Generations

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celebrations, family, postaday2015

   
 
   
 
   
   
   
    
    
 
At this gathering we were 24, ranging in age from 14 months to 88 years old. The last time we had everyone together, I think we numbered 90 and that was quite a few years ago, our family has multiplied numerous times since then and even with the death of my aunt, we still come out being a much larger family.

This is the reason for all of the mini-parties, we can’t house all of us, we have to break it up into parcels of between 15 and 25 just for practicality.

It does make for a lot of eating and we are so lucky that our aunts are the most amazing cooks, we eat like royalty.

Tomorrow we are having clafoutis with goat cheese and peppers, we are having sausages on the barbecue and a gratin of courgettes and potatoes. It is going to be so extraordinarly yummy especially with the homemade apple tarts afterwards.

My sister’s place is so lovely, we couldn’t have asked for a better venue. I shouldn’t say her place, it is a rental, but the spirit of the place is enticing, I’m sure my sister wouldn’t mind having some acreage here sometime in the future.

Our daughter is home!

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celebrations, Christmas, postaday2014

We haven’t seen our daughter since August 18th. We didn’t mind that she didn’t come home for Thanksgiving, we were happy that she went to celebrate with her really good friend, but it doesn’t’ mean that we didn’t miss her very much. Both of our children are young adults, but trust me when it is Christmas, they revert back to their younger selves and as parents we couldn’t be happier. They both love the Christmas feast; their food orders come after serious consideration on their part and Christmas morning still serves as an early morning wakeup call.

I think that our daughter was missing us a lot as well. I know that she loves Christmas and she is excited to see what will miraculously appear under the tree come Christmas morning, but she also missed having us, her family, near her. This is going to be a really lovely Christmas, I can feel it in my bones.

An early birthday celebration

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birthday, celebrations, dinner, food, postaday2013

Part of the reason for our New York weekend was to celebrate our baby boy’s birthday, since he will be turning 22 during this week, we wanted to celebrate together as a family and weekends are the best time for those. It still amazes me that my hubby and I have a son who is 22 and a daughter who is 19. However no matter how adult they think that they are, they still get all excited for their birthdays, they are so cute with their excitement. Our baby boy had a few requests for his birthday dinner; my brother-in-law face-booked him with questions as to what he wanted, since we were having the dinner at my sister’s house. First our son wanted the usual as a starter; rillettes de saumon (salmon spread) and then he picked roast beef, he asked for string beans, his favorite and my mother decided to get some tiny Yukon Gold potatoes to roast in the oven at the same time as the roast. Now for the best part, the baby boy asked for cheesecake, I didn’t have the time to make it at home so my mother went to our favorite patisserie La Cannelle to buy it.

When we got to my sister’s house the first thing that we all did was introduce ourselves and Jack to the newest member of my sister’s family, Harry their puppy. Harry is a rescue puppy, a mix of Retriever and either Beagle or Basset Hound, he is 8 months old and he is adorable. He is a little on the shy side and he and Jack played outside for a while and at first it was all play until it wasn’t and Jack felt it necessary to lay down the law. He didn’t like Harry sniffing at his backside and he made it known loud and clear. My brother-in-law and sister were really understanding about Jack putting his foot down, I was feeling as if Jack should have been more understanding but I realize that I was projecting unreasonable expectations onto our little Jack, a dog, not a human. They had some time in different rooms and then we they were reunited, it was all back to nicey-nice and sniffing and being together.

When we got around to the food, the roast wasn’t just any roast, it was a standing rib roast, all majestic and such, quite a sight to behold when it was pulled from the oven. The string beans and the potatoes were beautifully prepared and the juices that came with the rib roast were so delicious. When the rib roast was carved and brought to the table, it was mouth watering to look at, the slices were all cooked to rare to medium-rare and they were so tender. My niece and my nephew were watching the baby boy dip his bread into the accumulated juices on the platter which just happened to look like blood and they decided that they wanted to do the same so they kept asking the baby boy to dip their pieces of bread into the blood. My nephew was saying out loud and proud, blood tastes real good. It was funny, our little man has the gift of making everyone laugh. After a nice salad and great cheeses, dessert was served. We ate our cheesecake though we had one criticism, it was too sweet for our palettes, and like I said, it didn’t stop us from eating it.

We had such a wonderful dinner, I think that the baby boy was very happy with the weekend all around. I do have one thing to say, our Jack is sooooooooo happy being home. He is caput on the couch and probably will be tomorrow as well.

Happy Easter to everyone!

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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! 🙂

Birthday celebration, family and homemade sushi

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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.

Sainte-Etienne and visiting more family

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celebrations, faith, hiking, mountains, postaday2012, rivers, travel

Yesterday was the big day where we, the baby girl and I, had the good fortune to arrive in Sainte-Etienne to help celebrate the fifty year wedding of Tonton Andre and my Tantine. My cousins Vincent and Veronique are wonderful hosts, they gave us each our own room and put their oldest son in a sleeping bag downstairs, the poor lamb. He is being really good about it, however yesterday he might have gotten his revenge with me. After all the festivities, the cousins, all excited about showing the baby girl and I the surrounding countryside, decided to take us down to a cascading river. All we had to do was take a little car ride into the surrounding hills. We park the car, Vincent, Veronique, Xavier, Louis-Marie (the oldest son) Clervie and the baby girl and I head off down hill towards the river. The path at times was a little slippery with small rocks shifting under our feet but we got to the bridge that hung over the river without any trouble. There were others splashing around and the overall picture it created of lush greenery, cool cascading water forcing a path around big rocks and boulders, still waters further down clear enough that I could see the bottom up from the bridge that I was standing on while admiring this graceful tapestry of nature, was amazing, I could understand how a painter would be moved to try to capture this beauty onto his canvas. However, I was feeling frail and tired yesterday so I stayed on the bridge with my cousin Vincent, the doctor, while everyone else went down to wet their feet and climb over the rocks.

When they had their fill of the water and joined us on the bridge, Vincent led us further into the hills to show us the Tour d’Auriole, the way to the Tour wasn’t that bad, the path meandered up and down with rocks strewn everywhere serving as steps leading us to the site of the Tour. At the base of the Tour the views were beautiful, forest everywhere interspersed with Chateaux and always the beautiful river Loire in our presence. One of the four grand rivers of France, my cousins are very proud of their rivers and they love to show them off in their best light, so Vincent said that we absolutely needed to climb up to the Tour. I have always maintained that I am the clumsiest person ever, if there is a way to fall, I will find it. The only way to get up to the Tour was to be half lifted, half pushed up to the summit. During the course of trying to get my feet onto solid ground, I felt my right knee graze the rocky ground. Did I mention that I was in a skirt? By the time that everyone got up to the Tour, my cousin the doctor looked at my leg and said “oh dear”, Veronique gasped and I looked down and saw my bloody knee from scraping it and right on my shin a huge black and blue hematoma already all swollen. My family was really upset that I got injured, me, I didn’t care. As I was trying to console them, I said that it wasn’t the first time nor the last. It wasn’t anything worth fretting about. Did I mention that I also stepped in a weed that leaves an incredible burning sensation on your skin and that it burns for hours. It is still burning on my other leg which does help distract from the hematoma on the right leg.

Otherwise we had a lovely day, we went to church at 11:00 to bless and celebrate the fifty years of shared happiness and then we went to the nearby school where a buffet was set up for us and family friends. There was a six foot long dry sausage that I took a picture of, salads, pâté, tabbouleh and other goodies to eat. The desserts were ice cream and a huge apple tart.

Our stay here was a wonderful ending to our trip throughout France, today we are off again on the trains to get back to Paris. I’ll be hobbling on my two bad legs, oh joy.

A French birthday party

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birthday, celebrations, dinner, family, postaday2012

Today is my birthday, I am now 45 years old. I wasn’t especially looking forward to it but it was a nice one nevertheless. Each time, ever since I can remember, that I have been in France on my birthday, the family gathers here at my Tonton and Tantine’s house and many fresh fruit tarts are consumed along with many bottles of champagne. Tantine C. made a plum tart, Tantine L. made a chocolate tart and my cousin made an apple tart. They were all delicious, you can’t name a favorite because they were each phenomenal in their own way. Tantine L.’s chocolate tart was singular in its consistency; it was almost like a fudge in texture but not as sweet. The consistency was smooth and creamy, sliding down your throat type of creaminess. Many champagne glasses were raised in honor of that tart. I loved all three tarts, tarts have now become my favorite dessert because I adore the contrast between the pastry crust and the fruit, simple and exquiste at the same time.

Earlier in the day, my cousin Leon, who took up the majority of my childhood memories since he was the older one and I always followed whatever crazy idea he had when we were little, he took me and a mutual friend of ours out to the city for lunch. It was your typical French outdoor restaurant, unrushed and a lovely ambience. The food was very good, I had a plate of smoked salmon served on toast points with an herbed frsh cheese to start, the boys each had a flan of zucchini and leeks on a tomato coulis. Our plates were clean when the waiter came to clear the table, it was that good. I had caramelized scallops drizzled with pesto and served with sauteed zucchini and rice, my cousin had breast of duck with fries and our friend had penne with pesto. It was a great time, talking about this and that and the other.

After we parted ways with our friend, my cousin and I went in search of our respective children who had dined together somewhere thereabouts. They were easy to find and we went our separate ways, the baby girl and I went off to do back to school shopping and my cousin and his children headed off back to the family stead.

I had a wonderful birthday, my hubby sent me the best card that I al going to save, he called me and that was special as well. I know that I am going to get another little celebration when I get home. My baby boy sent me a message as did my other relatives, my sister left me a message and my mother called as soon as she got in from her flight overseas. Today was a great birthday.

This post is short and not as descriptive as usual, I’m feeling a little tired but I wanted to share my day as it runs through my head, I’m glad that I did.