Happy Easter to everyone!

Tags

celebrations, cooking, Easter, feasts, food, holidays, postaday2013

I wish everyone a Happy Easter and I hope that it was a joyous day for all. This morning as I was flipping through Facebook, I posted Happy Easter everyone! Enjoy your ham, enjoy your lamb and most of all, be sure to enjoy your chocolates! What is amusing about my wish for my friends is that for my own Easter dinner there wasn’t any ham or lamb to be found, there wasn’t even any Easter chocolates eaten.

My family enjoyed a small brunch of soft shell crabs meunière with Jasmine rice and asparagus served with a dijon mustard vinaigrette. I forgot to take pictures, they were also devoured quite quickly. The sauce meunière is such an easy sauce to prepare, all it takes is butter that has been browned by whatever you have been sautéing, in this case it was soft shell crab, it could easily be Dover sole or flounder, once the soft shell crab was done being sautéed; I added the juice of a large lemon and voila, the sauce meunière. If I had parsley on hand I would have added it but I forgot to get some, oh well, it was still quite nice especially with the rice. I, myself, ate most of the asparagus. It is one of my favorites, I didn’t forget it this time and they were perfectly crisp, tender. All in all, it was a nice meal and we celebrated Easter Sunday quietly as a family. After which my son graciously agreed to drive his sister back to school.

So now my hubby and I are getting to watch the season’s premiere of Game of Thrones on HBO and later we will watch I think that it’s the season’s finale of the Walking Dead. Perhaps not the most appropriate viewing for a Sunday but these are brilliant shows and I like them a lot.

So again, Happy Easter everyone! 🙂

Famous?

If you could choose to be any famous person who would you be, and why?

Interesting question just in the fact that the other day I was contemplating my mortality and wondering if part of the reason dying was so unappealing was because the thought of disappearing completely from existence was so utterly saddening. I think that writing and finishing my book is sort of a reaction to this underlying realization, I don't want to fade away into nothing. I want to leave something concrete behind, more than just a tombstone.

In that vein of leaving something behind in the written word, I would be curious to be the writer George Sands, she lived in Paris, had numerous lovers but I think that Frederic Chopin was her true love. I used her novel as part of a paper that I had written about French peasants and their deplorable conditions alongside Emile Zola's novel The Earth. What I love about George Sands is that she lived her life on her own terms and did it courageously.

I enjoy being Laurie Nichols but spending a day walking in the shoes of someone such as George Sands would be an experience to be remembered.

Witnessing something symbolic

Tags

body art, meaning, postaday2013, symbolism, tattoo

Today my hubby and I went with the baby girl as support while she received her first tattoo. My hubby has three tattoos, so he was understanding and completely on board with the tattoo idea. Myself, on the other hand, always made it a point of honor that both my children wait until eighteen before they had any type of piercings or tattoos done because personally, I find them very unappealing. My husband is the only person that I know of who has tattoos that I find suit him and that are attractive.

My baby girl waited until the day after her 19th birthday to get her tattoo and she specifically asked us to go, so how can I say no. I might not agree with tattoos but it isn’t my body, it is hers, so I can’t just impose my tastes and sensibilities on her. It is simply a matter of taste and self-expression after all. I can’t deny her my support just because of a difference in taste. She is my baby girl after all and since it is a painful undertaking, she has to hold someone’s hand and it should be mine, her Maman.

I have to hand it to the baby girl, she was awfully brave and pain tolerant. The tattoo artist himself was quite impressed by her grit and stoicism. My hubby and I weren’t so surprised because she has always been plucky and feisty, since she was a tiny little thing.

The ultimate thrill

Describe your ultimate theme park ride. Roller coaster? Water ride? 3-D Experience?

I have an aversion to heights so I do not have any favorites amongst the rides but I do however have a few stories, I am a mother and isn't that part of the job description; follow you children on whichever ride they have to go on?

There was one particular ride that the baby girl and I went on, I forget the name but basically it operated on the centrifuge principle and spun very quickly. As the baby girl and I were spinning in our car in one direction, independently, of the spinning arm that held our car, that was spinning in another direction, the baby girl started saying that she wasn't feeling so good and I talked her down from losing her breakfast. I told her stories and made jokes, got her laughing and then I made her laugh even harder when I was making fun of my own misery. When the ride finally stopped, we almost crawled out of the car and made our way to the curb and sat for quite a while with our heads between our knees. For years after, the baby girl would walk past that ride and say to anyone listening that she would never go on that ride ever again.

