A Visit to Galerie Vivienne

Five years ago I sat in a hospital cafeteria while my husband, a relatively young man, had bypass and carotid artery surgery on the same day.

I was terrified, and had taken some medication to dull the terror. To keep my mind off the ordeal, I read - or tried to read - the then-current issue of "Paris Notes."

We so often recall so vividly the details of life-defining moments, and this was one for me: I was reading about Paris' indoor shopping galleries and wondering if I would ever visit one. It seemed unlikely at the time.

With each visit to Paris, I have learned more and seen more and experienced more. Finally, last year I visited Galerie Vivienne just north of the Palais Royal. We stumbled upon it, actually, in our search for Le Grand Colbert.

This L-shaped shopping area was built in the 1820s, but their popularity waned once the big department stores emerged.

For me, there is something elegant and indulgent about shopping at such a place. I imagine buying frothy lingerie, heady perfume, a slim volume of 19th century poetry.

I love shopping, and it usually takes only a few small purchases to make me happy. In my student days and student-loan-paying days, my shopping was pretty much limited to Saturdays on State Street in Madison. I'd buy coffee, bagels, cream cheese, and vegetables at a small market, and then dodge into an old-fashioned Woolworth's for toiletries and household supplies. I adored Woolworth's as a child and I came to appreciate its variety and low prices as an adult.

I have yet to shop extensively in Paris, except for food and trinkets to bring home to family and friends. But when I am missing Paris and feeling empty because of it, I have a local shop that gentles and soothes me. It is a large boutique located on the lower floor of a big old-fashioned department store that has been restored and made into apartments.

Here I find silk scarves and beaded purses and textured jackets and glitzy necklaces cheek-by-jowl with Tiffany-style lamps and furniture from Asia and India and rich leather jewelry cabinets and the most delicate china. I try to visit once a month or so and I am always amazed at how the inventory turns over.

Recently I bought a silk scarf from Paris there, and knowing where it came from soothed me on a bad day.

A bit like a visit to lovely Galerie Vivienne.

Now that I've found this enchanting place, my next goal is a enjoy a meal at one of the galerie tenants, A Priori Thé, a restaurant savvy enough to serve desserts in half portions. Why can't more restaurants do this?

Spring Salad with Dried Blueberries and Strawberry Dressing

In my part of the world, spring salad lunches, usually given by church guilds and women's clubs, abound.

I adore them. Everyone has a favorite salad she - or he - is proud to prepare and showcase. I love taking a spoonful of this and a spoonful of that and tasting it all.

I would be hard pressed to choose a salad favorite. More often than not, my own salads are based on whatever is on hand.

There is one rule I follow rigidly: Make the salad a surprise. A salad is a medley of different flavors and textures. Add nuts or dried fruit. If you buy ready made croutons, sauté them and add something; garlic, maybe or even cinnamon. Balance the flavors.

My Spring Salad with Dried Blueberries and Strawberry-Chardonnay Dressing followed most of my rules.

1 bunch radishes (about 7-8), sliced
1 cucumber, sliced
2 bunches green onions (about 10-11), chopped
1/4 cup dried blueberries

Layer the ingredients. Add a fruit-based dressing. My choice was bottled strawberry dressing, but you could certainly make your own. If I had more time these days, I certainly would have. But weekends are all I have these days.

Earth Day and the Jardin des Plantes

Last spring, we came upon this winged creature in the Jardin des Plantes, and since he is made completely of recycled materials, he makes a good photo for Earth Day.

Each year, I take small steps toward becoming greener. I recycle books, plastic bags, cans, jars, bottles - as do most of us. We never use styrofoam, and we try not to overdo paper towels. We've learned to cut down on our driving, and my husband prefers to bicycle to work in the summer. We compost. We try to use what we have instead of buying new. We try to buy locally and fresh, with no additional packaging.

But there is so much more we can do.

I am appalled at the wasteful packaging that runs rampant in the health and beauty industry; my goal for the next year is not to buy products that use lots of plastic molding.

I was encouraged recently when I found paper bowls that were made from corn, potatoes and limestone.

I've found one of the best ways to be green is to have the Frugal French Gene.

How about you? Got any tips for me?

Triscuits and Tapenade

Except for the steak, nothing I made over the weekend turned out right. Oh, it tasted alright, but it wasn't photogenic.

Every spring, I try to clear my refrigerator of all the frozen food accumulated over the winter. In cold weather, we tend to stock up and hunker down, eating more home-cooked meals than in warmer seasons when we are lured out to try new restaurants.

My pantry gets a clean out, too, and this weekend I found granola cereal, oatmeal and prunes and walnuts as well as a half bag of dried-fruit-and-nut-mix. So I made prune bars with a crunch crust. They tasted great, but did not lend themselves to a photograph. In fact, the crumbled. But they were great topping for ice cream and yogurt.

