While in Paris, we did our part in supporting the local economy - but as locals, not as tourists. We bought an air mattress, a few mugs, lots and lots of cheese, and a few other items that probably wouldn't qualify as "souvenirs." Towards the end of our stay, we started thinking about the material legacy that Paris would leave in our lives. Sure, there were the 10,000+ photos we'd taken, and I guess this blog counts as somewhat "material" (or at least "documentary"). But come on - we live in a material world, and we are material girls, so it was high time we picked up a few things to inspire bouts of nostalgia once we'd returned to our regularly scheduled American life.
We started simple: a set of "Prince and Princess" plates we'd first seen at Le Bon Marché in the winter, then rediscovered at another store in May.
Each small, plastic plate (clearly intended for children) depicts a prince or princess offering suggestions for proper table etiquette, always in the first person so as to lead by example:
I carry my food to my mouth.
I don't eat chicken with my fingers.
I don't put my knife in my mouth.
I don't talk with my mouth full.
My hands rest on the table.
I only leave the table when the meal is finished.
Besides pointing to some interesting cultural differences in manners, the plates are brightly colored (the photo doesn't do them justice) and never fail to stimulate conversation. Plus, they're dishwasher-safe!
Prince and Princess plates: find them at a novelty shop on the Ile-St.-Louis near you, and collect all 12!
In the middle of our marathon last day in Paris, we practiced the skill we most appreciated acquiring over our nine months in France: dropping everything to enjoy a leisurely lunch.
One last time, we visited Le Baratin, the celebrated gastro-pub conveniently located a block-and-a-half from our apartment. I'd been for lunch with my mom and Cathy; Maggie and I had been to dinner there once (Mo and Héloise's treat!); but Maggie and I had somehow failed to hit up Le Baratin for their super-economical lunchtime menu.
The whole restaurant is tiny, but we sat in the tiniest section, up a few stairs from the bar and next to a food-and-art library that we could have spent the next nine months working through.
To eat, a few staples of Le Baratin, starting with whitefish and a simple green salad.
Maggie's first course was artichoke au jus. I had some delicious braised oxtail over chickpea-carrot stew. For dessert, we shared the by-now-familiar strawberry soup and a slice of strong cheese.
When asked what we miss most about Paris, we tend to talk a lot about the food culture. It's not too hard to see why. That Le Baratin takes such care in arranging wine bottles above a bookshelf full of reference works that reinforce the professionalism of even the tiniest of out-of-the-way, hole-in-the-wall restaurants - well, that says it all.
We may have left Paris, but we still get updates from time to time thanks to our eyes and ears on the ground, Héloise. She recently emailed this shot of the fallout from Nuit Blanche, which Boston clearly needs to get going.
Yes, that's an old school Citroën delivery van sitting in a fountain at the Parc de Belleville. It's surrounded by streetlights, and it's about to be overrun by Tilal, who's breaching the fountain defenses. Thanks, Héloise, for reminding us of all that there is to miss about Paris - public art, parks, and thoughtful friends.
Soon after we first arrived in Paris, the "sweet" sounds of my clarinet reverberated through the courtyard as I tried to get back in the habit of practicing daily. To my knowledge, no neighbor ever complained - but I did get lots of invitations to play with people the neighbors knew. Héloise, for instance, connected me with her pharmacist, Catherine, who was looking for a clarinetist with whom she could play through a collection Yiddish folk music. We got together a half-dozen times over the course of the year and ultimately decided to repay Héloise's social networking prowess with an informal concert for her, her kids, and Catherine's parents. It turned out that the concert took place during Dimi's visit, so she attended as well.
As was my habit, I recorded the concert - but unfortunately I botched the recording, such that only one and a half tracks exist. Here they are:
Luckily, Dimi took charge of the Flip Video camera during the concert, and there are lots of clips to give you a better sense of what (and how) we played. Also there's lots of footage of the kids, who were (as always) unbearably adorable, even when they got a little tired of the whole concert thing.
This is just me warming up, but I include it because, at the end, Catherine says either "He is very handsome" or "He is very good." Either way, it's all good.
Mehdi and Nahel watch attentively while Héloise prepares her iPhone for recording. Tilal dances like no one's watching, and Catherine's parents listen respectfully.
A rare, full track. We could have rehearsed more, but that would have taken all the spontaneity out of the concert. After the hesitant beginning, we make it through the whole thing unscathed and rather spiritedly.
