Puttering and Chicken Soup Philosophy

Puttering around my kitchen is one of my greater joys. By American standards it is tiny, less than a two giant steps in any direction, and under equipped, but it has the things I need most: good knives, spatulas, potato masher, two wooden spoons, 2 ladles (one for serving), stove top, oven, whisk and food processor, the later being the major necessity.

Some of my French friends produce five-star meals with the same or less. Although I don’t claim to be as a good a cook as they are, I can hold my own. None of them who have eaten my cooking have spit it out, and usually have taken seconds.

Today I decided to make chicken soup because of lots of leftovers: the roast chicken from Sunday lunch, the eggplant Catalan, some ginger, and misc. veggies that were in the frigo. Taste testing I find it’s good and will be a once in a lifetime eating experience: this combination will never be duplicated.

As I watched the liquid bubble, I realised there a story about everything on the stove top.
The teapot was given me by cousins as I was about to move to Europe hand carried from their home in Tennessee by my daughter who had visited them.

The casserole was a birthday present from my girlfriend. Usually this brand costs a small fortune. She found it brand new at a vide grenier for 5 Euros. It has held spaghetti sauces, soups, veggies, casseroles that both of us have shared and even more I’ve eaten by myself.

The dish behind the casserole has bittersweet memories. The lovely man I was living with at the time on the Riverway in Boston in an apartment I adored. It was a cold February morning and we wandered into Brookline Village with its almost English feel to one store that featured unusual household kitchen items. We saw it at the same moment and headed for it. As the French say it was a coupe de foudre. No debate was needed to buy it and the six matching bowls.

Sadly, although he was lovely and we loved the bowl, we were not meant to be a loving couple, more my fault than his. His loveliness was demonstrated in letting me keep the bowl. He has disappeared into another life, and I hope he is as happy as I am.

So today is the day that I will write, putter around my kitchen making chicken soup until it is time to run errands, maybe stop at the café, talk to friends and enjoy puttering in a life I’ve chosen and has far exceeded my expectations.

That's how crazy...

“How crazy are you?” My roommate asked as soon as I answered the phone “Oui, allo.”
“Why?” I asked.
She explained she was in the process of ordering two tickets Monday night for Garou’s concert in Lausanne. I am in Argelès.
For those that don’t know who he is, I have adored him as a singer since he appeared as Quasimodo in Notre Dame de Paris. http://youtube.com/watch?v=KUXGVfmrEN4&feature=related I saw the stage production in Paris and I saw Garou in concert once.
Tomorrow I go to the train station to buy my train tickets for Geneva.

Even if I am a good cook...

some things are not worth doing. I learned and relearned this. Once we put on a great Christmas Eve supper of Chinese food made from scratch. However, considering the labour involved and the cost of the ingredients and the clean up, it would have been cheaper and easier to do take-away for the same results.

The same thing happened with croissants. We rolled the dough and buttered and rolled and buttered and rolled and buttered for an evening. And the smell when they baked the croissants for breakfast was wonderful BUT the taste was only equal to those we bought.

Roast chicken is one of those things. Buying it freshly roasted with the juice, onions and potatoes ladled into the bag makes more sense than roasting it myself. I can still make a great salad and veggies to go with it at the same cost and less effort.

Thus I ordered a chicken for Sunday lunch to feed my cousins…without an ounce of guilt.

Her name is Lola

And she’s a show cat…

Sorry Barry Manilow…but Lola is certainly showing herself off as she perches on the boxes outside her owners’ store. Babette is mad about her. In fact, if it came to be a choice between Jean-Pierre and Lola, I suspect we would see Jean-Pierre walking down the street with his suitcases.

Lola’s kittenhood was not that easy…Her joy at taking the toilet paper and pulling until none was left on the rolls, getting her head stuck under a door which necessitated that the door had to be replaced because of the damage in rescuing her was only met with murmurs of how clever she was from Babette while Jean-Pierre remained silent as he patted his poodle Mr. Bill.
Lola’s plaintiff cries could be heard up and down the street before she had her shots and could be allowed to claim her part of her territory outside, which is not willing to share with Ptah II, my friend’s cat who only appears on market days but was regularly chased back into my friend’s store. If Ptah II, who is all white and triple the weight, sat on Lola, I suspect the cat would look like one of those cartoon cats flattened into one dimension by some tragedy. It will never happen because he is always running away.

Tintin, a dog of dubious parentage, walks by her looking the other way. I suspect they have some kind of pact of –If-you-don’t-look-at-me-I-won’t-scratch-your-eyes-out.
Bianca the tiger cat and Lola also seem to have some sort of agreement.

