B is for boulangerie

une boulangerie :: a bakery (french lesson for the day)

what else?? the french take their bread very seriously, VERY seriously indeed. widespread famine linked to massive bread shortages plagued the last months of louis XVI's reign, and along with some very badly managed wars, a staggering national debt, and an unfortunate comment by his lovely bride ("qu'ils mangent de la brioche!"), helped lead to his demise at the foot of the guillotine.

today bread is served at every meal and baked on nearly every corner. a professor at cornell, steven kaplan, has written a contemporary history of bread and a guide to the best bakeries in paris. you must watch this clip of his appearance on the conan o'brien show - it's hilarious. and a little bit creepy. anyway, you'll never look at a baguette the same way again.

one of knox's first priorities when we settled in the 14th was to find a new bakery. we were big fans of maison keyser in the 5th, but it's too far now for the daily dose, so within days, he'd found our replacement.

l'atelier d'antan - workshop of yesteryear (for the longest time we thought 'antan' was a dude's name and that this was his workshop. we're just glad knox never asked which one was antan!)

this is the best bread in the 'hood, no doubt about it. i had my pal delphine over for dinner a few weeks ago, and she agreed (imagine my pride - i impressed a frenchie with my bread savvy!). they close at 8 though, which jacks our work schedule just a bit, so we've started buying in 'bulk' and freezing a few loaves at a time. still awesome.

knox, trying to resist the urge to bite into the fresh baguette - most of the time, he's unsuccessful.

january is also galette des rois season. the french eat the galette for the epiphany, the holiday that celebrates the visit of the three kings to the baby jesus. many celebrate on the first sunday of the month, but since the actual date is a little fuzzy, the galettes are served all month. for knox and me, i'll be honest, the celebration is one not of christ, but of the buttery-frangipanyyy-goodness that is the galette des rois (and we have made it a point to celebrate at least 5 or 6 times this month). traditionally, there is a fava bean hidden in the galette, and if it's found in your slice, you get to be the king or queen for the day (which, sadly, does NOT excuse you from dishes). typically, the youngest member of the family hides under the table and decides which slices go to whom, but since knox is really just too big for that, we usually buy the 2-man galette, sans fava. still dee-lish.

all this talk about bread... hmmm, i've got some chèvre and a few tomatoes lying around - i think it's time for lunch!!

A is for arc

as in arc de triomphe, where knox and i spent new year's eve three years ago (well, we were on the champs élysées... with about 2,500 other champagne-fueled revelers...). the arc was designed in 1806 in honor of all those who fought for the glory of napoleon's france, and its iconography depicts heroic young frenchmen in the buff fighting germanic warriors in chain mail (rrrowr! next time i'll have to pay closer attention). it's one of the most famous landmarks in paris, and it's hard to believe that the french had considered charles ribart's elephant triomphal in its place:



can you imagine?? and they thought the eiffel tower was tacky!

FRAVINAbécédaire

so, monday at the library: i'm staring at my cursor, humming the theme song to "sanford and son" inside my head (don't ask - it's a mystery)... when it hits me: i am not wasting enough time on my blog! hours later, knox introduces me (virtually) to nina, a british gal who keeps a much hipper blog than i do.... i'm pretty sure knox has a geek-crush on her, but that's okay. she's smart. and she does the most fab alphabetical entries on all sorts of random things.

it's an abécédaire, as they say here. you know, a picture alphabet! "A is for alamo, B is for bloated..." (which, given the amount of cheese i've been eating lately, would not be so terribly hard to capture in image form!)

so this next installment, which will be 26 posts in all, goes out to knox, redd foxx, and nina. my cursor will mock me no more! stay tuned for entry numéro un: A is for arc.

au revoir fall leaves, bonjour winter freeze

the fountain at jardin du luxembourg

happy new year! bonne année! chuc mung nam moi!

i don't know about you, but we'd just about had enough of 2008 chez barnes peden. i love the new year. i usually make it a point to spend the first day of the year in my pjs, which given my line of work, could happen any old day, but i try to limit it to the first... and some sundays... now, knox and i are not known for our new year's eve antics ("amateur night," as he calls it), but this year was particularly... umm... boring? since knox was leaving bright and early in the morning for nyc, we spent our evening packing and doing laundry (though not quickly enough sadly - we stepped away for a moment only to return to a locked-up laverie with our clothes still in the dryer! he had to leave without his favorite argyle socks!). knox did cook up a delicious batch of walnut chicken (a peden family favorite), and we managed to stay up till midnight, but... well, i'd wager the frozen horses had a wilder night than we did.

a horse made of bronze covered in ice

P.S....

