Gloaming Designs

egg & dart

Today is a big moving day around here. Click the image to see where and why! And thank you. Truly.

xo,

A.

2nd First & Loving

Monday we celebrated our 2nd first wedding anniversary! You see, last year, we first celebrated our wedding in July in Maine but we didn't want family to feel obliged to cross the ocean (and what better excuse for two parties?) so we had our French wedding August 20th, 2011 in Orléans. Now we get to celebrate twice a summer! This year we had dinner at the new bistro across the street.

~

Remember that "Loving" list I did a couple weeks ago last month? Here's another!

Things I'm loving:

• This album (especially "Mare" which starts around 4:00) and again this song (it was on repeat here when the film came out).

• This wallpaper - oh my, it hurts. How I would love to have the space/money to put that up somewhere.

• I made this jam and now small batch canning has made me want to preserve again. I don't need 20 jars of jam but 3? Just right.

• The new Ikea catalog came out in France and there are some interesting pieces and then this which made me gasp (and not for joy).

happy weekend!

xo,

A.

It's too hot to work

But we did anyway. The end of last week and the weekend and the beginning of the week were the kind of days where you sweat sitting still and you keep the windows shut tight for fear of letting in waves of heat. The weekend was particularly bad. So, of course, we started a major home improvement project in the middle of last week. (Of course.)

Last year the apartment above us had an unnoticed flood (the owner doesn't live in the apartment so it went unnoticed) which filtered down the walls and made our bathroom and living room walls lose big chunks of paint and plaster to reveal black mold polka dots underneath. It was lovely. When we called the agency that takes care of renting the apartment to us for the owner, they said call your insurance company and send us the bill. The insurance company said, "Do you want to do it yourselves? Here's 600 euros". We said, "Ok."

Romain started by scraping the loose paint Wednesday and I spent all of Thursday and Friday spackling and sanding the walls and the ceiling to get it back to a flat surface. On Thursday, I thought I hated spackling the ceiling the most out of any activity in the world. Friday, I knew it was actually sanding the ceiling I hated most.

The point is after a final long day of finishing the work and cleaning up, we have a clean white bathroom. It is suddenly a spa and it may have been the delirium but at one point, I seriously thought there must have been a window added to the room (it is windowless). That's how much brighter it is.

So that up there is just a glimpse. It hard to photograph since it is small and has no natural light but with a few finishing touches, I might just share the finished product. It has only taken me four years to get it close to how I'd like it to be!

This lovely piece is one of the finishing touches. I found a blurry photo of it on the French version of craigslist and saw the price 10€ and nearly hunted the seller down. I wasn't sure what we would really find but it is so much lovelier than I could have hoped for the price!

Look at the detail! I kept peeking at it on the metro ride home. And Romain, who "didn't really like it" from the photo was pleasantly surprised, "It looks steampunk!" Whatever you want, darlin'. I just have to wire it up and hang it (from the cement ceiling, ugh.). But I'm taking the finishing projects a little slower to recover from the heat and DIY marathon last weekend.

Some of us are taking the recovery process more seriously than others.

xo,

A.

Weekend in Orléans

What the weekend looked like.

 

French Toast for Marion

Weekend breakfasts growing up were long, sunny affairs full of possibilities. Mama always made the table pretty, set with flowers, marbles in glass bowls, shells from beach walks, linens, any of our treasures, and always a glass of bright orange juice in the middle of our breakfast plates. The first taste of morning.

We would listen to the radio or put on a favorite morning cd (like above) and my mother and I would putter around in our robes bemoaning my father's unwillingness to stay in his nightclothes all morning. We would open books, contemplate recipes. Sometimes I would be the first one awake and I would choose something special and bake it as quietly as I could, smiling to myself about what a surprise it would be. (I am using the past tense, here, but the truth is that present day visits home are blissfully not at all different from these memories.)

And we had our classics. The books that held our favorite recipes, the books that felt like weekend mornings just having them out. They are some of the dearest additions to my collection of cookbooks as my parents give me my own copies through the years.

One of our very favorite morning visits was this book: The Breakfast Book by (the extraordinary) Marion Cunningham. So many of our classics came from this book and when I received it as a gift from my parents, I read it almost cover to cover for the first time. It is full of wisdom and delicious things but always in the voice of a good friend and mentor who has just poured you a cup of tea or sent you a letter. It's not fussy, it's not grand. It is simple and comforting and, for that, beautiful.

