This past Valentine’s day weekend, when my friends Judith from Chicago and Daphne from New York made a quick jaunt to Paris, we decided to have a girls’ night out. To be near them, I booked a hotel room in downtown Paris. I just wanted a place to bunk for the night and the Best Western at Notre-Dame de Lorette offered a convenient place as well the required standards of a well-known chain.
One thing that makes or breaks a trip, along with your budget, is the price of a hotel room. In Paris, a decent hotel room in a central location can cost between 150 to 300 Euros (US $200-$460). My single room at the BW Lorette amounted to a modest 98 Euros (US $130) for one night.
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Best Western,
France,
hotels,
Notre Dame de Lorette,
paris,
tourist
Pan-seared chicken, asparagus, and spinach raviolis
Recently, I had dinner with two wonderful friends at a renowned restaurant called Casa Olympe in Paris, where celibrities are frequently spotted. Reservations are tough unless you know one of the regulars who can get you in. This eatery isn’t much to look at from the outside, but its chef, the famous Olympe, has built her golden reputation on it since 1973 with her esoteric dishes made from out of the ordinary ingredients. Trusting that I can’t go wrong no matter what, I ordered pigmented squid on a bed of vermicelli. And when the waiter deposited the plate of food in front of me, I could swear that for a moment my stomach went cold.
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Casa Olympe,
paris
As much as Proust’s madeleine evoked one man’s nostalgic memories of a far away past, a pair of Laura Ashley curtains could elicit recollections of a time back in the last decades when all things “Laura Ashley” was the rage. Invariably described as ‘quintessentially English,’ the Laura Ashley name conjured up images of pretty, romantic women and rooms draped in refined, graceful dresses and soft furnishings.
A Laura Ashley designed room
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interior design,
Laura Ashley
Basic French toast
Contrary to popular assumptions, the French toast’s claim to fame was not laid by the French themselves, as they can rightfully boast about their ingenious inventions such as the French bullet train, Pasteurization, Braille, or the Guillotine.
The appellation “French toast” dates back from 1871 according to Merriam-Webster. As Brendan Koerner wrote in Slate magazine, “Culinary historians disagree over whether French toast has exclusively Gallic roots. The simple concoction of bread, eggs, and milk likely dates back to Medieval times, when the battering process was used to make stale loaves more palatable. The question is whether the French were truly the first to dip and fry their bread, or whether other Europeans stumbled upon the ‘invention’ on their own. For example, a similar dish called ’suppe dorate’ was popular in England during the Middle Ages; it’s unclear, however, whether it was brought over [to them] from what’s now France by the Normans, who may have delighted in something called ‘tostées dorées’ before toppling King Harold II in 1066.”
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bread,
breakfast,
French,
French toast
Back in the days when I lived in Texas, I met some very strange people. Once, at ZH’s office party, someone said to me, “You know, your husband’s desk is always clean at the end of the day. It’s creepy. It’s like nobody works there.”
I knew two things about ZH — one, he’s a neatnik; and two, he’s slightly odd (but that could be because he was French) — so I didn’t think much about the comment. At the time, as a housewife with three young children, I didn’t work; hence I didn’t have a desk to compare to. I had gone to college and graduated but don’t recall much studying and much less a desk.
Then when I got back into the work force, I understood what that person meant about clean desks. There were hardly any to be found at my office. In an average open floor space, there were mostly desks cluttered with computer monitors, telephones, piles and piles of papers. The actual working space, if any, was around the size of a sheet of paper. I’ve worked late many times and seen the cleaning crew squirt cleaner on just that 8.5 x 11 spot and scrub it. One time, there was a mysterious smell that emanated from somewhere on our floor and got progressively malodorous as days went by. After some investigation, the office manager discovered a plate of half-eaten sushi under a pile of clutter on a desk whose occupant was on vacation.
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clean,
desk,
organization,
work space
Lineart drawing of a Vionnet design
For centuries, fashion (though some would assert gender politics) imposed the corset in women’s wear to achieve a stiff, wasp-waisted look. This controversial garment was often blamed for cancer, circulatory diseases, asthma, ugly children, and death. While these claims were never medically corroborated, it is still safe to say that corsets were not exactly women’s cozy wear of choice, to say the least.
