Bring it on, Popeye...

I have been told by people who garden that starting this early in the season is pointless very ambitious. And I'm beginning to think they may be right, seeing as every time we get a few sunny days it seems the grandgarden has a serious growth spurt.

Nonetheless, we're thoroughly enjoying this little project and I think my nails have never looked better than when they're covered in soil. (Betcha' Revlon never thought of that color choice.) I actually got a little peeved when it rained for three days straight because it meant I didn't get to go water the plants and check on them.



We had our first harvest the other evening. Spinach and mint for salads. Yum!

Pink hairbow and all...

I recently had an audition for a voice-over for the character of Nelly. I know what you're thinking: Little House on the Prairie. Not quite. (Although they do love that show here.)

This was an audition for an animated television series for little kiddos and Nelly is actually a penguin with a pink hairbow. The show currently airs on the television station France 5 and they are going to be doing a version in English, which is where I came in.



I came in, as I said, to audition for Nelly's voice. But while I was there they asked if I would be up for trying one of the boy penguin voices too. I laughed, but we tried it and it worked. By the end of the hour I had auditioned for Nelly, two boy penguins and an owl. I loved it. And the casting director said I have talent for boys' voices. (Can't wait to put that on the ol' résumé!)



I should know soon if I got the job or not. But just in case you're interested, there are stuffed animals for each of the characters. Right now there's a 30-inch stuffed Nelly - pink hairbow and all - available on ebay for a very reasonable $142 + shipping.

Place your bids now! I'm sure she will be a collector's item one day...

Mr. Kari Masson...

This morning I got yet another press release by email addressed to the attention of Mr. Kari Masson. I guess it could be worse. The Yves Rocher frequent shopper card that I plop down with each purchase of mascara or lipgloss is in the name of Karl Masson. At least the press emails usually spell my name correctly, even if they assign it the wrong gender.

Nonetheless, when I got the press release I made a comment about being sick of people addressing my mail to 'Monsieur'.



Things changed at about 2pm. I got a payment in the mail for a documentary voice recording I did back in December. Both the check and the envelope were written to Mr. Kari Masson. The payment wasn't for nearly as much as you're probably thinking, but it is enough to pay for our groceries this week.



And that, Mr., Mrs. and Ms. Blogreaders, is a very literal answer to our prayers this morning.

Don't cry over soured milk...

...make it yourself!

Soured milk has been a part of my life for many years.


My brother and me in Côte d'Ivoire

As a kid I loved Saflait brand lait caillé, literally 'curdled milk'. I ladled it out of its light blue and white plastic tub, the one with the picture of the African woman smiling at you from under a big bowl balanced on her head. Stir in a sprinkling of sugar to cut the tartness and voilà: one of my favorite snacks.


In Senegal they eat a locally made soured milk called soow. What do I mean by locally made? I mean made by the women of the household. You could also buy soow in little shops, but in my village the women made it themselves. (I have to admit that I liked it more before learning how to make it from one of my Senegalese friends.)

Soow
500 grams of powdered milk
water
1 cup of starter, either soow or plain yogurt

Dissolve the powdered milk into the water. Stir in the starter. Cover and let sit in a cool place for three days. Serve with a little sugar, or use to make lakh or thiakry.

Gotta' love a recipe that requires letting milk sit out for three days. But at least it's in a cool place, right? The recipe I got from a Senegalese friend for conch (as in the shell of) called for letting sit on the roof to dry in the sun for three days!

The lait caillé stand where Jonathan and Pape would buy their soured milk

Jonathan used to make lahk every night with his Senegalese family, the Dieyes. I like to think of it as the Senegalese answer to Swiss muesli (oats, dried fruit and yogurt). Swap out the oats for millet and the yogurt for soured milk.


A restaurant with Pape Dieye

Lakh façon Dieye
1 liter lait caillé
fresh coconut, chopped
handful golden raisins
1 apple, chopped
2 bananas, chopped
1 packet vanilla flavored sugar
a few drops of fleur d'orange flavor
cooked millet, cooled

Mix. Eat. Simple enough, right?



Learning how to make thiakry at the Niang's

Another Senegalese favorite is a sweetened snack or dessert called thiakry made from millet and soow. We used to eat this soured milk treat every Sunday night in Dakar when we'd visit the Niang family.

Thiakry
1 liter soow
1/2 cup sugar OR 1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 packets of vanilla sugar
1 tsp ground nutmeg
4 cups cooked millet (can substitute small size couscous), cooled

Combine the soow with the sugars and nutmeg. Stir in the millet or couscous. You can also stir in dried or fresh fruit, such as raisins or chopped apples.




