an illustration of the love locks by Louise Kinet, but Justine Collette’s J’aime me proteger probably says it best in the heat of the moment.

The winner will receive a free iPad, but depending on the designer and her/his lifestyle second or third place may be more financially rewarding; 1 year’s supply of condoms. I just love sitting back and picturing how you claim that prize. Is it an avg. of the last three years activity? Do you call on demand?

Contest runs until Nov 3, click here to participate.

Seriously? Again?

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Last month I regaled you all with my French bureaucratic adventures helping Mr French replace a lost/stolen passport. The joys, the anguish, the utterly overwhelming stress. So you can imagine my somewhat nuclear reaction when I sat down at the computer last Friday, logged on to Air France and proceeded to enter E’s passport information for her trip to Chicago this Wednesday. This is THE trip. As in the flight that will be taking her to the US to study at the University of Chicago for the next four years.

After I’d dutifully entered all the required information a little red line of text appeared above the expiration date; E’s passport had expired!?! Seriously?How could that possibly be? Well, at heart, we’re French, so we travel on French passports. We only use our US passports when traveling to the US, and that is only because authorities will not let us enter the country on foreign passports.

So, this morning, bright-eyed, bushy tailed and anticipating the worst, we were at the US Consulate to request an emergency passport. After this weekend’s protests we feared security would be extremely tight, so we left our cellphones, electronics, bottled water and even our belts at home, showing up with just our paperwork. The security guards actually applauded us in gratitude.

And there were quite a few guards to applaud. There is security forcing you to cross the street in front of the Embassy, next to the Consulate, a security tent on the sidewalk outside, then a security building before you enter the main building, and finally a patrolled line of people waiting to be handed a number for the long wait ahead.

Once you have your number, you can sit in one of two areas with a total of 120 always occupied seats for US citizens and visa applicants. There are vending machines with entire meals in case you start getting faint with hunger, a photo booth for official Emergency-Only passport photos and a large, red box bearing the sign, SAFE HAVEN kit, for Multi-trauma Emergencies. MULTI-TRAUMA only. Good to know that we are prepared for MULTIPLE injuries. Thanks for the reminder, guys.

We then wait as we hear one US citizen after another explain how their passport was stolen. A few are there for extra pages in their passports, or the paper work for a minor child, but mostly these were folks who had been robbed in the night. Note to self; keep that passport off the street and always stash a spare credit card separate from the rest of my papers/credit cards, it will save hours of hassle.

The cashier at the Consulate wears a yellow id around his neck with the words “WMD first responder” and a nuclear symbol artistically printed up the side. WMD? Weapons of Mass Destruction. Just so you know, this is the go-to guy if the embassy ever comes under nuclear attack. I’m guessing that means he knows the code to the fall-out shelter.

I know I’m becoming French, because I had brought along every document listed on the Embassy website PLUS E’s plane tickets, university acceptance letter, the invitation to Orientation, a hotel reservation for the first night, and an Orange bill less than three months old. They didn’t ask to see any of it. They simply made her take an oath that everything she’d said was true to the best of her knowledge. Then, exactly 2 hours after our arrival, E had a hot-off-the-press passport that will ensure her legal arrival in Chicago tomorrow.

So in the end, would I rather loose my French passport, or my American one? It’s a draw… the French version drowns you in paperwork until you want to blow the place up, while the US counterpart scares the crap out of you with constant reminders that somebody, somewhere out there, would like to blow you up.

ps On a more sober note, given the climate in the world today, the people who get up every morning, kiss their loved ones good bye and head off to an office that is an international target, well, my hats are off you.

 

 

Lèche vitrine*

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a Street reNamed Happiness

Growing up, I was not the girl with movie star posters on her walls. Luke Skywalker did not melt my butter and I had no dreams of cycling off into space with my very own ET. I was a grounded girl I figured, my feet firmly planted in the rich California earth. Then the Goodfellas came out and I nearly swooned for Ray Liotta. Turns out, I like the bad boys. The really bad boys.

Which is when I realized that us girls, we all have a very particular taste of our own. Someone at adopteunmec.com must like bad boys, too, because she has helped he online dating site go brick and mortar, opening up a pop-up shop for single women.

Pilot Mec, I always wanted the Barbie plane!

Like human Barbies, the available men are displayed in large, pink boxes, with detailed instructions on the side just waiting to be unwrapped by an anxious young girl under the Christmas tree.

