Petit Bonheur Simple

Don't ask me why, but I'm in baking fever.
Today I tried my luck with Madeleines au Citron, and they came out d-e-l-i-c-i-o-s-o!!!


The recipe for around 21 pieces:
200g sugar
200g butter
80g flour
80g grounded almonds
6 egg whites
1 soupspoon honey
peel of 2 lemons + 5cl lemon juice

Let the butter melt in a pot and cook until it gets ligthly brown and has the nice nutty taste - put aside to cool down. Sift sugar & flour together in a bowl and add the grounded almonds. Lightly whip the eggwhites with a fork, add the sugar/flour/almond mix and stir it all through. Add the liquid butter, lemon peel & juice and honey and mix it all until it gives a homogene paste.
Pour the paste into your madeleine moulds (which you have buttered before) and let cool in the fridge for 1 hour. Then bake at 190°C for 12-15 minutes.

Easy, hm?

 
So, after I did not post anything for 48 hours, here are the news: The Soldes has started! Of course I totally forgot about that when I had lunch with the girls on the newly opened terasse of the printemps, so here I was, surrounded by woman who kill for the item they want, trying to get through the building.
Soldes in France are not civilized. Everyone is rummaging in boxes with small stuff, cruising through a rack of 128 clothes in 7 seconds, trying on bra's over shirts and trousers under pants (yip, imagine the line if you want to change in a cabine?). You have handbags in your face, shoulders bruising your upper arms, feet kicking - the French even forget to say their 'Pardon' which normally comes over the lips ever so lightly if they just brush against you like a feather. Everyone tries to get that long lusted after dress or shoes for a lot less, and dare you being in their way! So in one word, Soldes means combat!
Of course we all know that the nice stuff is gone within hours, and for the rest of the 4 weeks you can buy things in size 0 or size 56 and you even get 70% off the price - on the ugly stuff nobody wants. Which explains why I had to join the combat-zone today as well...had to!

I tried it - I made my first batch of Canele.
Canele's are little cakes - outside hard and caramelized and inside soft and moist - which where invented in Bordeaux in the 17th century and  they are soooo good that I decided to learn how to make them myself, so I can enjoy them whereever in this world the future will take me (soon more on that topic).
Yes, I know, on my picture they look a bit deformed, but I said first batch!!!
And I know, they seem a bit burnt, but the connaisseur will know that they come in three different grades, from lightly brown to slightly burnt. (To prove that point, check the Wikipedia page! Theirs have the same colour as mine! Ha!
Just for the record: The inside is parfait!!!

For those who did not know: The French are a queueing nation. And they do so very structured and orderly and with enormous patience. Nothing was different this weekend, except for that I could enjoy some queueing (looks funny that word) with Miss M who is over from Madrid for some days.
We cleverly avoided the Saturday 3 o'clock at night (or shall we say in the morning) taxi queue by making use of a reserved number ;-) but on other occasions queue-hell got us:
For example did we spend around 32 minutes in big heat on the Isle de St. Louis for Paris' most famous icecream (Berthillon), which I always think is totally worth the torture. And on Sunday we did not go into the re-opened Orangerie to see Monet's Waterlillies, cause a very very (say 1-1.5 hours) queue in pouring rain was not so tempting.
I once read somewhere, that an ordinary person spends about 3 years of his/her life for something, so we did our fair share of that again this weekend (6 mins to pay at BodyShop, 7 mins to catch a cab on Saturday evening, 18 (!!)  mins to get a waiters attention to ask for the card plus another 5 until he comes back for the order, over 1 hour tonight until the ordered Thai-food arrived at Madame L's home - oh la la... But we took it all with the french nonchalance (you just get that living here for a while) and are looking forward to tomorrow's queueing surprises. I can't wait!!!

The Berthillon queue and the object of desire:

The queue at the Musee de l'Orangerie:

So, today was the day, the day I went to buy a new bikini (my favourite oldish one was looking 'Tired' (quotation Boyfriend).
The topic of bikini-shopping is mentioned every spring in every female magazin in every country of this world, so I guess even the slowest person on earth meanwhile got it: We do not like bikini shopping! The greenish colour of our teint (particularely in H&M cabines), the uglyness a knee can reach, the odd bruise on our thigh (Fete de la Musique?), and of course the fact that the sizes written in the bikini never correlate with our real body size (Which Macho / bulimish Supermodel is sitting in the bikini factory and puts big-size-tags in little bikinis to make us feel bad?).
Anyway, I can't hear that wailing any more myself, neither the unhelpfull tips every magazin gives you on how to overcome the bikini-shopping-horror (take your time, buy in expensive shops with big cabines, take the bikini home and try there, blahblahblah), so here is the one and only working bikini-buy-advice: Drink Champagne!
Two glasses will make you just tipsy enough to overlook your little flaws but not drunk enough to buy a model which will convert you into a species dragged back into the water by Greenpeace.
So done, I found a dreammodel, it suits me and I look good in it. Of course there will be no picture here of me with the bikini, let's not get carried away, but look at these nice shoes which where just in my way while strolling home. And yes, that is one of the side-effects of the pre-shopping Champagne, the over-consuming.
Next week: How to return objects I bought while on a champagne-high...

