A crew was power washing the garage floors and we were directed Down instead of the usual Up.
Down, down we went ... "I didn't even know this was down here!" I said to Richie. He shook his head in agreement. We had to take four escalators to get to the gym, that's how far down we were.
As I was leaving aftr my workout, I quipped to the very nice young woman at the desk, "We had to park so far down (sympathetic head shake on her part) that we were next to three Chinese kids playing soccer." And she roared.
Once down the four escalators and in the car, I checked the cell phone for messages and the screen read -- for the first time ever -- "Searching for a signal..."
That's D O W N.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Hereuse Jour de Bastille!
This is the day that the Bastille, a fortress-prison, was stormed by the peasants in 1790.
Today there is a huge military parade and Sarkozy and the Missus will throw a garden party at the Palais de l'Elysee. All over the world, in fact, the French embassies will be doing similar garden parties.
I wanted to be sure that what I will be serving Sunday was authentic for a French pique-nique, so I checked. Various Website instructed as to what "proper" Bastille Day dishes should be and "they" are so wrong I nearly covered my hairline with my sneer.
Bouillabaisse and French Onion Soup are winter dishes. Crepes or a chocolate mousse would be acceptable, but barely. The only thing suggested that IS picnic food is ratatouille and here's how you make it. This is a very easy dish and much of the content is left up to the cook.
You'll need - one large egg plant or 3 or 4 small ones. Some people slice the egg plant, salt it and let it sit to take away the inherent bitterness. Other people don't. Your choice on how to treat the eggplant.
A medium onion -- red or white -- coarsely chopped.
Couple of zuccini, cut in rounds
Couple of cloves of garlic, minced
4 or 5 tomatoes - beefsteak for more juice; Romas for less
Seasonings - equal parts thyme, rosemary and basil
Get a big pot (I use a pasta pot) and pour in maybe 1/2 cup of olive oil. Because eggplant soaks up olive oil, be prepared to add more.
You want to put the vegetables that take the longest to cook in first, so -
eggplant first, followed by onion, chopped; zuccinis, garlic, minced and lastly 4 or 5 raw tomatoes, sliced or quartered, your choice. Toss in the seasonings.
Keep the burner gentle, put the lid on the pot and leave it alone for 20 or 30 minutes. What happens is that the vegetables release their liquids and they become the "juice" in this dish. It keeps well and is usually served at room temperature. Bon appetit!
Today there is a huge military parade and Sarkozy and the Missus will throw a garden party at the Palais de l'Elysee. All over the world, in fact, the French embassies will be doing similar garden parties.
I wanted to be sure that what I will be serving Sunday was authentic for a French pique-nique, so I checked. Various Website instructed as to what "proper" Bastille Day dishes should be and "they" are so wrong I nearly covered my hairline with my sneer.
Bouillabaisse and French Onion Soup are winter dishes. Crepes or a chocolate mousse would be acceptable, but barely. The only thing suggested that IS picnic food is ratatouille and here's how you make it. This is a very easy dish and much of the content is left up to the cook.
You'll need - one large egg plant or 3 or 4 small ones. Some people slice the egg plant, salt it and let it sit to take away the inherent bitterness. Other people don't. Your choice on how to treat the eggplant.
A medium onion -- red or white -- coarsely chopped.
Couple of zuccini, cut in rounds
Couple of cloves of garlic, minced
4 or 5 tomatoes - beefsteak for more juice; Romas for less
Seasonings - equal parts thyme, rosemary and basil
Get a big pot (I use a pasta pot) and pour in maybe 1/2 cup of olive oil. Because eggplant soaks up olive oil, be prepared to add more.
You want to put the vegetables that take the longest to cook in first, so -
eggplant first, followed by onion, chopped; zuccinis, garlic, minced and lastly 4 or 5 raw tomatoes, sliced or quartered, your choice. Toss in the seasonings.
Keep the burner gentle, put the lid on the pot and leave it alone for 20 or 30 minutes. What happens is that the vegetables release their liquids and they become the "juice" in this dish. It keeps well and is usually served at room temperature. Bon appetit!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Bragging!
Richie and I have a French godson named Fabien Gibert. His nickname is "Fob" like "Bob." He is an attractive young man (27) who inherited all of both his parents' considerable charm.
