When I was photographing with this week’s word – composé (composed of, compound) – in mind, I was wondering how much of a stretch can I go in interpreting it? I’m still trying to familiarise myself with my new neighbourhood, and there are still things to be done to turn the apartment into a home. With my head half in the air, certain interpretation may be shaky. If only it’s possible to photograph the compounded stress I was feeling earlier in the week but slowly dissipated as more and more task got struck off the check-list…
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13 Jan: You know the whole “stressed spelled backward is desserts” thing? Yes, I sought some sweet cure today, in the form of a mixed box of bite-sized treats. Adorably called the children’s selection, six different desserts have been put together, checking the boxes on: fruitiness (lemon tart), nuttiness (hazelnut tart), chocolateness (chocolate tart), crunchiness (candied choux), silkiness (vanilla slice) and fluffiness (praline choux).
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F grumbles that I don’t often bake for him. Sadly, that is quite true. Can I blame it on the equipment I have in our very little Parisian kitchen? Or actually, to be more accurate, the lack of equipment. Back in Dublin, I had a wonderful and spacious kitchen, with all kinds of tools and ingredients at my disposal; I kid you not when I say I used to stock 7-8 different types of sugar! Now, we have two: white or brown…
But the mood does strike from time to time, and my recent kitchen experiment had been met with reasonable success. F adores the moist yet zingy-fresh slices of cake (“perfect for afternoon tea”), and my friends who have tried it have been asking for the recipe too. Last I heard, even their friends are asking for the recipe. I guess that means it merits a blog post, in particular because it’ll make my life easier in event of future recipe sharing.
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This week has been completely bordélique and I have pretty much abandoned a whole bunch of things aside to concentrate on the move (although not before completing another MOOC). Packing up our lives after two very comfortable years while accumulating more things than ever was a lot of work, and cleaning up two apartments added to the load too. It appears the previous tenant to our new apartment doesn’t understand the concept of hygiene and cleanliness…
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6 Jan: I guess packing could be a whole lot easier had I not been obsessively keen on keeping every single brochure, map, ticket and whats not from our travel. I’ve been meaning to sort them out and save only the most “important” ones in a travel scrapbook, but clearly I’ve been procrastinating… I won’t have time to go through them now but I will definitely get working on the scrapbook as I unpack, so nothing beyond the necessary will stay in the new apartment.
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It is no secret that I love to eat and I always prioritise things that seem unusual when picking from the menu. Sometimes, when there are more options than I can manage on my own, I throw the puppy eyes at my dining companion in hope he/she picks up on my inner plea to order one of them… ;)
Last year, in writing the list of 101 goals, I added “10 things I’ve never tried before” and hope it’ll make food discovery more interesting. However, actually having dishes in front of me often translates to “busy eating, no time to think or take photos” and therefore writing this post had taken a little longer than expected.
1. Courgette flower: semi-hidden here between a slice of chorizo and a cherry tomato, the courgette flower is bright to look at and delicate to taste. They don’t transport well nor last beyond a few hours after picking, so it’s not something that can be easily found in Paris (much easier in south of France though). It tasted like, well, courgette, but a “lighter” version. The flower also has a soft velvelty texture, like most edible flowers really.
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Hurrah, I finally got round to getting my Grand Palais Sésame 2013/2014 pass! The first exhibition I saw with my all-access pass was that of Cartier, slated to run until 16 February 2014 in the Salon d’Honneur.
I am not one who’s particularly interested in sparkly and expensive jewellery, but still curious enough to want to see what makes others gasp with joy given the beauty of gems and precious metals set into decorative items, both wearable and non-wearable. It is also always interesting to learn the role that Cartier plays in the history of decorative arts, and to take a brief look into the creative process behind some of the exhibited pieces. I must say I still don’t know the topic sufficiently well to try to write about it, but I have some photos that I can certainly share with you.
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With seemingly a gazillion and one things happening, this week’s photos consist of a random mix, summing up the chosen word rather nicely: aléatoire. I must admit, photography is low on my priority at the moment, as we dealt with certain apartment-related hiccups, postponed our move by a week, and started to pack (and still packing – how much stuff can one own while living in a small Parisian apartment?!) everything up. Intermittently, there were friends to see, closing exhibitions to catch, and galette des rois to eat.
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30 December: Throughout the month of December, all the carousels owned and operated by the city council have been offering free rides to much delights of the children, and perhaps parents/grandparents too, especially those whose young ones normally want to ride it over and over and over and refuse to leave without throwing a tantrum. Afterall, it can get expensive quickly. The danger, of course, is said children in question will continue to seek the same, if not more, number of rides once they are no longer free again…
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I pondered about writing a recap of my 2013, but after a few false starts (text typed, deleted, typed, edited, deleted, typed, deleted again etc), I realised my heart is not in it. How could I? Sitting right next to me is a list of things I have to do in the next 2-3 days, largely because F and I will be moving to a new apartment.
Sometimes, things happened at an incredible speed in Paris. Moving is usually one of them. Mind, apartment-hunting is not. My head is still whirling at the timeline involved: apartment viewing (2 weeks ago), verbal acceptance (a week ago), lease signing (yesterday), inventory visit (this evening), moving day (end of the week). Had we not been away from Paris for the Christmas break, everything could well took place even sooner.
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Another round of Project 365 more or less completed, even though we have a couple more days to go to end the year. I’ll put those two photos towards the first week of the next project, so to keep the week running nicely from Monday to Sunday. Still hesitating though over the set up for the new series, and I don’t even have quite as much time as I thought to ponder over it, because F and I are moving to a new apartment and there are tons to do!
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23 Dec: While presents that we bought have been safely delivered, they remain unwrapped. Cue: a morning spent covering up gifts with papers that will quickly be shredded into pieces on Christmas day. This glass baubble reminds me of how fragile trees are in our current environment, to be torn down, often without much second thought. I normally do not wrap presents – I’d rather put them in reusable paperbags – but since F’s nieces won’t understand such concept, I make my peace with the wrapping paper use and vow to be more vigiland with my effort to stay green.
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On Christmas morning, I woke up to a video of my adorable niece sent by my brother, saying “Ho, ho, ho, mehwy chwistmas”.
It had been a very merry Christmas indeed, and my first experiencing it the French way. My own family doesn’t celebrate Christmas per se, but for one that loves to cook and to eat, it does mean three festive meals (we start with a good Irish roast, followed by a Chinese steamboat, and finally Korean barbecue) with mere few hours break in between. That’s a lot of eating in a single day.
The celebration in France is bound to be different, and in fact, my belle famille doesn’t buy into the overlong meal with extravagant dish after dish in one seating. Instead, we get to spread the feast over two days. A satisfying Christmas eve dinner and a boisterous Christmas day lunch makes the whole experience much more manageable, and I did enjoy my meals a lot more. (Here they are, in pictures.)
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