Throughout the book she shares, what I imagine are, her favorite little bits and pieces about breakfast:

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged and well-provisioned breakfast table. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

As well as her own wisdom:

(from her Breakfast Table Civility and Deportment rules)

7. Because everyone is defenseless at breakfast, there should be no contentiousness or crossness.

13. And don't answer questions in a saucy manner.

Indeed, as the Frenchman would say.

~

So when I heard last month that she had passed away, I went back once again to her breakfast book. Flipping to the back, she arranged a delightful collection of breakfast menus by season and by event such as "Thanksgiving Breakfast", "A Day in Bed", and "A Special Day". I had contemplated going back to our all-time favorites for a breakfast in her honor, but when I came to the last menu, I know there was no other choice:

A VERY, VERY SPECIAL BREAKFAST

Fresh Orange Juice Ice

Chocolate Walnut Butter Bread French Toast

So I baked the bread and we devoured the rich French Toast and raised our orange juice glasses to Marion. For her recipes, her work to bring appreciation to real home cooking, and her delightful book on breakfast. How lucky we were to have her at our table weekend mornings.

Chocolate Nut Butter Bread

adapted from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham

(one medium loaf)

I used whatever nuts I had on hand (hazelnuts and walnuts) but I suspect that any nut or combination of nuts would be just as lovely. Marion advices, since the bread is so rich, dipping the slics only briefly in egg for French Toast so they don't absorb very much. I made the toast twice and the second time let it soak which I liked even better because, to me, the egg helped balance the richness.

1/4 c warm water (105 - 115°F)

1/2 package dry yeast

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 tbsp sugar

1/8 tsp salt

2 eggs, room temp

6 tbsp (87g) butter, softened

1/2 c chopped nuts (large pieces)

3 oz (85g) semisweet chocolate, chopped into large pieces

-

Stir the yeast into the water and left dissolve and foam for 5 minutes.

In a big bowl, beat yeast mixture, flour, sugar, salt, and eggs until well blended. Add the butter in pieces and beat until batter is smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a towel and let rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Gently punch down the dough and fold in the nuts and chocolate pieces until evenly dispersed. Spoon the batter into a 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 3-inch loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes. Wait 5 minutes before turning the loaf out onto a cooling rack and remember, there will be melted chocolate so don't be wearing you white cocktail dress.

To make French Toast, cut loaf into 3/4-inch thick slices. In a soup plate or baking dish, combine 4 eggs and a splash of milk. Soak each side of the slices in the egg until they are moist but not falling apart. Griddle, and devour.

P.S. go easy on the syrup.

xo,

A.

Marché Photo of the Week

There are a couple things about August: 1. It is the month that everyone flees Paris. All of France goes on vacation somewhere else.  Shops close for weeks, even pharmacies (although they coordinate so there is always an open one nearby), there are long stretches of quiet empty sidewalk, and there are no afternoon sounds of the kids burning through their late day bursts of energy with their friends because they are all en vacances with family and friends. Even the markets thin way out and big holes are left where vegetable, meat, and cheese stands usually are. Sometimes they are temporarily replaced by random kitchenwares or underwear vendors but there is mostly just open space left where it was once crammed with people. It can be strange (where on earth will I get my basil this week?!) and it can be blissful (do you hear that? me neither! so quiet.)

2. There should be amazing tomatoes in August. Tomatoes that burst just from being held and that melt in your mouth into the most refreshing sweetness. Tomatoes you wait all year for. But this year is bad for the tomato in France. At least in our part of France. My mother-in-law lost all her tomato plants (50 I think) because the endless rain and the cool weather did them in. And I'm finding it hard to find the "tomato of my dreams" (Dad). I have hopes for the beauties in this weekend's finds but we shall see.

3. There are so many short-lived, much-anticipated crops coming into the market that I often over do it. Such was the case last week and I was able to make a shorter list this week because my vegetable drawer is still overflowing.

So, here's what we brought home this week:

clockwise from top left

- Watercress and baby greens (purple frisée? and beet)

- Noire de Crimee, Pineapple, and Cornue des Andes tomatoes

- eggplant

- cucumber

- zucchini

- peppers

- Reine Claude plums

- tarragon

- thyme

- basil

- mint

- dill

- melons

- sorrel

And, lest you think taking these pictures is easy, Albert has a special message for you:

Thanks for that, Bug.

xo,

A.