I grew up with music: playing it, singing it, listening to it. Music is closely intertwined with my religious life too; I have sung with church choirs as long as I can remember (including a stint as a paid singer at The Riverside Church in New York City for two years just after college). Music history itself is closely intertwined with religion (something I was able to weave into my college senior thesis). Bach (among others) would not have been quite the prolific composer (I’m guessing) without the need to provide settings for religious services on a regular basis. In moving to Nice, the question of how I would integrate into the musical life of the city for me was a question of when, not if.
I began by looking for a church. The first church I found was an Anglican Church, across the street from my real estate office on Rue Joffre. (A European History major who focused on the middle ages, 20th century history is not my forte, but at the suggestion of a friend, I had read Barbara Tuchman’s book on World War I – The Guns of August, so I actually have some familiarity with the names on the streets around here – lots of French WWI heroes recognized by street namings.) I attended the church one Sunday in September; it was a welcoming congregation, and the Anglican service was familiar and spoken completely in English (when I attended my brother’s church several weeks later on Worcester, Massachusetts, I considered again how small we are as a world family). Typical of Anglican services, there was a cantor for certain parts of the service; in this church there was no choir. Even the organist didn’t get too play too much; and the congregation was the typical English “don’t sing too loud” crowd. I was probably singing too loud.
There was a coffee hour after the service, in the adjoining building (apparently some wettish weather prevented the coffee hour from being held in the garden, as usual), and I went over to mingle with the crowd. There was coffee available, and some salty snacks, but there were also bottles of wine on the table near the coffee; for a Euro you could buy yourself a little after-church wine. How civilized!
The English are an institution here in Nice. I’ll let you look up the history, but the fact of the matter is that the English love the French Riviera (and that’s what they call it, not, like the locals, the Cote d’Azur), and lots of them not only vacation here but have settled here in their retirement years. The French can’t knock the English too much, because they do a lot to keep the economy humming, but what the French can’t stand is that the English make no attempt to integrate into France, with their biggest transgression being the fact that most of them don’t learn to speak the language. In a conversation with a Niçoise woman one afternoon waiting for a concert to begin (all in French!), she asked me if I was Anglais (English), to which I answered yes (taking it as whether or not I spoke English as a native), but later, when I disclosed that I was American, not from the UK, she had a whole different perspective on me. And she was particularly praiseworthy of my French conversational skills!
That coffee hour at the Anglican church was another small world experience: In introducing myself to a woman lingering there, I discovered she was a Presbyterian minister who was vacationing in Nice for the week; I ended up spending the next several minutes grilling her about the goings on at the General Assembly (Annual Meeting of Presbyterian clergy and elected officials) that had occurred the previous month. I made sure she knew about Western Presbyterian in DC before I let her go. (http://www.westernpresbyterian.org/).
I decided I would visit another church the following weekend. This time it would be a French church. If I wanted to integrate into French culture, attending an English church was not going to help. On my meanderings, I had found another church, which appeared to be Protestant, not far from the Anglican church (this one was on boulevard Victor Hugo – another familiar name). I had to go to my dictionary to look up a word; the sign on the door said “Culte – 10:15.” I wanted to make sure I didn’t assume anything: “culte” means “worship” in French. So the next weekend, at 10, I headed over to the Église Réformée. (http://www.eglise-reformee-nice.org/)
I was there a little early, but it didn’t look like too many people were in the congregation. But the group there clearly knew each other; and the guy who appeared to be giving everyone hellos was the same guy who showed up a few minutes later in the front of the church in a black robe and white collar.
It was indeed a Protestant church; the service order was familiar, even one of the hymns was familiar that morning (“Tous unis dans l’esprit” – “We are One in the Spirit”). I liked the pastor, who, happily for me, spoke very slowly – which went a long way to help me at least understand the words he was saying, even if I didn’t understand the whole conceptual idea he was trying to convey. Although there was no coffee hour after this service, I told myself that I would return to this church.
But this church also had no choir – just an organist who played not so much. Actually, that morning, it looked like the organist had rolled out of bed after a late night to play this morning gig – he was a 20-something from the back of him, with hair that hadn’t seen a brush for a day at least. The post-sermon meditational music he played that morning was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I smiled.
But if there was no choir, it did not mean that this church did not support the musical arts. That morning I found on one of the tables in the back of the church a brochure for a series of musical programs going on in the church during the year ahead. Suddenly the congregation was feeling a little more like home.
I missed church at the Église Réformée for a few weeks, due to my travels back to the States and a Sunday morning spent sleeping quite late, recovering from my trip to the States. In the interim, I attended a mass at a downtown Catholic church (see previous posting, La Vie en Rose), and found, like I had around the world, that the Catholic service is fairly predictive, whatever language is spoken. I like it at times, but not for weekly fare.
In the interim, I had started looking in the local paper, Nice-Matin (“matin” is French for “morning”), for musical events in the city. I discovered that they published a “cultural calendar” on Wednesdays, so two weeks ago I purchased the paper on Wednesday (I still can’t get myself to by the paper every day here, it seems so expensive at 85 cents [euro] – although I realized when I was in NYC a few weeks ago that even the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal when purchased on the street are $1 or more.)
In the newspaper, I found a free concert to be performed that Saturday by the local professional orchestra (Orchestra de Cannes Provence Alpes Maritime Cote D’Azur – known to locals as ORPACA – http://www.orchestre-cannes.com/) at the Nice Conservatory (http://www.cnr-nice.org/). I had heard ORPACA with Priscilla in another free concert in a small town, Le Cannet, just north of Cannes a week or so earlier. They were a group worth going to hear. (The performance we had heard of Ravel’s Piano Concerto even prompted Priscilla to get the CD.) I called Christiane and invited her to join me at the concert. That weekend was also the monthly concert to be given in the series at the Église Réformée on Sunday afternoon. I had a weekend ahead full of free concerts!
The Saturday concert was pretty impressive. The conductor of ORPACA had come up with the idea twenty years ago of giving Conservatory students the opportunity to play with the professional orchestra, and over the years, many successful students had gone through that experience. The concert featured four of the program graduates, and they were all talented and impressive in their concerto solos.
The next afternoon, at the church, I heard a small Niçoise chamber group. (Beethoven, Serenade in D Major op. 25; Schubert, String Trio in B flat major, D.581 and Mozart, Quartet for flute and strings in D Major, K. 285) The fun thing was to see that the cellist I’d heard do a solo the previous evening was a member of the quartet. I already felt like I knew the Niçoise music community!
While at the Conservatory on Saturday afternoon (we had gotten to the concert hall quite early, given that the concert was free, and wanting to make sure we got a good seat), I had picked up the flyer with all the other concerts going on at the Conservatory in the year ahead. I found that they had Monday early evening series, and the next concert would be the Monday upcoming. So on Monday late afternoon, I walked up to the Conservatory (deciding that walking was more efficient and more economical than taking the bus), and had the opportunity to hear some of the principal players in ORPACA (including the conductor, a flutist) perform some fairly eclectic chamber music. The program featured a harpist, and some interesting and captivating pieces by Ravel and others. (Debussy, Sonate for flute, viola and harp; Faure, Berceuse op. 56 for violin and harp)
So, although at this point I had not yet found a choir, I had certainly found music in Nice!
The season is in full swing, and there continue to be plenty of concert offerings for me to take advantage of. This weekend was the Ensemble Baroque de Nice (http://www.ensemblebaroquedenice.org/) season-opening concerts; I heard them perform Bach’s Orchestral Suites on Sunday afternoon in the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate in old Nice. I was a little disappointed to be sitting mid-nave in the cathedral; the result was similar as for those who sit mid-nave in Washington’s National Cathedral; lots of notes were left in the rafters. But the group was very good. I left that concert and walked by the Église Réformée, to see if the concert advertised for 18h was still in progress. The Alliance des Lyres, had just begun the second half of the concert; so I got to hear Rossini’s Stabat Mater performed by a quartet of absolutely wonderful soloists (and supported by a lackadaisical chorus, unfortunately).
Just so you don’t think I’m a complete classical music nerd, Priscilla took me to hear a jazz quartet at the local community music center (right next to the Conservatory) on Friday night. The quartet featured Hadrien Feraud , a 24 year old whiz kid bass guitarist who has already played with all the big names around here, apparently. He had three very competent and talented kids (they all looked so young) play with him (drums, lead guitar and keyboards, respectively), and P and I left the concert believers in the kid’s talent.
This coming weekend, the City is sponsoring an entire 3-day weekend (on All Saints Weekend, no less, which is a national holiday in France, the Catholic country that it is) of free concerts at the city’s Acropolis – a large convention center. ORPACA, the Ensemble Baroque de Nice, and a few other orchestras from neighboring areas (including Monaco) will be featured.
As a former arts administrator, I can’t help but note the mechanics of arts presenting and administration I have noticed here. As you may know or be aware, the French state basically supports the arts. The Conseil Générale des Alpes-Maritimes (the region of which Nice is the largest city) gets lots of publicity for making most of the concerts happen (I think every concert I have heard so far was supported by the CG). The byproduct is either that the concert is free, or there is a nominal charge. Amazingly, admission charges to the concerts I have attended (so far, only in churches and community centers) have never exceeded 14 Euros. Barely 20 dollars! As the per-concert price of choral concerts has headed toward $30 in the States, I’m happy to pay to attend concerts here. But lots of them are just free. [The alternative is the “big name” concert promoter-organized concerts that one can attend in Monaco or Cannes for big ticket prices – pop music icons and bands and famous entertainers…]
So, will I find a chorus to join? I read a notice in the newspaper Nice-Matin this week that the Catholic church around the corner from me is looking for “new” voices to join their choir to do special services each month. I think I may just join them.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Blueberries
Myrtilles. I found them today in Picards, the supermarket that sells ONLY frozen food. That’s it. (Frozen food in French is “surgeles” – sur – on; gelés – iced, basically.*) The store is a little surreal, it’s a fairly large room whose dominant color is white, lined with waist-high, open-from-the-top deep freezers in which you can find any kind of frozen food possible. It’s got the feel of a room for the insane (but no rubber walls), or a factory where they assemble microcomputers – all anaesthetized and sterile. Until you look into the glass-covered freezers, all you see is black and white placards perched on the tops of the freezers with the names and prices of the contents therein. Vegetables, fish, chicken, beef, pasta, pizzas, complete dinners, pastry desserts, fruit, ice cream, you name it, if it’s food that can be frozen, it’s here.
I was looking for blueberries. Ever since having them in New York City a few weeks ago, I had looked for them in fruit stands and in supermarkets here. But the berries that were so prolific and cheap on the streets of New York were nowhere to be found here in Nice. Finally, I thought, perhaps, frozen. After church this morning, I wandered around the city streets – it was quiet, as most stores are closed on Sunday mornings, but there are some stores that open in the morning (and then close for the afternoon). And I saw a Picards on my walk that was open. I’d heard about the store from my French tutor in the States, but had not darkened their doors since my arrival here. But this morning I went inside.
