Music has charms

I have been back home for a while and I have definitely been mourning Paris.

The events I am writing about took place on August 19th and 20th.

(Time for doing this blog seems less available now that I am home. I have an ever increasing amount of respect for people with the discipline of regular writing)

One of the first things I did when I returned was order two cookbooks from Amazon. I know, buy from small businesses, Cambridge Local First, but these books are nowhere in my fair city. I ordered "Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber" and "Paris Sweets" by Dorie Greenspan which was rumored to have a good macaron recipe. While I was waiting for them to arrive I did try the Luxembourgers, a macaron at Burdicks in Harvard Square (http://www.burdickchocolate.com/). I was caught in a thunderstorm walking home from Mt. Auburn Hospital and it was one of the first places I could duck into. (honest) . Gus Rancatore from Toscanini's Ice Cream, a man who knows desserts had recommended them (http://www.tosci.com/) so they were on my mind. I thought they were a little soggy but that really got me dreaming of macarons so I decided to bake even before my cookbook came.

Oddly, none of the many cookbooks I own had a recipe for macarons and I was definitely not about to page through the old Gourmets and Bon Appetits I have stashed in odd cabinets. I looked online and read and compared recipes and decided on one from A La Cuisine (http://www.alacuisine.org/). My reasons for opting for this one were; one, it was based on Pierre Herme's recipes, and two; it was in U.S. volume measures so Ididn't have to get out Gary's food scale (bought had a yard sale for ???) or convert metrics with one of those easy to use on line conversion sites.

The fun starts at about 4pm on August 19th after I printed out the recipe. The egg whites in the batter were to be "allowed to thicken by leaving them at room temperature overnight." I separated my eggs and planned to bake later. At about 11pm ( 7 hours would be overnight) I started . I needed to finely grind almonds and automatically took out the Cuisinart. The minute I dumped them in I realized my mistake but it was too late. I had created almond butter,chunky and bland. I threw the next bag of almonds in the coffee grinder and things were going OK.

It's midnight and we have moved into August 21st.

I realized my macarons would not be perfect on the first try. The recipe had a lot of subjective,adjective driven descriptions of the procedures."Shiny", "just the right consistency""small peaks" and yes "flow like magma". This last is not too helpful unless you are a geologist.

My batter seemed OK, I piped it out onto the circles I had traced on the underside of parchment, let them sit for an hour so they would form the foot. Along with lots of adjectives I had a large number of dirty bowls. Recipes that create this always put me a little on edge, I feel as if the procedures are just out of my total control.

I turned on the oven, waited a bit and popped them in. They did not really rise and looked awful. They were so off that I figured something was off in my oven, the burnt yet raw product being my clue. I shoved in my cheap oven thermometer and it was only 125 degrees too hot. I went to bed.

These are cooked ???

I retested my oven in the morning of the 21st with a borrowed , fancier, oven thermometer.
Clearly the thermostat was shot as the oven ran between 450 and 500 degrees as soon as it was turned on. I will absolutely not discuss whether this is the call for the Wolf stove I dream of.







This was the beginning of a day fraught with technological melt downs



As August 20th continued I discovered i Tunes had dumped half of my music somewhere into the sky. I really panicked. The music I have put on iTunes is such a conglomeration of my own cds, downloads, borrowed stuff that it seems like the scrapbook of an important side of me. I still had the music on my Ipod and after Gary calmed me down from my semi-hysterical state we discovered it was still on the hard drive. I decided that i would just use iDump (love that name)to put my music back in iTunes.I have no idea why this happened but at least I could procede to the next event on my agenda without thinking about my lost music. (including hers)




Laura Cantrell (http://www.lauracantrel.com./ is my favorite singer these days. She has a beautiful voice and chooses and writes great tunes. I heard her singing "The Conquerers Song" on some radio station about 5 years ago and have seen her shows several times since then. Her songs are vignettes of women's lives as
well as a selection of tunes with a subtle but unmistakeable
anti-war sentiment. She even does a cover of a tune by one of my most embarrassing favorites, Johnny Rivers. She does "Poor Side of Town" and did it live at Passims on the 20th. She does a version of New Order's "Love Vigilantes" that will make you cry. (what an underrated band). Besides her great voice in that small room I was happy to see two of my favorite (but odd) instruments in the band. The wonderful Jimmy Ryan was playing mandolin and there was gasp, an accordian. I think the player was named Ted Reichman. The rest of the band was great, folks who play on her records ,Mark Spencer, Jeremy Chatsky, and like a bad joke, I am unsure of the drummer. Laura also does a web only (now) radio show on WFMU http://www.wfmu.org/, a progressive, independent radio station in New Jersey. Her show Radio Thrift Shop has lots of oddities of obscure often female singers. Check it out .