HO HO HO!!

christmas day vertigo

christmas 2005, back when it was still open air! we didn't ride this one...

this year santa came through, and how! as anticipated, our day revolved around eating, and as we perhaps should have anticipated - given my track record - around saving one or two botched recipes: i forgot the vanilla extract for the cookies, and worse, i forgot to sauté the onions and rosemary for the sausage (which was really only half my problem - try finding jimmy dean's in france! i ended up buying a lump of sausage "flesh" and going from there). we managed to eat very well, despite the minor glitches, which just goes to show what an art form cooking is...

the real highlight of the day, however, was the trip to the tuileries, where santa got over his vertigo and what appeared to be a very strong urge to barf, and took me for a ride on the ferris wheel! it turns out paris recently replaced the old gondola-style cars with fully enclosed pods  - a real plus in the 35-degree weather. brr!

and look! you can hardly tell he's hyperventilating.

 napoleon's tomb in the distance

we'd just seen "the birds" a few nights before... i almost peed my pants when they took flight but this little one was completely unfazed.

christmas dinner - no, knox is neither saying grace nor thanking the lord for solid ground. he's asking me to stop taking pictures of our food (all blurry, of course) and eat.

happy holidays!

our "tree" - we "hung" our tin foil star with tape

hope everyone has a happy holiday season. knox and i are planning to cook up a bunch of food - cherry chocolate chip cookies, french toast, sausage with rosemary and mustard, pork tenderloin with onion and apples, party potatoes... - and go for walks in between meals! i asked santa for a ride on the tuileries ferris wheel this year, which is definitely NOT santa's idea of a good time... but i think i've been pretty good this year, so fingers crossed.

IMEC

since one of the perks of my fellowship this year is funded research travel, i decided about a month ago to head over to caen, on the normandy coast, and spend a few days in the archives of IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine). the archives are located in the abbaye d'ardenne, which was established in the 12th century, nearly annihilated during world war II, and reopened as a site for research in art and literature in 1988.    

the archives and reading room are housed in the old cathedral

a view of the courtyard in front of the cathedral

the entrance and administrative offices

as a researcher, you can stay onsite for 40 euros a night, which includes a ride to and from the train station as well as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. the rooms and cafeteria are located in the old barn and are both very comfortable. and when i say cafeteria, what i mean is ONSITE CHEF - duck, pork tenderloin, the most marvelous lentil and ham salad i've ever eaten, wine at lunch! (not ideal in a research scenario, but who can resist?), five kinds of cheese, pear tartes... all enjoyed with literature geeks from around the world... i didn't find any smoking-gun-type documents in the archives, nothing that is going to make my dissertation blow minds or anything, but it was such an enjoyable experience i don't care. in fact, knox and i are thinking of going back in the spring - a little lovers/geeks retreat, if you will. 

luuuuke, remember the force...

la bibliothèque nationale de france, where all the magic happens (view of east entrance stacks; there are two more on the west side)

the entrance: when it snows, everyone brings trash can lids or card board sleds - it's fun!

the stacks, west entrance (story goes that they built them in glass, then realized that the sun was going to bake all the rare texts they own and added the wooden panels)

weekdays, when we're not at home, snuggled on our great big red corduroy sofa drinking tea and watching 'office' reruns, knox and i can usually be found at the french national library. this is where, on december 1, 2008, i wrote the first word of my dissertation (i believe it was "Whereas" but i'd have to check. since then i've only managed to turn that word into 10-15 pages or so, but given that it took 2 full months of sitting here - reading and fretting and reading some more - to work up the courage, i'd say i'm doin' all right).

anyway, this is our office, aka "the death star." it's the french empire's ultimate weapon against american grad students completing their research! first of all, a study in wood, steel, and glass, it's not one of paris's most attractive sites. to get there, you have to climb maybe 75 or so wooden steps and traverse what the architects certainly couldn't have meant to be a roaring wind tunnel. then you get to the ramp, which when raining, is not for the faint of heart. once you're inside, you have to get past two metal detectors, three turn styles, and a handful of storm troopers... you transfer your belongings to the transparent briefcase they provide, then descend two sets of escalators into the bowels of the building, where the reading rooms are. if you haven't broken a sweat by the time you get to your seat (which you must reserve in advance), they make you go back outside and start over.

without bosses checking in on us, it's true that we often can't be bothered to turn up, particularly when it's raining. and since i generally refuse to rise before the sun, which now means we're not getting out of bed till 9:15 at the earliest, we're never at work before noon. BUT, once seated, we can usually work up a good groove till around 7pm, when we head home for dinner and a glass of vin rouge. it's actually a really great place to work.

i am thinking, though, that if i can tap into the force while i'm here, i'm going to blow it up before we leave.

untitled, 12

knox at the hôtel de ville