Claire Rides 20

I may not be blogging too much these days ( read: not at all) but my little sister who has far more real adventures, tests of physical and mental prowess and revelations of the soul than I do is.

Claire is currently riding across the united states along route 20 from Boston, Mass to Portland, OR. And lucky for you she is taking the time to write about it, and write about it well.

www.clairerides20.blogspot.com

Much better than me writing about getting over jet lag by eating meatballs and blue cheese while watching Columbo on the telly and my axolotl Pompydoo play with Stephane.

Check her out. Give her love. Try not to get too depressed that the walk home from the grocery store nearly left you winded while she is covering some 85 miles uphill a day while removing ticks from her body and depending on the kindness of strangers to maintain her minimal hygiene.

This one's for you mama

moar funny pictures

What a load of Croc

So I did something recently that I promised myself I would never do. Not only did I promise myself, I gave open looks of disdain to those that did and readily spoke about them and their poor sense of style behind their backs. Ladies and Gentlemen, I confess, I wore those hideous Crocs while flying. Trans-Atlantic.

While I admit that they are extremely comfortable, they also look like a piece of plastic cheese that you would find in a child's grocery store set. I let my croc wearing family and newly converted boyfriend convince me that wearing the crocs on our flight back to England would not only be sensible and practical, but would give my flight a whimsical air. Both of us wearing bright red crocs with wool interior, mine with Minnie Mouse sticking out of one of the cheese holes, boyfriend with Donald Duck. How cute.

I am someone who believes that while being comfortable on a long flight is of the utmost importance, it should never be at the expense of style. I broke this rule and paid for it.

You know you're not wearing cool shoes when adults look at the apparel on your feet with shock and/or pity and young kids run up to play with them. I was wearing toys for shoes. In public.

And just to confirm my feelings that the comfortableness of wearing red rubber on my feet would indeed be cancelled out by the sheer embarrassment of wearing red rubber on my feet our taxi driver put in his two cents.

Interesting shoes, he said. Yes. They were Christmas presents from my Mother in Chicago.
Well, your Mum sure has a good sense of humour, because the last time I saw a lady wearing shoes like that a house fell on her.

It's not Easter anymore folks

So clearly there has been a bit of hiatus from this blog. Now this doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to be back posting on a weekly basis, simply that I was sick of seeing that slightly cross-eyed photo of myself from Easter. So here are some photos from my recent trip to the Isle of Jersey. Highly recommend. Especially for fans of seafood.
View of Jersey from the plane

Champagne and oysters. A girl could get used to this.

Easter fun

There are some memebers of my family who are of the persuasion that the best part of Easter is the egg salad the day after. For me it was always getting my hands dirty.

they say it's a sign of verility, non?

I rarely talk about celebrities on this blog, which is probably because like most bloggers I secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) see myself as my own little star. But today I'd like to talk about poor bald Britney Spears. I'm sure the news coverage in the states has been the same over here - Celeb on the verge of a nervous break down.

Now her fragile psyche aside (be they rumours or truth), girl looks good bald. Beneath all those extensions; blurred make-up and beer sweat it was easy to forget that Brit Brit is not just a spiralling pop star on her way down but a pretty face too. She is just so purrty. And I'm jealous. I've always wanted to shave my head, but am too vain, too scared, too, well, normal to go through with it. How amazing it must feel to be able to exfoliate your scalp, to let it see sun, to breathe - and to give your hair a whole new start.

Britney - I hope you get the help you need if you do indeed need help, but most of all I hope you enjoy that beautiful baldhead of yours while you can.

Spicy Ham wears a crisp blanket

I've just seen an ad for this lovely looking choice piece of meat - that is right, they are bringing back the Spam Fritter. A slab of spam battered and fried. I'd be interested in finding out why this no doubt light, healthy, all-natural, golden treat had to leave us and what genius decided that we were indeed a nation ready to embrace yet again this spam goodness.

Interestingly enough when I did a search for this photo on Spam Fritters, I found that it is also urban rhyming slang for Shitter.

Enough said.

Second hand comes in first

Just thought I'd play the proud daughter and show off some of my Papa's sculptures, who frequently has pieces on display in various Cote d'Azur locations. All sculptures are made by recycled metals, giving used objects new life, be they window handles or tractor seats.

My my has it been that long? You're looking FAB by the way

No, No, I didn't forget about you my little neglected blog. I'm sorry I stayed away so long. But instead of wasting time feeling guilty, lets waste time catching up.