He is also a talented cartoonist and now works in Paris as a graphic designer and video photographer. To see his works, visit astunt.fr (the second photo, top row, is his grandfather, Rene.) More of his work is shown at astuntphotographer.com
Take a look at how the French do it -- Bastille Day is right around the corner!
He is also a talented cartoonist and now works in Paris as a graphic designer and video photographer. To see his works, visit astunt.fr (the second photo, top row, is his grandfather, Rene.) More of his work is shown at astuntphotographer.com
Take a look at how the French do it -- Bastille Day is right around the corner!
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Let's Have A Pique-nique!
Bastille Day is this Thursday, but I'll manage to restrain myself until Saturday to throw a French picnic. It won't be easy ...
One thing that will be different will be: No Firecrackers! I was in Aix-en-Provence for a Bastille Day and spent the afternoon and well into the night quivering in terror. Reason? French people laughingly lob cherry bombs at each other! Far from my gentle childhood when we had Roman candle duels.
So, what're we going to eat? Ah, let me tick off the delicacies... radishes with butter, "green peppers," assorted olives, a baguette, a stick of dried sausage -- just whack off a chunk with that knife on the bread board -- French potato salad, a pile of sliced French ham (supermarket delis usually carry it) a couple of Maille mustards, a Brie for a ham and cheese sandwich, maybe a Camembert, too -- fresh fruits and peach champagne to wash it all down! (Amour de Paris, Trader Joe's, $4.79/bottle)
"Green Peppers" is straight out of Provence and it's simplicity itself.
1 clove garlic, minced, crushed into 1/2 teas. sea salt. Douse this paste with a T of olive oil
1 green pepper, washed, cored and cut into thin strips. Put the strips in the "sauce," mix well and eat. I use a bowl with a tight-fitting lid to make this; it's the easiest way to coat all of the peppers. And because the salt makes the green peppers limp after awhile, make it and eat it; don't make it ahead of time and hold it back.
Jacques Pepin's Potato Salad
2 lbs. fingerling potatoes, boiled and drained. For fun, peel a strip lengthwise around each potato and then cut each potato in half horizontally. You want to have bite-sized pieces of potato at the end.
1/2 cup olive oil to saute:
2 green onions, cut in rings; white and green; 2 slices red onion, chopped and 1 clove of garlic, minched. When this is done, add it to the potatoes.
Put 1 1/2 T Dijon mustard into 1/3 cup white wine and mix. Add a grind or two of black pepper and slam it onto the potatoes.
Pepin's recipe also calls for addingt 2 or 3 T chopped chives and 2 T chopped fresh basil OR 2 T chopped fresh fennel, but I think that would make it "too herby" so I'm calling these ingredients "optional." Pardon, M. Pepin...mes apologies.
One thing that will be different will be: No Firecrackers! I was in Aix-en-Provence for a Bastille Day and spent the afternoon and well into the night quivering in terror. Reason? French people laughingly lob cherry bombs at each other! Far from my gentle childhood when we had Roman candle duels.
So, what're we going to eat? Ah, let me tick off the delicacies... radishes with butter, "green peppers," assorted olives, a baguette, a stick of dried sausage -- just whack off a chunk with that knife on the bread board -- French potato salad, a pile of sliced French ham (supermarket delis usually carry it) a couple of Maille mustards, a Brie for a ham and cheese sandwich, maybe a Camembert, too -- fresh fruits and peach champagne to wash it all down! (Amour de Paris, Trader Joe's, $4.79/bottle)
"Green Peppers" is straight out of Provence and it's simplicity itself.
1 clove garlic, minced, crushed into 1/2 teas. sea salt. Douse this paste with a T of olive oil
1 green pepper, washed, cored and cut into thin strips. Put the strips in the "sauce," mix well and eat. I use a bowl with a tight-fitting lid to make this; it's the easiest way to coat all of the peppers. And because the salt makes the green peppers limp after awhile, make it and eat it; don't make it ahead of time and hold it back.
Jacques Pepin's Potato Salad
2 lbs. fingerling potatoes, boiled and drained. For fun, peel a strip lengthwise around each potato and then cut each potato in half horizontally. You want to have bite-sized pieces of potato at the end.