The tomatoes and potatoes in the layered dish recipe I found on the Internet fell apart after cooking, too. The potatoes were great, firm and slightly salty, but the tomatoes turned to mush. Yes, I followed the directions but I suspect those two items just don't roast well together, even if handled differently during preparation.

I rubbed the steak with herbes de Provence and then in crushed bay leaves and left out to absorb the flavors for two hours. We enjoyed it - and the inside was sufficiently pink - and I am sure my father would have been proud of me for it.

The wine, which was French, was dark and berrylike, not quite the vine noir de Cahors, but certainly reminiscent of the stuff we'll be sampling in five months.

The amuse bouche, which I usually only prepare on weekends, were the best. I found roasted garlic Triscuits at the Italian Market and thought they'd be the perfect match for my unopened jar of tapenade from Provence. I spread them with low-fat cream cheese first to blunt the saltiness of the tapenade, then topped them with a walnut or a slice of olive.

I take pleasure in cobbling together little finger foods, using whatever we have on hand. This was a great marriage of tastes, and it was though we had the south of France on our palates.

Albert's Garden and the Start of Farm Market Season

For a time when my grandmother was about 70, her cousin Albert came to live in her upstairs flat.

Albert was a bachelor, a man of about Annie's age who'd been a merchant seaman, a common occupation here on the Great Lakes. Retired now, and in failing health, he moved into the apartment where Mémere and Pépere raised their brood of children at the end of the 19th century.

Albert planted a garden in the backyard between the old shed and the lilac bushes. He grew carrots, radishes, cucumbers, onions, green beans and tomatoes - all the staples of Annie's summer table.

The orderly rows intrigued me. So did the seed packets attached to ice-cream bar sticks and stuck into the soil. I seem to recall some sort of scarecrow, which might have worked on the birds, but did not deter the occasional marauding rabbit.

I spent plenty of summer mornings with Annie, playing in the backyard while Albert weeded the garden and Annie strung her laundry along her vast network of clotheslines, propped up with weathered wooden poles. There was a mild indentation in the yard (the site of a former flower bed) and I was convinced this might have been a rabbit hole (repeatedly throwing myself into it did not send me hurling into Wonderland, however).

Mid afternoon after his nap, Albert would head for one of the watering holes a block away on Mason Avenue, returning just before supper, sometimes weaving his way down Bellevue Street. My grandmother did not approve of this pastime and she would be tight lipped through most of the supper hour.

Albert would step out into his garden again as the summer sun sank into the sky and the band concerts started over at Frenchtown Park.

Tucked into bed at night, I wondered about the rabbits out among the rows of vegetables, and I hoped the beating of my heart was not actually the sound of a wolf coming to get me.

When Albert lived at Annie's house, we had plenty of fresh vegetables. After he left, and subsequently died in a veteran's hospital, Annie had to make do with the farm market, the growers who went door to door, and the generosity of her neighbors with gardens. She had a few small patches, of rhubarb and radishes, but the garden was never as vast as it was when Albert came to stay.

It won't be long now until the local farm markets open. I'll buy tomato plants of course. I had a bumper crop last year. What will this summer bring?

Excellent!

Thoughtful Julie of Noshtalgia gave me an E for Excellence rating, for which I am pleased and grateful.

I am supposed to bestow it on 10 more bloggers. Only I can't. The problem is, I cannot choose 10 people without leaving other people out.

I can't do that.

Because even the humblest blog (like mine was 22 months ago and still is, I guess) has something to offer. Maybe it's genuine. Maybe its truthful. Maybe it has few photos or no photos at all but wonderful insights. Those are excellent blogs.

Then there are the established blogs with large followings done by bloggers who are kind and friendly and answer your questions. Excellent indeed!

There are bloggers with whom I have a lot in common, and excellent way to foster an online friendship. I give them an E, too.

Of course, there are the Big Name Bloggers with book contracts and huge followings and they are very good at what they do. I have not found all of them to be terribly friendly, but some — hilarious David Lebovitz, for example - are kind and generous.

As far as I am concerned, everyone who visits here or whose blog I have linked to, gets an E from me.

As we say in Wisconsin, I really like you guys.

April in Paris? Not this Year!

I've started this post four or five times now.

Each time I struggled with what I wanted to say. Having written professionally, I am keenly aware of good and bad writing and cheap sentiment, and all I could produce was mediocre sentences and, I'm sorry to say, cheap sentiment.

What I tried to say is this: It's April and for two of the past three Aprils, I've been packing and planning for Paris. I'm not doing that this year.

But I've felt this intense longing lately, almost a physical pull. Yes, it is a physical pull, because Paris is like a lover whose scent and touch and breath you miss, you ache for.

