I'm singing in the...

Living in the wide open spaces of the countryside cuts you down to size.  You feel appropriately insignificant, mother nature in her extremes is writ large and subject to inexplicable whimsy.  Moving to the bricked-in spaces of the city creates this pulse-quickening sense of expansiveness, all those languages, accents, skin colors, eye shapes, extraordinary personal histories, the swerve of social history evident in heroic buildings, the ringing trams, clustered bicycles--and mmm, those bookstores.  All that potential and hectic activity give the impression that we, as individuals, really can blaze our own trails. It simply took tasting hummus heaped onto sesame-speckled bread rings from a local Turkish market to realize I've just plain missed certain things.

Summer, in the rain.

But first I had to get used to stoplights again. By this I mean the stoplights keeping me from places I just have to get to by a certain time.  Because being in a hurry is a near-obligatory sub-clause of city life, and everyone's in a hurry here because we're all late because half of the transportation infrastructure in Amsterdam is under construction.  I only wish I was exaggerating.

The convertible mini cooper, in the rain.

Maybe you can't take the city out of the girl, not even after three years in what came tantalizingly close to southern French heaven.  (Oh, don't make me think of that garden I had to leave behind.) Here, there's just a rain-sodden terrace (a real luxury, should the un ever choose to shine again).  But the heels rise, the pants (and everything else) are tighter, and the wildness is found not beneath the scrub oak but rather in tribal-looking makeup and in that jaunty, sharp-hipped confidence of the (young) Dutch. Who are neck-twistingly taller than me, I must add.

The traffic, in the rain.

Good grief there's a lot of energy that gets burned in a move, lots of things happening at the same time and going in different directions.  Health insurance, a smooth transition for the kids, a coatrack (for all the raingear and coats in August/September). My thoughts are as jumbled as my files. Meanwhile, my to-do list is longer than a Dutchman's leg--and growing.  So this is partly why I haven't had really special photos to show you.  But it's been raining here, too.  A lot.  More than usual.  The rain barely pauses, and then only to switch to Chicago-style gusts of wind, because a proper Dutch day has all four seasons. And then some.  And oh, dear, I'd forgotten how to dress for this ongoing climatogical change; me and my silly, filmy, country summer wear.  But it's coming back to me.  And so is my affection for this laid-back, at times grouchy (can you blame them with this weather?), always engaging city.      

Kyrie eleison.

After a matter of days in Amsterdam, we had to return.  It's hard separating, whether from a person or a place.  You find yourself going back to that familiar beauty that drew you in the first place.

In stark contrast to the Amsterdam I've thus far experienced this year, Paris was at her seasonally appropriate best: 30 degrees celsius (86 degrees fahrenheit), long rows of tourists with their feet in the fountains, and city streets alight.  Top down, music playing, we were nevertheless in Paris for a seriously good reason: a friend's wedding.

The wedding was familiar and exotic all at once, being held in the Russian Orthodox tradition.  Imagine squadrons of Parisian and Russian women in over-the-top hats and perfectly fitted, fancy summer dresses--and sky-high heels.  Their companions faintly overwarm in their suits. And all of us standing for the full length of the service, which lasted an hour and a half.  There are no seats in a Russian Orthodox cathedral, and the Alexander Nevsky on rue Daru in the 8eme arrondissement granted no exception to this  rule.

The two priests, one old with solemn eyes and a full, square beard, one a strapping young tenor, chanted the entire service, in a sort of Gregorian manner.  They were draped from neck to ankle in heavy, golden vestments, absolutely covered with embroidered religious motifs.  They led the bride and groom's procession into the church, where the couple stood upon an immaculately white piece on cloth laid upon the Persian carpeted floor.  They held a golden chalice, from which the couple drank.  And then came the crowning, which involved eight male members of the wedding party.  Four men behind the bride, four behind the groom perspired in their morning coats while taking turns to hold the golden crowns a steady few inches above the heads of the bridal pair.  All this with song and prayer ringing in the air (the choir was hidden but sang in a sort of call and response throughout the prayers and crowning); the acoustics were powerful and somehow intimate.  And there was gold and intricate designs and carving everywhere.

