Ah, Motherhood

I just have to blog about an interchange I just had with Jocelyn a few minutes ago. There I was soaking in the tub, reading a book (one of my favorite things in the world to do), and Jocelyn walks in the bathroom. She kneels by the tub and this is the exchange that takes place:

Jocelyn: “Mom, why is your stomach like that? Are you going to have a baby?”

Me: “No, Jocelyn. Definitely not.”

Jocelyn, reaching into the tub to press on my stomach, like it’s bread dough that she can pound down: “Then, why is it so big and fat like this?”

Me, thinking my stomach actually looks better now than it used to: “Well Jocelyn. Before Mommy had you and your twin sister, my stomach was nice and flat, but carrying two babies at the same time made my belly grow out to here (I show her), and it just never went back to the way it used to be.”

Jocelyn, with a concerned look on her face: “Oh.”

Me, worrying she might feel bad: “But I want you to know you were worth it, and I don’t care how my stomach looks if it means I get to have you, Jeni, and Maisy as my daughters.” Then I await Jocelyn’s outpouring of gratitude for me as her selfless and loving mother. . .

Jocelyn: “Well, it feels like mashed potatoes,” then she abruptly leaves the bathroom.

That’s gratitude for you. I think I’ll lock the bathroom door next time.

La fleur d'orange

Here’s something unique about the specific area where we live in Southern France.  We happen to live very close to the town of Grasse, which is considered the world’s capital of perfume. In fact our town, which is called Plascassier, is considered to be a community of Grasse.  Per Wiki, Grasse “is the center of the French perfume industry and it produces at least two-thirds of France’s natural aromas (for perfume and for food flavourings).”  Based on my limited experience, I would venture that the other one-third of the “natural” aromas I’ve picked up here come from foreigners, local meat & fish markets, the mushroom trade, cigarettes, and cab drivers. Grasse has all kinds of perfume factories and tours, as well as museums, gardens, and other typical kitschy tourist traps in which I can’t wait to see the gift shops. So where am I going with all this? The bakeries in this area—because of their proximity to Grasse—offer a little something extra in their variety of amazing baked goods and pastries. They buy up orange blossom water, a byproduct of the perfume factories nearby, and they put some of it into their bread recipes.

As you can see this Orange Blossom Bread has the same basic shape as a flower blossom, and the French call it "Fleur d'Orange."  I’m pretty sure this bread is completely unique to this area, and it’s in all the local bakeries.  We finally bought a few to try out. So what do they taste like, you ask? Imagine a large soft Bavarian pretzel, stripped of salt and with a hint of sweetness, mixed with Body Shop Jolly Orange Body Butter. Are you there with me? Well, these Orange Blossoms taste almost that good! The aftertaste is even worse, like you just licked the pollen off a bee.  So, yes, even though they are cool-looking, they are not going to edge out pain au chocolate anytime soon in our book. Maybe it’s an acquired taste.  We’ll put this bread squarely in the “Been There, Done That” category. They will, however, remind a person—bittersweetly—of Lehi Bakery’s amazing Orange Rolls.

Fall Soup Taste Test

Besides the Halloween cats, another recipe I got from the blog “Small and Simple Things” by Kim McCrary was a fall recipe for a butternut squash and carrot soup. I am ashamed to admit I had never used butternut squash in my life before this, and I even had to look it up online to see what it looked like! Isn’t that embarrassing? Once I saw it, of course it looked familiar, but I had never cooked one. Don’t tell my mom!

Anyway, I decided to make the recipe for my family, but I also bought two competitor squash soups from the store so we could have a scientific taste test. My homemade soup was #1, but they didn’t know that.

My kids loved the samples in their little cups they got to try, and they liked all but #3—the pumpkin was too strong in it.  Jason and I didn’t care much for it either.  My three girls liked the other store- bought soup the best, probably because it tasted the blandest of the three soups.  Jason and I both agreed there was no question that the winner was the homemade one.   No joke.  It’s delicious and so good for you too!  The recipe is definitely a keeper, and it will get its very own recipe card in my file. 