And there they were. In among the framboises (raspberries), mangones (mangos), et cerises (cherries) were Myrtilles sauvage – blueberries (handily identified by the blueberries on the plastic bag!). Sauvages implies that they are wild (and apparently from Sweden) but that sounds better than cultivated blueberries to me. Now I can have blueberries on my yogurt again!
P.S. Myrtilles went on sale this week at Picard’s – bonanza!
*Priscilla, my professional translater, tells me that a better translation of surgeles is under ice, or in deep freeze. I need a better dictionary, she tells me!
I was looking for blueberries. Ever since having them in New York City a few weeks ago, I had looked for them in fruit stands and in supermarkets here. But the berries that were so prolific and cheap on the streets of New York were nowhere to be found here in Nice. Finally, I thought, perhaps, frozen. After church this morning, I wandered around the city streets – it was quiet, as most stores are closed on Sunday mornings, but there are some stores that open in the morning (and then close for the afternoon). And I saw a Picards on my walk that was open. I’d heard about the store from my French tutor in the States, but had not darkened their doors since my arrival here. But this morning I went inside.
And there they were. In among the framboises (raspberries), mangones (mangos), et cerises (cherries) were Myrtilles sauvage – blueberries (handily identified by the blueberries on the plastic bag!). Sauvages implies that they are wild (and apparently from Sweden) but that sounds better than cultivated blueberries to me. Now I can have blueberries on my yogurt again!
P.S. Myrtilles went on sale this week at Picard’s – bonanza!
*Priscilla, my professional translater, tells me that a better translation of surgeles is under ice, or in deep freeze. I need a better dictionary, she tells me!
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Brown Sugar
Brown sugar, a staple in most American kitchens, is not, I discovered this week, a staple in French kitchens. Searching supermarkets for what is known as sucre Vergeoise blonde, a key ingredient in my famous chocolate chip cookies, therefore this week became my own quest for the culinary Holy Grail.
It all began when I visited Corsica last month with Priscilla. During our week there, we drove to the town of Conte, to visit with one of her Alte Voce singer friends, Rosanna (See article Alte Voce). Rosanna is a lovely, warm, engaging and vibrant woman, and during our visit, I learned that she is also a very good baker. She offered us samples of her cookies while we were there, and I complemented her, letting her know that I was a cookie baker too. She became quite animated, and asked for a cookie recipe from me. She brought me a piece of paper, and I instinctively wrote down the recipe that most of us grew up knowing as Tollhouse Cookies, the recipe listed on the back of a bag of Nestle’s Semi-sweet Chocolate Morsels. [In the last decade or so, myriad varieties of so-called chocolate chips have become available, as the major confectioners’ marketing departments search for additional sales (e.g., peanut butter, chocolate mint, dark chocolate, white chocolate, minis, etc.), but the original ones from my childhood were the semi-sweet, melt-in-your-mouth-gooey-chocolate pieces in cookies hot from the oven, from the yellow Nestle’s bag.]
I wrote down the chocolate chip cookie recipe from memory (I have submitted my own version of the recipe to more than one cookbook compilation over the years, with my own twist of substituting Grand Marnier for vanilla extract), and gave the paper back to Rosanna. She started reading it and I realized it needed to be in French, of course (duh), and then seconds later, realized it had to be in metric measurements if she was going to be able to use it. Hmm, not in my repertoire, the measurements, that is. Rosanna was a little deflated, but we went into her kitchen to see if she had a measuring cup that had ounces by any chance (hard to imagine, however) marked on it. Her measuring cup was an interesting beaker-like plastic cone with markings on it – but not in ounces, but milliliters. Back in her sitting room, I was able however, to annotate the recipe with the names of the ingredients in French – most of them. By the time we were getting ready to leave, I was promising (apparently this happened between Priscilla and Rosanna in French around me, I didn’t actually understand the promise at the time) to send my hostess the complete recipe in French with understandable measures.
Before we left, I asked Rosanna for one of her cookie recipes. She proudly whipped out a piece of paper and wrote down six ingredients. Et viola! She described, with some prompting, what was to be done with the ingredients, so I made a few notations on the piece of paper. We talked about the temperature of the oven (“the highest heat possible” – another lesson learned about French appliances; ovens are not as sophisticated as American ovens; the temperature dial on my oven here is not in degrees, but in digits, 1 – 9, you figure it out!), and upon learning that I had an electric oven, Rosanna declared, “It is not possible to make these cookies in an electric oven. I have tried.” (Spoken in French, I believe.) But such a declaration was not to be a deterrent to my own interest in trying to recreate her cookies!
A few days after we got back to the mainland, Priscilla emailed me a link to a website that had American/European conversions for kilos, pounds, ounces, etc. “For your recipe for Rosanna” she wrote. I looked at the site, and tried to make conversions between cups and kilos, but found it a little frustrating. I took off for my Paris trip that week, so I forgot all about the recipe for awhile. Then a week or so ago, before I left on my trip to the States, Priscilla let me know that while she was with the Alte Voce group the previous weekend, she had heard Rosanna tell someone that she was going to get an American cookie recipe from me. Whoops! I hadn’t realized I was on the hook. I mobilized into action.
One of my purchases while I was in the States was a box of brownie mix, as my friend Erick had expressed a wish for brownies when I asked if there was anything I could bring him back from my visit. Having bought the mix, though, I realized that I needed a cup measure, and was pretty sure that I would not find one of these in Nice. I consulted with my mom, who found among her “things” in the house, a nest of cup measures (one-quarter, one-third, one-half, one), which was helpful, but we also talked about finding a cup measure with liters and ounces. She was sure she could find one in the Dollar Store, she told me. So, on my last day in Amherst, while I was finishing my packing to head back to Nice, Mom headed out on her quest to hunt down a cup measure. She returned victorious (“the last one there!”) with a plastic cup-and-a-half measure, with milliliters listed on the other side. Stage One, appropriate utensils, (partially) completed.
A few days later back in Nice, now equipped with a way to measure ingredients, I went back to my recipe with the earlier calculations with the measurement conversions. But in looking at the calculations (1 gram = .035 ounces), I realized that simply converting ¾ cup of sugar to grams was going to come out with a pretty weird number. It became evident to me that I would have to experiment with ratios, using the European measures, rather than doing a strict conversion. This began to make more sense once I started shopping for ingredients. A cup of butter is easy to figure out in the States, because butter is sold by the pound, and the tablespoon measurements are frequently listed on the side of the bar of butter (and most bars of butter are ½ cup). But butter in French supermarkets is sold by the gram, typically 250 grams, and not in bars, and not carrying any notation showing 100 or 125 grams for easy measuring.
But figuring butter was my base, and that 250 grams was more or less a cup, and that the sugar ratio in my recipe was 1 to 1.5, I started coming up with my recipe in grams. The new “European” cookie recipe looks like this:
Traditional = European
¾ cup white sugar = 175 grams sucre blanc
¾ cup brown sugar = 175 grams sucre Vergeoise blond
1 cup butter = 250 grams beurre
2 eggs = 2 oeufs
1 tsp. vanilla extraact = 1 cuillère à café vanille (Arȏme Naturel de Vanille liquide par Vahiné)
2 ¼ cups flour = 550 grams blé
1 tsp. baking soda = 1 pc. levure chimique
½ tsp. salt = ½ cuillère à café sel
1 cup chocolate chips = 2 pc. Pépites Créatives (chocolat pour pâtes à gâteaux) (2 x 100 g)
The unfamiliar sounding ingredient in this list was the “levure chimique.” I would not have known what exactly to look for with regards to a baking soda substitute, because baking soda does not exist on French store shelves. But the recipe Rosanna gave me had “lev. Chimique” listed, and I was able to find the packets of this leavening agent (really, not quite sure what it is, but presumably what we call baking powder and/or soda) in my local supermarkets. Stage Two, workable recipe, complete.
So, I was ready to experiment making cookies with my “new” measurements. I headed out to buy ingredients. (Actually, the ingredient search was coincident with my figuring out measurements, but I am telling the story serially here.) As I have written, shopping in supermarkets is a pleasurable pastime for me, and I can spend hours (literally) shopping in French supermarkets these days – actually “shopping” is not the right word, “cruising aisles and looking at items on the shelves” is more like what I do. But given my experience cruising aisles, I knew my ingredient shopping would require a dictionary in hand. Experience had shown that buying something without knowing exactly what the wording on the label says could result in a surprise (if I had known that volaille was another word for poultry, I would not have bought that particular box of tabouli mix, for example).
White sugar, flour, butter, even the levure chimique, were not hard to find in my local supermarkets. What I became stumped with was finding what I knew to be brown sugar. I went to two different stores, without success, and then consulted with my friend Christiane, who said, of course, they must have it in the store. She accompanied me to a Monoprix on the main drag in Nice, and we found the sugar shelves, and of course, there were lots of “brown” sugar packages, including sugar in cubes or pourable sugar packaging. They call it “sucre de canne.” But I told Christiane what I was looking for was not on the shelf. She was puzzled; I described to her a moist brown sugar that could be packed into a cup measure. She said she didn’t know what this was. Good, I wasn’t going crazy.
That night on the phone with Priscilla, I bemoaned my failed attempts to find brown sugar. “No, No, they do have it here!” she said animatedly. “I saw it in my local grocery here the other day.” But she agreed that this was not an item that was mainstream in French cooking. Then she gave me, in her own Priscilla way, the exact name of the thing I should be looking for: Beghin Say Sucre Vergeoise Blond, or Brun. So equipped with a name, I headed out to the local Italian Cocci Market around the corner from me the next morning. Et violà, sitting there looking at me from the shelves was a small kilo package of sucre Vergeoise Blond (different producer, but same product). Success! Now I could make real American cookies. Stage Three, ingredients assembled, complete.
A quick word about the chocolate chips. I now live in a country where there are almost full aisles of chocolate in just about any food store. They love real chocolate here; America makes feeble attempts at chocolate products in comparison (though things are getting much better than they used to be. Trader Joes has helped revolutionize chocolate bar choices. Bringing chocolate back from Europe is no longer the first request I get from family). That being said, given that chocolate chip cookies, and cookies, basically, are not in high demand here in the land of the baguette and the croissant, I had only one choice for chocolate chips in the supermarket. My recipe above is specific, simply because those are the only chips I found, in every single store I visited. In my cruising of the baking aisles, I did find varieties of instant chocolate chip cookie mix, though, and I actually bought a bag of it to try and see what the French think of as chocolate chip cookies. The comparison between my American cookies and the French wannabes was striking – the brown sugar difference, Priscilla and I decided.
The purchase of the French cookie mix, while a culinary disappointment, was fortuitous, as the instructions on the back were very helpful as I was trying to write instructions in French for Rosanna. French phrases for cooking are not exactly intuitive. Here’s how instructions for my cookies turned out:
Prechauffez votre four th. 9 (200° C)
Dans un saladier, mélangez de beurre mou avec de sucre blanc et blonde. Ajoutez des oeufs et vanille et fouettez à nouveau.
