french countryside – Page 90

I am leaving for Oslo, Norway tomorrow. I decided to put up an old post before I leave which I had on Africantapestry two years ago. A little story. A sketch.

To accompany the ongoing saga of the soon-in-bloom-tulip, as well as the gardening folie that has me firmly in its hystyerical grip, I made a strawberry soup with the very first strawberries of the season. Not yet tasting of summer and sun though…! But who cares…! Using them in a summer/spring soup with added balsamic vinegar and handsfull of mint and pepper and rose water, is a great way to satisfy that ferocious desire for summer fruits.

Flinging soil and seedlings around in the garden (here in the northern hemisphere!) and serving early strawberries on our plates and sometimes even catching a warm glimpse of the sun…what more can we wish for?

Suggestions:

Add red berries like raspberries, blackberries, blueberries…
Serve with a sprinkling of freshly milled black pepper.
Use a handmixer instead of fork to break up the strawberries.
Use Maroccan mint if you can find, which have a stronger flavour than ordinary garden mint.
Or use some lemon verbena instead in high summer.
Serve chilled on hot summer days, but at room temperature early in the season.
Serve along with a slice of lemon poppyseed cake as accompaniment, or a herbed shortbread.
Don’t be afraid to use a lot of mint!
Use stevia, which is a herb sweetener, instead of sugar or honey.

…the red tulip…

“Like last year, this single red tulip once again made its appearance in my all white and blue garden. And like last year, I accept it and welcome it. It has become quite a game and I’m amused by the tulip’s proudness and dedication to defeat me. It reminds me of a guy I once knew at university who wouldn’t give up either.

He was madly in love with me, completely, head over heels..and yes, he was sort of cute too, I thought at that stage. I was staying in a hostel for girls on campus, fourth floor out of six, overlooking beautifully tended campus gardens. And he was staying in a hostel for boys, way off, on the other side of the campus. That’s how it was those days. No men allowed in the girls’ hostels and vice versa, which made for very exciting experiences! Except of course, for visiting hours in the lounge downstairs.

Very regularly, he would show up at my hostel, long after visiting hours, on nights when the moon was showing off in the sky and the stars were sparkling impatiently with anticipation. With his guitar and a red rose and his best friend, I would be charmed with unashamedly beautiful love songs from the garden under my window. Their strong, deep melodious voices, trained from years of singing, had every girl hanging out their windows along with me, losing ourselves in the charm and romance of “old world courting” from down below. Beautiful beautiful brown eyes, would always be on the list of songs and their voices would fade away in the distance with Goodnight ladies. My red rose, always stolen from an overflowing garden somewhere, would be left on the windowsill downstairs at the front door, for the hostel had already firmly been locked up for the night.

And so it happened that he got caught one night while stealing my red rose. He unfortunately chose the garden of the Professor of engineering, with whom he was very well acquainted…! He was allowed the rose, but had to work the Professor’s compost heap for two weekends. For a while, it was slow on the rose-serenading-scene and we all missed it..all the ladies, that is. Then one night there he was again, with a stolen red rose and guitar and his best friend. The cute guy I once knew. And who I still know. He is my husband.

…fini…

I was in Paris the past week and unfortunately couldn’t get around to “les cupcakes de Chloe“. So on arriving home, I couldn’t wait to bake a cupcake to satisfy that lust for a sweet, icing topped helping. Of course mine isn’t even close to Chloe’s, but it is still delicious. I am done now. For quite some time.

While taking the metro to and fro(urgh) I made use of the time, staring at people, thinking and wondering about them. Making up stories about them. Scribbling notes and drawings in my notebook. Who they are, what they do, where they come from, their life stories. How they look. First impressions. Based on what we see and hear and feel.

A recipe from Cupcakes, cookies and macarons by Marabout chef.

Suggestions:

I prefer baking mini cupcakes, since the big ones are too much for one helping. And if you like a second, it still doesn’t make one full cupcake…leaving you with no guilt for this indulgement!
OR bake different sizes of cupcakes for an interest on the cake platter. In which case you will bake the different sizes at different times..the smaller the cupcake the quicker the baking time.
The cranberries can be left out.
Use lemon or lime juice and lemon zest instead of orange juice and zest.
Add a tablespoon of ricotta or mascarpone in the butter icing sugar
For lighter cupcakes, omit the butter icing sugar and simply sprinkle the cupcake with some sifted icing sugar.
Serve with fresh fruits like strawberries and a coulis, or caramelized orange slices and an orange coulis.

First impressions. That instinctive first thought or opinion about something or someone. How many times have you said just after meeting someone…”I like him, he seems nice”, or I don’t think I like her, there is just something about her…” A house, a school, a country, new neighbours, a restaurant… That first impression is something a “con artist” relies on to entrap his victims. It is that “thing” that makes you stare at a person walking into a room with a certain presence…that makes you keep quiet when a deep voice speaks on the other side of the room.

I have had an occasion where the vegetable man at the market asked me whether I’m a historian. On my surprised: “why?”, he pointed at my handbag and the pencil holding my hair up. To him, I had the look and manner of an historian, with my Indiana Jones leather bag and pencil in my hair(which I used to keep my hair from falling into my painting back at home..).

Another time we lived in SC and I used to visit Books a million close by early some mornings to get some drawing and writing done in a corner with a coffee. One day a woman approached me, sat down next to me and started chatting. I’ve seen her often as well as many other regulars, but they never approached me, thinking I was working with all the books and paper around me. It turned out that they all had their impression too…wondering who I was, where I was from, wondering about my foreign accent, my keeping to myself in a corner, my soft-spokennnes, ( I have a voice that just doesn’t carry!) Along with my dark hair and dark complexion, not fogetting the hereditary dark circles under my eyes, they decided I had to be Arabic.

Once I was reading a book in a coffee shop while waiting for Hartman to arrive at the station. At some stage I burst out laughing for some funniness in the book. A while later, a man sitting opposite me started speaking to me, fascinated by my laughing out loud all by myself, and asked me if I was a teacher revising a novel… I read with a pencil in hand, my reading glasses low on my nose and a little notebook on the side.

Hartman, in his university years, somewhat resembled a young Mick Jagger – very tall, very slender, sinewy, with thick long disorderly hair, constantly wearing his favourite thick old army coat, his grandfather’s hat and his guitar slung around his shouders. My mother trusted him nothing!! Today, much older and wearing black woolen coats and hats, Mick Jagger made way for a Francois Mitterrand strictness and formality, leaving some people with a slight apprehension to approach him.

First impressions. Truth…or deception…or a little bit of both…?