As I walked into the shop, I felt like Barbie herself, the entire Matel universe brought to life with a pilot, veterinarian, gym buff, and surfer dude. As I clapped my hands in glee, I turned to see Thomas, the event photographer who I met last week and who also happens to be a very good friend of La Fashionista (Mr French’s daughter).

“I’m…. I’mmmmmm….. here for work,” he stuttered, pointing to his camera and very hard-to-miss tripod.

“Yes, me too,” very glad to have OutandAboutinParis by my side as chief witness to my innocent curiousity.

Monsieur Surfer Dude

At 15h the place was humming like a night club, crowds spilled out on to the rue du Bonheur, with live music spun by Mr Techni, an open bar and plenty of treats to seduce the girls. Adopteamec gets girls. There was chocolate, and bubble gum pink tagadas, and mouth satisfying Magnum bars to pleasure their fantacies as they popped into a box with the tux clad Mr Chic, or the plugged in Mr Geek.

I had been shooting the IHT early that morning, so I thought it would be fun to get the guys with the paper. Opening the box of Mr Chic, I expected a look of utter horror. I am probably closer to his mother’s age than his own. But this is France where age matters less, and I was greeted with a warm invite.

Le Bar, serving teddy bears, red heads and geeks

As stereotyoes would have it, Mr Chic held the paper up to pose, Mr Geek started reading and I had to pry it from his hands, while Mr Muscle just held it up to the plastic box, the concept of reading well beyond his imagination.

If you’re looking for a bad boy of your own, Adopteamec is at 15 rue des Halles in the 1st until next week, before hitting the road for the dating capitals of Europe…

 

*Lèche Vitrine means window shopping, but translate as Window licking

*Adopt a Dude

Les ados…

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French Jr moved in this week. Its a temporary arrangement as he changes flats, which is something of a shock to the system for all of us. He’s sleeping on the couch, in the living room, just 1.5 meters from my desk, which explains why it is currently 10am and I am still holed up in my bed, computer propped on my knees, trying to sort the sheets of paper from the linen sheets.

It can’t be easy for him, especially when Mr French and I head into the kitchen for our breakfast, turning on lights and clanging around pots before the sun has yet risen. And it is somewhat surreal for my two girls who have never really lived with a boy before. Two teenaged girls who must now share a bathroom with a boy. A hip 22 year old boy.

Day 1 – I go into their bathroom and find not one, not two, but THREE pairs of thong underwear that somehow never found their way into the laundry bin.

“Girls” I shout, “come put your panties away.”
“Relax, its not like anyone is going to see them!”
“Oh yeah, and Jr? You don’t mind Jr seeing your itsy bitsy, teeny weenies?”

3 nanoseconds later the bathroom is spotless, the panties gone, zit creams hidden and sanitary items put in their proper drawers, instead of left in a box on the floor. I can see that I am going to enjoy this.

Day 2 – Mr French has a business dinner and I’m headed out to test Le Grand Pan (excellent btw) with a girl friend. The three kids have dinner together. Later that night, after yelling at the girls for not having taken care of their dinner dishes, I ask them how the evening had gone.
“Horrid,” replied one or the other. “We couldn’t watch a show, or, like, do anything. We just had to sit there and talk. So annoying” Films during mealtime are forbidden, as is singing at the table or dancing on the chairs, but they seem to forget this at every meal so dinner is often a chorus of “No singing at the table”. I’m considering giving the new situation an FB Like.

Last night – We book the tickets to visit E in Chicago this October. M is thrilled and starts packing immediately. There is a moment of total panic when she realizes her leather jacket is missing. I have two younger sisters, lived in University dorms and M is my second daughter. I don’t exactly go into panic mode over missing accessories, unless they are my own. A few phone calls later and she remembers it had been lent to T who accidentally left it at E’s, so E brought it home and it is now at N’s.

I’ve had enough, so I head up the hall into the living room where Jr is deeply invested in his social media. M comes tearing after me. “Moooooooomm, it’s  CA-Ta-strophe!!! We’re going to have to get me some new bras in the US, haven’t you noticed, look my boobs have grown.”

The next sound in the house was a short, dry “Oh” followed by the scurry of mortified footsteps heading back down the hall. Je suis mdr.*

* I am mort de rire (dying with laughter)

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