Crêpes and Such

As I browse amongst my friends' blogs on France I realize I neglected to mention la Chandeleur, or the mid-winter celebration marking the slow return of the sun. It is always fêted with piles of crêpes.

As I do my research into this celebration, I learn its pagan and Celtic roots: amidst the many references of Latin and Roman times, is one to a Northern European tradition of chandelours, or the equivalent of the American groundhog day but in favor of watching the behavior of the bear as he creeps out from hibernation as an indicator of the length of winter, ours meaning bear. The imagery is rather marvelous, no?

Then there is the day of Brigid or Imbolc the 1st of February, linked to the Celts, and a day of candles, or chandelles, bringing purification and fertility to the land before the spring plantings.

As generally happened, the Christian church chose the dates already on the celebration calendar to position a festival of their choosing. In this case it became the day to mark Jesus' presentation at the Temple, and the purification of the Virgin Mary. Thus, the use of blessed candels is approved, and all is made right. He who brings a lit candle all the way home from church without it being snuffed out by the cold wind will not die this year.


Celui qui la rapporte chez lui allumée
Pour sûr ne mourra pas dans l’année

However, those crêpes which persist as the layman's symbol are rich in imagery: the round disk of the sun, the golden possibilities of a good harvest, lay away the first made and the year will be bountiful, flip it with your right hand with agility and perfection while holding a gold piece in your left and your luck will be assured throughout the year...

As does still happen on occasion, my American roots overwhelm my French persona and I am more in tune to Presidents' Day and the fall Jewish holidays (I am a former New Yorker) than to the French holiday calendar. And so, it was my children who announced to me as we drove home from school on February 2 that it was crêpe day and thus my other offers of other snackfoods were swept from the table.

Happily, these children are pre-teens and children of cooks all, thus with but a bit of guidance from me (I made the pâte à crêpe, batter, and cut it with water as I really didn't want to see all the milk I'd just gotten at the farm Sunday be used up by Tuesday afternoon!)they attacked the project with gusto.

I also suggested -- remembering a past crêpe event this fall -- that they put their small ladelful of batter in the pan, swirl and then pour out the extra into the mixing bowl, to ensure thin crêpes, even if this method leaves a bit of a tail on the crêpe.

Stacks of crêpes were made for their afternoon snack. But then, it didn't stop there. Carnival was slated for Thursday at school and the older classes were to bring in ten crêpes each as their contribution (for Jonas' class the request was fruit juice and home made cakes). Thus the project was repeated Wednesday night.

Being the mom I am... I was fine with them cooking and using all my utensils, but... I draw the line at being the clean-up slave. With more than a bit of nudging, I was able to get them to clean up the stove top of cooked-on drips, and their pans, bowls, whisks, spatulas, etc., The floor was my job. No one's perfect.

And as I do so, I remember the canon about the Jour de Chandeleur that we sang during my Steiner/Waldorf training... if only I could grasp than the first line in my head.

Our crêpe batter for a very large pile:

La Pâte à Crêpe

3 eggs
enough flour whisked in to make a paste
1/4 cup of water whisked in to thin the paste
more flour till thick again
milk slowly whisked in till thinned to a batter texture
now switch to water and keep adding till you've a light cream texture
a pinch of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
and optionally: a 1/4 teaspoon vanilla or a scrape of a vanilla bean

Ideally you have a short sided crêpe pan, but if not, a non-stick frying pan will do. We do rub it with a bit of butter on a paper towl nonetheless, get it hot and pour in a ladel of batter. Swirl around to cover the bottom and pour out the excess. With practice you'll get the size of your ladelful just right and no longer need to pour out the excess, improving the overall look of your crêpe.

Cook till it starts to bubble up with air from below, flip with style or with a spatula. Let cook a couple seconds on the reverse side and flip out onto a plate. Continue.

Bedside Readings

This winter I've been working my way through Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Joan Gussow's This Organic Life.

They are inspiring, but daunting, examples of what I would like to be able to do but am not sure I'm completely capable of putting into place. Self-sufficiency, growing your own food, raising chickens and turkeys, patronizing the local markets and farms, keeping to a healthy, local diet respectful of the food chain, the environment, and yourself.

From Barbara Kingsolver I wonder if I could raise turkeys? Learning to eviscerate them, pluck them, etc., doesn't particularly phase me, I'd be more worried about the abundance of hawks I see in the neighborhood feasting upon them before myself. However would the food needed to keep them going be more expensive than themselves in the end? I create lots of good scraps -- which have been going into the compost -- but I've not a huge garden, nor funds for lots of feed corn (which I'd want organic in any case, right?) and there are quite a number of dogs in the area...

Joan Gussow goes on quite a bit about her success with sweet potatoes. And yes, I love these too. Could I manage to plant them when the ground is 70 degrees F and keep them in a back room at 60 degrees afterward? Am I sufficiently organized to do this alone?

At this point I've a strawberry patch, some garlic planted I hope for the spring, some lettuce plants, my herbs, and hopes to clear some more of the back garden to plant more this spring. However, as I rent my home every summer, it's not easy to plan a vegetable garden when you'll not be here.

At JP's? But that's pretty iffy, and I'm not there that much and so wouldn't be able to truly care for it.

What I seek is coherence, balance, investment, ownership, pleasure, nourishment, enrichment for my children and myself... And the fun of trying something, discovering how.

I'll see what I'm capable of. Before me I've a couple weeks of down time. The kids are with Erick, JP away, and my garden is staring me in the face. If not now, when?

Sun in my room

This is a magical moment of the year. When school vacation begins, we are still awaking in the dark, moving a bit zombie-like as we scramble to get ready for school, warm up the house, get out the door.

During these two weeks of winter break, the sun catches up with us. These past three mornings the internal clock has me up at 7, and low and behold, the sun is coming to join me. Brilliant orange skies flood into my little bedroom window to the East.

Jonas sat upright mesmerized yesterday. And this morning, I was quite blinded by the orange ball itself, right within my view.

I shifted the placement of my bed this year, to benefit from a view of trees rather than the neighbor's wall. It was JP's suggestion, and a good one.

For too many months now it has been dark, gray, misty. At last the sun is back. And with it unbelievable clouds of dust are visible in my room! mmm just a little reminder that I need to pull out the vaccuum up here and not just down in the more 'public' rooms?

For the moment, the timing is perfect: light and orange glory about 7AM, the sun itself just before 8. However, much as I love the light, I also love to sleep. T'is possible I'll have to start contemplating getting a curtain next week!

A reorganized household

Just before Christmas it was mutually decided that my pre-teen girls would return to their parents' homes during the week, newly able to carpool with neighbors. I am thus now a den mother to four boys, rather than to six pre-teens. It all got shuffled around. At first we were a bit dismayed and out of sorts, but very quickly a new balance of personalities and personal needs fell into place. For the moment, the girls have not been replaced, and, it's turning out to be a blessing in disguise.

Leo and Mael -- our two that had been paying court to our 13 year old girl, and who'd often had their feelings toyed with by her -- have now joined forces. Leo came down from his shared room with Jonas, and Mael came up from his shared room with Gaetan, and now they share what had been the girls' room (and before that my living room, but that's ancient history at this point).

With two fewer bodies in the house, the raucus games of hide and seek have dissipated, to be replaced with far more card games, juggling, more attention to homework, and miracle of miracles, night-time reading! At least for Leo and Mael. Gaetan is just not a reader, but he has enough homework to keep him up till late at night.

My internat de garçons, boys' boarding house, is remarkably calm, free of spats and -- dare I say it? shall I jinx myself? -- relaxing.

I spent the fall in an intense tither, coping with the multiple personalities, clashes, snits, spats, mini-explosions, petulant appetites and crises emotionnelles. Too many Saturday afternoons were spent simply exhausted, sleeping as long as I was permitted (three hours was perfect) to simply recuperate from the effort.

And now? Well, I've fewer funds. The girls' boarding fees were going directly to pay my boys' school fees. Thus with these no longer coming in, I'll be scrounging a bit more than I would have liked. But I have much more head time to myself, time to contemplate getting that part-time job, time to write, and, with this new constellation of bodies, I can even go out an evening during the week and know they'll be okay.

I guess I should just accept that I'm a mom of boys. Having not had my little girl, I'm not too experienced on that front. Interesting.

Knocked about by une Rhûme

Well, after an autumn filled with stress and fatigue, but remarkably free of colds, the flu, tummy upsets, etc., I seem to have been felled by a nasty one. Oh it's passing, so I shouldn't complain too much. But three nights of minimal sleep, the painful sinus passages, either dripping or completely blocked up, just feeling yucky. I could have easily and pleasurably skipped this moment of bed-rest and enforced slow-down.

Yesterday I made use of my bedrest by working on the memoir proposal, re-working texts, re-orgaizing, cropping, re-wording, filling in. The perfect project for this winter vacation when the boys will be mostly with their father and JP is far away in Bolivia. I treasure the time for myself, and perhaps being sick was just the thing I needed to sit still and get to work.

The boys have been lovely -- all four. Thursday after all my backing and forthing between school, the speech and writing therapist, handball, etc., and before that at the winery helping with the last minute things JP needed to do before his departure (I already sick) I just wanted to collapse. So they handled their own dinner, dishes, etc., and I was able to do just that.

Goodness I'm grateful. Last night and this morning as well Leo and Jonas both have been dears. Jojo got his room clean (had to, or we weren't going to Avatar...) and after our VO 3D version of this film (my head pounding near migraine territory at the end) they happily took care of their own dinner, helped with dishes and permitted me to yet again crash early.

Today, I'm almost human. Housekeeping was shared amongst us (they did the bathroom, kitchen table after breakfast and brought their stuff up off the stairwell). I vaccuumed the downstairs, made desserts, corn bread, washed salad, did the shopping, etc., for guests tonight and tomorrow.