Mélangez tous les ingrédients sec (farine, lev. Chimique, sel) et ajoutez dans le saladier avec les autres ingrédients.
Ajoutez finalement de pepites de chocolat et mélangez sans trop pétrir.
Avec deux cuillères à café, laissez tomber des petits boules en lignes sur une plaque à patisserie beurrée, bien espacées.
Faites cuire 10-12 minutes jusqu à ce que les cookies soient blonds (un petit marron, aussi bien). Une fois cuits, laisses-les tiédir avant de les décoller.
I was ready to bake. Almost. Although my furnished apartment’s kitchen is a pasta lover’s paradise (courtesy of the Italian owner – lots of big pots for cooking pasta), I found it woefully underprepared for a baker. So, during my trip to Carrefour to purchase my comforter and bedding last week, I also went in search of cookie baking fundamentals: baking sheet, spatula, and a strong wooden spoon for mixing. These were fairly easy to find in the aisle with kitchen accessories. I also noted on the shelves nearby the baking paper that I was pretty sure the French used (and shown on the side of the box) for baking in the oven. This practice from the old World has definitely left the American kitchen. I decided the good old American cookie sheet greased with butter would do for me. Stage One, appropriate utensils, complete (as far as I knew at the time!)
The ready-made mix purchased also at Carrefour was my first cookie effort. Using my new utensils, I was able to produce the chocolate chip cookies as instructed on the back of the package. They looked OK, the oven worked fairly well. I was ready to make my own recipe.
Actually, at this point, I made Rosanna’s cookies. Here’s what she wrote down that day to give me:
1 kilo Farine
300 g Sucre
250 cl hile
250 cl vin blanc
2 p. levure chimique
1 p pincée sel
I had found all her ingredients easily, and set about making the dough. Realizing that a kilo was a lot of flour, I planned to cut the recipe in half. But I started to pour out the liquids in the full measures (ml incidently, not cl, as she wrote down) by mistake, so I plunged ahead with the full recipe. And yes, it was a lot of flour. As a baker with experience, I also realized that the wooden spoon was not going to be helpful, that I would have to knead the flour (a total of 9 cups!) into the mixture. Kneading the cookie dough reminded me of baking gingerbread at Christmastime; one of my more pleasurable times in the kitchen, but also lengthy – kneading 9 cups of flour into a sticky ball of molasses and brown sugar takes time! And Rosanna’s recipe was just the same, although the dough was not so sticky (no brown sugar in her recipe).
My notes from my conversation with Rosanna about the cookie making was that one should roll out the cookies and sprinkle with sugar before baking. At this point, I realized that I did not have all the utensils I needed; I had not purchased a rolling pin for rolling out cookies. Hmm. It was McGyver time; time to improvise. I took a glass (luckily I had one thick enough not to break on me), and to the best of my ability, “rolled” out the dough to ¼ inch thickness or so, cutting the dough into squares and then putting them on a baking sheet. At this point, I saw the value of the baking paper I had rejected in the store, as I sprinkled sugar on the cookies and watched the crystals drop between the cookies onto the baking sheet. This would make a messy cleanup once the sugar baked on the sheet, I thought. In my next batch, I sugared the cookies before placing them on the sheet.
While not exactly pretty, and while missing that last cup of flour (I got tired of kneading!), the cookies turned out tasty. Like shortbread, and very enjoyable with jam or jelly and a cup of hot coffee or tea. Stage Four, Rosanna’s Canistrelli Corsican Cookies, complete.
Finally, it was time to make Margarita’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. I decided to make a half recipe – this time I knew the measurements well enough! – as I now had two pots full of cookies sitting on my refrigerator of which I was not looking forward to being the sole consumer. Knowing the recipe like the back of my hand, and having all the ingredients I needed, the process was quick and easy. The oven cooperated, the cookies came out browned and sugary and tasting like they should. I am feeling confident that with my French recipe, Rosanna can do the same. Here’s hoping!
* * *
Rosanna’s Canistrelli cookie recipe (in English, with American measurements)
9 cups flour
1 ½ cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white wine
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp. salt
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, with half the flour. Turn mix onto board to knead in remaining flour. Roll out dough in ¼ inch thickness, cut into squares and put on greased cookie sheet.
Cook in hot (375-400 degree F) oven for 10-15 minutes.
It all began when I visited Corsica last month with Priscilla. During our week there, we drove to the town of Conte, to visit with one of her Alte Voce singer friends, Rosanna (See article Alte Voce). Rosanna is a lovely, warm, engaging and vibrant woman, and during our visit, I learned that she is also a very good baker. She offered us samples of her cookies while we were there, and I complemented her, letting her know that I was a cookie baker too. She became quite animated, and asked for a cookie recipe from me. She brought me a piece of paper, and I instinctively wrote down the recipe that most of us grew up knowing as Tollhouse Cookies, the recipe listed on the back of a bag of Nestle’s Semi-sweet Chocolate Morsels. [In the last decade or so, myriad varieties of so-called chocolate chips have become available, as the major confectioners’ marketing departments search for additional sales (e.g., peanut butter, chocolate mint, dark chocolate, white chocolate, minis, etc.), but the original ones from my childhood were the semi-sweet, melt-in-your-mouth-gooey-chocolate pieces in cookies hot from the oven, from the yellow Nestle’s bag.]
I wrote down the chocolate chip cookie recipe from memory (I have submitted my own version of the recipe to more than one cookbook compilation over the years, with my own twist of substituting Grand Marnier for vanilla extract), and gave the paper back to Rosanna. She started reading it and I realized it needed to be in French, of course (duh), and then seconds later, realized it had to be in metric measurements if she was going to be able to use it. Hmm, not in my repertoire, the measurements, that is. Rosanna was a little deflated, but we went into her kitchen to see if she had a measuring cup that had ounces by any chance (hard to imagine, however) marked on it. Her measuring cup was an interesting beaker-like plastic cone with markings on it – but not in ounces, but milliliters. Back in her sitting room, I was able however, to annotate the recipe with the names of the ingredients in French – most of them. By the time we were getting ready to leave, I was promising (apparently this happened between Priscilla and Rosanna in French around me, I didn’t actually understand the promise at the time) to send my hostess the complete recipe in French with understandable measures.
Before we left, I asked Rosanna for one of her cookie recipes. She proudly whipped out a piece of paper and wrote down six ingredients. Et viola! She described, with some prompting, what was to be done with the ingredients, so I made a few notations on the piece of paper. We talked about the temperature of the oven (“the highest heat possible” – another lesson learned about French appliances; ovens are not as sophisticated as American ovens; the temperature dial on my oven here is not in degrees, but in digits, 1 – 9, you figure it out!), and upon learning that I had an electric oven, Rosanna declared, “It is not possible to make these cookies in an electric oven. I have tried.” (Spoken in French, I believe.) But such a declaration was not to be a deterrent to my own interest in trying to recreate her cookies!
A few days after we got back to the mainland, Priscilla emailed me a link to a website that had American/European conversions for kilos, pounds, ounces, etc. “For your recipe for Rosanna” she wrote. I looked at the site, and tried to make conversions between cups and kilos, but found it a little frustrating. I took off for my Paris trip that week, so I forgot all about the recipe for awhile. Then a week or so ago, before I left on my trip to the States, Priscilla let me know that while she was with the Alte Voce group the previous weekend, she had heard Rosanna tell someone that she was going to get an American cookie recipe from me. Whoops! I hadn’t realized I was on the hook. I mobilized into action.
One of my purchases while I was in the States was a box of brownie mix, as my friend Erick had expressed a wish for brownies when I asked if there was anything I could bring him back from my visit. Having bought the mix, though, I realized that I needed a cup measure, and was pretty sure that I would not find one of these in Nice. I consulted with my mom, who found among her “things” in the house, a nest of cup measures (one-quarter, one-third, one-half, one), which was helpful, but we also talked about finding a cup measure with liters and ounces. She was sure she could find one in the Dollar Store, she told me. So, on my last day in Amherst, while I was finishing my packing to head back to Nice, Mom headed out on her quest to hunt down a cup measure. She returned victorious (“the last one there!”) with a plastic cup-and-a-half measure, with milliliters listed on the other side. Stage One, appropriate utensils, (partially) completed.
A few days later back in Nice, now equipped with a way to measure ingredients, I went back to my recipe with the earlier calculations with the measurement conversions. But in looking at the calculations (1 gram = .035 ounces), I realized that simply converting ¾ cup of sugar to grams was going to come out with a pretty weird number. It became evident to me that I would have to experiment with ratios, using the European measures, rather than doing a strict conversion. This began to make more sense once I started shopping for ingredients. A cup of butter is easy to figure out in the States, because butter is sold by the pound, and the tablespoon measurements are frequently listed on the side of the bar of butter (and most bars of butter are ½ cup). But butter in French supermarkets is sold by the gram, typically 250 grams, and not in bars, and not carrying any notation showing 100 or 125 grams for easy measuring.
But figuring butter was my base, and that 250 grams was more or less a cup, and that the sugar ratio in my recipe was 1 to 1.5, I started coming up with my recipe in grams. The new “European” cookie recipe looks like this:
Traditional = European
¾ cup white sugar = 175 grams sucre blanc
¾ cup brown sugar = 175 grams sucre Vergeoise blond
1 cup butter = 250 grams beurre
2 eggs = 2 oeufs
1 tsp. vanilla extraact = 1 cuillère à café vanille (Arȏme Naturel de Vanille liquide par Vahiné)
2 ¼ cups flour = 550 grams blé
1 tsp. baking soda = 1 pc. levure chimique
½ tsp. salt = ½ cuillère à café sel
1 cup chocolate chips = 2 pc. Pépites Créatives (chocolat pour pâtes à gâteaux) (2 x 100 g)
The unfamiliar sounding ingredient in this list was the “levure chimique.” I would not have known what exactly to look for with regards to a baking soda substitute, because baking soda does not exist on French store shelves. But the recipe Rosanna gave me had “lev. Chimique” listed, and I was able to find the packets of this leavening agent (really, not quite sure what it is, but presumably what we call baking powder and/or soda) in my local supermarkets. Stage Two, workable recipe, complete.
So, I was ready to experiment making cookies with my “new” measurements. I headed out to buy ingredients. (Actually, the ingredient search was coincident with my figuring out measurements, but I am telling the story serially here.) As I have written, shopping in supermarkets is a pleasurable pastime for me, and I can spend hours (literally) shopping in French supermarkets these days – actually “shopping” is not the right word, “cruising aisles and looking at items on the shelves” is more like what I do. But given my experience cruising aisles, I knew my ingredient shopping would require a dictionary in hand. Experience had shown that buying something without knowing exactly what the wording on the label says could result in a surprise (if I had known that volaille was another word for poultry, I would not have bought that particular box of tabouli mix, for example).
