Music Television. Remember that?

It is cold and rainy here today so I am taking the opportunity to stay inside and fais le menage. (housecleaning)

I decided to flip on the TV to entertain the restless monkeys and low and behold, I found MTV playing actual music videos. In fact one after another- video after video after video. The kids sat blankly staring at the TV and yes, I know, I am a mom who exerts lots of TV restrictions but they were mesmerized. It then dawned on me that with the advent of reality TV - MTV at home pretty much doesn't play videos anymore so it was likely they had never seen a music video. Its all Cribs, Road Rules and other crap. So I explained to the kids what a music video was and shuffled off thankful that at least one place on earth knows that MTV stands for MUSIC TELEVISION!

How to beat the heat...

Paris Plages started up this week and seems like it will be a great fun and FREE thing for us to do here in Paris. Very little is free and frankly most everything here is crazy expensive. They have closed off this road that runs along the Seine and set up tons of activities for young and old alike. There are places where they have trucked in sand to make an actual Plage and build sandcastles, a place to play boules (petanque), a lending library complete with loungers to hang in and read, beach chairs right on the edge of the river, concerts, exercising, and loads more. To the right you can see at the bottom of the page a climbing structure for kids under 7. This is on our end of the Seine so it is an easy walk from our apartment.





Here is a view down the river of some of the festivities.

Hello? Beautiful!

They have misters set up so you can cool off when things get hot. I wish I grabbed a picture of this guy who was sunning himself along the banks in a lovely French Speedo and then got up - stood under the mister to cool off and returned to his seat. When there is no ocean around people just improvise with summer!

Buddy mixing it up with other kids.

And finally they have installed a pool right on the edge of the Seine with fabulous views. It is also on our end of the river so it is a 20-minute walk from our apartment. Lucky us! It is free to the public and has certain hours for certain ages. From 3:30 pm -6:30 pm it is reserved for kids under 10 and their guardians. There are however rules. Boys and men must be in speedos for hygeine purposes and everyone must be in a swimming cap. You walk through feet cleaning pools and a shower before you get to the swim deck.

But when a FREE city swimming pool looks as clean as this, one can hardly argue with the rules!

It was however freezing.

The US seems Fava-less. Why?

Have you ever seen fava beans so large? Yes those are favas next to regular sized baguettes! I happen to love fava beans but they are hard to find at home. I race to the markets in the spring time on my annual fava hunt and this year I could not find them at any of the groceries I frequent including Whole Foods but did manage to find them at Plum, a tiny produce only market in the South End of Boston. We happened to be in town that day and I found lovely fava beans which I prepared over salmon later that night. After watching my 6 year old son gobble them up like m&m's I decided to get more. Unfortunately not. After searching all the markets near us for the magical beans, I decided to make the hour long drive into Boston but had neglected to call Plum first and she didn't have any that day. It was too far to drive to be making regular runs into town for some veggies. So I gave up. Much to my delight, fava beans seem to be a staple of the French diet and are everywhere. They have them in all sizes, at every farmers market and in every grocery store. They even have them frozen in all the stores.

For those of you not familiar with the fava bean- it looks like green bean but is larger. Once you open the pod you will find that the beans are wrapped in a waxy coating which you need to remove before eating them. I blanch them for a minute or two in some boiling water and then rinse them under cold water. I then take a knife and make a tiny slice in the waxy shell and squeeze out the lucious green bean.

Here is a pile of shells along with one of the beans. If you blanche them for more than a few minutes it is likely you won't have to cook them more but if not, you'll want to toss them in for the last minute of the cooking process for whatever you are serving them with to finish cooking. They are easily overdone so be careful not to cook them too much or they'll get mealy. If they are underdone they are a bit bitter so it is advisable to taste one after blanching to see how much more time they need under the heat.

S'amuse bien....

There are a very many people who shy away from taking their small children to Europe because they think the kids won't appreciate being there. Yes, dragging little kids from museum to museum can get tiresome but there is so much in European cities for kids. I think they cater to children more than large US cities do and perhaps that is why American's have a hard time grasping that their little kids will actually have fun in Europe. The kids and I are hopscotching from playground to playground around Paris. The first one you see here is the one right by the market I like to shop at for fresh produce. It is a good little compromise we have. Everyone behaves while mom does the shopping and then we get a good long stretch at the playground.





















































This is the playground at the Luxembourg Gardens which you must pay to enter. It is 2.30 euros/kid and if you want to go in with your kids you need to pay the 1.60 euro fee for an adult. SJ and I stopped here earlier after a long walk around the 6th looking at a possible neighborhood for our September apartment. The apartment is less than a block from Le Jardin so if we get it - the kids will be veterans of this PG.























































So this contraption is a little zip wire of sorts for the kiddos. You can see above that you grab a poma seat thingy and drag it across the platform and then hop on for a swing ride around.