If you want the recipe, just remember to click on Kim’s blog on my blog list.  You might have to scroll down a little on her blog to find it, but it’s there.  Kim said she can get the squash already cut up at Costco!!  Cutting and peeling the squash was definitely the worst part of the preparation.  (Do you guys know how lucky you are to have Costco?) Thanks Kim for another fun October recipe. 

Crying for Candy Corns

So I am a little homesick this month. October is probably my very favorite month in Utah—not just because of Halloween and all the cute decorations and costumes, but because the weather turns cool but not too cold yet, there’s fall break from school, which teachers love as much as students do, and there are so many fun things to do with your family. Each year we like to see the witches at Gardener Village, and have hot chocolate and a donut at the bakery there; we always go to Cornbelly’s at Thanksgiving Point; we also always go to Heehaw’ s in Pleasant Grove where there’s a haunted hayride. We also always drive the Alpine loop, which is breathtaking in the fall.

My experience so far is that in France, Halloween is a very scaled down affair. At the grocery store (like Walmart) where they have two aisles of yogurt, they had about ¼ of an aisle of Halloween stuff—all of it was pretty lame too. There were a handful of kids’ costumes (mostly of the scary variety), but that’s about it. Sigh.

My girls are having a Halloween party though at their British school. I got assigned to bring a baked good. I have decided to make cookies shaped like Halloween cats. I got the idea from my sister’s friend’s blog called “Small and Simple Things.” (It’s the cutest blog with so many ideas for holidays, and I have loved her posts on Halloween ideas this month. The author is Kim McCrary, and there is a link to her blog if you scroll down on my blog list.) This recipe is darling, and the cookies are supposed to look like this when they are done:

Obviously the recipe calls for candy corns. Do you think I could find candy corns in France? I even asked some British teachers at the school if they knew where I could get some after I had looked everywhere. After I described what they were, one teacher said, “I don’t know what those are; we definitely don’t have those in England either.” Whoa. If Mother England doesn’t have candy corns, I might as well give up trying to find them in France. Extra long sigh.

So I decided to improvise. I made a trial batch of the cookies today with Jenica and Jocelyn’s help. They taste great and turned out really cute, but they just aren’t the same without candy corn eyes. I used a rectangular chewy candy that I cut diagonally to make two triangles for the eyes. We can’t get red hots here either for the nose, like the recipe calls for, so I used skittles that my friend brought when she visited instead.

I’ll let you know how the actual holiday of Halloween goes, but I’m not expecting much.  How can a country that doesn’t even sell candy corns know how to properly celebrate this holiday?  Hasn’t anyone in this country ever been to California Adventure in October? Here's to reminiscing:

Disneyland in October 2007.  Maisy was just 3 months and the twins are 3.

Sacre Bleu!

Hey, this is Jase here. I'm just realizing that we have a blog forum where I can say or post ANYTHING I WANT?! Does that mean I can post a picture I secretly took of the enormous guy on Castle Beach sunbathing uncomfortably close to our family beach mats with only a sun hat, iPod and G-string?

Zut Alors! It worked. I immediately regret not getting the also-interesting "derriere photo" featuring the puzzling lower back tatoo, which I've never seen on a) a man, and b) a very large man in the sun. Many questions have kept me up since that day--what country/planet was he from? What songs was he listening to on that iPod? Why the sun hat when the remaining 97% of his skin was very exposed? Did he really own a Ferrari like the hat indicated?

Now that I have posting rights, I will start to compile some of my thoughts and personal musings. Tiff is definitely picking up the best of the Pierce Family thus far, but my views tend to be a little more...random and offbeat. Maybe it's time to give the other side of the story.

Amy's Visit

We finally had our first visitors and had a wonderful time! My good friend Amy Kartchner and her son Kaden visited us for a week; they left to go home on Sunday, October 3. The trip out here is neither cheap nor convenient, and Amy knows how much I appreciated the visit, especially because Jason was gone all but one day, and I would have been alone otherwise. (He has been traveling a lot lately—last week when Amy was here he was in Athens, Greece, and the week before that he was in Milan, Italy, and just days before that he was in Malaga, Spain.)