This restrictive style of dress faded out at the turn of the 20th century, thanks mainly to an avant-garde French fashion designer named Madeleine Vionnet, who was a woman herself.
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fashion,
France,
museum of decorative arts,
paris,
vionnet
A cushion (or pillow) is typically a kind of square or rectangular bag sewn on all four sides and filled historically with feathers, flock, hair, wool, or various vegetable fibres. Nowadays, the stuffing is often made of shredded synthetic foam or plastic fibre. It has a decorative function but also one of pleasure.
The cushion adds comfort for a person sitting on a chair or armchair. It can allow one to rest one’s feet on it. In certain cases, the generic term of “cushion” is employed to indicate a pillow, such as bed linen intended as a headrest. Taken outdoors, cushions can be placed on lounge chairs or they can be used to sit on the grass to avoid humidity and insect bites. In France, during open-air opera season, it’s common for spectators to bring decorative cushions to improve the comfort of steel chairs or bleachers.
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… But not just in any frying pan.
Have you ever been baffled over a recipe such as a paella or couscous that requires a huge cooking receptacle — and you had to use several pots and pans to make do? It’s enough to want to give up before you even start.
For all you space-frustrated cooks out there, I would like to introduce you to a revelatory frying pan/skillet that will change your culinary life. It is the one kitchen item that I cannot function without. This skillet is large, 33-cm (13 inches) wide and 7-cm (3 inches) deep. It has a straight bottom instead of the usual curved skillet bottom. It is so spacious and friendly, it can take anything you throw in it.
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Last November, as my French husband, ZH (‘Ze Huz’band’) watched me break out of the starting block for the holiday triathlon — Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year — with talk about concocting a new solution for turkey brine, debates about pumpkin pie recipes, and the color scheme of the Christmas tree… He suddenly said, “Chérie, let’s go away somewhere for New Year’s Eve this year.”
I stopped pummeling the flour and butter destined for a pie crust and looked up at him with wide Bambi eyes smeared with mascara from the heat of the oven. “Really?” I could hardly believe this brilliant idea and reached up for a hug but he deftly extricated his neck from my doughy digits.
Every year, we get together with three other couples for the end of year feast. We’ve known these people from university for over 3 decades, and our children have gone through potty training and prep school around the same periods. Up until about five or six years ago, the offsprings were more or less happily participating in the festivities. But now, in the age range of between 18 and 23, they have mostly flown the nest and left their parents in the party scene dust.
Since then, the eight of us gather for a quiet dinner party to ring in the New Year. The men, testosterone speeding, run on about economy, politics, and the stress of their high-powered jobs. The women, more laid-back, ask after our children and laughingly reminisce about spectacular memories. (Do you remember that evening when little Archie fell into the harbor between two anchored yachts at the Monte Carlo marina?”)
This ritual, while comfortable and reliable, had become boring. ZH and I were in the mood to break out of the ranks. My heart and mouth screamed ROME! ROME! ROME! But he said, “We’ve already been there.” But I wasn’t about thinking culture and art, I was thinking of warm weather. A destination where I didn’t have to wear two pairs of socks day and night. We finally settled for Budapest. Now make that three pairs of socks.
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Until I moved to Europe, the notion of “wall-to-wall” carpeting was as innate to me as ketchup on french fries. It wasn’t something I even questioned, like why houses in temperate climates would need carpet in every corner of the house when hardwood, tiles, or heaven forbid -linoleum - would be a more practical choice. Ask any kid who’s been yelled at by her mother for dragging sandy feet into the house!
On the other hand, in a northern hemisphere country with colder temperatures, wall-to-wall carpeting is more the exception than the rule. There is no real rhyme and reason in the carpeting logic in French homes. For instance, the 600 square foot salon in my mother-in-law’s house (a former 15th century convent that was reconverted into a private residence after the last nun died in the 1960’s) is half covered in carpeting while the other half isn’t. I asked her the reason for this. And she answered, “Why, I don’t quite recall.”
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