White sugar, flour, butter, even the levure chimique, were not hard to find in my local supermarkets. What I became stumped with was finding what I knew to be brown sugar. I went to two different stores, without success, and then consulted with my friend Christiane, who said, of course, they must have it in the store. She accompanied me to a Monoprix on the main drag in Nice, and we found the sugar shelves, and of course, there were lots of “brown” sugar packages, including sugar in cubes or pourable sugar packaging. They call it “sucre de canne.” But I told Christiane what I was looking for was not on the shelf. She was puzzled; I described to her a moist brown sugar that could be packed into a cup measure. She said she didn’t know what this was. Good, I wasn’t going crazy.
That night on the phone with Priscilla, I bemoaned my failed attempts to find brown sugar. “No, No, they do have it here!” she said animatedly. “I saw it in my local grocery here the other day.” But she agreed that this was not an item that was mainstream in French cooking. Then she gave me, in her own Priscilla way, the exact name of the thing I should be looking for: Beghin Say Sucre Vergeoise Blond, or Brun. So equipped with a name, I headed out to the local Italian Cocci Market around the corner from me the next morning. Et violà, sitting there looking at me from the shelves was a small kilo package of sucre Vergeoise Blond (different producer, but same product). Success! Now I could make real American cookies. Stage Three, ingredients assembled, complete.
A quick word about the chocolate chips. I now live in a country where there are almost full aisles of chocolate in just about any food store. They love real chocolate here; America makes feeble attempts at chocolate products in comparison (though things are getting much better than they used to be. Trader Joes has helped revolutionize chocolate bar choices. Bringing chocolate back from Europe is no longer the first request I get from family). That being said, given that chocolate chip cookies, and cookies, basically, are not in high demand here in the land of the baguette and the croissant, I had only one choice for chocolate chips in the supermarket. My recipe above is specific, simply because those are the only chips I found, in every single store I visited. In my cruising of the baking aisles, I did find varieties of instant chocolate chip cookie mix, though, and I actually bought a bag of it to try and see what the French think of as chocolate chip cookies. The comparison between my American cookies and the French wannabes was striking – the brown sugar difference, Priscilla and I decided.
The purchase of the French cookie mix, while a culinary disappointment, was fortuitous, as the instructions on the back were very helpful as I was trying to write instructions in French for Rosanna. French phrases for cooking are not exactly intuitive. Here’s how instructions for my cookies turned out:
Prechauffez votre four th. 9 (200° C)
Dans un saladier, mélangez de beurre mou avec de sucre blanc et blonde. Ajoutez des oeufs et vanille et fouettez à nouveau.
Mélangez tous les ingrédients sec (farine, lev. Chimique, sel) et ajoutez dans le saladier avec les autres ingrédients.
Ajoutez finalement de pepites de chocolat et mélangez sans trop pétrir.
Avec deux cuillères à café, laissez tomber des petits boules en lignes sur une plaque à patisserie beurrée, bien espacées.
Faites cuire 10-12 minutes jusqu à ce que les cookies soient blonds (un petit marron, aussi bien). Une fois cuits, laisses-les tiédir avant de les décoller.
I was ready to bake. Almost. Although my furnished apartment’s kitchen is a pasta lover’s paradise (courtesy of the Italian owner – lots of big pots for cooking pasta), I found it woefully underprepared for a baker. So, during my trip to Carrefour to purchase my comforter and bedding last week, I also went in search of cookie baking fundamentals: baking sheet, spatula, and a strong wooden spoon for mixing. These were fairly easy to find in the aisle with kitchen accessories. I also noted on the shelves nearby the baking paper that I was pretty sure the French used (and shown on the side of the box) for baking in the oven. This practice from the old World has definitely left the American kitchen. I decided the good old American cookie sheet greased with butter would do for me. Stage One, appropriate utensils, complete (as far as I knew at the time!)
The ready-made mix purchased also at Carrefour was my first cookie effort. Using my new utensils, I was able to produce the chocolate chip cookies as instructed on the back of the package. They looked OK, the oven worked fairly well. I was ready to make my own recipe.
Actually, at this point, I made Rosanna’s cookies. Here’s what she wrote down that day to give me:
1 kilo Farine
300 g Sucre
250 cl hile
250 cl vin blanc
2 p. levure chimique
1 p pincée sel
I had found all her ingredients easily, and set about making the dough. Realizing that a kilo was a lot of flour, I planned to cut the recipe in half. But I started to pour out the liquids in the full measures (ml incidently, not cl, as she wrote down) by mistake, so I plunged ahead with the full recipe. And yes, it was a lot of flour. As a baker with experience, I also realized that the wooden spoon was not going to be helpful, that I would have to knead the flour (a total of 9 cups!) into the mixture. Kneading the cookie dough reminded me of baking gingerbread at Christmastime; one of my more pleasurable times in the kitchen, but also lengthy – kneading 9 cups of flour into a sticky ball of molasses and brown sugar takes time! And Rosanna’s recipe was just the same, although the dough was not so sticky (no brown sugar in her recipe).
My notes from my conversation with Rosanna about the cookie making was that one should roll out the cookies and sprinkle with sugar before baking. At this point, I realized that I did not have all the utensils I needed; I had not purchased a rolling pin for rolling out cookies. Hmm. It was McGyver time; time to improvise. I took a glass (luckily I had one thick enough not to break on me), and to the best of my ability, “rolled” out the dough to ¼ inch thickness or so, cutting the dough into squares and then putting them on a baking sheet. At this point, I saw the value of the baking paper I had rejected in the store, as I sprinkled sugar on the cookies and watched the crystals drop between the cookies onto the baking sheet. This would make a messy cleanup once the sugar baked on the sheet, I thought. In my next batch, I sugared the cookies before placing them on the sheet.
While not exactly pretty, and while missing that last cup of flour (I got tired of kneading!), the cookies turned out tasty. Like shortbread, and very enjoyable with jam or jelly and a cup of hot coffee or tea. Stage Four, Rosanna’s Canistrelli Corsican Cookies, complete.
Finally, it was time to make Margarita’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. I decided to make a half recipe – this time I knew the measurements well enough! – as I now had two pots full of cookies sitting on my refrigerator of which I was not looking forward to being the sole consumer. Knowing the recipe like the back of my hand, and having all the ingredients I needed, the process was quick and easy. The oven cooperated, the cookies came out browned and sugary and tasting like they should. I am feeling confident that with my French recipe, Rosanna can do the same. Here’s hoping!
* * *
Rosanna’s Canistrelli cookie recipe (in English, with American measurements)
9 cups flour
1 ½ cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white wine
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp. salt
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, with half the flour. Turn mix onto board to knead in remaining flour. Roll out dough in ¼ inch thickness, cut into squares and put on greased cookie sheet.
Cook in hot (375-400 degree F) oven for 10-15 minutes.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Time Management or What Do You Mean You Don't Work?
In the Hugh Grant movie, “About a Boy,” Grant plays a 30-something guy who is independently wealthy (courtesy of a father whose one successful song turned out to be a Christmas song, ensuring annual royalties until the end of time). He is single, doesn’t work, and basically just dates women and breaks up with them (a similar plot line for another favorite show of mine, “Two and Half Men” – “Mon oncle Charlie” here in France). What made me think of the movie today was remembering the voice-over the character gives about how he spends his days: he measures activities in 15 minute time increments, as a way to keep the 24 hours in a day from becoming totally overwhelming. I thought of that as I went through my day in carefully orchestrated increments (but not quite of the 15 minute variety): cookie baking in the morning, swimming and sunning in the middle of the day, a visit to the bank in the afternoon. I bought two newspapers today; I plan to read them sometime in the late afternoon and early evening, before the television news comes on. Oops, forgot to schedule in my Internet time; perhaps I will do that before the TV news.
I watched a Poirot movie on the television yesterday. (Those of you who know that my television set sat unplugged in my condo in Virginia most of the time may find it amusing that I am becoming a television watcher of sorts here in France.) I’ve always loved M. Hercule Poirot; I think I read every single mystery that Agatha Christie wrote with him as the lead investigator. I remember pleading for my dad to get me the final in the Poirot series, “Curtain,” in which Poirot is killed, but identifies his killer. It was 1975; it was a momentous Christmas for me. Anyway, the movie I saw the other day was yet another typical setting of British upper crust society spending a week (or who knows how long) on some estate in the Cotswolds (or someplace like that), where of course someone is killed, and Poirot happens to be a guest for the weekend. Watching the movie (dubbed in French, of course), I thought, what do those people do all day? Clearly they were rich enough not to work; it seemed (in the story, anyway) their days were measured by meals, served like clockwork by attentive servants, in the main dining room. And their evenings were always cocktails, followed by dinner, followed by games in the drawing room and after dinner drinks, or some such civilized thing.
Now that I am unemployed, I have a whole new perspective on what it means to not work. My perspective comes from the fact that I am voluntarily unemployed, an important distinction from those made so involuntarily. My days are basically without the stress of searching for a job. Not that I don’t think about it, but no part of my day is planned with activities like writing a resume, or contacting a former colleague about possible job openings, or reading newspapers for help wanted notices, or scanning the Internet for possible other things to do with my life other than the job I just left. My life at the moment is filled with the mundane activities that come with building a new life in a new place just for the fun of it.
I have devised a schedule for my days, but I remain fairly flexible and laid back about it; if I want to sleep late in the morning, I do. It is such a lovely departure from the past two years, in which I went to bed each night planning whether or not I would get up at 5 a.m. so that I could do a run or a workout in the gym before leaving for work at 6:30 a.m., or deciding I would let myself sleep until 5:50, and to leave by 6:30 for the metro so I could be at work not later than 7:15, for the daily 8 a.m. meeting for which I was responsible. In a weird “can’t let that early morning habit go” reaction, however, I am letting myself wake up early, as the local Riviera Radio station out of Monaco plays an hour of BBC News at 6 a.m., and I’ve wanted to hear the latest out of Washington and Wall Street to see if “how low can we go” is still the recurring theme of this crisis. But if I want to go back to sleep after that, I do.
Unlike the achingly proper British, I do not keep posted meal times each day, but certainly planning and preparing for meals has become an important and time-filling activity in my new life. After my initial awkward experience with a pain au chocolat my first day in France (see August postings, Wednesday Morning in Nice, and Anxiety Produces Nothing Good II), I decided I would ease into my new country’s culinary habits. Meaning that I have been trying to replicate my American eating habits here at first, and slowly add in the components of a true French meal. Some of the meal components have needed no transition at all; I have been a cheese and yogurt eater forever, and I love wine with dinner. It’s the baked goods that I’ve been taking my time with; several years ago I stopped buying yeast breads, so that the only grains in my home kitchen were crackers, Trader Joes being my favorite location for new and exotic varieties. Between boulangeries and patisseries here on every corner of Nice, it is hard to avoid the lure of the yeasty loaves and butter-filled pastries that cram shop windows and whose smells waft through open doors on the streets. My niece, with her one year experience living in Italy, said to me, “Don’t worry, you’ll lose all the weight you gain in France when you get back to the States.” Yeah, well, I’m pretty happy with my weight right now, so I’m not in a mood to tinker with it. I have decided to make bread purchases an occasional event (but there is nothing like brie on a soft olive loaf, yummm), which my workouts and my body will deal with accordingly.
