paris – St GEORGIA & Boo

takings from T.S. Eliot’s, Little Gidding

chère douce Paris, je reviendrai un jour

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make and end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

For last words belong to last years language

And next years words await another voice.

But the passage now presents no hindrance

To the spirit unappeased and peregrine.

Between two worlds become much like each other.

So i find words i never thought to speak.

creative endeavours and healing

I have been slowing down, sifting through, and clearing out on purpose. Life has presented me with an abundance of challenges over the past few months, with children, family, finances and grand life decisions. I keep reassuring myself there is no wrong here, just different paths to take, i keep reminding myself that i am only one person, and all will be well. Friends are important right now, at least one in particular. I think without this friend, my challenges would have been inevitably harder. She has been my breath when i have found it impossible to breathe, she is the one who listens as worlds fall apart, makes the tea and wipes away the endless tears without trying to change or move me into feeling better. She is alright sitting beside the hurts knowing only too well that they must be felt and really is powerless to change them anyway. It is with this hand, of this friend, that things are able to rise to the surface and be felt at the very depths that they require, without holding them in judgment or with regret. It is with this, that things are ever so slowing changing form, making room for new ideas, new beginnings, creating space, honouring growth. She is the one who reminds me to be more gentle with myself, to nurture my soul and more importantly forgiving myself for the minor infractions I so harshly hold myself accountable for. She reminds me that All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce.

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce

we ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other

Earnest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Restaurant Polidor 41 rue monsieur Le prince 75006 ParisPolidor restaurant featured in Woody Allen’s, Midnight in Paris 2011

We dined here three time during our four night stay, at this wonderfully humble restruant famous for Hemingway. I ordered the same meal twice not for any other reason than to simply indulge my senses once more in the simplicity of this succulent dish, suprême de poulet veloutè de morilles,purèe. ‘superbe’

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes and green beans with veloutè sauce

Ingredients for the chicken: 4 large pieces of free-range Maryland chicken,1 litre chicken stock, 3 continental parsley stalks, 2 cloves of garlic, cracked pepper

Method: place all the chicken into a deep baking dish, they can rest on top of each other. lay the parsley over the chicken, add the garlic whole to the baking dish, lightly season with the cracked pepper and then pour in the stock. Cover tightly with foil the entire top of the baking dish to keep all the steam contained. Set the oven at 180°C and slow roast for 2 hours. Check the chicken after approximately an hour and ladle the stock over the chicken sitting out of the stock, recover with the foil and continue roasting. Meanwhile prepare the veloutè.

ingredients for the veloutè sauce: 100grams butter,100grams flour,1litre chicken stock

Method:In a saucepan gently melt the butter without letting it colour. Remove from the heat and add the flour all at once and stir to combine. Place the pan back on the heat and cook over a gentle heat to a lightly fawn colour. Allow to cool. Bring the stock to the boil. Add the stock to the roux (flour mix) slowly over the heat, beating in well and allow to thicken before adding the next ladle. Bring to the boil, adjust heat to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes.

ingredients for the potatoes: 6 large desiree potatoes peeled and chopped,50grams butter, 250mls cream, salt to taste

method: In a pot of boiling water add the peeled and chopped potatos, boil on a rapid heat until cooked through then strain and return to the pot, mash well until there are no lumps . In another saucepan gently heat the butter until melted and add the cream cook until warmed through then add the mix to the potatoes. With a cake spatula and over a gentle heat work the cream through the potatoes until silky smooth.

Next, boil the string beans for a few minutes, ladle the veloutè into wide bowls add a large scoop of the potato and place a piece of the chicken on top finally drain the beans lightly drizzle in olive oil and season then place a few onto the chicken. Serve.

Carla Bruini.. si belle

paris, tu me manques terriblement

paris, i miss you

terribly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvyMG0z0FZY

Shakespeare and company

Shakespeare and company.