Here were my most memorable things about the visit (in no particular order):

1. Watching Amy try to function on 8 hours sleep in a 48-hour period. She arrived early Monday morning France time, and I made her stay awake all day, even though she wanted nothing more than to sleep for about 16 hours straight. The jet lag when you go this far east is pretty rough anyway, and she spent two nights in a row on a plane (she had a long layover in JFK). I felt bad for her, and I knew exactly how she felt. However, she really needed to stay awake or she wouldn’t have adjusted to the time change until it was time to leave! It was also a little bit funny to watch her pretend to have a conversation with me as her head was bobbing and her eyes were closing. At point on the drive home, Jason and I were discussing how "fussy" Maisy gets without a nap.  I said, "how will we keep her from getting fussy tomorrow?"  Amy surfaced briefly from her foggy stupor in the back seat and exclaimed, "I promise I won't be fussy tomorrow." 

Kaden and Amy on their first day here in Cannes, France on "La Croisette."  That's Italian "glace" Kaden is eating. It's sold everywhere here, just like in Italy.

2. After the kids were in bed, and after Amy got over her jet lag, we stayed up watching episodes of “The Middle” and “Modern Family” on DVD. I don’t watch TV here, so American sit-coms were a rare treat.

3. Getting to know Kaden better. He is such a polite, sweet, well-behaved boy, and my kids LOVED having someone to play with.


Kaden, Jenica, Jocelyn, and Maisy at a polar bear exhibit at Marineland in Antibes



Kaden and Jocelyn at an outdoor recreation area called "Les Bois des Lutins." 

 



Maisy and Kaden at Castle Beach in Mandelieu near Cannes. 



Kaden and Jenica playing while waiting for lunch at Marineland.  I have no idea what game this is.

4. Watching Amy in high gear while helping all the kids with homework while I made dinner. My kids have crazy hard spelling tests every Friday, and it takes a couple of hours to prepare them each week. They have had words like climbing, plumber, knight, knock, whistle, wrong, penknife, and whiskers. They are only in first grade! Jocelyn especially needs lots of help focusing long enough to learn to spell these words. Amy spent an hour on a couple of different nights helping my girls with their reading and their spelling at the same time as she was helping Kaden with his math, AND this was all while Maisy sat on her lap, and Amy helped her with a puzzle. It was pretty amazing to watch. My girls just love her.

5. Eating lunch in San Remo, Italy. It was only an hour drive to San Remo, and I had never done this before, so it was fun to try something new. I was worried about finding the market there, but we did it. The reason why I loved eating lunch there was because the food wasn’t that great. I know that sounds weird to say, but neither Amy nor I have ever been that impressed with Italian food we have eaten in Italy. We always feel like we have gone to the wrong place or ordered the wrong thing. This place was no different. The cheese pizza had strong-tasting blue cheese on it, and my pasta was super greasy. It was still a fun experience, and it helped me to appreciate the next item on my list even more.

Maisy and me--San Remo, Italy

Can you see the blue cheese?  This pizza looked better than it tasted in my opinion, and pizza is a dish the Italians usually ace (I even really like blue cheese, but not this time).

6. Eating the most delicious food I have ever had in my life at an Italian restaurant in Antibes, France.  As a favor to Jason while he was out of town, one of his French colleagues, Dany Laroque, and his wife Corinne, took us out to eat at a place called “Michelangelos.”  I had never heard of it, but since the walls of this place were covered with pictures of famous American celebrities, like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Stephen Spielberg, all pictured with the chef, I assumed it must be pretty good food.  "Good" does not do this place justice.  We didn’t get involved in the ordering process, which was all done in French, but it wasn’t even done from the menu.  The chef personally came to our table and planned the meal. All I can say is that I will never again say I don’t really like Italian food.  Two of the starters had thinly-sliced truffles on them!!  It really was the best food of my entire life (even though I love French food too).  As you can tell from this post, the south of France has an enormous Italian influence.

This leg of lamb in front of Amy was bigger than her head.  That's gnocchi as a side-it was so good, and I didn't think I liked gnocchi

Roasted chicken and garlic potatoes.  

This is lemon meringue pie for dessert--it tasted as good as it looks!

7. Going on a bakery chase to compare pain au chocolate, baguettes, and various mini French desserts at six different bakeries that came highly recommended by some of the French tour guides we met at a perfume factory in Grasse. We passed about twelve other bakeries to get to these particular six, and two of them are within walking distance from my house. Man, I love France.