1/2 cup olive oil to saute:
2 green onions, cut in rings; white and green; 2 slices red onion, chopped and 1 clove of garlic, minched. When this is done, add it to the potatoes.
Put 1 1/2 T Dijon mustard into 1/3 cup white wine and mix. Add a grind or two of black pepper and slam it onto the potatoes.
Pepin's recipe also calls for addingt 2 or 3 T chopped chives and 2 T chopped fresh basil OR 2 T chopped fresh fennel, but I think that would make it "too herby" so I'm calling these ingredients "optional." Pardon, M. Pepin...mes apologies.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Windowshopping
Richie is a great advocate of windowshopping. As he gleefully points out, "It's FREE!"
Many women and quite a few men like to dreamily house hunt. And we're not interested in some little beach shack, an abandoned hut or, God forbid, a fixer-upper! We want the good stuff!
And I found a terrific source for big time daydreams. Architectural Digest runs a monthly column called "On The Market" -- breezy, catch-y, no? They also run the properties up for bid on their Website -- archdigest.com, then inner search for "estates for sale."
Let's start small and move on up, shall we?
Palm Springs 5 bedrooms, 5.5 baths, 8,000 sq. ft. $13.9 million Cool factor! Parts of the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever" were shot here.
East Hampton 4 bedrooms, 4.5 baths 3,400 sq. ft. $38 million Cool factor! Dahlings, it's on Further Lane, THE address in the Hamptons
Oh, the Hamptons are so over for you? How about Blair Castle then, in Ayrshire, Scotland. It's 900 years old and has been completely restored. There are 18 bedrooms, 16 baths, 25,000 sq. ft., along with four farms, seven cottages, a carriage house with stables and a tennis court. 13 million! (What a deal! For $13 million you could have your own city!)
Countess Nathalie Volpi has moved on, but you can buy her old house. Located in Sabaudia, Italy (an hour south of Rome) this 11,370 sq. ft. place has seven bedrooms, five baths, a guesthouse, caretaker's quarters and stable. The land stretches from the Tyrrhenian Sea to Lake Paola. $28.1 million
The hell with it all, you say? Start from scratch with Ronde Island, Grenada. This undeveloped island covers 2,000 acres and costs $100 million. And that's just for the dirt -- you have to install electricity, gas, water, fi-os, sewage disposal and all of the rest. Based on the helicopter-shot photo, set aside a lot for trimming out the trees.
Makes the mortgage payment look downright friendly, doesn't it?
Many women and quite a few men like to dreamily house hunt. And we're not interested in some little beach shack, an abandoned hut or, God forbid, a fixer-upper! We want the good stuff!
And I found a terrific source for big time daydreams. Architectural Digest runs a monthly column called "On The Market" -- breezy, catch-y, no? They also run the properties up for bid on their Website -- archdigest.com, then inner search for "estates for sale."
Let's start small and move on up, shall we?
Palm Springs 5 bedrooms, 5.5 baths, 8,000 sq. ft. $13.9 million Cool factor! Parts of the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever" were shot here.
East Hampton 4 bedrooms, 4.5 baths 3,400 sq. ft. $38 million Cool factor! Dahlings, it's on Further Lane, THE address in the Hamptons
Oh, the Hamptons are so over for you? How about Blair Castle then, in Ayrshire, Scotland. It's 900 years old and has been completely restored. There are 18 bedrooms, 16 baths, 25,000 sq. ft., along with four farms, seven cottages, a carriage house with stables and a tennis court. 13 million! (What a deal! For $13 million you could have your own city!)
Countess Nathalie Volpi has moved on, but you can buy her old house. Located in Sabaudia, Italy (an hour south of Rome) this 11,370 sq. ft. place has seven bedrooms, five baths, a guesthouse, caretaker's quarters and stable. The land stretches from the Tyrrhenian Sea to Lake Paola. $28.1 million
The hell with it all, you say? Start from scratch with Ronde Island, Grenada. This undeveloped island covers 2,000 acres and costs $100 million. And that's just for the dirt -- you have to install electricity, gas, water, fi-os, sewage disposal and all of the rest. Based on the helicopter-shot photo, set aside a lot for trimming out the trees.
Makes the mortgage payment look downright friendly, doesn't it?