Shakespeare and company

Fifty Grand and The Sun also Rises, introduces us to Hemingway. His individual and his concept of human nature were both very close to ours (referring to Jean-Paul Sartre). Hemingways lovers were in love all of the time, body and soul, actions emotions and words were all equally permeated with sexuality and when they gave themselves to desire, to pleasure, it bound them together in their totality.

There was another thing that pleased us. If a man brings his entire self to every situation, there can be no such thing as a ‘base occasion’. We attached much value to the small pleasures of daily life, and Hemingway lent romantic charm to such things as a walk, a meal or a conversation;… at the touch of his pen insignificant details suddenly took on meaning. The kind of realism, which described things just as they are.

words by Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life

One thing that I have taken great delight in was the unforeseen wonder of the bountiful bookshops prevailing in this endearing city. Paris was indeed full of surprises. We visit the well-known Shakespeare and Company and immediately are captivated by the lively atmosphere of passionate literary fans wandering in awe of the scene of books that they are surrounded by. Upstairs there is a library, of donated books that are neither for sale nor for borrowing, they are priceless in their value and you can take great pleasure in making yourself comfortable in a worn leather chair and immerse yourself in one of the precious pieces for a while. No one will ask you to move or to leave, you can sit, absorb, dream, write, read or even play the piano if you are inspired to do so.

Paris’s bookshops are alluring and plentiful, they are a wonderful way of intimately getting to know this enchanting city.

Piazza dei Ciompi, flea market

one of the most wonderful things to do is to get lost in a city that you have never seen before. the most enchanting of all our discoveries so far on this journey have come purely by accident or a touch of fate. my husband and i tend to wander with no plans or intent, except to maybe eat perhaps. This little endearing market discovery, we found on the outer skirts of Florence’s city centre. Tiny stalls lined and filled with Italy’s lost treasures. There was an abundance of old preloved paintings, books, and nostalgia quite similar to that of France’s Saint-Ouen flea markets (located in the northern suburbs of Paris, and as featured in Woody Allen’s 2011 film ‘Midnight In Paris’). There was something to be found here for anyone interested in grazing through the days offerings.

You will find this delightfully alluring market in Piazza dei Ciompi, Florence.

our parisian apartment

pictures from our parisian apartment in the Latern quarters, St Germain. A parfait’ place to stay while falling in love with Paris.

rue du cherche-midi,paris france

from an apartment in Roma, words ..germain greer

This book is dedicated to LILLIAN, who lives with nobody

but a colony of New York roaches, whose energy has never failed despite her anxieties and her asthma and her overweight, who is always interested in everybody, often angry, sometimes bitchy, but always involved. Lillian the abundant, the golden, the eloquent, the well and badly loved; Lillian the beautiful who thinks she is ugly, Lillian the indefatigable who thinks she is always tired.

It is dedicated to CAROLINE, who danced,but badly, painted but badly, jumped up from a dinner table in tears, crying that she wanted to be a person, went out and was one, despite her great beauty. Caroline who smarts at every attack, and doubts all praise, who has done great things with gentleness and humility, who assaulted the authorities with valorous love and cannot be defeated.

It is for my fairy godmother, JOY with the green eyes, whose husband decried her commonsence and belittled her mind, because she was more passionately intelligent, and more intelligently passionate than he, until she ran away from him and recovered herself, her insight, and her sense of humour, and never cried again, except in compassion.

It is for KASOUNDRA, who makes magic out of skins and skeins and pens, who is never still, never unaware, riding her strange destiny in the wilderness of New York, loyal and bitter, as strong as a rope of steel and as soft as a sigh.

For MARCIA, whose mind contains everything and destroys nothing, understanding dreams and nightmares, who looks on tempests and is not shaken, who lives among the damned and is not afraid of them, a living soul among the dead.

-words lovingly borrowed from Germain Greer, THE FEMALE EUNUCH

paris moments

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who

has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast