Trip to France

Wow.  It has been over a year since I last posted anything.  I just need more time or need to make this a priority, and, that is not going to happen.  It is January 16th 2013 and my yoga class was cancelled tonight.  I was just reading some blog posts and decided that I have minute or two (I really wanted to get some knitting done tonight and watch some more of my tapes on nutrition that I ordered from the teaching company).  So, here I am trying to write something in a few minutes' time!

What I really want to tell you about is my trip to France in October.  Since the trip was really a food and wine exploration, I felt it would fit here.  I should not have waited so long, but really - who has time for blogging around the holidays?  We went for 10 days.  It was Joe's birthday present (he celebrated a milestone birthday last year) and he had wanted to make this journey for quite some time.  We went with some friends of ours whom we had never traveled with before, and you all know what a risk that can be, but it wasn't.  It was great and they were the perfect travel companions.  We actually had a great time (at least we did and I hope they did too).

We flew to Paris on the usual flight out of the States that departs at night and arrives in Europe by morning.  We had reserved a rental car ahead of time and, without going through all of the grizzly details, ended up with a lovely Mercedes station wagon that served us perfectly.  We left the airport destined for Burgundy and, to our dismay discovered pretty quickly that our GPS spoke German.  So we did the old fashioned thing and got out the maps we lugged all the way to the France with us and found our way.

The trip across France was very interesting.  Having only been to France once before; a trip that was limited to Paris and a bus trip to Versailles, it was fun to see what the rural landscape of France looked like.  It was quite scenic.  One of the first things we noticed were these trees that looked like they had nests in them but they were actually Sycamore trees that were pruned a certain way.   Off in the distance we would see rolling hills with very old - and when I say old I mean old - homes and/or farms like you only see in Europe.  Houses made of stone, and castles, and very large, stocky white cattle known as Charolais cattle.

And, of course, vineyards :-)

When we exited the highway to access the local roads that would take us to our final destination I knew I was in love.  As we came into Nuit St George I knew I was in a place that I had always dreamed of being in and it only got better from there.  We were staying in a beautiful, old, stone inn in Morey St Denis in Burgundy surrounded by vineyards.  When I say it doesn't get any better, I am pretty sure, for my tastes, it doesn't!  The name of the Inn was Castel Tres Girard and here is a picture of it.  It was surrounded by vineyards in every direction and they were making wine in the basement.  

I cannot emphasize enough how much it was more like "farmland" than something glamorous.  These people were making a living producing wine.  The homes in burgundy especially, were very old and really quite beautiful.  Most roads in these little villages could only acomodate one car going one way at a time.  Let me see if I have a photo:  

This was around the corner from our Inn in Morey St Denis.

And this:

And, if you want to see old, this Chateau was built in the 10th Century and is still in use.  It is in Gevrey-Chambertin:

So, if you know anything about France, then you know they take their meals (food) very seriously.  They eat lunch from 12:00 to 2:00 and do not try getting into a restaurant for lunch before or after those hours.  As a matter of fact, I would not even attempt to walk into a restaurant at 1:30 and ask for lunch.  But, as I mentioned above, that was exactly the time we arrived at the Inn and the woman, whose name I unfortunately did not write down, who ran the inn, rushed us into the dining room and fed us.  And, we were grateful she did.  My first meal in Burgundy were eggs cooked in red wine (oeufs au vin rouge).  It was simply perfect.

This too I have a picture of:  

After a nap and a shower, we took a little walk about.  And before long it was dinner time.  Dinner is served from 7:00 till about 10:00.  They take your entire order at the beginning.  They do not rush you through dinner.  You have a cheese course with each meal, unless you decline.  And, you are served with grace and respect for the meal.  I cannot think of anywhere I would rather eat than in the places where we ate in France.

Over the course of the next few days we traveled about Burgundy eating and drinking their food and wine.  We visited Beaune which is the Capital of Burgundy and a beautiful city.  We had a wonderful lunch there also and hope to go back someday.  We traveled the countryside.  It was hunting season and we actually had a deer run out in front of our car one day on our way through the countryside to visit an old cathedral in Chateauneuf.

After Burgundy, we traveled over to Beaujolais to spend 3 days in that lovely part of France :-).  Our house wine is usually a Beaujolais-Villages, which I just happen to be drinking while writing this.  We love the different Beaujolais wines and were anxious to test and taste along the Beaujolais wine route.

We stayed in a beautiful inn in St Amour called Auberg du Paradis.  For the next three days we traveled around Beaujolais tasting a lot of village wines we cannot get here in the States.  The highlight of our exploration of Beaujolais, after finding this:

was our dinner in Auberge du Cep in Fleurie.  It was one of the restaurants that Johnny (R.W.) Apple (a food writer for the NY Times)

http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/travel/22apple.html?pagewanted=all

suggested that was worthy of a plane trip to visit.  He only chose one restaurant from each country!  This particular restaurant was a bistro in Fleurie.  We could not have asked for a better experience as our reason for being there was to taste the local wines and eat the local foods.  Again, it was perfect.

Our traveling companions were Frank & Eileen.  Both Joe's and Frank's ancestors came from the Alsace region of France/Germany depending upon when you are referencing.  So, we needed to visit this region since we were going to be so close.  We chose to stay 2 days and nights in Strasbourg.  And this too was lovely.  Joe got to have his charcroute and I got to search for little French wine bars called Winstubs because Charcroute is not my "thing".

Winstub's serve a blend of French & German food and we did pretty good in choosing one.  The proprietor was a hoot and entertained us, as well as the rest of the restaurant all night.  Here he is trying to get us to drink Shnapps at the end of the night:

Actually, I think he succeeded in convincing Eileen that would be a good thing to do :-).

We had a marvelous trip and I cannot wait to go back.

Well, this took longer than a few minutes so I did not get any knitting done nor did I watch any videos.  But, I did enjoy reliving my trip to France and look forward to the day when I can do it again.  Bonsoir.

Lighter Reading

I just finished reading The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz and loved it.  I highly recommend it.  He is a hoot.  It was laugh out loud funny while also being quite informative should you find yourself traveling to Paris anytime soon!

Books

Well I just finished reading We the Animals by Justin Torres.  This book was incredibly written but it was sad and dark.  I definitely recommend it for the prose alone, but now I think I need something lighter so I decided to finally pick-up The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz.  What could be lighter than reading about a bakery chef's journey to live and survive in Paris.  This has to be good.

Before We The Animals I had read Kim Severson's book Spoon Fed and loved it.  I can't thank Kim enough for writing a book that was so real and honest.  Sometimes you just need to read other people's truths to help you discover some of your own.  She's a great writer and full of inspiration.  I very much enjoy her style and I always enjoy learning more about food and cooking!

I will let you know how the baker makes out in Paris when I'm done, but I already know he's doing just fine because I follow him on twitter!

A Few Good Books

It is Sunday and I finally have a minute to update some book reviews.  This week I completed two books.  The first book, titled Breaking Bread, by Lynne Christy Anderson was a great book, especially if you enjoy reading about food. Ms Anderson is an adjunct professor at Boston College and she also teaches English as a second language.  In her earlier years, she had worked as a chef.  At some point she got the bright idea to interview her immigrant students about the foods of their country.  She asked them to teach her about a special recipe from their homeland.  So in addition to their stories about success in America and missing the country from whence they came, you also received a recipe from them.  I will not say much more than that, except that I highly recommend the book.

The other book I finished this week was actually a book on tape titled Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese.  This was actually a great book to listen to on tape.  The actor who did the reading was wonderful.  This is a story, simply put.  It is a story about 2 twin boys and begins with their birth and takes you through their lives, as narrated by one of them. I don't want to say too much other than I recommend the book-on-tape version.

The 4th of July 2011

Happy 4th of July to everyone. Today is actually the 4th, but we had our BBQ/4th of July party on Saturday. Most of the neighbors were present at some point of the day or evening, and, we even met some new neighbors from the 'hood! I didn't actually make a whole lot this weekend. We had some customary dishes like a salad of mixed greens. Jenny & Bob brought their slaw and Vicki made a potato salad. This was good because the week before I had made both coleslaw and potato salad for my mother's birthday party and I really didn't feel like doing it again. I decided to make my "Greek Salad" since it is now summer and I have had a hankering for it. I make mine with peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, sliced red onion, black olives, garlic (since I'm using the garlic raw, I leave them whole and cracked, so people can pick them out) olive oil, oregano, and salt & pepper. The oregano is actually from Turkey that was brought over by Joe's nephew's in-laws who visited us this year for Easter. They also brought ground cumin, red pepper, ginger and sumac. I actually used the cumin and red pepper in the black been recipe below. I love gifts like that! Anyway, back to the Greek salad - this is usually best after it sits for awhile. I usually add the tomatoes shortly before serving as well as some (or in my case a lot) of feta cheese. You get great "juice" with this salad so I will warn you now that you will need a loaf of great - and I mean great European style - bread for dipping.