Chrimbo and New Years were lovely. Tons of gorgeous home cooked food in France, beautiful countryside, and some long overdue bonding (especially with my youngest sister). Among some of the dishes I ate:



A succulent Venison



The ever popular Christmas treat in France, Oysters.



Tender and powerful Wild Hare

Spent some time with friends in Paris and then dabbled in my first role behind the scenes of a Television show in the making.

It's pretty hard not to miss a city that can give you a sight like this:

I'll do my best to update more often. I find that when I leave it this long there's so much to say, you end up saying nothing at all.

Corn and Fish.

Another Thanksgiving spent miles away from the country that raised me on turkey, pumpkin pie and the joy of throwing around the ole pigskin on a brisk fall day in November. Of all holidays I think I find Thanksgiving the hardest to be away from family and friends back in the states.

This holiday to me is more important than all other holidays in America. Thanksgiving doesn’t take in account religion or race. It is a rare time in a vacation skint country where Americans get two full days off to spend time with their families, gorge themselves on good home cooking and relax.

It’s a time of year I find hard being so far away, but I’m making do with my own mini feast this Saturday with a stuffed turkey, green bean salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and thanks to the help of a charming colleague, pumpkin pie for dessert.

I’ve had to field a lot of questions from my British friends about this strange American tradition.

Brit: So do you give each other presents?

Me: No. We just eat a lot and watch American football on t.v.

Brit: So where does the tradition of thanksgiving actually come from?

Me: Well, they teach us in school about how the Pilgrims and the Indians came together for a big feast. The Indians taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn and the Pilgrims taught the Indians how to fish.

Brit: I have a hard time believing the Indians still didn’t know how to fish at this point.

Me: Yeah, you’re right. I think it was more along the lines of the Indians taught the pilgrims how to grow corn by planting it with a fish.

Skeptic Brit: Uh huh….

Me: Well, I know there’s something to do with corn and fish and a big feast.

Brit: Ok.

Me: But of course in reality it was like hey Indian, show me how to plant corn. Thanks. Now here’s a musket in your face and a blanket of small pox. But yeah, pumpkin pie rocks.


So come to think of it, perhaps I don’t deserve to be over in the states for Turkey day

Check out my recollections of Thanksgiving pasts in last years past

Food Glorious Food

As winter is creeping upon us I've been a busy little bee in the kitchen but somehow (as my friend the Southern Belle has pointed out) amidst all that cooking I forgot to blog.

Here are some of the dishes I made during my Internt hibernation.

This colourful salad was actually made by the Frenchie - it is one of his classics and tastes as lovely as it looks.

This was my first attempt at fried chicken and judging by the fact that Frenchie devoured all of it and then the next day told some of our friends that they should come over and have me cook them fried chicken all day I'm sure it will not be my last. There was also a chunky mushroom gravy to go with this dish, but the picture looks like fried chicken and mash smothered in baby poop so I decided not to post that one.

I picked up some Halibut at the fishmongers. Stuffed them with lemon slices, massaged a lemon pepper rub into them, wrapped them in tin foil with some leeks and sugar snap peas and a dash of white wine and threw them in the oven with a little water in a baking dish. Accompanied with wild rice. I loved this dish. Although next time I think I'll cook the sugar snap peas separately as they took on too much of the white wine flavour. And some of us had a hard time eating around the bones, but survived.

Stephane's favourite hangover cure. I'm not a big bean fan, but on this particularly fuzzy morning they hit the spot.

My usual roast chicken, nothing beats the classics.

Last night I made my dear friend S. Belle's winter soup. Unfortunately we gobbled it up so fast there is no photo, but I do have some in the freezer now so I'll try to produce a shot at some point. I had to substitute onions for leeks and rosemany for thyme, but the soup was delicious. And I loved the smell that baking squash produced in the house. I finally went out and bought a hand blender (which I've been wanting for ages) and tried it out on the soup. Between me and Stephane a lot of soup went on the walls of the kitchen, but we finally figured it out.

Sorry for the hiatus!

The proud owners of their home grown chili pepper

Magic Beans and Sunshine

The ankle is recovering nicely and thanks to everyone who wished for a speedy bipedal return. I am now sans crutches and sans bandage. Bruises are fading. My limp comes and goes as does the pain, but I am ever so thankfull to be mobile once more. I cannot wait to be able to run again. And we will even be attempting to play catch again with our super fast nerf football - although not in our hole-ridden back yard, but in the University park down the road.