Now that we're in France - a country with refrigeration in most homes - I was suprised to come across an old favorite at the Monop': soured milk. Jonathan spotted Bonne Maman brand lait caillé. And the kicker: there's a recipe on the box for making it at home!



Petit Caillé
Boil one liter of fresh milk with 15cl cream. Let cool to room temperature. Stir in one pot of Petit Caillé and 3 drops of rennet. Pour into small pots and let sit overnight (about 15 hours) at room temperature, covered with a dish cloth. Refrigerate and eat either plain, with sugar, jam, honey or fresh herbs.


Puh-leeze. Only sitting out 15 hours? That's for amateurs ;).

Say Beaufort!

Downtown village Beaufort, located high in the French Alps in the Savoie region

We like to do as the Romans. Today that meant enjoying Beaufort cheese, which apparently the Romans did too! These 100-pound cheese rounds are made from Tarentaise cows' milk in a teeny tiny village in the Alps. The village is called...(drum roll, please)...Beaufort!


Jonathan, Gabi and Ken walking to the cheese cooperative

It takes 11 liters of raw milk to make one kilogram (2.2 lbs) of Beaufort cheese. There are three varieties:

- Beaufort de Savoie (summer Beaufort)
- Beaufort d’alpage (made in chalets in the Alps)
- Beaufort d'hiver (winter Beaufort)


The cheeses have to be turned every two days for six months as they age. You can see the process in the video below.




Say cheese! (Or just freeze like a deer with his hooves caught in the cookie jar .)


At 12 euros per kilo, these 40- to 50-kilo rounds of Beaufort are worth about 600 euros each!


Jonathan taking the tour. Be happy the scratch-n-sniff function on this blog is disabled. :)


Beaufort cheeses on the right and left. One is made from summer milk and the other winter. The flavor is different as the cows eat grass in summer and hay in winter. We tasted and opted for 300 grams of the winter. Mmm...
















I love the aprons drying over the balcony on the left.

There's a WHAT in the river?

There are some things that really should be included in your 'Welcome to France' informational packet. Of course, this packet is fictional - but if it were real, it simply must include the following tidbit to avoid confusion and a serious gross-out factor.

Tidbit du jour:
In France, the word for a child's security blanket or perma-attached stuffed animal is pronounced 'doo-doo' (spelled doudou).

Why is this important?
Because it helps to avoid panic when you read this lead-in to an article in the paper:



An enormous doudou flotting in the Rhône river. Yikes. And to think this is just a block away from Jonathan's school!



The full story is that there is a giant, inflatable mouse floating in the river that is supposed to look like a kid's stuffed animal and is part of a flooding awareness campaign. (Don't ask me. It wasn't my idea.) Also floating in the river is a giant, inflatable handbag and giant, inflatable armchair.



Flooding is a serious risk in this area. Nonetheless, I giggled like a little kid when I read that there was an enormous doudou floating in the river.

Numbers talking...

4:15pm. Time I left the doctor’s office, hearing her say not to lift heavy things.

22€ chèque written for the doctor’s visit.

2/3 will be reimbursed by government healthcare.

15 treatment sessions prescribed with a kinésithérapeute for rééducation du rachis lombaire en lordose.

3 raindrops I felt walking to the grocery store.

One. As in ‘buy one, get one free’ special on meat.

4 to 5 times per month we eat meat.

8 big packages of halal turkey, pork chops, beef and shrimp we now own

Totalling 11 lbs.

16€ saved.

26 lbs of groceries crammed into 1 reusable grocery bag.

½ kilometre walk and 3 floors up to our apartment.*

* Uphill in the snow, both ways.

Le sneak peek...

It came in the mail on Friday.

The return address was from a publishing company.

I started reading it last night and didn't look up until page 217 .

It's that good.

I looked over at Jonathan - fast asleep wearing my sleep mask - and made the easy decision to keep reading. The thrill of having a copy in my hands before the book is officially released aside...

It's still that good.

Elizabeth Musser's new book is out in bookstores in May.

Resurrection...

What more could be done than Thou hast done!

Thy death is my life, Thy resurrection my peace,
Thy ascension my hope, Thy prayers my comfort.

From The Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions

Twisting my arm...ouch!

Stop the begging.

Enough with the pleading.

For parsley's sake - get up off your knees. I'll do it, okay? I'll update you on the grandgarden.


New additions: six tomato plants (three Roma and three Cobra)


Jonathan found some strong sticks to use as tomato stakes.