Another ride that sticks out in memory was the old fashioned roller coaster like the ones that you see in the old posters at Coney Island. We went together as a family on that one and my baby boy who was in the car in front of me kept looking behind to see just how green and terrified his Maman was getting. His Maman didn't disappoint, I felt as if that ride was the longest torturous ride ever, it felt rickety and noisy and I could have sworn that it was going to tip over or onto its side at any minute. I was so happy to be on terra ferma when the ride was over.

I am so happy that the amusement park adventures are over, hooray!

Birthday celebration, family and homemade sushi

Tags

celebrations, children, dinner, homemade sushi, postaday2013, sushi

Tonight, the four of us had a fantastical dinner. I call it fantastical because we were gathered together eating one of our favorite cuisines and celebrating the baby girl’s birthday and just being, as a family. Now with the two babies really busy with their own friends, jobs and schools, our family dinners have become a rarity. I choose to focus however, on how nice they are when they happen and not complain about the dinners that aren’t happening.

Our dinner was, as you will see in the pictures, mostly homemade sushi. Sushi preparation isn’t that easy, especially if you want it to be sleek and elegant. I wouldn’t mind perhaps taking a lesson sometime in the future just in the technique, because the flavors and the condiments are fairly straight forward, but the technique definitely requires finesse.

Now about the table layout; that was all my hubby, he most definitely has finesse. If it had been only me, the sushi would have been presented on the table, but in a much more austere manner. I love the way my hubby puts the flair in our entertaining, when he is here, there is nothing to fear, the setting will be beauteous. He helped with a few sushi rolls, applying his strong hands to shape them tightly and uniformly and putting the Tobiko flying fish roe on top,

The fish that I used was sushi grade tuna and sushi grade salmon filet, fresh from the marketplace at Guido’s, we also ordered salmon roe, Tobiko flying fish roe, and smoked eel from an online sushi specialty website. The rolls that we made were pretty basic, all variations on the Dragon roll. The Dragon roll is an inverted roll with cucumber, crab meat, tuna or salmon and then sliced avocado and sliced smoked eel are placed on top of the roll. You will see different looking rolls on the table but they all have the same ingredients just layered differently.

It was fun to make together but as usual, it was more fun to eat. What gets me is that for as long as you work on the preparation, you eat it exponentially that much faster. It was a great time together celebrating a very special day in our household. Happy birthday to the baby girl.

Your local guide

Write a piece about a typically "local" experience from where you come from as though it's an entry in a travel guide.

When I grew up, we lived in Astoria, New York two blocks from Astoria Park which is right on the East River. The gorgeous Triborough Bridge crosses the East river and leads us in Astoria right to the upper East Side in Manhattan. It's just a short hop, skip and jump across the river. If you can't afford the real estate in Manhattan than Astoria is the ideal place to live, affordable and so close to Manhattan.

Each and every time any of our relatives would come visit us from France, Astoria Park was the first stop on their tour because since the flight in was always late in the day, Astoria Park was the best first stop because at night you had the magnificent skyline of Manhattan all lit up at night alongside the completely lit bridge. It is one of the breathtaking sights that you don't forget. Moreover, coming in late from Europe, you're tired so how much easier than to have a gorgeous first sight of New York only two blocks away from your family's house. We would spend some time feasting on the bejeweled vision and plan for the next day, where we would go and the things and sights that we would visit.

This is always full of such fond memories.

Palmiers or elephant ears

Tags

birthday cookies, cookies, postaday2013, puff pastry dough, rolling pins

Tomorrow is the baby girl’s 19th birthday and she requested her favorite cookies, elephant ears in English or Palmiers in French. I have written about them before, how wonderful they are and how tricky they are to bake; only because of the cookie being dipped in sugar and the high temperature of the oven, 425 Fahrenheit, the chances of getting charcoal cookies are very good if you don’t keep your eye and nose on high alert.