I finally went to go see Little Miss Sunshine. I had been playing down my true feelings about this movie in order to not over hype it to friends and colleagues and have the movie not live up to my gushing praise. But I myself have had many a movie ruined for me by others this way so I decided, hey - fuck it. This movie is hands down the funniest movie I have ever seen. For the first time in my life I watched the credits roll in a darkened movie house with tears streaming down on my face - tears of laughter. I want to shrink the movie down in all its yellow honest goodness and carry it around in my pocket forever and ever.

So, as I recall, I had given a blurb about the New York leg of our trip and failed to mention Boston. Oh darling Boston - do not think it is because I love you less. I was wounded, remember? Wounded playing with the very football purchased in your fair city.

A quick rundown of our time in Beantown: First off the reason why I had not mentioned anything about this trip to NYC/Boston on my blog prior to departure is because mi madre had no idea we were going. She was wrought with guilt over the fact that she had abandoned her first born daughter in the middle of England never having visited her and yet had been to see her second child in her new Bostonian digs twice or thrice or something - a lot more than none is what I'm getting at here (you reading this Mom?)

The surprise was great as she had no idea and was impressed with the amount of people involved who had to keep our trans-atlantic voyage under wraps. We spent the weekend en famille - eating, walking, shopping etc. I only wish we could have had more time together.

After the parents left we had a fabulous greco-roman party chez Ondine with plenty of sexy togas, olives, dolmas, Ben Hur and impromptu cold readings of greek plays. Oh and copious amounts of red wine.

Stephane and I stayed in a beautiful B&B in Cambridge which had High Tea with a different type of cupcake everyday. There was a cute gray kitty that would occasionaly hang out in our room or join us on the patio while we tucked into breakfast.

There was a baseball game at Fenway park, a tour around the Museum of Natural History in Harvard, lobster, clams and oysters were consummed in the oldest restaurant in America, a certain Freedom trail was followed, and much drinking, eating and shopping.

Another one bites the dust

So my view for the past day and a half has been this:

On monday night, while I was waiting for my photos to upload for my post on NYC, I asked Stephane if he'd like to go out in the garden and throw around the new nerf (american) football that we had bought in Boston. We played for about half an hour, me in the deep end making some spectacular catches which Stephane will back me up on. We then decided to switch sides. About 2 minutes into that I went running to catch the ball, my left foot fell into one of the many holes hidden in the field behind our house, my body went falling one way and my foot stayed planted in the hole.

A call to the ambulance later (with a very charming Stephane telling 999 that his "partnairs ahnkle his beeg, lahk a bubbal") Stephane finally got them to come over. Wheel chaired out of my house sucking on laughing gas for the pain.

Luckily one of my friends at the hospital is doing night shifts this week and so I had a friendly face take care of me, which made all the difference.



It started raining when we got home and I had to crawl through my front door with it pissing down on me and all the neighbors staring out their windows.

So If anyone has any pointers on walking with crutches let me know. I'm not very good at it.

On the plus side, my arms and back will get super toned from having to get up and down stairs on my butt.

Martini flavored cheetos redux

Martinis to Cheetos and everything inbetween

Our recent trip to the states started with an incredible cheese burger and a martini at our friend, the ever fabulous Miss O’s swanky local pub in Brookline, Massachusetts and ended with a much coveted bag of orange finger inducing Cheetos at Gate B36 at Logan Airport.

What? You went to America and didn’t tell us? Yes. Sorry for the secrecy but this trip was on a need know basis, as my Mama had no idea we were going stateside to see her for a transatlantic Birthday surprise. It worked like a charm.

And since you have all been so patient while I have been away – excluding those of you that send me threatening emails to write more often or pay the consequences – I will treat you to a long overdue Lauren photo-story.

We arrived in Boston for a single night, graciously put up by Miss O . Fell in love with her neighbourhood and apartment, which is impressive considering we were jet lagged and smelly, which is not a good state to fall in love with anything or anyone.

We then took the cheap (in every sense of the word) Fung Wah bus to New York City where we were picked up by the generous and patient Beau of my favourite jersey girl, Danielle . Dinner in Little Italy and a short walk to work off the copious amounts of pasta consumed.

Danielle, her Beau and her scrumptious dog Audrey (who is NOT a fan of Beyoncé’s new single in case you were thinking of getting her the album for her birthday) housed us for our short week in the Big Apple. I'll let the photos do the talking.



Despite having already been in NYC for a day and a half, this is the first photo we took. T. Rex in Toys R Us in Time Square.

A quick snap at Time Square.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to leave you in suspense. I was hoping to put up all my NYC photos tonight, but either a slow connection or a Blogger bug is causing my photos to take way too long to update. I'll update as soon as