The couple drove off in a wine-red 1950s convertible Dodge Coronet (with Washington state plates!) We cheered, and that evening, we drank an awful lot of Champagne. 

You are what you eat--and the company you keep.

My life in the south of France is measured by basket.  Basket after basket, creaking under the weight of perfectly ripe produce and locally made goodness, redolent of earth and sun.  Here are some of the marchands who have filled my baskets and larder, year in and year out.

Erwan is a traiteur extraordinaire, and my go-to guy for years now.  He sharpened his knives and his wit in the brasseries of Paris for years before heading out to the province for fresh air and friendlier people. He makes a magnificent cured, roasted turkey, more tender than you can believe, rubbed with herbs and unlike anything I've ever had, anywhere else.  He makes lots of things, fine free-range roast chickens, paprika legs, seasonal specialties (like Camargue beef), a mean sausage.  I could go on, but his turkey (on the bone) is what keeps me coming back.  He calls it  jambonette de dinde, and he is holding some in the photo. I so wish you could taste a morsel.  

Guillaume has an excellent selection of organic fruit and vegetables, with less familiar varieties mixed in with the standards.  All grown locally.  Right now, his white peaches are heady, perfumed and juicy beyond any singing of it. I tried to get him to pose holding his superlative golden beets.  As you can see, he refused.  With a smile. I think he only agreed to a photo because I asked so nicely.  In Amsterdam, I am going to miss his produce something fierce.

Louise and her husband offer organic vegetables--white and green asparagus in the spring, onions, potatoes and mushrooms later in the season--but it is her tiny, deeply flavorful wild blueberries, and her wild blueberry tart that have really made her name.  I can't keep track of how many children they have, there are more than four, and they all go together into the mountains to pick these blueberries.  She said we've maybe one more week's worth, then blueberry season is closed for 2011.

The queue was as usual, way too long for Christophe, my neighbor and one of my main cheese sources. You can see him in the background. He makes long, meandering trips to cheesemakers he knows, returning with treats from the Lozere, the Basque Pyrenees, and points well beyond.  When he isn't selling cheese and sausage, he is playing petanque--in the summer anyway.  The rest of the year, he hunts wild boar.  His Basque Tomme de Brebis, a ewe's cheese from the mountains, can make you temporarily lose the power of speech. I kid you not.

 

If you have been reading me for awhile, you may be familiar with Claudie.  She is a pelardon queen, with a very loyal following of customers; I have made pilgrimages to her farm to watch her and her husband turn goat milk into the signature cheese of our region.  She gives me eggs and extra cheese, I give her plants from the garden.  And cookies. 

Jean-Louis is a fifth generation butcher who slaughters and cuts all his own meat, from the entire animal.  In France, more and more meat is prepared at large slaughterhouses, then shipped to butchers, who simply make the final packaging for sale; people with Jean-Louis' depth of skill are a dying breed. Jean-Louis makes sausages, pates, and cures his own ham.  In winter, he makes his foie gras from his own ducks.  To do this,  to get to the village markets and set up his wares, he wakes up at two in the morning and goes to bed at seven in the evening. Conscientious and proud, he provides written details on the provenance of all his meat.  There is always sedate classical music playing in the background at his truck, and he is always impeccably dressed--note the pristine, personalized apron and red tie.  He chats up his regulars with a charming elegance, swapping recipes and vivid anecdotes.  I give him a pot of my chutney, and he gives my kids yoyos and generous samples.  Once he retires (not long now), his business will close: his children are not interested in his metier.

These people are as much the Cevennes as the sycamores in the village, the dramatic views, the cigales and the crows stealing my figs.  It just wouldn't be the same without them. 

I'll be seeing them all again, during the next school holidays.

In the air.

A lot of what I do in the summertime is about capturing the best moments. It's all about distilling--reducing and preserving the essential--whether I'm cooking a batch of deeply ripe raspberry jam, bottling fruit liqueurs or making chutneys, for which I'm now using the Reine Claudes that are so weighing down the plum trees in the garden.  Memories, to be opened at a later date for the taste buds, the eye, the nose, the mind.