Yesterday was different-things-day. First, it was the first day of summer. Then, it was Midummer, the longest day of the year. And thirdly, very very important for people in France, it was Fete de la Musique!

(Short summary for all who don't know what this is: On June 21, anybody, really anybody in France is allowed, even encouraged, to sing (and that is independently of talent). Paris, for example, is full of puberty-teenage bands (a.k.a 'Take That' of the future), singing and desperate housewifes, hobby-percussionists, real famous artists (Why again did we not go to see Robbie at La Defense?) and some really good but really unknown musicians. Every cafe and bar pulls out their speakers to the street or open window and blows theirs sounds into the neighbourhood. And although it may sound odd, it is a goooooooood party!)

I met with some very nice people (of course I had to write that), to join the occasion. To lay the base for a long night it was decided that we have dinner at 'Little Italy', which was interrupted several times by the following obstacles:
* A pigeon with diarrhea, and although T 'takes a lot of shit' (sorry Kids, bad word!), he did not like it on his arm
* The constant arrival of more people and less tables
* The poubelle exactly where M should be sitting
* Rain, rain, and then rain again (Watery Primitivo is not good!)
* The fact that rain does not only falls from the sky, it also bundles up with more rain and then attacks from the sun-cover (How are these things really called?)
* The very beautiful but very photo-shy waiter (But we got him!)

Well, we somehow made it through a funny dinner and went on to catch some of the music-or-not-music experiences. P&C, if you would not have left so early, you could have heard a very good U2 but not so good Pink Floyd sing-alike, and MM, please get to know your neighbourhood better, cause you guided S and me from the best party to the block who was dead.

Let's do it again next year!?
(See all pictures in the 'Fete de la Musique' Album)

In order to be prepared for our very possibly happening moving I did an inventory of all our furniture today, so that I can get some estimates from moving&storage companies. And holy moly, do we have a lot of stuff!!! This brought me directly to the question of 'How much furniture does a person need'. How much? Ok, because we moved together lately, we are blessed and have 2 fridges, 2 doublebeds, 2 washing machines, 2 Nespresso machines, 2 of almost everything of which 1 is always in the cellar. But when it comes to moving, it's not so much of a blessing any more. I guess I do some Ebay-ing later today...

On a totally different subject:  I read on the German 'Spiegel' webpage, that Namibia invited Britney Spears over to give birth to her 2nd child in this country. Since Brad & Angelina chose to do that, it opens up a totally new kind of tourism. I am sure sooner rather than later we can find related offers in some of the travel-catalogues, kind of 'Birth inclusive' or so. And on the way down there, catch a South African 'Apothecary-Frog' to test if you are really pregrant...
Read it here (sorry, only in German):http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/erde/0,1518,422312,00.html 

I hope you are lucky catching that animal, cause it seems even Bruno is highly sophisticated in cleverness, more than the crap  'crack team of Finnish bear trackers' Bavaria especially flew in to catch him. He has been seen sitting on the steps of a local police station and eating a little girls pet rabbit and a guinea pig, but he is still free. Go Bruno!
This one is in English: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,422138,00.html

Our garden is dying!!!
You certainly see it on the picture: everything is dry, brown and well, dead, which of course is "une catastrophe" (quotation Madame B. - La consierge).
I did'nt get exactly why it is dying: either she used too much of the products the gardener gave her, or too little, or they were wrong, or she has to use them now, whatever it is, it's not working, it's clearly dead.
Am I glad I only have two little fake fir trees in front of my window. (Yeah, okay, there is also the mint & basil plant which look a bit like dying too, but that's different!
Tomorrow hopefully: Bonheur

...to the ordinary shopping-net!
You know, I always have this pink shopping-net in my handbag, and it comes in handy when-ever I am in the supermarket and have to juggle tons of grocery home. It has never-ending space for bottles, lemons, tins, cheese and chicken, but it just does not get any approval in the eyes of the French!
Of course, this here is the country of the Louis Vuitton bag! And also of the foldable Longchamp bag, which should you not have such a bag onboard while on a plane, you basicly are outed immediately as the un-stylish foreigner and deserve only ignorance. My shopping-net at least get's the raised eyebrow, but what really drives me bonkers are the 'pointers' or the 'smirkers'!
I am sure in Germany the shopping net has far more fans. Also, I know barely any German who had not a phase where he owned (and officially used!) a linen bag (known between the natives as 'Jutesack', and nowadays only used by economically correct people).
And of course, not to forget the typical East-German 'Dederon-Beutel', a bag made from the same material as umbrellas! In absence of plastic-bags - they were forbidden should they show ANY enemy (so to speak West-german) advertisment on them - we even made them ourselve from 6 (or 5) material triangles. And it was tough to get some with a nice pattern or good colours.
But here in Paris they do not like my shopping net! 
Anyway, I just wanted to say 'Thank you' to the inventor of the shopping net - I love mine and will carry it until death parts us...