As a mature cat, most shenanigans are behind her. Maybe there was a television show she watched showing Queen Elizabeth’s regalness. In any case she has a developed a dignity that only accentuates a royal attitude. When Lola gets tired of posing outside from her box throne, she will enter the store, and find a sleeping place near the tubes of mayonnaise and please do not make too much noise, folks when an order is being rung up. "We royal cats need our sleep you know."

Nuts

Nuts to you, you’re nuts, it’s nutty, nutso…

When did nuts get to be so derogatory?

There’s nothing negative about nuts when my cousins carry a large and delicious bag of pecans from New Mexico.

My new book cover

I love it...

I want to start doing the publicity but the internet line is still down in my part of town and I find myself in the café (not a hardship) trying to get everything done before the battery wears down.

I think of all my books (he he he) this is my favorite cover.

Waiting for Godot...

Not quite...

but I was at the train station for the first possible training coming up from Barcelona. There would be three and I planned to meet each one. My cousin and his wife were coming and said they would catch the first train they could after their plane landed.

Although we’d talked by e-mail it had been a good twenty years since I’d seen him. I wasn’t sure I would recognize him…

But then up the stairs came a version of my father who said, “Do I look like a Boudreau?”
The answer was yes. And thus started a wonderful visit that it is still going on.
Eat your heart out Samuel Beckett.

Yeh(s) Boo(s)

A Yeh Boo week if I’ve ever had one. My desk top tells it all.

Boo 1: See the white book with the orange dot. That’s my Livebox, which is dead. It is also my modem. It is not dead because it is broken. My outside line is defective. It doesn’t matter why, I can’t connect to internet, my lifeline for my work and my friendships if not my news. The man at France Telecom told me (at lightning speed and repeatedly until he got the idea that 100 words a minute would work better than if he tried to talk to me at 300 words a minute) it was an outside line and maybe just maybe by next Wednesday they would be able to fix it. Fill in your own expletives then yell them several times for me.

Yeh 1: My favourite café has wifi access.

Boo 2: See the medicine. I hate taking any kind of pills, think most of them are more dangerous than the disease, however, when shingles (called Azone in French and pronounced Ah- zone-ah) have caused my left eye to close, those pills look outright yummy. And the cream is as soothing as ice cream on a sore throat.

Yeh 2: The French health system. When I first checked with the doctor he wasn’t sure, so he had me come back (it’s a three minute walk from my flat) four times over three days. The cost was one visit 22 Euros and a man who was determined to get it right before giving me an incorrect treatment. The medicine however was 111 Euros which makes it Boo 2.5

Yeh 3: The program for Cinemaginaire film festival at my local movie house, another three-minute walk. This year they are concentrating on movies about the senses. I’ve seen Huston’s Reflection in a Golden Eye, Tous les hommes sont des Romans (All the men are novels) a French film about two women, one who lives in her head, one who is sensual and how their friendship makes them incorporate). The director talked about the technical and budgetary problems in making the film (he had a walk-on roll to save a salary). The French director Luc Besson did make the comment that film making in the US is a business, in France it is an art form. I agree, although some French films fall far short of art, but then many US films fall far short of good business deals.
They also had a series of shorts done by the local film studio. Considering it was the first time any of the pupils had ever done film making, the shorts were anywhere from adequate to quite good. Of course, there was the fun of seeing Marike’s goats and Danielle, my fishmonger in supporting roles. Today I will see films from the US and Argentina. So far this will cost a total of 16 Euros.

If you add up the yehs and boos the yehs are ahead by .5, which I can live with.

Trying a French Haiku

L’artichaut avec
L’huile d’olive et moutard
Oui, un bon répas

Good News

The UN has enough fuel to be able to deliver food into Gaza for two days. About half the population relies on this aid to eat.
The blockade by Israel has left the residents of Gaza in desperate straits much like the Warsaw Jews felt during WWII.

My fourth no buy month

This month my intention to buy nothing material, not a book, not a sock didn't go as well as last month where I only bought a mop at 2 Euros. I consoled myself that I said I could replace stuff. Imagine if the innards of my toilet went yet again (French toilets leave much to be desired) and I had to wait eight months to flush.

The computer needed replacing. A writer can't be without a computer.

But today I plunked down 1500 Euros for a car. Those that know me will say "She bought a car??????? She hates cars. She thinks everytime they move they are killing the planet."

Well in Argeles I share a car with a friend. We don't drive much between 300-500 Kilometres a year. I mean sometimes one tank of gas lasts nine months. But the car, which was over 20 years old, gave up.

The garage had this car, my friend didn't have the money, I did. Therefore I bought the car, BUT I gave it to her. It is in her name, it is her car.

Technically, I never said I wouldn't buy gifts for others, so I can consider it either a replacement or a gift.

Thank God I don't own a car. I would consider myself a terrible failure if I couldn't figure out how to live without one. At least it gets good mileage, a tiny, tiny, tiny consolation to my participation in planet murder.