8. Shopping with Amy. Though I didn’t buy very much, knowing I have access to it all later, shopping at the little town markets was still really fun. Amy found a few things, but she didn’t go crazy either. It was fun to just experience it—we listened to the people, said “bonjour” and “merci” a lot, and we just walked around looking at purses, fresh flowers, jewelry, clothing, and other odds and ends. We probably bored Kaden to death, dragging him everywhere, but we sure had fun.

9. Getting a mini break from driving.  Amy drove my kids to school one morning so I could put on my makeup. She kept saying, “there must not be a single straight street in this whole country!” It’s true—there are so many round-abouts and winding roads everywhere.  Driving is so not my favorite thing here, and I have to do it about 1 ½ to 2 hours a day.

10. Dying over the small glass of orange juice I bought at a restaurant in Cannes that ended up costing 12 Euros (that’s about $16.00). I never would have ordered it knowing it cost that much, but now Amy can see I’m not lying when I say it’s expensive to live here! We have to be really careful not to blow our food budget each week. We almost never go out to eat, not even to McDonald's.

I was not ready for Amy to go home after the week was up. My next visitor (my other best friend) comes in November and that seems so far away. I didn’t realize how much I needed a visit until Amy left, and I am embarrassed to say I spent the rest of that day in bed reading a book and feeling sad, which isn’t like me. I got up to fix food for my kids and that’s about it. They cuddled with me a lot, and they were sad too. They think Kaden is their cousin and they kept asking me why they don’t get to see their cousins more. We love you, Amy and Kaden! Thanks for the fun times.



I’ll have three bidets, s'il vous plait

We are finally settled into our permanent home here in France, and we even received our household goods from the U.S.   It took me about a week to unpack, and I didn’t realize how sentimental I would get opening up boxes of our things, even inexpensive little stuffed animals that I knew my girls would be so happy to see again.  I was especially happy to find my cheese grater of all things.

This house is exactly how you would imagine a French villa in the French countryside, and I mean exactly.  It has an old-world feel and smells sort of musty unless you open the windows.  It is certainly not a big home based on American standards, but it is more spacious than I expected, and my kitchen has pretty much every modern convenience except a garbage disposal.  I’m embarrassed to say it’s better than I expected, mostly because I feel embarrassed to admit that a part of me thought France would be somewhat uncivilized compared to America—that I might see donkeys pulling vegetable carts, or experience lapses in electricity and running water (I blame these misconceptions on my mission to the D.R.).  Our landlord looked at me so funny when I asked him of it was safe to drink the water out of the tap.  He told me that of course it is safe.  The only really annoying thing about our living situation is that we have to drive our own garbage to dumpsters just down the street rather than take it just outside the house, but that’s no big deal anymore.  I’m used to it now.

This is a view of the house from the back with all the shutters closed

This home has real shutters that aren’t just for looks; I actually open them every day to let in light and use the windows to control the temperature rather than a thermostat.  We have grape leaves growing over most of the house.  The leaves are now turning red in the fall—so pretty.  The yard is big and has beautiful landscaping, which gives the home lots of privacy, a commodity the French seem to demand in even the smallest of homes. 

Here is the view out of Maisy’s bedroom into the front yard.  I love the terra cotta roof and majesty of the large shrubbery.

The furnishings inside the home are very modest, and almost all the furniture came with the house.  I think 99% of it came from IKEA.  One piece that is certainly not from IKEA is my favorite item in the home.  It’s a large antique wardrobe that Jason uses for his clothes.  It looks like it would transport all of us to Narnia if we got inside.  

A stereotype about Europeans that has turned out to be true so far is their love affair with the bidet.  We don’t use them much in the US, and I’ve certainly never owned a home with one bidet, let alone three.  That’s right, our house has three bidets!

Whoever built this home actually traded counter space and drawers for a bidet in the master bathroom.    Unreal. 

My girls took one look at the bidet when we moved in and said, “I love the little sink they put in for us, Mommy.  That will make it so easy to brush our teeth!”  So, yes, all three of my girls use the bidet in their upstairs bathroom as a sink to brush their teeth rather than for its intended purpose.