I love the way Catherine celebrates at the end of this one.
Dimi got all meta, filming Mehdi filming us.
Nahel gives new meaning to "interpretive lap dance."
More meta filmmaking. An almost complete "track."
Drama! Tilal knocks all my music off the music stand, then cries about it.
After struggling to find the pages I needed to continue, all is resolved and we pick up where we left off.
The kids were getting bored, thus all the ambient noise and the sterner-than-usual looks from Catherine's parents. Dimi also apparently discovered a new camera angle.
The finale of our Yiddish repertoire was a canon without a satisfactory end, but we made do anyway.
Encore! An Irish folk song. I don't know why, but whatever.
The end! (This post is dedicated to Catherine, who's waited way too long to hear herself play, and to my grandfather, who eats this stuff up.)
Occupying the former apartment and atelier of the über-Romantic painter, the (smallish) museum showcases many of the famous artist's lesser-known works, as well as a number of sketches and personal items collected during Delacroix's voyage to North Africa. The only major works on hand was an early draft of The Death of Sardanapalus, and completely missing were any references to a work we'd learned aboutthrough the "Jeunes ont la parole" program - The Women of Algiers (in their Apartment) - or my personal favorite work in the entire Louvre - Liberty Leading the People.
We were in and out in under an hour, but that shouldn't diminish the importance of the museum's collection. If you love any of the works above, the Musée National Eugène Delacroix offers many equally delightful gems. And even if you find the museum itself disappointing, at the very least the garden separating apartment from atelier provides a fantastic refuge for the weary First Free Sunday aficionado.
I'm in Israel right now! It's all thanks to Birthright Israel Foundation, which pays to send hundreds of Jewish youths to the motherland every year. In 11 days, my tour will take me to most of the major historical, religious, cultural, and political sites in the country. This stint on the other side of the pond has brought back some of the challenges that we faced during our first weeks in France. What will I eat? Will I make friends? How will I communicate with loved ones back home?
With France already under my belt, I can answer all of these questions with ease. I will eat everything anyone puts in front of me. I will make some friends, but not too many (especially since I'll have Robert with me). And I will communicate via Skype, the free internet-phone and video-conferencing software that everyone should know about.
There's not too much to explain - you download the software, set up an account, find your peeps online, and press "call." Skype is how we were able to check in with people back home throughout the year, including at Thanksgiving, when we said hi to my entire extended family.
I don't have a phone in Israel, so if I want to call home, it'll have to be with Skype. And that's fine by me.
It's not the prettiest thing we brought back from France, nor is it one that we'll keep for all that long. But in terms of utility, it ranks up there with cocoa from La Bonbonnière and pullovers from Galeries Lafayette:
Yup, it's a poop bag. We only saw two poop bag dispensers in 9 months, and both were in rich suburbs of Paris. The bag above (and the other 10 that we took as "souvenirs") comes from Sceaux, where we visited the lovely park and said goodbye to Damien. It reads, "A small, daily gesture . . . a big gesture for the environment and for other people. Thank you."
The other bags we saw - but didn't take (stupid, stupid, stupid) - were in Versailles.
I want to criticize Paris for not offering poop-bag dispensers, but I know they don't have the spare cash that Versailles and Sceaux have. So here's a cost-effective idea: after having already coordinated bike-sharing, and now car-sharing, would it really be so difficult for the City of Paris to promote poop-bag sharing? People with extra, appropriately-sized plastic bags could bring them to drop-off points, where dog owners could pick them up, and use them to pick up after their dogs. Simple! Safe! Socialism! Petition your arrondissement council today!
Straddling two cultures, leaving one kind of culture shock for another, sometimes the best way to feel at home is to eat like you did at home. While we were in Paris, this meant home-made bagels and tacos, granola bars, banana cakes, mac'n'cheese, baked French toast, and especially cookies. Back in Somerville, this means reproducing some of our favorite dishes from the past year, and making as many French-flavored recipes as possible.
We started with a palate cleanser we enjoyed at Hidden Kitchen, adapted to suit our tastes:
That's farmers market-fresh strawberries and mint from our own garden over home-made strawberry sorbet over limoncello jello. We served it as a dessert, and will definitely make it again - maybe adapting it differently to be peach sorbet over raspberry liqueur jello, or kiwi sorbet over orange vodka jello . . .
