Violent femme au foyer

Updated Donna Reed moment of the day: Washing the dishes in my slinky black dress and newly purchased black pumps while humming along with whatever my iTunes has decided to play. As I’m rinsing the bowl I used for my cereal this morning I actually said out loud “ oh darn, I forgot to buy the milk” – the only thing missing from this picture is a string of pearls around my neck.


Lauren Poulin

My recipe Space

Sunday Roast

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach... Last Sunday I made Stephane this lovely roast chicken. Unfortunatly it wasn't cooked enough, so we had to hack it up and shove it back in the oven. Ah, you can't win 'em everytime. It still tasted good. But I need to buy a baster and a cooking thermometer.







Last night, I made the dish you see before you ( I swear, it tastes a lot better than it looks)
Pork chops with a Rosemary, Wine sauce, rice, and sautéed mushrooms spinach and garlic in butter. - the vegetables were so good, I'm trying to think of how many other dishes I can incorporate them into. So far, I've come up with a quiche...let me know if you have any other ideas. I could have fallen in love with those mushrooms they were so delicious. Lauren Poulin

Here's info on my latest recipe (yes I have finally moved on from meat and am starting to attack fish)

Baked Salmon steaks with lemon pepper rub, a drizzle of olive oil and thin slices of lemon, in oven 190 celsius for 15 min accompanied by vegetables:

Large mushrooms, courgettes, and vine tomatoes - placed in baking tray with olive oil, basil leaves (I now have a pot growing in the window sill) and sea salt I left this in the same time as the salmon - however the courgettes (zucchini) did not have enough time to cook - oh well, better luck next time, and I'll add them to a pasta dish tomorrow night. The tomatoes were lovely - I shall make them more often.


Here's a quick list of what I have made in my new fabulous kitchen:

Roast basil and garlic Chicken with carrots, potatoes, and courgettes

Baked Brie and garlic

Meat Loaf

Lasagna

Steak and corn on the cob

Tuna steak and roasted courgettes, broccoli, mushrooms, eggplant with goat cheese

I'll give details later.... just call me Betty Crocker



Lauren Poulin

French Kiss

Below you have a sunset view of the highest bridge in the world, the viaduc de Millau.

We had a lovely time, stayed at Stephane's parents place and got to see our cat Lechat. His parents treat the cat like a little prince. The cat gets served mineral water while they drink tap. We had a bbq with Stephane's friends. Lovely fix-me-up house with a large garden right on the banks of the Tarn river. A little piece of heaven. Saw Kayaking tournaments. Millau is a very sport oriented town with lots of biking, water sports, and para-gliding. We went to the top of one of the mountains to see the paragliders take off (and also to look into perhaps daring to take a ride myself) the views were spectacular. (as you can see above) However we did see one unfortunate soul awkwardly take off for paragliding adventures only to quickly turn 180 degrees and find himself smack dab back into the side of the very mountain he had only moments before been leaping off of. Thankfully he only suffered a few broken ribs ( and probably a large dose of embarrassment). We also went swimming in the river with a friend of Stephanes. We saw snakes, ducks, trout, and crayfish (which I mistook for a lobster at first...)

After we went to Vence forStephane to meet my dad for the first time. My father was very taken by Stephane's welcoming nature and pleased to see that his daughter had not chosen some big "macho" type.Stephane then went on conference in Toulon. I spent the next three days hanging out with the family, went to the beach with Kenny and went to see him perform with his choir in the town square for Fete de la Musique. Also had some nice quality time with little Wanda playing in the garden with her horses.

All in all a very satisfying trip. However it was also extremely hot. It got up 38 Celsius. So I was actually quite thankful to return to the east midlands where a cool summer thunder storm awaited us.

Off to Southern France

I'll be MIA from my new blog while I go see my cat (and my in-laws) in Millau (the town in southern France that now houses the largest bridge in the world and where my beau is from) and then onto Nice to see my dad and the rest of the family. This will also be the first time that the boyfriend meets the dad. I'll fill you guys in on all the gory details when I get back. Wish me luck!

I have also had a request from my friend Anne-Marie to put a "smiley" photo of me on the blog as the photos that are on now are hardly representative of the wale tooth grin I have come to be known for. I'm still trying to figure out how to upload a photo into my profile space, so once I got that covered you'll all be able to bask in the abnormally large smile of yours truly.

à plus

I'm too sexy for this bar...

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Originally uploaded by lauren lechat.

Lauren Poulin

Little ole moi

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Originally uploaded by lauren lechat.

Lauren Poulin

So you've decided to become a blogger...

Well, if my blog is anything like my journal entries, they will be few and far between... but in this day and age, just ain't cool unless you put your boring life on the internet thinking that people actually would prefer to read about you than go out and live their own fabulous lives.

Here's a bit of background:

Born in Aubagne, France June 4th 1980, a beautiful southern French town near Marseillle that is filled with Pagnol dreams, lavender, thyme and Pastis.

Mainly raised in the north suburbs of Chicago (to see my hometown, please rent Home Alone, Ferris Bueller's Day Off or try to find reruns of the show "Sisters") with my mother and younger sister.

Went to University in Ithaca, NY (snuck away for a year to "study" in Paris)

Moved to Paris permanently after graduation. Met cute French biologist, and eventually followed him to Nottingham, England after living in Paris for three years.

Obviously I'm leaving out a lot, but mysterious is sexy. Shame I'm such an open book. Note to self: work on being more mysterious, even if it means having a porous and empty blog.




Lauren Poulin