I love spring. Once we landed in Paris on a perfect April day, arriving at our hotel in the early afternoon. After a shower and a nap, we took off to explore our neighborhood in the Latin Quarter.

It was a Thursday, and it was balmy and breezy and possessed all the qualities of spring days when the weekend is just ahead.

The daffodils and chestnuts were in high bloom and the air was scented with a mix of scents: flowers, exhaust, bread and that dank, musty smell that emanates from basement windows and vents. Paris: Elegant, sensual, gritty.

The phrase (and movie title) "unbearable lightness of being" somehow described our feelings as we walked the streets in search of just the right café. Businesspeople, students, au pairs with their charges - everyone seemed to be in the same mood.

If you haven't been to Paris, please go. You can do it on the cheap, even with the dollar nearly worthless. Paris is everything it - no, she! - is reputed to be and more. Find your own Paris, even if you discover it only once.

Go.

Roasted Red Pepper Salad with Almond-Stuffed Olives

When I looked outside Saturday morning and saw December instead of April, I was surprised but not disheartened. When it is cold and blustery outside, there are plenty of antidotes inside.

Start by lighting a scented candle. My favorites for days like this evoke the Mediterranean. In the dining room are eucalyptus and herbes de Provence, while the kitchen candle is apricot.

Next plan your menu for the day. Tomatoes and roasted peppers are what I prefer when the weather is gray. Perhaps some cheese. Voila! The basis for a roasted pepper salad.

1-12 cherry tomatoes, slightly roasted
3 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 red bell peppers,
2 garlic cloves
10-12 chunks of fresh mozzarella cheese
olives (mine were green and stuffed with almonds)
handful of fresh parsley, chopped
dash sel de fleur
dash pepper, freshly ground

Toss the the cherry tomatoes and toss them in one teaspoon olive oil. Roast at medium heat in a small oven until they are just soft; chill. Next, cut the red peppers into strips and chop the garlic. Toss peppers and garlic in a bowl and coat with the remainder of the olive oil. Roast at 425 for about 15-20 minutes until the peppers begin to turn black along the edges and the garlic turns brown. Place in a large bowl and set aside to chill.

Once roasted ingredients are chilled, toss with cheese and olives. Add parsley (and basil, if you have any fresh on hand; I did not). Cover and chill for two hours. Season after you taste test.

This is a sweet salad! I served it with London Broil that had been rubbed with herbes de Provence and garlic.

Just making it cheered me immensely. Preparing the countertop, chopping the garlic, and roasting the peppers gave me a purpose.

There is nothing quite like puttering about in the kitchen, is there?

Closing the Shutters Against Nightfall

I spoke of spring too soon. In the past 24 hours, we've had rain, sleet, hail, thunder, lightning, heavy winds and bone-chilling cold.

It is good to be inside, standing at the kitchen counter looking out at the wildly thrashing cedar trees on the north side of the house. Will one fall and take out the horse barn one of these windy nights? I hope not.

Despite the racket the storm is making, I could hear red wing blackbirds a while ago. There is something that enchants me about noisy birds at dusk. They comfort me as night descends, perhaps.

I am thinking of spring in the Lot Valley, when we closed the shutters about 9:30 each night. In a minute or two, an owl would begin hooting from the tree outside the front door. It was pure magic.

We knew the feral pigs would prowl the garden and pool area at night. Once I heard them, banging about the lower level of the house and rose to stand sentinel at the front door. The motion detector light went on and then off, stopping my heart for a minute. Looking out the window, I could see an ambulance rush its way up the Route des Gorges. I said a silent prayer for the person in trouble.

On these dark and stormy nights, I think of Chez Bateaux, and the days we will spend there in the fall. I hope the owl returns too.

Spring Peepers and Key Lime Chicken

Now when I drive down Riderman Road at dusk, I roll the windows of my car down so I can hear the chorus of spring peepers and bullfrogs and other night creatures. No matter how cold, no matter how rainy, I want to hear this song, this celebration of my favorite season.

When I was a child, I'd sit on our back steps on April nights, one ear cocked for the sound of robins, the other taking in the sounds of post-supper cleanup in the kitchen and the boys playing baseball in Olson's empty lot three doors away. The clatter of pots and pans, the thwack of the bat against the ball: These were the sounds of spring evenings.

The smell of earth, newly released from winter's grasp was sensual, fertile, waiting. The color of the sky was azure turning to salmon.

I loved it. And the warmer days that followed.

Saturday was such a day, with everyone turned out with rakes and brooms and yard waste bins.

On these days, I seek certain food: seafood, tomatoes, citrus fruits. Like key limes.

Key Lime Chicken

3-4 boneless chicken breasts
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon key lime peel, grated
2 tablespoon key lime juice
1/4 teaspoon ginger, ground
1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 orange

In small bowl, combine lime peel, lime juice, ginger, and redpepper. Set aside.