Our next flurry of cooking and baking took inspiration from one of our favorite Parisian food bloggers, Clothilde Dusoulier. Her blog and eponymous cookbook, Chocolate and Zucchini, provide English-language recipes that cover a wide range of French cuisine, both traditional and modern.
Here are some of the things we made:
"Papillote de bar aux asperges" - "Papillote" is the technique of cooking something wrapped up in wax paper; we substituted turnips for bar fish.
"Chicken and cashew mini-quiches" - so many substitutions in this one, they don't deserve their name. Basically it's flour, milk, and egg, with whatever else you want to throw in, cooked in muffin tins. Perfect for an appetizer or brunch, and crust-less, so not terribly time-intensive.
"Zucchini carpaccio with raspberry vinegar" - didn't have raspberry vinegar so we had to improvise a little, but it tasted as pretty as it looks.
"Bulgur-stuffed round zucchini" - again, lots of substitutions, but you get the idea. Adjectives we'd use to describe this dish include "filling," "healthy," "seasonal," and "Halloween-y."
Not pictured: super tasty gougères (cheese puffs) that we've now made a few times, all thanks to Chocolate and Zucchini.
One of the souvenirs we picked up months before leaving Paris was a cookbook called Rilletes à la folie. Rillettes are usually meat-based salads, kind of like tuna fish, but made with goose and duck and pork. We were almost never without rillettes in our fridge, since they're perfect for a snack, a picnic dish, an apéro or something to go along with a meal. The cookbook we found provides recipes not only for the meat-based rillettes, but also for veggie and dessert options.
Craving rillettes a few weeks after we moved back, we started out trying to make a strawberry-lavender-cheese version, but realized we didn't have the right cheese, and turned it into a sorbet instead. Influenced by Dimi's spice-inspired approach to food, we topped the sorbet with espresso sugar-encrusted banana and served the ensemble in shot glasses, for something different.
Turns out that it's hard to miss Paris too much when the scent of French cooking fills your apartment a few nights a week. Come on over, we'll treat you to something fabulous!
We can't send you Parisian prizes anymore, but we can still test your knowledge of the city. And to make it interesting, if you guess right, we'll send you the address of one of the most interesting views of the city.
All you have to do is tell us 1) the name of the square and 2) what recent film features this square prominently*.
*This is exactly the kind of trivia you'd get on a walking tour with us - and knowing that probably makes you grateful you didn't visit!
Our plan for our last few days in Paris went like this: say goodbye to friends, check out a few new places, and tire out Panda so she sleeps on the plane and doesn't relapse into separation anxiety. (Final grades for each component of this plan: A, A, and F, respectively.) In an attempt to kill three birds with one RER ride, on Monday, May 31, we headed about 15 minutes south of Paris and met Damien at the Parc de Sceaux.
Damien lives in Antony, so the Parc de Sceaux is "his" park just like the Parc des Buttes Chaumont is "our" park. It's always fun hanging out with Damien, but it was especially nice also having a guide to what turned out to be a much larger space than we expected. Originally the grounds of the Château de Sceaux constructed by Jean-Baptiste Colbert (great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Stephen), the park includes a rose garden, a number of grand canals with fountains, a reconstructed château that houses the Île-de-France museum, fancy outbuildings, playgrounds, a sports complex, and lots of shaded paths.
Despite all this baroque beauty, we will always remember the Parc de Sceaux for the exciting discovery we made there: the park has not one, but TWO - count them - TWO off-leash dog areas.
This is clearly only possible because it's outside of Paris, and because the community of Sceaux is the 44th wealthiest in France. Paris can't even conceive of dedicating greenspace to dogs, even though it'd go a long way towards getting people to use leashes and ramasser. The off-leash areas were especially amazing because they were in wooded areas, rather than within gravel or dirt enclosures, so they seemed remarkably and sustainably clean. Needless to say, Panda was jumping for joy. Literally.
At the end of the day, we were sad to have to say goodbye to Damien, but happy to have discovered the Parc de Sceaux. We'll have to include a special appendix in our "Year in the Herbe" coffee-table book for superior and dog-friendly greenspaces outside the city.
In September 2009, Maggie, Louis, and Panda moved to Paris, France. Follow along as we have an amazing adventure. Read the archives for more on how we got here.
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