Seesaw Wheat Oof

It's a wonderful feeling when something you've been patiently, albeit sporadically trying to learn, starts to show results. It could be anything from learning to drive a standard transmission car (which I've been teaching my oldest) to a new quilting technique to studying a foreign language.

For a few years now, I've been teaching myself French with the help of books, videos and some coaching from my son, who's studied three years of French. Periodically, I visit websites that have mini French lessons, and I practice my pronunciation. French is very similar to English in that the pronunciation has little or nothing to do with what is written.

I was following a link to the Paris newspaper, Le Figaro's, website with an article (in French) about a contest judging the best flan of Paris. There is also a short video showing the judging process, so I watched and listened to see what I could pick up. I picked out "texture" "cream" "color" "golden" "bakery" and "food store". Then I heard this phrase "Seesaw Wheat Oof". I knew I recognized those sounds. What could it be? I kept repeating it to myself. Sees - that's six. Wheat aka huit - that's eight. And Oof is ouef - egg. Six a huit ouefs! Six to eight eggs! I have a lightbulb going off over my head moment and it feels awesome!

Water, water everywhere

When I was in France, I drank a lot of water. Coming from the humidity of Florida's climate, the naturally drier climate of France in September had us sucking on bottled water pretty much all day long. Like everything in France, the water was expensive. Whenever we sat down to eat in a restaurant, we would order the complementary "carafe d'eau" - a pitcher of cold water, to save the $4.00 bottled water charge.

One day in Lyons, I got separated from our group after I made an extended stop at the post office. Since I was on my own for the next six hours, I decided to make the best of it and stopped to have lunch at the outdoor seating area of a cafe on the central square. I was able to order the special, a pork chop with cauliflower gratin, without any problem and I asked for the pitcher of "d'eau" (pronounced DOH). The waitress looked at me quizzically and asked me "a pitcher of what?" "D'eau", I replied, "D'eau, d'eau, d'eau." Which made me feel like a Doh (Homer Simpson style.)

I ended up ordering lemonade.

And to this day, I still don't know what I was saying so incorrectly that the waitress couldn't understand me. C'est la vie.

World Nutella Day

How fascinating for a snack food to have it's own day - who declared this anyway?

It doesn't really matter because Nutella really does deserve it's own day. After all, it's hard not to love the wonderfully chocolaty, creamy, hazelnutty stuff. Thumbs up to the Italians who combine hazelnuts and chocolate in wonderful ways.

I was well into adulthood when I discovered Nutella. I'd always considered it price prohibitive - more than $4.00 for stuff that gets thrown in with the peanut butter selection at the grocery store? How good could it be, anyway. When it was on sale one day at Publix, I decided to give it a whirl. Boy was I in for a treat.

As soon as I realized how delicious it was straight out of the jar, I went on a journey to find what surface it was best spread upon. For me, Nutella on toast or baguette just didn't cut it. I tried it on various cookies and crackers and fruit and decided upon my favorite - cheap little butter cookies. These are flower shaped, hole-in-the-middle cookies you find at bakery thrift stores and drug stores, never in the grocery store, and they usually sell for about $1.00 a pack. Sometimes they are studied with bits of chocolate in an imitation of chocolate chip cookies. Try it and you'll see what I mean. My second choice is Bimbo Pan Tostado, but that's a little bit more difficult to find outside of a Mexican specialty shop. I suppose Rusk Toasts might be close. Pan Tostado has a slightly sweet taste that plain old toast doesn't have and I think that's why it combines so well with Nutella.

My favorite Nutella memory - It was our last day in Paris and I had taken the Metro by myself to Montmartre, home of the Moulin Rouge, many African immigrants and the fabric stores of Paris. I was shopping my little heart out and filling my shopping bags to the brim when it finally occurred to me that I was starving. The cafes were all full to the brim with tourists and locals taking in the view, along with their coffee, of Sacre Couer on the hill above. A corner takeout window was selling warm crepes filled with a choice of toppings, from plain butter to strawberry preserves to (you guessed it) Nutella. I tucked my crepe into my purse and found a somewhat secluded door step behind a rack of fabric and there I dined, basking in the afterglow of fabric shopping, Paris on a September afternoon and two weeks of French bliss.

Yikes!

How did that happen - almost three weeks without a blog entry? I also haven't been reading many blogs or checking my email or the daily deals on Amazon.com or Woot.com, etc., etc. Why not?

Well, I had a last push to get everything ready for the Big Fabric Sale. A week ago Friday, everyone from our local quilter's guild was invited over to partake of the great deals on fat quarters from my selection. Many did come and, although the afternoon was unseasonably warm in my garage, shopped a good deal. I was able to condense the collection a fair amount and add some cash to my rainy-day fund, but still have many, many fat quarters left to sell. That means it's back to Ebay. I may try and sell more during our neighborhood garage sale on November 8, but since the majority of garage sale shoppers are not quilters, I don't expect too much turnover then.

I've also been super busy at work - actually working! By that I mean not playing, and catching everything up, going over the books to clean them up and get ready for year end, catch up on collecting monies owed and try to find ways to cut expenses. The business is getting hit hard by the recession, just squeaking by, and the squeaking would be a little easier if we could cut out some of the overhead. I offered to cut my hours, but nobody took me up on my offer!

Did I mention how much I love my Hello Kitty purse, shown at the right? It doesn't look like a Hello Kitty purse, but it is and I just love it! Here it's draped with a scarf I bought on my very first day in Paris. Apart from water and food, this was the first purchase I made in France. I took this pic after arriving home from the gala 15th birthday party we attended for my niece Yuriana where I wore my scarf and carried my purse for the first time.