Then you get back in line and do it all over again!














When the playgrounds offer stuff like this and are in such good condition you don't mind paying for an all day ticket. If we end up living near here in September that all day ticket will be really worth its salt!

Vive la Vonage!

Our Vonage telephone account is hooked up and working! So if you have our home phone - feel free to call us - just please do the math on time zones!

(if you don't get us or our voicemail it could be that we've unplugged the Vonage box to charge our computers using the only converter we have so far. More are coming on Friday so we can power more than one thing at a time!)

Unexpected delights....

Wind and clouds followed those crazy storms last night. The sun briefly showed its warm rays but other than that this has been a chilly day for the heart of summer. To be honest, I prefer this kind of weather when I am not near the ocean and can easily find relief from the heat. However, on Monday when Paris Plages opens up we'll be wanting all that seasonably warm weather to heat things up for swimming and sunbathing along the Seine.

Not quite sure what to do today, I tossed a kids book on Monet in my bag and decided to head to the Tuileries to read to the kids before going to L'Orangerie to see the magnificently huge Waterlilies housed there. We walked down to La Bastille where Buddy informed me he was getting a blister and wanted to go home and change his shoes. So back we went and once he was donned in his crocs with the heal strap turned to the front we were good to go. Hopping on Line #1 we rode for about 5 stops until we came to the Tuileries station. Much to our (their) delight upon exiting the station we found that the Tulleries has a carnival from the end of June through the end of August. The kids went wild. It was complete with games, French carnival food and a huge ferris wheel.






















The nice thing about doing carnivals in foreign countries is that they have all the fun - but probably dangerous stuff - due to the lack of being sued for personal injury. The carnival was empty so we had the rides all to ourselves. The other nice thing is that the ride operators here don't try and wait for the ride to fill up before starting it. They had two kinds of bumper cars - one with the regular cars and one with bumper motorcycles. Or as I like to call them, bumper Vespas! The kids and I decided to do the regular kind and when the operator discovered that the kids were too short to be both buckled in AND reach the gas peddle he shrugged his shoulders in a way only the French can and said "d'accord". So the kids drove around totally unbuckled and no one was wearing a helmet. Oh, the dangers!!! Well, it was just me out there with them so I took care not to bump them - well not that much anyway. They thought it was incredible fun. We then took a ride on the ferris wheel to grab some incredible views of Paris and with all the dramatic weather we have had lately, the clouds made for some great pictures.


















































Nice zoom huh?!





































After the fun and games it was time to grab a sandwich jambon and a fanta to eat our dejeuner in the parc with the rest of the Frenchies on their lunch breaks. We read the book on Monet and then strolled down through the Tuileries away from the Louvre towards L'Orangerie. On our way we came upon a group - obvious from their office attire- still on their lunch break from work engaged in a heated game of boules. Lady in navy pants with cute sweater just bowled a show stopper and hit the little white ball with her first boule. You could tell the men were now taking the game very seriously and one by one got up there and failed miserably. Then second to last guy, with suit-pants tight enough only a euro guy could pull off, tossed his boule and knocked her out of the way. When the last office-mate tossed his first ball it was apparently close enough to require everyone to approach the mess of silver balls on the ground to examine who was winning. It was at this point that I noticed that all these well coiffed people had marched into the parc after a rainy night for this game of boules and their well healed heals were covered in the white mud of French parcs. Leaves and branches stuck to them but no one seemed to care. Realizing he had a chance to win this gig, l'homme returned to the line to bowl his second boule but the seriousness of the game at this point required him to put down his glass of rose and really focus. It was a failed attempt as was the last boule bowled by our lady in the cute sweater so alas, we think second-to-last-man-in-tight-pants won. Mind you, it was just about 2 pm. For those of you working in an office- do you get to take off mid-day for a glass of wine and a game with ALL your officemates? Ahhh the french workplace!

So off to L'Orangerie we went and had a wonderful time peeking at some of Monet's most impressive pieces along with lots of other impressionist works done by his compatriots.




















The prize for being such a good maman today shelling out euro after euro at the carnival, filling my children's brains with important information about 19th century artists, and buying ice cream as we walked back to the metro was a complaint-free stretch of shopping for shoes!

Comment on dit "hail" en francais?

n. grele f

vb. greler


Last night we got a sudden thunderstorm. Lighting flashing and wind picked up like a tornado out of no where. In an instant we were showered with hail the size of a large pea.

n: grelon m

This is a hailstone SJ grabbed out the window.