I suppose in many ways I've tried to do that with this blog. Coming on three years now, I've gathered together some fine moments, many of which still glow in my mind's eye as brightly as my neighbor's newly pressed picholine olive oil. And while I've enjoyed every season to the full, this summer seems more memorable than usual.

Leaving'll do that to you, bringing the things, people and places you most value into blade-sharp focus. Call it a sort of early-onset nostalgia. As an expat and dyed-in-the-wool nomad I really try not to put off the important stuff--carpe diem and all that jazz--but there is always the latent awareness that another move could shake things up once again. This time, the siren call of my husband's work imposes; so for the past month I've been simultaneously living it up and preparing for a return...to city life.

I'm moving due north. For the first time ever, I'm going back to live in a city I already know. If I sound fairly cavalier about leaving the sunny south, it's because I know we'll be back in France--and regularly. (We have to: we're keeping the farmhouse.)

Care to explore Amsterdam with me? I'm leaving in two weeks. 

Or you could drop by and help pack some boxes...

Going to the sea.

Heading to Cassis seems to have turned into an annual tradition of sorts.  There are worse things. 

This time, I avoided all the highways.  It took most of the day to get there, but it was magical.  We went through the tiniest Provencal villages, through big cities (Nimes and Marseille), and above all through the rolling, endlessly changing countryside. 

The fruit and vegetable stands, with their hand-lettered signs, were up and running nearly everywhere.  The cigales were screeching away; we knew this because the top stayed down the entire trip. 

We stopped for lunch and a wander in Salon-de-Provence, made memorable by its remarkable fontaine moussue. 

 

The fountain dates from the sixteenth century, and the lime deposits from the water have made over time a natural sculpture covered in moss and fairy-light, fern-like vegetation.  Underneath the mushroom-shaped limestone, water drips constantly.  It is hypnotic, a cave in the making, in the bright light of day.

The animation of the cities has become a bit unfamiliar and exciting for us, so it was also a pleasure to drive through them.  But I had a specific idea in mind: I was willing to risk hitting Friday evening rush hour in Marseille for the sake of D559.   Also known as La route de la Gineste, D559 runs from Marseille to Cassis, above the deep, rocky coastal inlets, and across the windswept limestone clifftops and plateau.  It is not to be missed. 

See the tiny houses in that valley?  Breath-taking terrain, every inch of the way, and then, after the nth hairpin turn, Cassis and its golden rockface swerve into view. 

This was the view from our room, taken by my five year old while I was having a well-earned shower.

I have written about Cassis before, here and here and here, so the basics about this charmingly low-key port have been covered.  But there are always lovely spots in Cassis to admire--and photograph.

To better see some of the detail of this gorgeous Ferris Wheel, you can click on the image.  My son's in the St. Exupery/Le Petit Prince airplane...

In the center of the photo below, two men are sea jousting (you might have to click on the image again to better see).  Each standing on a fast-moving boat, the opponents are trying to knock one another into the cold water using lances.  Sea jousting dates from Ancient Greece and Rome, and has been played in port and river towns across France since the time of the Romans.  Provencal sea jousting (joute nautique) is considered the most aggressive of the various versions.  These days, even women have begun to joust, according to the national federation.

I watched from the balcony, and decided I'd rather stroll around looking at boats rather than falling off them.

Once back from Cassis, my kids spent the day at our neighbor's place.  Building a hut in their dry riverbed was the main order of the day, but the children also collected pinecones.  Arriving on the tail end of their foraging session, I was able to grab a couple of cones. 



These cones are from a very large, mature umbrella pine, and you can see the seed pods are tucked back in between the scales.  While this wasn't the greatest year for pine nuts, there is still nothing finer than to dislodge the seed pods, and, using a small stone, crack open the seed pods and eat the creamy colored pine nut within.  Fresh pine nuts have a slightly resinous, almost eucalyptic flavor, far more intense than anything found in a store.  They taste simply spectacular, which perhaps explains why I have never been able to get anyone to collect them for anything other than their own immediate consumption.  If you are lucky enough to get your hands on some fresh pine nuts, or you choose to go the storebought route, I have just the recipe.  I found it in Real Simple magazine years ago, a simple riff on Italian biscotti ai pinoli, which I slightly tweaked; it is devoured by kids and adults alike.  I haven't made it lately (hence the lack of a photo).  Let me know what you think.  I'd love to post a photo of your cookies, so do send me one if you try the recipe.