In addition to the salads, we roasted some cauliflower and broccoli and made an asparagus dish prepared with pignoli nuts, leeks, prosciutto, and orange & lemon zest. Joe BBQ'd some chicken on the Weber Kettle, some baby lamb chops (lollipops) on the open wood grill and some ribs on the smoker. He also smoked up some squab he had in the freezer. I think everyone had enough.

As for trying new recipes this weekend, I didn't do much but I did discover a new way to make ice coffee. My problem in the past was always that after I added the leftover coffee from the morning to the ice in my glass, it became very diluted. And, after adding the milk it became even more diluted. But, you needed the hot coffee to dissolve the sugar I like to put in my ice coffee. Apparently, the way around these obstacles is to make espresso ice cubes and a simple syrup to keep in the fridge for such occasions. This is really good ice coffee.

I also tried a recipe Sunday morning for black bean pate that I had seen in the paper the week before. It was pretty good and something I think I will make again to put out prior to dinner. If you are interested in the recipe, go the NY Times and search for Black Bean Pate'. It is one of Martha Rose Shulman's Recipes for Health.

I almost forgot about the Blackberry Caipirinha's that I couldn't wait to try. Doesn't that sound wonderful. Anyway, I ran to the store last week to pick up a bottle of Cachaca to make them because when I saw the recipe on the food52 website, I knew I had to try them over the 4th. You simply muddle some blackberries - about 6-8 plump ones - with 2 wedges of lime and a teaspoon of sugar. Add ice and 2 ounces of cachaca. Sounds good, but I didn't care for them. They were a bit strong for my taste. However, if you add a little of that simple syrup you made for the ice coffee and some cold Pellegrino you have in the fridge, they're pretty good. So, now that I have all of these blackberries that I wasn't going to use, I had to put them in the food processor with a little sugar and lemon juice to make a syrup and keep in the fridge to add to my Prosecco, which I am having right now.

The only other thing that I really wanted to have this weekend was strawberry shortcake. When I went into town this morning, I was reminded that it was Monday and therefore the Schroon Lake Farmers Market, and, guess what - someone had fresh strawberries. I just finished making the biscuits (I used Marion Cunningham's cream biscuits) and tonight I will finally have my strawberry short cake.

In addition to a couple of new recipes that were tried and tested this weekend, I also just finished reading a great book titled: Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton. This memoir was fascinating because she has not lived the "normal" life, but what I really connected with is her desire for food prepared simple and fresh. She feels the same way about food that I do and that is that real food doesn't really need to be fussed with very much to taste good. She doesn't do "foam" on her food. I am also never going to feel uncomfortable about making dinner reservations for the 6:00pm time slot - which is when I really want to eat - not at 8:00pm - after reading her book. I have not yet eaten at her restaurant (Prune) but I am so encouraged that food being served in restaurants may be coming back to this way of thinking since she was the winner of the James Beard Foundation award for best NYC chef this year!!!!! Congratulations to Gabrielle. If you like food and, the story of how someone discovered their love of food and food preparation, you should pick-up this book. If nothing else, her life and her style of writing is great entertainment.

So that's it for my 4th of July weekend 2011. I hope yours was a good one and a healthy one spent relaxing and with people you enjoy. Until next time.....

First "BBQ" of the season

I realize Memorial Day weekend was a whole week ago. Why does it take a whole week to write about what you prepared and ate over the weekend? "What have I been doing all week?" you ask! I was doing "stuff" like I always do. And, unfortunately none of that stuff included a trip to the gym. It was a good thing I made it to yoga all four days over the long weekend. It was great - I felt like I was on a yoga retreat. A rainy yoga retreat but a retreat nonetheless.

Dead End Gene Pool

Well, I just finished listening to Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden. (I enjoy listening to books on tape (CD) while in my car. It makes sitting at all of the lights on Route 9 so much more enjoyable.) This book was incredible. I am amazed that someone would want to put all of that in writing for the world to read. It reminded me of Angela's Ashes only this is about the uber wealthy. The book is a memoir and Wendy is a descendent of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Unbelievable. The rich are so different in so many ways, but I don't think they are happier! I am not sure why she wrote this book as she mocked her grandfather for writing his memoir in her (this) book. Anyway, if you're up for some trash and want to learn about how the rich love their alcohol, drugs and porn, pick up this book. Otherwise, stick to something more rewarding.