The title of this post came about because once again I have been shown the power and influence of music.

The entire line is: "Music has charms to soothe the savage breast.

To soften rocks,or bend a knotted oak."



William Congreve (1670-1729)



Keep reading, keep listening

parks

The best thing about this trip, no question , is the amount of time we have had. While the euro-dollar conversion is horrifying that has made no impact on the real richness of our stay. Until these last few days nothing has felt rushed or "have to"; the time has meant I can walk off those calories (I have not run once in Paris, the honeymoon will soon be over)






I came armed with the knowledge of some famous public spaces and gardens and had read about some others. These spaces are made even more valuable by the fact that the Paris streets have no greenery in front of buildings. There have been a few peeks into beautiful courtyards but the public greenery is most of what we've seen and it has been a treat. I do miss my garden.This is how it looked just before we left.

The parks here are really made for a city. Many of them seem somewhat formal with bed after bed of flowers. That these blooms are often fairly common annuals is astounding, whoever thought that dahlias and petunias could be regal ?

These pictures are from Jardin du Luxembourg. There are lawns, flower beds, tennis courts, donkey rides. You can't sit on the lawn in most places but there are these metal sage green chairs all over the place. They sit unlocked and in perfect condition. They seem to stay within the park. We went on Bastille Day afternoon and it was filled with families enjoying the sun.


My favorites though were less known. On June 29th the NY Times had an article "The Hidden Gardens of Paris" How lucky for me. I made it to a few, some purposefully, some by accident. I headed for the Jardin de la Vallée Suisse simply because they said that an otter lives in the pond.

I didn't see it but did see the carp. The park has some evergreens and bamboo. The large rock wall is really cement. There was a lemon tree and a big weeping beech.

My absolute favorite park was André-Citroen in the 15e. It has a large grass rectangle surrounded by garden rooms. The rooms are by color and sense; sight,scent,touch. It seemed past really full flower when we went yet these spaces are so well thought out that it hardly mattered.It is built on three levels with high walkways to look down from. It as built on the site of an old Citroen factory.It feels urban, it is a little hard edged with lots of stone flooring and stairs and then you see all this planting.

The other wonderful thing about this park was a platform with unpredictable water sprays that was between two large greenhouses. It was full of children with families and in camp groups. I have spent so many summers taking groups of children on outings that I always notice them. I don't think kids like anything more than playing in water.Here is a video to back me up:

Another great and definitely city space was the Promenade Plantée. This is near the Bastille and it is an old brick railway trail sort of a viaduct that is now a walkway with flowers, shrubs and trees. This was quite blooming a lot of roses on metal arches and forms,cherry trees, lavender in containers. You walk by buidings at their 2nd or 3rd floors and see them differently. Who are the landscape architects in Paris ? These are some of the blooms. We only went part of the way.

The first Sunday of every month is free museum day so we planned to give it a try. We heard the lines can be very long and planned to get up early and go to the Musée du Quai Branley.

This is a museum of no European and not much North American art. We slept late but when we arrived at noon there was no line so in we went. The building is beautiful, a tall glass wall along the river and this plant covered green wall.

On our way out there was a huge line; I don't know if I would have waited. We went off to the Musée Rodin to take fiscal advantage of the French. This was pretty crowded but the grounds are beautiful with many roses in bloom and sculpture displayed outside. The Thinker is here.

Rodin was quite prolific but my favorite part was the room of work by Camille Claudel. She was Rodin's lover and suffered greatly.I learned about her from the movie "Camille Claudel" with Isabel Adjani as Claudel. (Rodin, of course, was Gerard Dépardieu). Again this city space doesn' t look wild or untamed just beautiful .

Today when walking home I found the Square du Vert-Galant. It is on the west tip of the Ile de la Cité with great views of Paris. It is tiny but felt like a gift.

Closer to home is the Square du Temple. I have passed through here on many of the days I walked. When I read the signage the first time it seemed that there was originally a monastary there that was turned into a prison. reading on it seemed that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were there till their executions. I wasn't sure if this could be true but I looked it up and it is so.It has been transformed into a beautiful park always filled with a variety of people. It has some lovely plantings, especially these shady ones.

It has a pond and these ducks. When I walk through I know I am 15 minutes from our home here.