Truly, being sick and out of sorts was not on the program this week! But at least some extra rest was possible.

Carnival at the Waldorf School!

All the school's a play... or at least the entire school is in costume playing their respective roles. Jonas' class was inspired by their reading of the Fables of La Fontaine. Jonas, when nudged by one of his best friends, agreed to be the tortoise -- which somehow seems fitting for his personality. Throughout his class there were pairs of animals: a lion and a mouse, an ant and a cicada, a fox and a crow, a city rat and his cousin the country rat, a rooster, a cat and a...

A most active role the teacher took in becoming herself the rooster (quite a magnificent one she was!). With some candy to pay their way, they went out into the school yard, transformed into a country fair, complete with gypsies and their caravans (the older classes) an organic cotton candy (here known as barbe à papa) stand, palm readers, tests and games of all sorts, snacks and drinks (provided by we parents) and oodles more. It was a day of fun for everyone.
At first I was worried that Jonas would be a bit odd about his chosen costume. We'd put it together as a four man project: I bought the paints and found the cardboard. I drew the oval and gave suggestions for mixing paints, designing the shape. And then Mael helped Jonas with the back shell, and an hour later or so I saw Leo out there helping him paint the front shell. His little hat had been made by himself in class alongside his friends who in most cases had ears or a mane to attach to it.

According to his teacher, he removed his cumbersome and mobility-limiting costume but once or twice for certain games, and then donned it again. I shouldn't be so surprised, he does know the tale, and of course in the end, though the rabbit/hare be faster, he wins the race.

When I recounted this day's events to JP he commented on the very clear differences between my two boys. If Jonas is happy being the tortoise, Leo is most definitely more akin to the hare. And, at least Jonas is quite okay with that.

Is winter on the way out?

Though today is chilly and damp, yesterday was glorious, as was in fact quite a number of days last week. The north wind barreling through brought the sunshine, and when it decided to stop gusting and knocking us about, it left us a magnificent few days to revel, wander, walk and awaken.

Where in other worlds the ground hog came out and looked at his shadow (which he did or didn't see, I'm afraid I've not been following the news...), here we are simply grateful to be in a land where an early February walk by the Rhône or amongst the leafless winter vines is a pleasurable possibility.

As usual, I do these walks accompanied by dogs. Filou is my faithful companion, greeting all and sundry who cross our paths, sniffing butts and snouts equally, leaping, barking, dashing after a runner or two, and then back to my side. Quite clearly, he's checking out the world around us, protecting me from possible predators, right? On the island we're joined by Saline, the large and lovely mutt of our neighbors who could be my second dog. And when at the winery, there is the new puppy who arrived on Christmas day, Perro. I suppose when one's human goes for a walk, it is a time for bounding joy. Don't you agree?

As we cross the Rhône into Avignon in the morning on our way to school, we are greeted -- for the first time in two months -- by the brilliantly orange disk of the sun, sitting just above a point somewhat to the south of the Pope's palace. It has moved back north from its furthest winter solstice position, but still has a ways to go.

And, as I so gratefully felt and absorbed, the sun is with us far later into the evening. Four thirty felt early to come home from what had started out as an hour's walk, and what easily became two. How to leave that light?

And it did not leave me, but left its mark. My cheeks are red from a touch of late winter sun burn, my lips chapped and sensitive. Ah well. It is all worth it.

A Winter Soup -- 'Chinese style'

Whenever I roast a chicken or a rabbit I toss the post-meal bones into a stock pot with a few herbs, perhaps an onion, cover them with water and make stock. With the wood stove going nearly non-stop, it serves as the perfect slow simmering spot to draw out the flavors from those bones over a twenty-four hour period.

Once I've my two to three cups of stock, I drain it through a sieve -- putting the scraps outside for Filou and his friends to devour. It is then ready to add to my kids' current favorite soup.

This is my cheap, nourishing winter meal.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 carrots peeled and diced very small
one onion diced very small
1 quart of water
my chicken stock
one organic vegetable bouillon cube
a handful of frozen peas and/or corn
A package of Asian rice noodles
some soy sauce to taste




I drizzle the oil on the bottom of the stock pot, toss in the carrots and onions (or if I'm getting a bit daring, chopped leeks and cabbage, but I'm afraid my kids weren't too psyched to recognize these green bits in their soup this past time), lightly sweat these before covering with the liquid ingredients, adding in the bouillon cube and letting simmer till soft (about 30 minutes on my wood stove). I then add in the peas and/or corn and the rice noodles. When the rice noodles are tender, I check the flavor, add a bit of soy sauce and serve.

The kids get a kick out of mastering chop sticks. They already are fans of gomasio (sesame salt) and add it if needed to punch up the flavor.

The broth fills them up, as do the noodles. Warmed from within, homework and bed to follow come naturally on this dark winter's night.