Shopping for food is practically a daily activity for me; the shops here sell things in small sizes, and there isn’t that much room in my kitchen to store anything in bulk, or much of anything at all, really. I lucked out with a fairly good-sized refridgerator in my apartment, but many people here manage with a refridgerator the size of which you would remember from your college dorm room. Even while shopping at Carrefour, the Wal-Mart-sized super store, I found the food packages were remarkably small; I spotted no Costco-sized mega-rolls of toilet paper or super-sized bags of rice or cereal. (They do sell awfully large bottles of soda, however.) But honestly, given my life of leisure, having time to stroll down aisles and look at all the unfamiliar products and packaging, and new words (these are words you don’t learn in a foreign language classroom) is a delight for me (and a good time suck).
Exercise is the other planned activity during my days. Although I take pride, as a runner, that I can do my sport pretty much anywhere, in any type of weather, and in any type of attire; as an aging runner, I have shifted from being a running snob (“Who needs cross-training?”) to a gym-rat of sorts. When I moved to my Lexington Square condo four years ago, I looked at the small gym available to residents and said to myself, Lifting weights – I want to do that. In the next four years, I became a pretty regular user of the small but serviceable workout room (in addition to my regular, if infrequent, runs on the C&O bike trail), eventually using just about every piece of machinery in there: the bike, the elliptical machine, the treadmill and the weights and weight machine. When I arrived in Nice, I decided I was going to find a gym to continue my exercise habit (and also thought it would be a good way to meet people). So I engaged in a search through the yellow pages, and visited each of the gyms listed within walking distance of my apartment. I was looking for a gym with a pool too; the pool at Lexington Square, even though it was open only during the summer, had become an important post-exercise activity for me. Never one to spend more than 10 or 15 minutes swimming, I just felt that doing some laps post-biking or running made my legs feel that much better the next day. The gyms in Nice ranged from a Gold’s Gym (one large room with a sweaty, dank smell, lots of weight machines, one treadmill), to FitnessLand (huge, with pool, exercise class rooms, weights, many machines, sauna and whirlpool). The young lady at FitnessLand figured out my French wasn’t that great, but it turned out her English wasn’t that great either, but she won me over, especially when I learned that I’d get two gyms for the price of one, FitnessLand, a 15 minute walk west and Espace Wellness, a 5 minute walk several blocks south of me. I paid for the pools (they both have them, but you can’t really swim laps in the Wellness pool – Aqua aerobics is really big here in France!) and the space, but the locations are great, and there are tons of classes to choose from at each gym.
I am busy now trying to figure out my schedule for what days I will go to the gym and what days I will run. Oh, yes, and I plan to buy a bike somewhere along the way, and so will have to fit bike rides into the schedule too. But coming up with a plan is just to make me feel like I know what I’m doing; if I wake up one morning and decide I don’t want to work out, I won’t. No hard feelings.
That’s the beauty of my new life. I can do what I want when I want. Eating, sleeping, working out, writing emails, writing generally, can all be done on whatever whim I have at the moment. There’s no time pressure. It’s such a change for me from the requirements of being at work at a certain time, or at a meeting at a certain time, or at rehearsal at a certain time. And I no longer have the pressure of having a list of things to do, that NEED TO GET DONE, and having that unsettling feeling of not knowing when I will get them done because of all the other time pressures. Such freedom!
But there remains an insidious voice inside me asking questions : What makes you think you can just chuck all of your life aside as you know it and lie on a beach by the Mediterranean sea wearing only your bikini bottoms while you work on a getting a tan in the fading autumn sunlight? When did you think you could just stop being a contributing member of society? What kind of ego lets you just escape from the world that everyone else is toiling in (and believe me, as the far as this goes, I know some people are REALLY toiling right now, given the current financial environment, that’s MY industry) and kick back and do nothing?
I have stock answers for all those questions, but the voice is persistent. I’m trying to ignore it for now.
The time to look for a job will come soon enough.
I watched a Poirot movie on the television yesterday. (Those of you who know that my television set sat unplugged in my condo in Virginia most of the time may find it amusing that I am becoming a television watcher of sorts here in France.) I’ve always loved M. Hercule Poirot; I think I read every single mystery that Agatha Christie wrote with him as the lead investigator. I remember pleading for my dad to get me the final in the Poirot series, “Curtain,” in which Poirot is killed, but identifies his killer. It was 1975; it was a momentous Christmas for me. Anyway, the movie I saw the other day was yet another typical setting of British upper crust society spending a week (or who knows how long) on some estate in the Cotswolds (or someplace like that), where of course someone is killed, and Poirot happens to be a guest for the weekend. Watching the movie (dubbed in French, of course), I thought, what do those people do all day? Clearly they were rich enough not to work; it seemed (in the story, anyway) their days were measured by meals, served like clockwork by attentive servants, in the main dining room. And their evenings were always cocktails, followed by dinner, followed by games in the drawing room and after dinner drinks, or some such civilized thing.
Now that I am unemployed, I have a whole new perspective on what it means to not work. My perspective comes from the fact that I am voluntarily unemployed, an important distinction from those made so involuntarily. My days are basically without the stress of searching for a job. Not that I don’t think about it, but no part of my day is planned with activities like writing a resume, or contacting a former colleague about possible job openings, or reading newspapers for help wanted notices, or scanning the Internet for possible other things to do with my life other than the job I just left. My life at the moment is filled with the mundane activities that come with building a new life in a new place just for the fun of it.
I have devised a schedule for my days, but I remain fairly flexible and laid back about it; if I want to sleep late in the morning, I do. It is such a lovely departure from the past two years, in which I went to bed each night planning whether or not I would get up at 5 a.m. so that I could do a run or a workout in the gym before leaving for work at 6:30 a.m., or deciding I would let myself sleep until 5:50, and to leave by 6:30 for the metro so I could be at work not later than 7:15, for the daily 8 a.m. meeting for which I was responsible. In a weird “can’t let that early morning habit go” reaction, however, I am letting myself wake up early, as the local Riviera Radio station out of Monaco plays an hour of BBC News at 6 a.m., and I’ve wanted to hear the latest out of Washington and Wall Street to see if “how low can we go” is still the recurring theme of this crisis. But if I want to go back to sleep after that, I do.
Unlike the achingly proper British, I do not keep posted meal times each day, but certainly planning and preparing for meals has become an important and time-filling activity in my new life. After my initial awkward experience with a pain au chocolat my first day in France (see August postings, Wednesday Morning in Nice, and Anxiety Produces Nothing Good II), I decided I would ease into my new country’s culinary habits. Meaning that I have been trying to replicate my American eating habits here at first, and slowly add in the components of a true French meal. Some of the meal components have needed no transition at all; I have been a cheese and yogurt eater forever, and I love wine with dinner. It’s the baked goods that I’ve been taking my time with; several years ago I stopped buying yeast breads, so that the only grains in my home kitchen were crackers, Trader Joes being my favorite location for new and exotic varieties. Between boulangeries and patisseries here on every corner of Nice, it is hard to avoid the lure of the yeasty loaves and butter-filled pastries that cram shop windows and whose smells waft through open doors on the streets. My niece, with her one year experience living in Italy, said to me, “Don’t worry, you’ll lose all the weight you gain in France when you get back to the States.” Yeah, well, I’m pretty happy with my weight right now, so I’m not in a mood to tinker with it. I have decided to make bread purchases an occasional event (but there is nothing like brie on a soft olive loaf, yummm), which my workouts and my body will deal with accordingly.
Shopping for food is practically a daily activity for me; the shops here sell things in small sizes, and there isn’t that much room in my kitchen to store anything in bulk, or much of anything at all, really. I lucked out with a fairly good-sized refridgerator in my apartment, but many people here manage with a refridgerator the size of which you would remember from your college dorm room. Even while shopping at Carrefour, the Wal-Mart-sized super store, I found the food packages were remarkably small; I spotted no Costco-sized mega-rolls of toilet paper or super-sized bags of rice or cereal. (They do sell awfully large bottles of soda, however.) But honestly, given my life of leisure, having time to stroll down aisles and look at all the unfamiliar products and packaging, and new words (these are words you don’t learn in a foreign language classroom) is a delight for me (and a good time suck).
Exercise is the other planned activity during my days. Although I take pride, as a runner, that I can do my sport pretty much anywhere, in any type of weather, and in any type of attire; as an aging runner, I have shifted from being a running snob (“Who needs cross-training?”) to a gym-rat of sorts. When I moved to my Lexington Square condo four years ago, I looked at the small gym available to residents and said to myself, Lifting weights – I want to do that. In the next four years, I became a pretty regular user of the small but serviceable workout room (in addition to my regular, if infrequent, runs on the C&O bike trail), eventually using just about every piece of machinery in there: the bike, the elliptical machine, the treadmill and the weights and weight machine. When I arrived in Nice, I decided I was going to find a gym to continue my exercise habit (and also thought it would be a good way to meet people). So I engaged in a search through the yellow pages, and visited each of the gyms listed within walking distance of my apartment. I was looking for a gym with a pool too; the pool at Lexington Square, even though it was open only during the summer, had become an important post-exercise activity for me. Never one to spend more than 10 or 15 minutes swimming, I just felt that doing some laps post-biking or running made my legs feel that much better the next day. The gyms in Nice ranged from a Gold’s Gym (one large room with a sweaty, dank smell, lots of weight machines, one treadmill), to FitnessLand (huge, with pool, exercise class rooms, weights, many machines, sauna and whirlpool). The young lady at FitnessLand figured out my French wasn’t that great, but it turned out her English wasn’t that great either, but she won me over, especially when I learned that I’d get two gyms for the price of one, FitnessLand, a 15 minute walk west and Espace Wellness, a 5 minute walk several blocks south of me. I paid for the pools (they both have them, but you can’t really swim laps in the Wellness pool – Aqua aerobics is really big here in France!) and the space, but the locations are great, and there are tons of classes to choose from at each gym.
I am busy now trying to figure out my schedule for what days I will go to the gym and what days I will run. Oh, yes, and I plan to buy a bike somewhere along the way, and so will have to fit bike rides into the schedule too. But coming up with a plan is just to make me feel like I know what I’m doing; if I wake up one morning and decide I don’t want to work out, I won’t. No hard feelings.
That’s the beauty of my new life. I can do what I want when I want. Eating, sleeping, working out, writing emails, writing generally, can all be done on whatever whim I have at the moment. There’s no time pressure. It’s such a change for me from the requirements of being at work at a certain time, or at a meeting at a certain time, or at rehearsal at a certain time. And I no longer have the pressure of having a list of things to do, that NEED TO GET DONE, and having that unsettling feeling of not knowing when I will get them done because of all the other time pressures. Such freedom!
But there remains an insidious voice inside me asking questions : What makes you think you can just chuck all of your life aside as you know it and lie on a beach by the Mediterranean sea wearing only your bikini bottoms while you work on a getting a tan in the fading autumn sunlight? When did you think you could just stop being a contributing member of society? What kind of ego lets you just escape from the world that everyone else is toiling in (and believe me, as the far as this goes, I know some people are REALLY toiling right now, given the current financial environment, that’s MY industry) and kick back and do nothing?
