Have you missed me?
It's the longest I've been without blogging and sharing every detail of my adventures...but it sure was nice! I won't recount every day and every detail like last year, but highlight a few of the good points.
I remember being so nervous last year before taking the train to Avignon for the first time with Marie-Césare. Since then, I've become a pro. I can pack her little backpack full of things for us to do so she won't get bored, I never forget the snacks, and can pretty much time her trips to the bathroom down to the minute. We were met by a smiling Padi and Didou and Marie-Césare's demeanor immediately went downhill. She is a
completely different child when she's with me...thank goodness.
Didou and Padi had already prepared the crêche and the tree, seeing as how the one in Paris didn't go over well with an overly excited Marie-Césare.
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| The tree!! Smaller than the tree in Paris, but just the right size for us! |
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| The crêche |
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| The figurine I bought Didou this year, knowing how important the crêche was to her...the intentions were for it to be Didou and Marie-Césare. |
Papillote's and Père Noël filled the air as we passed our first few days just the 4 of us. We visited the Marché du Gros Souper in St. Remy, where I bought a bottle of olive oil (for myself this time), a box of calisson's, a black olive fougasse as big as yo' head, and 2 bottles of vinegar (one of fig and one of garlic).
The parade in Eyragues was Saturday night, where we met Père Noël and a few of his closest friends.
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| My favorite. |
For such a small village, the parade was a big hit with free roasted chestnuts and
vin chaud for everyone. (And when I say parade I mean a couple of dancers followed by Père Noël's sleigh.) The sleigh was designed and created by Monsieur Victor the man who runs the carrousel in town and whom we all have come to know very closely as we spend hours upon hours at his
manège. Marie-Césare was giddy with excitement as we lined up to wait to sit in Santa's lap (and a photo op for the parents). She smiled dutifully and quickly gave her letter to Santa almost as if to not miss a beat. Papillotes were handed out at every opportunity, and I'll have to say I've grown rather fond of the citrus gelatin flavor.
All we do in Provence is eat. Didou loves to cook, and Padi has never missed a meal I am sure of it. She cooks blanquette and saucisson even when the only person eating is Padi. We wake up, have breakfast, do something for a couple of hours, eat lunch, do something for another couple of hours, have dinner, and go to bed. It really is that simple. Things we do during the day revolve around what meal she is going to cook and eating out or grabbing a quick sandwich is never an option. Goûter is served around 5, never before, and a quick shot of coffee after every meal is a can't miss opportunity. It's as if their bodies won't function without that 3 oz. shot of strongly brewed beverage.
Good news, to my surprise I made it onto the family Christmas card this year! (Okay, it's the Bonne Année card because the French don't do Christmas cards like us crazy Americans.) It is a photo of Gaspard, Marie-Césare and I in front of the Christmas tree in Paris. Pretty good photo of all of us, despite the stuffed pink flamingos in the background. I was privileged enough to be able to sign the cards to aunt Delphine, great grandmother Eugenie, and mami Rose to name a few.
Somewhere in between a lunchtime of homemade quiche and a dinner of roast chicken, Didou took the time to help me with my cross-stitch. I had been doing it with too many strings, and so she advised that I take them all out and do it again. Luckily, I hadn't gotten very far so this wasn't too much of a burden, but still more of a pénible than I was ready to take on. After I got everything sorted out, things went much faster and I'm so happy to say that I'm about halfway finished.
The afternoon we spent in Châteaurenard was a bust, because we went for a kids event put on by the townspeople. Turns out the townspeople were on strike from anything Christmas, and we ended up playing
pêche à la ligne for a pricey 4 euros. After a lot of drama in the cell phone store Didou ended up getting a fancy new phone which I'm pretty sure to this day she still really doesn't know how to operate. The next day we drove to Sénas, another small village in Provence. A play was being put on for the children, and unfortunately we didn't have tickets ahead of time so there were no seats. We were able to squeeeeeeze up in the balcony next to the light and sound technician, and to be honest, I wouldn't have been disappointed if they couldn't make room. It was rather cheesy and the majority of the show was with puppets, and I have a strange hatred for puppets and anything that talks through someone else's hands so I was out from the get-go. The highlight of the show? They burst out into Dolly Parton and Kenny Roger's version of "I'll Be Home with Bells On" ...in French of course. It sent me into a rage of laughter and I couldn't stop. I don't know whether it was because it would be totally normal to hear that song on the radio back home, or whether it was the fact that these people don't even really know who Dolly Parton and/or Kenny Rogers are but I was hysterically cackling.
