Dos and Don'ts

If I could tell you anything (and not sound bossy) I would tell you not to get sick with food poisoning on a weekend where it feels like it could be summer (this time is so short here) .

Certainly don't get sick on Sunday morning hereby ruining the rest of the weekend. Do make sure if you travel by taxi to the airport to meet your sister (in transit on her way back home from the US) that there is an escape (in this case a service area).

Do not get so sick that you can't sleep, your feverish body tossing and turning all night, too hot one moment, too cold the next.

Do not take a hot bath to ease the cramps telling your house mate to look after you. She might fall asleep and not realise you struggle to get out.

When you finally stumble into the kitchen you realise that your zeal for banning packaged food has left you with nothing that can be easily heated.

Go back to bed you aren't hungry anyway.

When you eventually manage to get back up and look outside, you realise the bugs have left the garden and the clematis is in full flower.

Do be glad about the Riverford delivery that left you with some vegetables and frozen meat. (and about the other housemate suffering from the same sickness: at least you know you're not alone) Equally, be glad about get-well-texts from lovely people, Stelline that have been waiting in your cupbord and crazy former housemates who still make you laugh.
And finally make litres of soup with the remaining meat and vegetables, crawl back to bed, listen to an audiobook, knit (if strengh allows it). Otherwise enjoy the flowers that your housemate got at work (where she got an amazing review with a big bunch of flowers)

Meaningful post?

Listening to the book pictured on the left last weekend I really - really wanted to write a meaningful blog post on Monday. Well, obviously that didn't work, it never seems to work if I set out to write meaningful things (imagine deep meaningful sigh).
So I deleted the pathetic attempt and am now writing again without trying to squeeze the meaning into the post: Julie-Julia is great. It's fun and entertaining and totally crazy. How can it not be, when someone sets out to cook all the 524 recipes of Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking in 365 days? (This includes the famous recipe of Homard à l'Américaine which has been avoided in my family ever since we knew it existed. There is even a family ban on it for restaurant orders.) In a time, where most of us didn't even know how to spell the word blog (in 2002 to be exact) Julia Powell blogged every day about her cooking experiences over the year and this is how the book came into being.
And if you are thinking "aha - a book deal... could that be what Tournesol is envisioning when she is trying to write a meaningful blog post", you're wrong. I thought about how and by what people are inspired and that we all need someone to inspire us - to do better, to try again, to try something new or something at all. And that we need to be reminded every now and then that we're not the only person in the world who feels sorry for him/herself.
The only flaw with Julie's book is in the publisher's summary: it doesn't say that the book is going to make you want to cook. You'll need to read/listen to it after you have stocked up your fridge from the market/supermarket and/or home delivery.
How I found out about the book? It's on a summer reading list of a French magazine. If they recommended a book about food it had to be good! And as I said it's also available as an audio book on audible. So what are you still doing here? Go over there and listen and be inspired!

Must have

"It's yellow, it's ugly, it doesn't go with anything, but it can save your life." Last month Karl Lagerfeld launched the French campaign for the safety vest.
If you want to avoid a penalty (which can be up to 120€) you'll need one of those when you drive through Belgium, Italy, Montenegro, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia and Spain during your summer holiday. It will be obligatory in France from October, so you'll be safe there. The same goes for cars with foreign number plates in Norway and Portugal. Although how you'll manage to drive to Portugal by car without driving through at least a part of Spain (where you'll need one) is not clear.
They even come with a EU norm (DIN EN 471) Anyone out there who wants to submit a EU normed safety vest knitting pattern....?