I have stock answers for all those questions, but the voice is persistent. I’m trying to ignore it for now.
The time to look for a job will come soon enough.
Monday, October 13, 2008
NYC and Me IV: Columbia Homecoming
One of the other planned events of my weekend in NYC was my family’s attendance at Columbia’s Homecoming game against Princeton. My brother in law Kenny, father of Chelsea, had planned his trip to visit his daughter around Homecoming (and my visit to the City too), and my Mom and Dad, veterans of football games past, were happy to drive down from Amherst to join us all at the game.
My first week at Barnard, one of the many things I signed up to do during Orientation was join the Columbia University Marching Band. It seemed like a great way to meet people, play my clarinet, and attend football games. I’m sure somebody talked me into it, but either way, I became one of the Columbia blue-blazer-clad members of The Greatest Marching Band in the World, as we liked to call ourselves (and as our Columbia blue t-shirts shouted out). Not everyone in the band played what might be called a traditional instrument; members were just encouraged to play something that made a noise. The band’s moniker was a little pathetic, there was no effort to be a true “marching band” with any kind of organization; our most frequent formation was called “amoeba,” in which the members ran around in circles on the field in some crazy fashion, stopping wherever we were when the drum major blew his whistle. But it was great fun; the band’s program was a script of biting sarcasm directed at the opponent of the day, and the songs we played embellished the script. The program was rarely more than five minutes long, but playing in the band afforded me some road trips to Harvard and Yale, and lots of fun drinking with other members of the band.
During my years at Barnard, my Mom and Dad made more than one journey to Baker Field at 217th Street in Manhattan (at the tip of the island). Homecoming was also always an occasion for the Columbia University Glee Club, of which I was a member, to sing for returning alumni pre-game at the field. So between Glee Club and Marching Band, my parents have some wonderful memories of Homecoming. Which we would try to recreate for Chelsea that October day.
And it was a great day. The weather, at first threatening rain in the morning, turned out beautiful and sunny. Dad drove down to the City to pick up Mom (who had arrived a few days earlier), Kenny, Mac (a Thai exchange student with Kenny) and me, and we all had fun shopping for luncheon food in a NYC market I had found on Broadway and 90th Street – one of those markets where they cut up cheese for you to taste, and have fresh bread on the counter, and myriad prepared salads, in addition to the fresh fruit on the racks on the sidewalk, and everything-else-under-the-sun-you-could-ever-want-to-eat inside the store. I had discovered via the CU website that there was a fenced in “picnic” spot complete with picnic tables up at the field, so we were going to, in traditional Brose fashion, bring our lunch. After a morning or studying, Chelsea was going to take one of the free buses available to students from the campus up to the field – this turned out to take much longer than she had planned, simply because there were so many people headed up to the game (although one would have been hard-pressed to tell exactly where they all went once they got to the field; attendance at the game was not what I would call “hearty”).
Dad dropped us all off at the field, and went off to hunt for parking. Mom, Kenny, Mac and I headed for the picnic area and found an empty table to set up our lunch. Mom wandered off and found the table where students were giving picnic-goers bracelets that allowed one to pick up several glasses of free beer (but not all at once!) that were being dispensed at another table on the field. It appeared, after the game began and we were still in the luncheon area waiting for Chelsea, that our fellow picnic-goers were mainly recent alumni of the College, enjoying the free beer.
In the picnic area I ran into a fellow athlete, Rachel, who I had seen at an event the previous day on campus. Once we got to our seats, I saw one of the Trustees that I had formerly served with on the Barnard board. And right behind her were Ula and Carrie, my two CU Hall of Famers – Ula had received honors for her basketball and volleyball records two years ago at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony; Carrie received honors for her amazing javelin career at Columbia at the ceremony two days earlier. The three hour game gave me a chance to catch up with all of them, even one of my Glee Club alums, David, whose daughter was the drum major for the marching band, of all things!
The highlight of the afternoon (besides enjoying the remains of the tiramisu that Chelsea had brought, leftovers from our Friday evening dinner at Carmine’s on Times Square) was watching the Marching Band. Still crazy after all these years, the script for the show was as caustic as ever, and the music amazingly together (credit Nancy, the drum major!). There’s nothing like recreating a memory, and on this day, it was a success.
My first week at Barnard, one of the many things I signed up to do during Orientation was join the Columbia University Marching Band. It seemed like a great way to meet people, play my clarinet, and attend football games. I’m sure somebody talked me into it, but either way, I became one of the Columbia blue-blazer-clad members of The Greatest Marching Band in the World, as we liked to call ourselves (and as our Columbia blue t-shirts shouted out). Not everyone in the band played what might be called a traditional instrument; members were just encouraged to play something that made a noise. The band’s moniker was a little pathetic, there was no effort to be a true “marching band” with any kind of organization; our most frequent formation was called “amoeba,” in which the members ran around in circles on the field in some crazy fashion, stopping wherever we were when the drum major blew his whistle. But it was great fun; the band’s program was a script of biting sarcasm directed at the opponent of the day, and the songs we played embellished the script. The program was rarely more than five minutes long, but playing in the band afforded me some road trips to Harvard and Yale, and lots of fun drinking with other members of the band.
During my years at Barnard, my Mom and Dad made more than one journey to Baker Field at 217th Street in Manhattan (at the tip of the island). Homecoming was also always an occasion for the Columbia University Glee Club, of which I was a member, to sing for returning alumni pre-game at the field. So between Glee Club and Marching Band, my parents have some wonderful memories of Homecoming. Which we would try to recreate for Chelsea that October day.
And it was a great day. The weather, at first threatening rain in the morning, turned out beautiful and sunny. Dad drove down to the City to pick up Mom (who had arrived a few days earlier), Kenny, Mac (a Thai exchange student with Kenny) and me, and we all had fun shopping for luncheon food in a NYC market I had found on Broadway and 90th Street – one of those markets where they cut up cheese for you to taste, and have fresh bread on the counter, and myriad prepared salads, in addition to the fresh fruit on the racks on the sidewalk, and everything-else-under-the-sun-you-could-ever-want-to-eat inside the store. I had discovered via the CU website that there was a fenced in “picnic” spot complete with picnic tables up at the field, so we were going to, in traditional Brose fashion, bring our lunch. After a morning or studying, Chelsea was going to take one of the free buses available to students from the campus up to the field – this turned out to take much longer than she had planned, simply because there were so many people headed up to the game (although one would have been hard-pressed to tell exactly where they all went once they got to the field; attendance at the game was not what I would call “hearty”).
Dad dropped us all off at the field, and went off to hunt for parking. Mom, Kenny, Mac and I headed for the picnic area and found an empty table to set up our lunch. Mom wandered off and found the table where students were giving picnic-goers bracelets that allowed one to pick up several glasses of free beer (but not all at once!) that were being dispensed at another table on the field. It appeared, after the game began and we were still in the luncheon area waiting for Chelsea, that our fellow picnic-goers were mainly recent alumni of the College, enjoying the free beer.
In the picnic area I ran into a fellow athlete, Rachel, who I had seen at an event the previous day on campus. Once we got to our seats, I saw one of the Trustees that I had formerly served with on the Barnard board. And right behind her were Ula and Carrie, my two CU Hall of Famers – Ula had received honors for her basketball and volleyball records two years ago at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony; Carrie received honors for her amazing javelin career at Columbia at the ceremony two days earlier. The three hour game gave me a chance to catch up with all of them, even one of my Glee Club alums, David, whose daughter was the drum major for the marching band, of all things!
The highlight of the afternoon (besides enjoying the remains of the tiramisu that Chelsea had brought, leftovers from our Friday evening dinner at Carmine’s on Times Square) was watching the Marching Band. Still crazy after all these years, the script for the show was as caustic as ever, and the music amazingly together (credit Nancy, the drum major!). There’s nothing like recreating a memory, and on this day, it was a success.
NYC and Me III: Lunch with Denny
Denny is an 84 year-old woman who has been a friend to my mother, and by association, our family, since before I was born. Denny, known to me as Vi, but to most everyone else as Denny, has been my personal friend ever since I went to Barnard, and especially after I lived for a year on West 106th Street, just down the street from her apartment on West End Avenue. Vi worked in Admissions at Teacher’s College for many years, and had a lovely side-line as a tutor to child actors, including Christian Slater, for a period of time as well. She never married, and has no living relatives, but has a wonderfully large circle of friends, a circle which has widened over time as she became close to her friends’ children as well (I fall into that category). During my consulting career and my many trips to NYC, I made it a point to take Vi out for dinner on a regular basis; we always had plenty to talk about and her advice always seemed right on the mark. I gave Vi an 80th birthday party in 2004 on the Barnard College campus; there were 66 people in attendance, from all over the country, and included her childhood friends, college friends, neighbors, church friends, and at least one entire family who had all made it to the event. It was a wonderful testament to the enduring legacy of her friendship.
Vi has five goddaughters, at least two of who are named Christina (including my sister), and one of whom is Cynthia Nixon. I have known Cynthia as long as I can remember, and I dutifully saw her in movies and plays throughout the years (starting with “The Philadelphia Story” in 1979 and most recently, her Tony Award-winning performance in “Rabbit Hole” in 2006), often joining Vi for a performance in the City, and frequently Cynthia would join us afterward for a post-performance dinner. To Vi’s delight, Cynthia attended Barnard College (she entered as I graduated); she could claim that two of her favorite people attended Barnard. During my term as President of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College (AABC), Cynthia was given a Young Alumnae Award at her 15th Reunion Dinner in 2003, and it was my pleasure to invite Vi to be a special guest at the event and sit at one of the head tables with Cynthia and me. That night Vi was in seventh heaven.
To fast forward and condense a bit, it was three years ago that we all noticed that Vi was losing her short term memory, and began to be concerned that she could no longer live alone in her apartment on West End Avenue. And almost two years ago now, after a fall getting on a NYC bus, Cynthia was able to find an affordable place for Vi to live out the rest of her days, in a quasi-hospital on the Upper West Side, in which she has 24 hour supervision and whatever medical care she needs. I have continued to visit Vi in her new home, and on this trip, I had arranged to bring my niece Chelsea with me, as I hoped to pass along our family’s tradition of friendship with Vi to Chelsea.
So it was that Chelsea, Vi and I were sitting at a four-top at Café du Monde on Broadway at 112th Street (right across from Tom’s Diner, for those in the know) enjoying a bright sunny day in October. We had just ordered our lunch when we were interrupted by Cynthia, who came over and embraced Denny, exclaiming, “I’ve been looking all over for you!” Apparently Cynthia had decided this was a good day for a visit too, and with that, she joined our table for lunch.