Biscuits au pin de pignon (Pine Nut Drops)

Makes about 40 cookies.

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons agave or corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 1/2 cups raw pine nuts

Preheat oven 190C/375F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Beat the butter, brown and granulated sugars, corn syrup, and vanilla for two minutes using an electric mixer. Add egg and beat until combined. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda and spices. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually add the flour mixture to the egg mixture.

Shape the dough into tablespoon-size balls. Spread the pine nuts in a low dish. Roll each ball in the pine nuts, pressing so the nuts adhere. Place the balls two inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until just lightly browned at the edges, about 12 minutes. Cool on the baking sheets for five minutes. Transfer the cookies to wire racks and cool completely.

Heat.

Where have I been? Doing everything and nothing.

Coaxing the lettuce and tomato patch through this extended dry spell and the children through the sudden expansiveness of no-school.

Picking berries (raspberries, the first of the blackberries, and now the last of the black currants and white currants), pulling weeds, blowing up inner tubes, sweeping the second round of wisteria blossoms from the terrace. Summer gives meaning to the terrace, after the long cold of winter and spring’s uncertainty.

Taking the kids to the creek or the tree-shaded, dreaming river.  Building huts is pretty high on their list.  Wading, racing homemade boats and stirring up the mud ranks high as well. I’m reading whenever I can.  And next week, it’s the beach for all of us.



We are very much in the here and now. Spring and fall, really anything before or after, have receded vaporously, and the present is all we know, this baking summer just short of eternal.

In the evenings, there are parties with neighbors, charming fellow bloggers and concerts.  There was once again Bastille day, with hundreds of kids walking to the fireworks display, each holding a paper lantern at the end of a bamboo pole, to form a flowing, bobbing candlelit procession. There is something distinctly magical about a retraite aux flambeaux. Long live this kind of French tradition.

What we are not doing: we are not sleeping indoors.  The stars, random satellites and waxing moon beckon, and we sleep on the terrace, laid bare to the night’s cool, uneven breath.  We fight closing our eyes, looking instead for patterns in the hushed sky.

 

There is once again the warm, musky smell of summer skin.  There is the sensual act of driving barefoot, toes curled around the pedals, sand drying and falling away. In the kitchen, the wide, square terracotta tiles are blissfully cool to the touch.

During all this doing and not-doing, there is always the background music of the locusts holding their lacy wings tightly against themselves and screeching ever higher, until something startles them and you find yourself in a pool of silence, with only the swallows’ zooming trajectories to break the fragile surface.

There are several nests tucked in around the house, and the mothers and fathers are kept busy teaching the little, uncertain birdlets to fend for themselves.  The little ones huddle together, then hurtle off raggedly into the air.

My children are stretching their wings and growing too.  They and their friends pad barefoot across the burning tiles of the terrace to dive and arch through the bracing poolwater, skin gleaming, seal-like, spangled with light.

We are at summer’s apex.  Which happens to be a mighty fine time to make a particularly luscious, warm potato salad.

Salade de pommes de terre (Roasted Potato Salad)

based on Trish Gray's winning recipe

Serves 8-10 as a side dish.
 1 kg. new potatoes, such as the all-purpose Mona Lisa variety, unpeeled and quartered/chopped to bite-size pieces
1 tbsp. olive oil
4 green onions, thinly sliced (both green and white parts)
4 tbsp. chives, finely chopped
¼ c. good-quality mayonnaise
2 tsp. fresh rosemary, very finely chopped
¼ tsp. black pepper
½ tsp. salt


Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Toss unpeeled, chopped potatoes in oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place in a roasting pan and bake until nicely browned.


Meanwhile, combine green onions, chives, rosemary and mayonnaise in a large bowl. Once potatoes are done, toss in bowl while hot, until potatoes are thoroughly coated. Season with salt and pepper. Serve warm.