Rinse chicken; pat dry. Brown chicken and garlic in a skillet with margarine, turning chicken frequently to ensure even browning and cooking.

Slice oranges while chicken is browning. Add lime juice mixture and orange slices to skillet. Cook for 3-4 minutes until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

I served this with a small green salad, rice and mango chutney.

This was adapted from a recipe I found on Everyday Health.

Banana-stuffed French Toast with Cashews

If the temperature is 60 and the skies are blue, it better be a Saturday.

And it was. To celebrate, we had French toast for breakfast.

My husband, ever the purist, prefers his plain with no frills. Oh, maybe a dash of cinnamon in the batter.

I have grown especially fond of stuffed French toast. I have been experimenting for the past year or so, with varying results.

Normally, I would suggest using a home-baked or bakery whole-grain bread, but I was too hungry to shop for some yesterday.

Banana-Stuffed French Toast with Cream Cheese and Cashews

2 slices whole grain bread, cinnamon with raisin would be perfect, lightly toasted
2 eggs
1 tablespoon low-fat milk
Dash sugar
Dash cinnamon
1 tablespoon Smart Balance (or butter)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup low-fat cream cheese
dash sugar
1/2 banana, sliced
handful of cashews

Blend cream cheese with sugar and set aside.

Whip eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla in a shallow bowl. Soak the lightly toasted bread just long enough to coat each side and slightly permeate the bread. While bread is soaking, melt butter in large skillet. Brown soaked bread in pan, turning frequently to ensure thorough toasting.

Transfer browned toast to plate. Smear one slice with cream cheese and top with sliced bananas. Then top with the second slice. Add butter or butter substitute, if you like, and top with cashews. I also added a tablespoon of low-sugar maple syrup.

It was a good start to a busy day.

The variations of stuffed French Toast are endless. Anyone know of a savory version out there?

Farm Fresh Eggs for the Weekend

As if a sunny spring Friday weren't gift enough, friend and fellow food lover Farmer Linda stopped by with a gift: A dozen fresh eggs in delicate tans, greens and whites.

She'd been out in her hen house and remembered my love for good food.

These are probably the freshest eggs that ever made a home in my refrigerator. Generally we shop for eggs at the grocery store, because you rarely see them at local farm markets.

All day long, Linda's gift cheered me, because I knew it would make a lovely photograph and an even lovelier meal - several meals, in fact.

To find out what I do with the eggs, you'll have to make a return visit to this blog.

Gifts of food - especially something this fresh - are my favorites. (Not that I don't love all gifts!) When I was a child, I enjoyed reading the columns of Gladys Tabor and Faith Baldwin in my grandmother's women's magazines. So often, Tabor and Baldwin would mention the friend who stopped by with a basket of walnuts or freshly plucked blueberries. Such gifts often came to my grandmother or my father, so I grew up understanding that the gift of food - and the subsequent meal made with it - is one of those experiences that makes life more enchanting somehow.

So my question for you is: What was your favorite gift of food and what did you do with it?

Lunch in a Classroom Café

My job requires me to help build relationships between educators and business people. It is a task I relish, because I enjoy the world of business and I've spend a good part of my life in the world of education. I feel comfortable in either.

But when the culinary arts world becomes part of the mix, I get really excited. Throw in a well-prepared meal, and I am on Cloud Nine.

I'm still coming off a high from yesterday when I joined a group of associates to enjoy lunch in a local high school classroom-cum-café. The five-table restaurant with an attached kitchen gives high-school students the chance to learn all aspects of restaurant management, from budgeting to cooking to serving.

Our lunch - of dinner-size proportions - began with an herb-y, spring salad with buttered roles. The next course was a baked and stuffed chicken breast, covered with an herb-y cream sauce and served with buttered peas and carrots. The dessert - and this was really to die for - was something called Peanut Butter Luster Pie. Imagine a caramel-y, peanut butter filling on a traditional pie crust, topped with a chocolate crust, a chocolate sauce and a generous dollop of whipped cream! I enjoyed every creamy bite.

All of it was prepared by high-school students - a crew of about 12. Polite and professional, they greeted us at the door of the school and escorted us up to the café.

The students - there are about 60 in all - routinely prepare meals for school staff and will also cater community events. What a great experience for them! I've noticed lately that high-schoolers locally are taking a greater interest in the culinary arts. We added a chef to the speakers lineup at a recent career event for teens and it was a popular presentation.

Yesterday's lunch was at the same school where I enjoyed an Empty Bowls Supper about a year ago. The bowl in the photo above is from a previous Empty Bowls Event and it reminded me of spring.

Postcript: After reading Lydia's comment, I decided I ought to ask other readers if they too are seeing an upswing in interest in culinary arts among young people. In our community, we have had two restaurants open in the last year that are owned by young men who are also chefs.