I have known Cynthia for a long time, so I didn’t really think about it, but when I introduced Chelsea to Cynthia, I thought, OMG, Chelsea is meeting a movie star for the first time! I knew that Cynthia is an oft-spoken of alumnae of Barnard on campus, and would be known to most females of Chelsea’s age as Miranda in HBO’s Sex in the City, and most recently of the SITC movie, which I had gone to with Chelsea, my sister and mother on the opening night of the flick. She could have sat slack-jawed throughout the lunch, but no, Chelsea kept her cool, identified herself as a Barnard freshman, and then proceeded to go through the meal without once asking a question that would have identified her as some star-struck fan. I was very proud of her! Indeed, I asked most of the questions that might be considered in that latter category, but got some interesting answers (the next SITC movie will be released in 2010; her next play “Distracted” begins on Broadway in January).
It was a classic moment in NYC for me – running into people serendipitously, having experiences that are familiar, yet new, and enjoying friendships that are long-standing.
Vi has five goddaughters, at least two of who are named Christina (including my sister), and one of whom is Cynthia Nixon. I have known Cynthia as long as I can remember, and I dutifully saw her in movies and plays throughout the years (starting with “The Philadelphia Story” in 1979 and most recently, her Tony Award-winning performance in “Rabbit Hole” in 2006), often joining Vi for a performance in the City, and frequently Cynthia would join us afterward for a post-performance dinner. To Vi’s delight, Cynthia attended Barnard College (she entered as I graduated); she could claim that two of her favorite people attended Barnard. During my term as President of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College (AABC), Cynthia was given a Young Alumnae Award at her 15th Reunion Dinner in 2003, and it was my pleasure to invite Vi to be a special guest at the event and sit at one of the head tables with Cynthia and me. That night Vi was in seventh heaven.
To fast forward and condense a bit, it was three years ago that we all noticed that Vi was losing her short term memory, and began to be concerned that she could no longer live alone in her apartment on West End Avenue. And almost two years ago now, after a fall getting on a NYC bus, Cynthia was able to find an affordable place for Vi to live out the rest of her days, in a quasi-hospital on the Upper West Side, in which she has 24 hour supervision and whatever medical care she needs. I have continued to visit Vi in her new home, and on this trip, I had arranged to bring my niece Chelsea with me, as I hoped to pass along our family’s tradition of friendship with Vi to Chelsea.
So it was that Chelsea, Vi and I were sitting at a four-top at Café du Monde on Broadway at 112th Street (right across from Tom’s Diner, for those in the know) enjoying a bright sunny day in October. We had just ordered our lunch when we were interrupted by Cynthia, who came over and embraced Denny, exclaiming, “I’ve been looking all over for you!” Apparently Cynthia had decided this was a good day for a visit too, and with that, she joined our table for lunch.
I have known Cynthia for a long time, so I didn’t really think about it, but when I introduced Chelsea to Cynthia, I thought, OMG, Chelsea is meeting a movie star for the first time! I knew that Cynthia is an oft-spoken of alumnae of Barnard on campus, and would be known to most females of Chelsea’s age as Miranda in HBO’s Sex in the City, and most recently of the SITC movie, which I had gone to with Chelsea, my sister and mother on the opening night of the flick. She could have sat slack-jawed throughout the lunch, but no, Chelsea kept her cool, identified herself as a Barnard freshman, and then proceeded to go through the meal without once asking a question that would have identified her as some star-struck fan. I was very proud of her! Indeed, I asked most of the questions that might be considered in that latter category, but got some interesting answers (the next SITC movie will be released in 2010; her next play “Distracted” begins on Broadway in January).
It was a classic moment in NYC for me – running into people serendipitously, having experiences that are familiar, yet new, and enjoying friendships that are long-standing.
NYC and Me II: Central Park Runs
I started my competitive running career in Central Park in 1983, and after running 10s of races in the park, including two NYC Marathons, it holds a special place in my heart. Running in the Park is always my way of “touching” the City when I am visiting; and I am always astounded (but perhaps shouldn’t be) when I run by someone I recognize.
I had three runs in the Park this visit. The first 5 miler on Thursday morning was capped off by a stretching warm down with my host Clara and friend Jay with their personal trainer in the Park. (I was sore the next day!) The second was on Saturday morning – the NY Road Runners Club was sponsoring the Norwegian Distance Races that morning, and I ran past runners as they took off on a 1.87 mile race around the south end of the park. As I ran past Tavern on the Green, I heard the finish line announcer give the crowd the news that five-time NYC Marathon winner Grete Waitz was standing at the finish line – which gave me a little thrill, as Grete was a significant icon in my early racing career (although Joan Benoit Samuelson has always been my hero). On that Saturday run I also noticed runners training for the NYC Marathon, which occurs on November 2nd. My friend Jean Yves will be running the race this year. Run #3 was on the morning I left the States; it was a crisp sunny morning and I was feeling fast, and had the lovely ego boost of passing most of the runners on the road during my 7:30 a.m. run. On this run, I ran around the north end of the Reservoir, which provides one of the most spectacular views of the City, especially as the sun is rising.
A fitting way to say good bye to the City.
I had three runs in the Park this visit. The first 5 miler on Thursday morning was capped off by a stretching warm down with my host Clara and friend Jay with their personal trainer in the Park. (I was sore the next day!) The second was on Saturday morning – the NY Road Runners Club was sponsoring the Norwegian Distance Races that morning, and I ran past runners as they took off on a 1.87 mile race around the south end of the park. As I ran past Tavern on the Green, I heard the finish line announcer give the crowd the news that five-time NYC Marathon winner Grete Waitz was standing at the finish line – which gave me a little thrill, as Grete was a significant icon in my early racing career (although Joan Benoit Samuelson has always been my hero). On that Saturday run I also noticed runners training for the NYC Marathon, which occurs on November 2nd. My friend Jean Yves will be running the race this year. Run #3 was on the morning I left the States; it was a crisp sunny morning and I was feeling fast, and had the lovely ego boost of passing most of the runners on the road during my 7:30 a.m. run. On this run, I ran around the north end of the Reservoir, which provides one of the most spectacular views of the City, especially as the sun is rising.
A fitting way to say good bye to the City.
NYC and Me
Last week I was in New York City and Massachusetts, visiting friends and family, and attending events at Columbia University. I had planned this particular trip home around the October 2nd Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame Dinner; I had been on the selection committee for the awards, and I thought it would be appropriate to be in attendance at the event (besides, I love black tie dinners – why else does one have a short black dress and three-inch-heeled pumps?). And it would be the first time I would see my niece, Chelsea, as a freshman at Barnard, and frankly, I needed to manage a visit out of the country during the Fall to make sure I was not in violation of the three-month stay rule in France. (I can’t be in France longer than three months at a time without a visa. I don’t have a visa.)
But as I stood in the Nice Cote d’Azur airport on October 1st, getting ready to board my Delta flight to JFK, along with a bunch of other chatty Americans (looking like the AARP crowd), I realized that I was not really ready to leave France quite yet. It felt like I had just arrived; and indeed, it had only been five weeks since I had left Dulles Airport for Nice. But I was scheduled to go, and had a long list of visits planned, things to buy, and correspondence to catch up with (where I wouldn’t have to pay overseas rates for calls or postage). JFK beckoned.
Before I left, Priscilla had commented that she wondered what culture shock I would experience when I arrived in the States. Given my short time in France, I have to admit, not much. In fact, arriving in NYC felt like coming home. Not only was I going there to see people I wanted to see, but the City itself has felt like home to me for a very long time.
My family has a long history in Manhattan: at the turn of the century (1900, that is) my Dad’s family first settled in the north of Manhattan (the part that is currently Central Park), before moving to New Haven and Westchester County; my Mom’s father attended Union Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side; my Dad’s father and uncle worked at Schumacher Fabrics on Lexington Avenue most of their business careers; my mother was living on Claremont Avenue behind Barnard College when she met my Dad (who was an East Sider); and then I went on to attend Barnard, and lived in the City for two years after college. And as a management consultant, I spent nearly half of my ten years in consulting working for NYC clients – and commuting from Washington to work in the City five days a week for them. My ex-husband’s first question, after we decided to separate, was, “Are you going to move to New York?”
Memories of my brief stay in the City became separate postings here. They are numbered, but in no particular order, above.
But as I stood in the Nice Cote d’Azur airport on October 1st, getting ready to board my Delta flight to JFK, along with a bunch of other chatty Americans (looking like the AARP crowd), I realized that I was not really ready to leave France quite yet. It felt like I had just arrived; and indeed, it had only been five weeks since I had left Dulles Airport for Nice. But I was scheduled to go, and had a long list of visits planned, things to buy, and correspondence to catch up with (where I wouldn’t have to pay overseas rates for calls or postage). JFK beckoned.
Before I left, Priscilla had commented that she wondered what culture shock I would experience when I arrived in the States. Given my short time in France, I have to admit, not much. In fact, arriving in NYC felt like coming home. Not only was I going there to see people I wanted to see, but the City itself has felt like home to me for a very long time.
My family has a long history in Manhattan: at the turn of the century (1900, that is) my Dad’s family first settled in the north of Manhattan (the part that is currently Central Park), before moving to New Haven and Westchester County; my Mom’s father attended Union Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side; my Dad’s father and uncle worked at Schumacher Fabrics on Lexington Avenue most of their business careers; my mother was living on Claremont Avenue behind Barnard College when she met my Dad (who was an East Sider); and then I went on to attend Barnard, and lived in the City for two years after college. And as a management consultant, I spent nearly half of my ten years in consulting working for NYC clients – and commuting from Washington to work in the City five days a week for them. My ex-husband’s first question, after we decided to separate, was, “Are you going to move to New York?”
Memories of my brief stay in the City became separate postings here. They are numbered, but in no particular order, above.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
La Vie en Rose
Even before I had the idea to move to France, I had the idea to improve my French, in a nod to my then French boyfriend. I looked for a French tutor on Craig’s List, but didn’t get any responses to my emails (why, then, were they advertising on the List?), so my friend Erick suggested I check out the Alliance Française. He didn’t know it in Washington, but he said that the Alliance was a French-sponsored organization in most foreign cities; when I looked for it online, I found it with no problem.
Ensconced on Wyoming Avenue in a lovely townhouse just north of Dupont Circle, the Alliance Francaise of Washington (http://www.francedc.org/) offers French classes, tutoring, an active library of books, CDs and DVDs, and lots of programming for its members. I joined it in January 2007, and immediately signed up for a mid-level French class. (The class, held on Saturday mornings, was an interesting mix of Washingtonians, mostly foreign-born, in which I was by far the best speaker – most of them were learning it for the first time. I gathered that many of them were being sponsored by their workplaces as well; although the class began at 10 and ended at 1, my classmates took a liberal view of when they actually needed to be in the classroom – some actually showed up at noon at times. Fascinating!)