The whole grandgarden: Jonquilles along the wall. Basil in the pot. A row of tomatoes. The center row of onions and radishes, punctuated by a rosemary plant. A row of spinach and lettuce. The second small square has parsley, lettuce and spinach. The two circles (colon) hold zucchini seeds. More tomatoes and a patch TBP (to be planted). Then three circles holding watermelon seeds.


Feuille de chêne rouge


Watering the plants


Spinach...and its handy-dandy identifying spoon. Those of you who know me will not have a hard time grasping how much enjoyment I got out of writing each plant's name on a plastic spoon in Sharpie to keep the garden organized to the max.


Lily of the valley that our neighbor, a woman in her mid 70s, gave us


Caroline fixing the border


Ooh la la! So pretty. But I'm guessing it's a face only its gardener could love...


The very first thing we planted: a lilac plant Jonathan ripped up and transplanted three years ago. These are its first flowers. (2 Corinthians 9!)

The coolest thing to happen yesterday...

If you go to the website of Decitre, a 100-year old French bookstore chain, you can search for books by author's name.



As of yesterday, if you type in k-a-r-i m-a-s-s-o-n, this is what you'll get:



My first author's credit! I've been working on this project for almost two years now. To date we have ten Go English Essentials, ten Bien-dire Essentials for learning French and last week we released our first two in the Hispanica Esencial series. The 22 audio learning guides are available from several vendors and bookstores in the US, UK, France and Australia...but Decitre is the first that I know of to list author's credits.



Which I thought was pretty cool.

Keeping me awake at night…

Okay, maybe they don't keep me awake, but these are the things I pondered the other night when I couldn’t fall asleep.

Lettre prioritaire
Why does a first-class stamp for a 20-gram letter mailed within France cost 56 centimes, or 76 cents, but a first-class stamp for a 28-gram letter mailed within the US is only 44 cents?

This is especially baffling considering France is slightly smaller than Texas.




Take a whiff.
How can a scent be cultural? For example, French dishwashing liquids come in a wide variety of scents, just like in the US. However, in France you can choose to wash your dishes in dishwashing liquids scented with mint, vinegar & raspberry, rosemary, apple, thyme & basil or bay leaf. Just to name a few.

Still going...
Why does our little three-foot tall washing machine have a 175-minute cycle when you use hot water? It can only hold one pair of jeans, one pair of pants, two shirts, and a couple socks (or one queen-size flat bed sheet and one pillow case). What does it possibly do to them that requires more than two hours in cylindero?








Cut the mustard
Are any American foods so tied to a city that if made elsewhere it would change their identity? There was a discussion at work about how upset the French are that the Dijon mustard factory in the city of Dijon is closing. Even though the famous Maille and Amora mustards will still be produced in France as they have since 1911, they will no longer come from the city of Dijon. No American foods this linked to their hometown came to mind, but surely there are some...right?

Kari, Kari, quite contrary...

How does the grandgarden grow?


The grandgarden from our bedroom window. Now including lettuce, spinach, parsley, rosemary, mint, radishes, onions, and soon...bell peppers.

I have to admit I get a little sad when I look at a picture of the seedlings before transplanting in comparison to now, two weeks en jardin. The outer leaves are pale and floppy. If you look closely you can see small, crisp green leaves forming in the center, but until they grow a bit more the plants are coming in just north of Puny.

Jonathan encouraged me with some wise words this morning. "Transplanting is a shock to the system. Kind of like when you moved to France. It takes time to recover and grow." Don't I know it. But I also know there is hope!

This morning we read in 2 Corinthians 9, "Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously." So the next time I go down to water the plants, I'll keep that gardening lesson in mind.


Emilie and her daughter Caroline, my partners in crime against a garden. Emilie is planting onion seeds. Those little green scrawninesses in the middle of the picture are spinach.


We've had rain a few days = not having to carry water down three flights of stairs!


Caroline 'helping' plant radish and onion seeds last Sunday. This morning there were about 40 little leaves poking through.


Tada! The product of three weeks in a wet paper towel sealed inside a Ziploc bag sitting on the radiator. The red and yellow bell pepper seeds have finally germinated. Even though we're not using any chemicals in the garden, these will not be truly organic because the seeds came from peppers I bought at the grocery store. I was too cheap (thrifty?) to buy seeds when I could just use these instead of adding them to the compost pile.


About 30-40 bell pepper seeds germinated and I couldn't bear to throw them away, so I planted some in egg cartons to see if any would grow to be seedlings. This is all one big experiment!


Planting the germinated ones. As of today I had six seedlings about an inch tall. Good thing I planted all 30-40...