Thursday, August 14, 2008

Country Living



Things are going quite nicely in the countryside. Last night I invited G's family over for dinner and made a traditionally English dinner:

Deep fried breaded mushrooms with garlic mayonnaise

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Roast leg of lamb with mint sauce and honey cider gravy

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Apple crumble with ice cream

I was in the kitchen all afternoon, especially for the breaded mushrooms which took ages, but it was worth it because they all loved it! I was quite surprised because the lamb and mint sauce was quite sweet (the recipe I found had a honey cider gravy with it) and the French aren't usually big fans of the sucré/salé (sweet/savoury) combination.

Anyway, even G's grandmother was impressed, which was nice, because her cooking is simply fabulous. It took much less time to stack the dishwasher than in did to make the meal, but G's help in that area was greatly appreciated!

So today we're winding down and getting ready for our trip to Warsaw on Tuesday with my parents. We're going for five days and it should be really nice to discover a new city again. It won't be long when we get back before we're off again, this time to Stockholm. But that's a whole other smorgasbord.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the French delight at Alain Bernard's gold medal in swimming. Let's see if Laure Manoudou can match it....

Monday, August 11, 2008

Escape to the Country


I'm currently ensconced in my tower -literally. G and I are in Chablis for most of August, trying to set up our new home in the countryside. The "tower" is attached to his grandmother's house, but is still independent, so we have our privacy as well as being conveniently placed to go around for nourishing meals twice a day...

Chablis is extremely quiet during August, give or take a few passing tourists, but with a bit of sunshine and a few lengths in the pool it's really the relaxing time that I needed after a rather hectic spring and early summer in Paris, setting up my business and trying to hold down two jobs.

I'm still living in Paris too, but from now on will be spending much more time here in Chablis. Not only to see G a little more often (he's here Mon - Fri) but to try to establish a life for myself here too. Make friends, join some clubs, find a band maybe, and perhaps a diving centre.

For the moment it's nice just to relax and concentrate on decorating our house, while keeping my translation business afloat, which is much easier away from Paris.

Right, it's dinner time.