Anyhow as I make these more often, I still wonder how small bakery shops keep up with the demand because there is no getting away from the time constraints of the pastry dough itself. I made 2.5 pounds of pastry dough and from start to finish with the rolling, folding and resting times, it took all of five hours before getting all of the cookies cut and onto the cookie sheets. The baking took ten minutes per sheet so the baking took a little while. I know that even small bakeries have specific ovens but I still admire them for the way they produce their wonderful pastries. It is hard and if they run out of any of the intricate pastries, it isn’t as if they can just whip something up on a whim. I also admire their product and time management. I used to have a tiny fantasy about having a pastry shop/ cafe but as I have written before, a day in the kitchen baking something just a little tricky is a healthy splash of water on my head to slap me back into reality.

I love these cookies because everyone who eats them makes “the” noise, the surprise that reaches their eyes when they are taken in by the buttery layers and the caramelization on the surface of those same buttery layers. It does my baker’s heart and ego a lot of good when I hear and see those happy faces.

Competition

What activity, task, or game most brings out your competitive streak?

I have never been a competitive person with others perhaps because I am quite hopeless in sports, I have never felt comfortable performing in public and often lacked the self-confidence necessary to truly compete.

However when it came to myself, I found myself to be the more interesting challenge. When I received my beloved Rubik's cube for my 13th birthday, it soon became a contest against myself; if I could get three sides, then could I get four, once I solved it, could I solve it faster? Honestly if I was going to win at anything, it was only by beating myself. I don't do well in competition.

I don't have a problem with that because at the end of it all, there aren't any hurt feelings, I have improved my skill level or if not, than I know that I could stand for more practice. I do the same with my baking and my cooking, each foray is always an attempt to out-bake myself from the last time. I would never compete against anyone else because I think that I would melt from the anxiety and the nervousness. I leave the competition to the professionals, I will remain in my own proper, personal competitive universe of me, myself and I.

My crazy guilty pleasure

Tags

aliens, guilty pleasure, postaday2013, sit-coms, Star Trek, Star Wars, T.v

One of the new shows this year is Neighbors on ABC. It’s about a human family who unwittingly move into a gated community that had been taken over by alien shipwrecked aliens inhabiting human form. Jaime Gertz has been a favorite actress of mine since I was in my late teens, early twenties. She plays Debra the mom, happily married to Marty, they have three children. They find out that they are living in an alien community and hijinks ensues. The alien family who decide to adopt Debra and Marty Weaver as friends, are named Jackie Joyce Girney and Larry Byrd. The aliens all named each other after sports figures.

Tonight is a very special episode, George Takei from Star Trek fame and Mark Hamil from Star Wars fame are guest appearing as supreme commanders checking in to see how the mission is going. I must not be the only one who considers this show as a guilty pleasure when two icons of science fiction are willing to grace the t.v show with their presence.

I am done with my confessional, you should tune in and watch, it is cute and harmless, good for when your brain doesn’t want stress or worries.

Idyllic

What does your ideal community look like? How is it organized, and how is community life structured? What values does the community share?

I grew up in Astoria, Queens and we had our small community that revolved around 24th Street. There was a group of boys, the boys on the block and a few girls and we all played together; at different stages of our childhood lives, it was harmonious, contentious, tension filled but rarely combative. We played tag and cops and robbers when we were in elementary school. When we got older we played a team version of tag and pretty soon left the games for hanging out on the various stoops. Eventually cars came into the equation and that meant that the hanging out left the block and moved onto greener pastures as in Astoria Park.

I was often left behind because I had a very strict mother and my universe was still restricted to the block. The boys were a few years older than I, so of course I was jealous of their freedom, so I explored other blocks outside of our little kingdom, off the reservation but not too far. The boys were not happy with my perceived slight whenever they returned. It was such a weird dynamic.

We also had the elders who surveyed the goings on of the block, the nana's, the yaya's, in a word the grandma's, who sat on the stoop and kept an eye on the comings and goings of the "kids" and any strangers who would walk down the block. We had our own neighborhood watch but they weren't the running type, they were the gossiping type.

I have fond memories of my childhood on 24th Street, the tight knit community, the boys on the block and knowing that at all times there was a grandma who was watching over you, making sure that you stayed out of trouble and that everything was fine on their watch.