Among the programming offered by the Alliance Française is a variety of French film viewing opportunities. It was through the Alliance that I was introduced to the E Street Cinema, in downtown Washington. For some reason, after years of watching foreign flicks at the Shirlington movie theater, I was unaware of the E Street offerings – and frankly, E Street was far more convenient by Metro (Metro Center)! The movie that I signed up to attend at the cinema was “La Vie en Rose,” telling the compelling story of the French chanteuse, Edith Piaf, her music and her early death. I think I was motivated to sign up for the ticket after seeing the listing in the weekly Alliance-emailed newsletter; this was June 2007, and I was in my mode of wanting to submerse myself in all things French, and here was a free opportunity to do so. Also, when I went to the Alliance to pick up my ticket for the movie, I got a free CD of the songtrack, which was pretty cool.
I enjoyed the movie, with Marion Cotillard in the lead role (she received the Oscar for Best Actress for the movie in 2008), which was shown in French, with English subtitles. I sat next to some other Francophiles in the movie theater, who were equally entranced by the movie. It was dark and disturbing, but it was the music that was captivating and Marion’s performance was compelling.
In January 2008, the Alliance again offered a viewing of “La Vie en Rose” at one of its Monday evening Ciné evenings at the Wyoming Avenue location. Interestingly, I almost didn’t remember having seen the film nine months earlier; and later, once I had, wondered why I had signed up to see it again. But I was happy I had; this time, I watched the movie in French, with French subtitles. At this point too, I had decided to move to France, and had signed up for private French tutoring lessons (my first session would be that same week). Knowing the story already, I didn’t need the English to follow the story line, and given the slangy French spoken by the lead character, it was immensely helpful to read what was being said on the screen. I’ve often thought during my first weeks here in France, I wish I had French subtitles!, as I’m trying to understand conversation around me. Being a visual person, this would help. But I’m getting along…
So, given my introduction to and immersion in Edith Piaf, when I was walking along a street in Nice a few weeks ago, a flyer stuck on the parked cars in the street caught my attention. It advertised a Mass in celebration of the 45th anniversary of Edith Piaf’s death, at a nearby Catholic Church, scheduled for early October. The flyer also indicated that there would be music before and after the church service. I knew from the movie that Edith Piaf had spent her final days in Grasse, the city where Priscilla lives, northwest of Nice. So the affection for her in this region made some sense. But another part of me thought that such an event would be a little over the top. But I took a flyer with me, anyway. I’m looking for ways to get to know my new city, and this would be one way to do it.
So, yesterday at 5 p.m., I put on a respectable outfit, and headed over to the Église Saint Pierre d’Arène on rue de France, about 10 blocks from me. I found the church, and as advertised, a woman was performing songs made famous by Edith Piaf on the church steps, accompanied by an instrument called a limonaire (not found in my French dictionary). The limonaire is essentially what many Americans would recognize as a player piano, except that the player is a box, which the singer, Domino, wound with a crank as she sang, and the “recorded” music played as she cranked. I noticed people going in and out of the church as she was singing, so after a few moments, I too walked up the steps into the church. I found the church full of people sitting in the nave, awaiting the start of the 6 p.m. mass. In my concert-going with Priscilla in France, she has typically encouraged us to be at church concerts well ahead of their advertised start. And this has served us well in securing seats, as free concerts in France, as just in about any other place, are well-attended. So, seeing the crowd in St. Pierre, I quickly found myself a seat about mid-nave, and hunkered down for the 40 minute wait. I had brought a paperback book with me, in case of this very situation, and although the church was pretty dark, managed to get in about 20 minutes of reading. (am reading a first novel written by a Barnard alum and a former consultant who worked for me at PwC, Marisha Pessl, called "Special Topics in Calamity Physics").
The mass started at 6. This was my first French Catholic service, and I thought, fittingly focused on a singer. It was a standard mass, but with Edith Piaf’s music sung throughout, “Mea Culpa” and “Les mȏmes de la cloche” sung by Domino; “Les 3 cloches” by a young boy, and a recording of Edith singing “Jerusalem.” It was pretty moving. The service included a presentation of a plaque naming a street “L’Allée Edith Piaf” (not sure where in the city it will be) to the Conseil Générale of the region.
After the service, the crowd stayed in their seats for the recital to follow. The program listed eight selections that were to be sung by Domino and another singer, Gil Florini. The selections included the most famous songs of Piaf, including “La vie en rose,” “Padam,” and “Rien de rien” (at least those are the ones I know from the movie!). This was what many of those in the audience had come for, I think, as the applause following these performances was enthusiastic and sustained. The singer Gil Florini, a man past middle age, reminding me of someone like Neil Diamond, drew the most applause, for his belt-it-out style – which was pretty Edith Piaf-like. (I have since learned that M. Florini is a priest in the church; which explains the exhuberant applause.)
I left the church happy to have taken part in a Niçoise event; also to have participated in my first French mass, and having been inspired by an evening of uplifting music.
Ensconced on Wyoming Avenue in a lovely townhouse just north of Dupont Circle, the Alliance Francaise of Washington (http://www.francedc.org/) offers French classes, tutoring, an active library of books, CDs and DVDs, and lots of programming for its members. I joined it in January 2007, and immediately signed up for a mid-level French class. (The class, held on Saturday mornings, was an interesting mix of Washingtonians, mostly foreign-born, in which I was by far the best speaker – most of them were learning it for the first time. I gathered that many of them were being sponsored by their workplaces as well; although the class began at 10 and ended at 1, my classmates took a liberal view of when they actually needed to be in the classroom – some actually showed up at noon at times. Fascinating!)
Among the programming offered by the Alliance Française is a variety of French film viewing opportunities. It was through the Alliance that I was introduced to the E Street Cinema, in downtown Washington. For some reason, after years of watching foreign flicks at the Shirlington movie theater, I was unaware of the E Street offerings – and frankly, E Street was far more convenient by Metro (Metro Center)! The movie that I signed up to attend at the cinema was “La Vie en Rose,” telling the compelling story of the French chanteuse, Edith Piaf, her music and her early death. I think I was motivated to sign up for the ticket after seeing the listing in the weekly Alliance-emailed newsletter; this was June 2007, and I was in my mode of wanting to submerse myself in all things French, and here was a free opportunity to do so. Also, when I went to the Alliance to pick up my ticket for the movie, I got a free CD of the songtrack, which was pretty cool.
I enjoyed the movie, with Marion Cotillard in the lead role (she received the Oscar for Best Actress for the movie in 2008), which was shown in French, with English subtitles. I sat next to some other Francophiles in the movie theater, who were equally entranced by the movie. It was dark and disturbing, but it was the music that was captivating and Marion’s performance was compelling.
In January 2008, the Alliance again offered a viewing of “La Vie en Rose” at one of its Monday evening Ciné evenings at the Wyoming Avenue location. Interestingly, I almost didn’t remember having seen the film nine months earlier; and later, once I had, wondered why I had signed up to see it again. But I was happy I had; this time, I watched the movie in French, with French subtitles. At this point too, I had decided to move to France, and had signed up for private French tutoring lessons (my first session would be that same week). Knowing the story already, I didn’t need the English to follow the story line, and given the slangy French spoken by the lead character, it was immensely helpful to read what was being said on the screen. I’ve often thought during my first weeks here in France, I wish I had French subtitles!, as I’m trying to understand conversation around me. Being a visual person, this would help. But I’m getting along…
So, given my introduction to and immersion in Edith Piaf, when I was walking along a street in Nice a few weeks ago, a flyer stuck on the parked cars in the street caught my attention. It advertised a Mass in celebration of the 45th anniversary of Edith Piaf’s death, at a nearby Catholic Church, scheduled for early October. The flyer also indicated that there would be music before and after the church service. I knew from the movie that Edith Piaf had spent her final days in Grasse, the city where Priscilla lives, northwest of Nice. So the affection for her in this region made some sense. But another part of me thought that such an event would be a little over the top. But I took a flyer with me, anyway. I’m looking for ways to get to know my new city, and this would be one way to do it.
So, yesterday at 5 p.m., I put on a respectable outfit, and headed over to the Église Saint Pierre d’Arène on rue de France, about 10 blocks from me. I found the church, and as advertised, a woman was performing songs made famous by Edith Piaf on the church steps, accompanied by an instrument called a limonaire (not found in my French dictionary). The limonaire is essentially what many Americans would recognize as a player piano, except that the player is a box, which the singer, Domino, wound with a crank as she sang, and the “recorded” music played as she cranked. I noticed people going in and out of the church as she was singing, so after a few moments, I too walked up the steps into the church. I found the church full of people sitting in the nave, awaiting the start of the 6 p.m. mass. In my concert-going with Priscilla in France, she has typically encouraged us to be at church concerts well ahead of their advertised start. And this has served us well in securing seats, as free concerts in France, as just in about any other place, are well-attended. So, seeing the crowd in St. Pierre, I quickly found myself a seat about mid-nave, and hunkered down for the 40 minute wait. I had brought a paperback book with me, in case of this very situation, and although the church was pretty dark, managed to get in about 20 minutes of reading. (am reading a first novel written by a Barnard alum and a former consultant who worked for me at PwC, Marisha Pessl, called "Special Topics in Calamity Physics").
The mass started at 6. This was my first French Catholic service, and I thought, fittingly focused on a singer. It was a standard mass, but with Edith Piaf’s music sung throughout, “Mea Culpa” and “Les mȏmes de la cloche” sung by Domino; “Les 3 cloches” by a young boy, and a recording of Edith singing “Jerusalem.” It was pretty moving. The service included a presentation of a plaque naming a street “L’Allée Edith Piaf” (not sure where in the city it will be) to the Conseil Générale of the region.
After the service, the crowd stayed in their seats for the recital to follow. The program listed eight selections that were to be sung by Domino and another singer, Gil Florini. The selections included the most famous songs of Piaf, including “La vie en rose,” “Padam,” and “Rien de rien” (at least those are the ones I know from the movie!). This was what many of those in the audience had come for, I think, as the applause following these performances was enthusiastic and sustained. The singer Gil Florini, a man past middle age, reminding me of someone like Neil Diamond, drew the most applause, for his belt-it-out style – which was pretty Edith Piaf-like. (I have since learned that M. Florini is a priest in the church; which explains the exhuberant applause.)
I left the church happy to have taken part in a Niçoise event; also to have participated in my first French mass, and having been inspired by an evening of uplifting music.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Visit to the States
With apologies to my Washington friends, I was in the States this past week, visiting friends and family in New York and Massachusetts. It was a whirlwind visit, that included attendance at the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame Awards Dinner (with my mom), the Columbia/Princeton Homecoming game, lunch with my friend Vi (with a surprise appearance by Cynthia Nixon, her goddaughter), time with my niece Chelsea, a Barnard freshman, and her dad, Kenny; golf with my Dad, an afternoon with my brother, Eric, and his wife Jan, and my nephew Ned. And catch up phone calls with several of you! Pictures are to the right. Other memorable moments: runs in Central Park, watching the VP and Presidential debates, mailing in my absentee ballot, and catching up with Ula, Carrie, Rachel, Philippa, Judy, Clara, Christine, Laura and her new son, David.
My next trip to the States will be in December when I fly into Dulles for visits with my Washington friends!
My next trip to the States will be in December when I fly into Dulles for visits with my Washington friends!
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