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Contradictions
"My Father at 100, a Memoir" by Ron Reagan Viking 228 pages $25.95
Reagan writes that his father loved being on stage, the cheering crowds, the public speeches, but was intensely private at home. He writes that his father would listen to a family member, respond and then vanish, back behind the shutters of his private world.
He wrote that he was the heart and soul of affability, but that he had almost no close friends in later life. I think that's fairly easy to figure out -- his peers were his age and he lived to be 93.
He was athletic and loved to ride horseback and swim, activities he willingly shared with his children.
Reagan goes on at length, describing how non-confrontational his father was, how he swallowed anger and avoided "discussions." Nancy Reagan in a Vanity Fair interview stated that "Ronnie never really got mad at me." What neither of them relates is a Secret Service agent's recounting of a time at the ranch when Reagan wanted Nancy to come riding with him and she preferred making phone calls to her girlfriends. Reagan waited patiently for awhile, then came charging into the house and ripped the phone right out of the wall. The agent said that it was hard to get another one up there quickly due to the isolation of the ranch.
In 2010, Ron, Jr. because curious about his Reagan grandparents and went exploring Tampico, Dixon, Rock River, the small towns in Illinois that his predecessors had inhabited.
He paints an unsurprising portrait of a man many of us felt we knew. Ronald Reagan was the same straight shooter in old age that he had been as a teenager.
Reagan writes that his father loved being on stage, the cheering crowds, the public speeches, but was intensely private at home. He writes that his father would listen to a family member, respond and then vanish, back behind the shutters of his private world.
He wrote that he was the heart and soul of affability, but that he had almost no close friends in later life. I think that's fairly easy to figure out -- his peers were his age and he lived to be 93.
He was athletic and loved to ride horseback and swim, activities he willingly shared with his children.
Reagan goes on at length, describing how non-confrontational his father was, how he swallowed anger and avoided "discussions." Nancy Reagan in a Vanity Fair interview stated that "Ronnie never really got mad at me." What neither of them relates is a Secret Service agent's recounting of a time at the ranch when Reagan wanted Nancy to come riding with him and she preferred making phone calls to her girlfriends. Reagan waited patiently for awhile, then came charging into the house and ripped the phone right out of the wall. The agent said that it was hard to get another one up there quickly due to the isolation of the ranch.
In 2010, Ron, Jr. because curious about his Reagan grandparents and went exploring Tampico, Dixon, Rock River, the small towns in Illinois that his predecessors had inhabited.
He paints an unsurprising portrait of a man many of us felt we knew. Ronald Reagan was the same straight shooter in old age that he had been as a teenager.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
She Didn't Always Live in the White House
Betty Ford had a good, long run. Her outspoken candor always intrigued the media and she was enormously popular -- at one point, 75 per cent of Americans liked her.
Because we knew of her at a certain time in her life, I was surprised to do some digging and discover other things about her that, while never "secret," were not addressed.
She was the youngest of three and had two older brothers. When she was 16, her father was found dead in the family garage. He'd been working on the car and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The garage doors were open, but he was an alcoholic and my imagination filled in the blanks. He died the day before his 60th birthday.
She married William Warren when she was 24. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic with, as a bonus, diabetes. Just after she decided to divorce him, he went into a (possibly alcohol-fueled) coma. It didn't kill him and she stayed with him for the two years it took him to recover. Then she divorced him.
She married Gerald Ford when she was 30 and they were married for the next 58 years, until his death age 93.
It could be argued that no matter how bad it may have been in the beginning, a life can wind up happily ever after.
Because we knew of her at a certain time in her life, I was surprised to do some digging and discover other things about her that, while never "secret," were not addressed.
She was the youngest of three and had two older brothers. When she was 16, her father was found dead in the family garage. He'd been working on the car and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The garage doors were open, but he was an alcoholic and my imagination filled in the blanks. He died the day before his 60th birthday.
She married William Warren when she was 24. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic with, as a bonus, diabetes. Just after she decided to divorce him, he went into a (possibly alcohol-fueled) coma. It didn't kill him and she stayed with him for the two years it took him to recover. Then she divorced him.
She married Gerald Ford when she was 30 and they were married for the next 58 years, until his death age 93.
It could be argued that no matter how bad it may have been in the beginning, a life can wind up happily ever after.
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