We spent many mornings outside, enjoying the sunshine and beautiful weather creating obstacles and courses for Scooby, the stick horse. The prize for such a winning horse and rider? A one euro piece and an offering of a Christmas tree branch, which symbolized flowers of some sort for the champion.
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| A chair "obstacle". |
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| The grand prize! |
On the 22nd, we cleaned the house and switched all the beds around for Chloé, Franck, and Gaspard's arrival. I changed the sheets on their bed, vacuumed upstairs, and helped with some laundry. Not before being shocked by the electrical outlet though. As I was pulling the cord out of wall to retract back into the vacuum cleaner, I felt a jolt of electricity run up through my arm, enough to make me jump back and wonder what had just happened. I don't know the why's or who-dun-its but I have certainly been more careful since then! We went to the weekly Wednesday morning market in St. Remy and stocked up on a couple of hundred dollars worth of foie gras and fig bread to accompany it, the biggest
chapon I have ever seen for our Christmas Eve feast (so big that from then on out we referred to it as the
bestial), some fresh olive tapenade, and homemade marinated artichokes for
aperitif. I
adore the Wednesday market in St. Remy and could spend hours upon hours just browsing and tasting all the delicious produce, regional cuisine, olive oils, wines, and browsing through the traditional Provençal
paniers and fabrics.
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| Lavender soaps and sachets for sale. |
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| Marie-Césare helping pick out the bird. |
The rest of the family arrived and the time leading up to Christmas flew by like a flash. Before I knew it I was changing into my dress for Christmas Eve dinner. After aperitif we all took our places at the slightly cramped table. Foie gras was served first which I gladly took seconds of, slathered it on some toasted fig bread and a generous helping of black olive spread on top. Holy moly it was delicious. Yes, the thought of eating *gasp* goose liver sounds horrible, and I don't agree with the measures that are taken to fatten those poor little ducks and geese up, but after one bite you forget anything has ever happened to them because its just so darn good. Does that make me really French, or what?
Oh! I forgot the best part. The wine. I had been looking forward to Padi's Christmas Eve wine selection since August. Our foie gras was served with a 1974 Chardonnay from the Loire Valley and was crisp, light, and fruity. With dinner he served a 1959 Pinot Noir from Bourgogne. It was perfectly smooth but with just enough punch. It went down like water and complemented the meal to a 'T'. 1959....can you believe it? I'm sure the bottle was worth quite a chunk of change. Padi inherited his father's wine collection when he died and, well, it certainly paid off for me. After the biggest bird I've ever seen in my life, a cardon gratin, roasted potatoes and roasted artichokes, we sopped up our plates with remaining pieces of baguette and prepared ourselves for the 13 Provençal desserts.
Our 13 desserts included the traditional le pompe à huile (a personal favorite of mine) is a sweetened yeast bread made with olive oil and topped with a light dusting of sugar. According to custom, you are to never cut the pompe à huile but tear it because it you cut it you risk the chance of going bankrupt in the new year. Along side were the 2 nougats, black nougat-caramelized honey and almonds and white nougat-pine nuts, pistachio, and hazelnuts. A yule log, raisins, dried figs, almonds, quince jellies, clementines, dates stuffed with marzipan, various candied citrus fruits covered in chocolate, fresh grapes from the region, and the most important...the Calisson. Ground almonds and fruit paste are joined together to form this small, almond shaped candy that is topped with royal icing. It is quite possibly the most important of the 13 desserts with the most history. Served alongside our gourmet buffet of pant-unbuttoning desserts was a 1949 Rosé from Bourgogne. I normally don't drink rosé, but I had to partake of this beautiful bottle. At this point, Marie-Césare had passed out and Gaspard was watching tv upstairs. Padi poured our glasses and I couldn't help but lift my glass into the light to admire the color. It was amber in color from the careful aging and seemed to glisten in the candlelight. It was almost thick and syrupy...Padi reminded me very quickly that no sugar was ever added to this bottle, that it got its sweetness from the natural aging of the wine.
Around midnight, we slowly rolled ourselves away from the table to attempt to clean dishes and set our shoes around the tree for Père Noël to fill with goodies. A far cry from the American stocking, which tends to be my favorite part of Christmas morning. The next morning came fast and furious around 7 am with an even more ridiculous amount of presents than last year. This year included a lifelike dog named Cookie for Marie-Césare, a new PS3 for Gaspard, new Fancy Nancy books for the both of us, and a new scarf for Maggie. Padi and Didou had given me a beautiful scarf from Fragonard, an antique rose colored plate that I admired while in the house in Viroflay, and a
pochette I had admired this summer on our travels to Aigues-Mortes. Chloé and Franck found a beautiful nightgown that doesn't look at all like me, but I love it just the same, some precious baubles that you can put on your flats to change up your look, and the Louis-Vuitton guide to Paris that is so sought after this year. None of it was necessary of course, but I was so thankful that I was a part of the family this year, and not just a guest...which would have been enough. I honestly can't imagine my life without the Lachaize family...it has become so natural and they are so precious to me, especially the little runt, Marie-Césare.
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| Christmas morning! |
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| All her new 'friends.' |
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| Incredible painted tile floors in the Palais des Papes |
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| Courtyard at Palais des Papes |
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| The "chapel"...seems more like a church to me... |
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| View from the terrace. |
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| Gorgeous sunset! |
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| The broken Pont d'Avignon. |
The very last day we all went out for lunch in St. Remy to an Italian restaurant just on the other side of the city center. We all filed in including Cookie, the new family "dog." Marie-Césare sat on the outside, so she could freely run back and forth between each family member as her patience ran low. 10 minutes later, an older woman with way too much lipstick who seemed to be a regular at the restaurant sat down next to Marie-Césare with her dog, Nicotine. (Rightly named because the woman went out for a cigarette break every 5 minutes...who could eat with all that smoking going on?) Marie-Césare couldn't focus on anything other than Nicotine and she couldn't wait to introduce Cookie. Nicotine didn't want anything to do with Cookie and sat obediently under the old woman's arm. At one point during the meal I looked over to the woman who was slathering butter on a piece of bread and feeding it to the dog. I giggled inside at the thought and went right back to chowing down on my Tuscan pasta. A few minutes later Marie-Césare asked if she could feed the woman's dog. The woman said yes and handed her a piece of bread to give him. Marie-Césare waved the bread in front of his mouth thinking he would reach out and snap the bread from her fingers. The woman remarked, "Oh darling, you have to put butter on the bread for him to eat it. He won't eat it if there's no butter." I DIED out laughing and turned to Chloé and told her the story. Her response? "Of course...he's French!"
We spent that afternoon in a city called L'Isle Sur La Sorgue picking out a mirror that Chloé and Franck were going to buy Padi and Didou for all their anniversaries and birthdays in 2012, instead of buying small presents along the way. Didou had seen the mirror in a store in St. Remy and got the card for more information. In a small corner of L'Isle sur la Sorgue is a small shop where "
Carton Noir" is located. The shop is modern yet welcoming and the walls are filled with her creations. The owner, Cécile Chappuis, creates beautiful mirrors, picture frames, and other various items exclusively from cardboard. It is mind blowing what she can create, and you would never in a million years think it was cardboard if no one told you. I encourage you to go to the website. They ended up choosing a mirror to hang over their mantle in Viroflay, natural in color, while I admired a small, oval, very feminine mirror with tiny flowers around the frame. It was painted black and would be wistfully romantic in a girly powder room. The big mirror ended up being 400 euros, and the small black mirror I had my eye on was 80 euros. Quickly dismissing it from my budget we packed up and went on exploring. The town was quaint and very old and filled with antique shops. We stumbled upon an old church that still had ancient, ancient electrical wiring and this store on the plaza which dates back to the early 1800's.
Our ride home was most memorable as the sky was painted colors I have never seen before...not even in the most beautiful sunsets of New Mexico. It started off pink, like long threads of cotton candy. As the sun set deeper and deeper into the horizon, oranges began to show through and the pink faded into a bright, eye popping purple. Red was the last color to show its face, and looked as if the trees were about to catch on fire. As we turned into Maillane, the colors mixed into a
mélange of happiness and no one said a word as we drove into the sunset with our jaws wide open at the sight of such a beautiful sky.
The next day before leaving, Chloé and Franck entered my room (which I had technically taken over Gaspard's room) and handed me a bag. I opened it up and since Christmas was over was suspiciously wondering what it was. I pulled away the heavy bubble wrapping and to my surprise it was the mirror from the Carton Noir shop!! I did my best "American surprised" face which Chloé absolutely adores and thanked them profusely. How kind of them...how lucky am I? I will cherish that for years to come, and will always think of them when I look into it.
Not without a few hiccups, Christmas holidays had come to and end. I was tired from the constant jabber of Didou and Marie-Césare and when you put 7 people in the same house for 5 days things can get a little sticky. We pulled through and had an easy train ride home. I am enjoying a couple of days of peace and quiet before Toni and her clan get to town on Saturday. Saturday and Sunday will be touring the family, celebrating New Years (somehow...no plans yet) and school will start bright and early Monday morning! Hope that each of you have had Happy Holidays wherever you are....and wishing you the traditional Bonne Année that I will be hearing in France for the next month! Gros bisous!
