This summer we traveled to France. We spent 3 days around Paris, a week in a medieval village in the south of France called St. Ambroix, and a week in Sancerre. We rented a car and got to drive the highway in one direction and drove through all the smaller roads coming back. We didn’t have a GPS in our rental car and it felt quaint to attempt all that foreign driving with a map and a conversation. We drove through hundreds of roundabouts and our policy was to keep going around until we knew which way to go. We twirled around quite a few traffic circles on our journey. One of the threads of conversation that wove through this vacation, was the concept of “France–the brand” and how it compared to France–the reality. In North America, the concept of France and French products act very similarly to an upscale brand. If something is from France, it is guaranteed to be expensive, potentially hand-crafted, and new and cutting edge from a design perspective–innovative. France, the brand products might also center around fairly expensive European style food. In other cases, the word french is added to something ordinary to make it sound upscale. Some examples of how “French” is used to make a product more upscale would be French roast, French vanilla, French press, French toast, and of course French fries. France has nothing to do with producing coffee, vanilla, fries, or bodum coffee pots, but the word “French” gives them a little something special in their branding. Apparently before it was called “French toast” it was called German toast–apparently in previous centuries the German brand used to be more popular than it is today. Now, French is chic. French lavender is another example. Apparently French lavender is a variety native to Spain–maybe North Americans aren’t the only ones who use the word “French” to make their products more marketable. We found France, the country to be so different than France, the brand....
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Buying things over the years… All of us buy a variety of things over the years. My customer experience ranges from wild joy at what I have bought to complete disappointment. These items are the ones I love so much I feel like I have a relationship with them. They make my life better in a long term relationship, and I grow more and more fond of them every day. I hope you will share some of the things in your life you love. 1. Vitamix Blender We bought our Vitamix a few years ago when I decided our family should try eating “raw” for a month. My previous blender lasted about 20 days and then was done. I really wanted a Vitamix. I had seen one in my 20’s and knew I wanted it. When the old blender broke, I looked at Mel and said, “What will I do?” and he said, “We better go buy you a Vitamix today.” Vitamixes are fairly expensive and he got some real points for understanding how important it was for me. We found one, bought it and I have been infatuated ever since with both Mel and the blender! Mel is fond of saying, “We are part of the Vitamix family.” It came with a video and that is how they talk about their customers. Hokey as it is, I really like being part of the Vitamix Family! 2. Kindle I have a Paperwhite Kindle and although I am not absolutely sure it is the best possible e-reader, I love it so much. I love that it clears my house of the clutter from my voracious reading. 3. The Art Quilt that hangs on the wall and says “YES!” My friend Catherine Schuler made it and I bought it as she was hanging her art show. I look at it from my desk and it reminds me how I want to live my life. 4. Cutco Knives I got these when the boys were little. They were pricey...
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These DIY “sun”dried tomatoes were easier than I expected and more delicious! My “sun” dried tomatoes are made in the oven. Since they take such a long time in the oven, I recommend you fill the oven with as many cookie sheets full of them as possible. My oven has 3 racks, so I do 3 sheets at a time. I tried both the convection oven and the regular oven as well as a dehydrator. I preferred the convection oven over both the regular oven and the dehydrator but use what you have, they will still be great. I tried this with both beefsteak and roma tomatoes. The roma tomatoes were substantially better than the beefsteak tomatoes from a cooking perspective and were what I was expecting to like best. The beefsteak tomatoes had an unexpected sweetness and could almost be eaten as dried fruit. I am looking forward to using them for some creative cooking! They are delicious. From a time perspective the beefsteak tomatoes take hours more. When I removed the roma tomatoes from the oven, I put the beefsteak tomatoes in the dehydrator for another 16 hours. 20 Roma Tomatoes per cookie sheet or jelly roll pan Parchment Slice the tomatoes longways and place cut-side up on parchment on a cookie sheet. Cook on your oven’s lowest temperature overnight. I removed the stems from the tomatoes but didn’t cut out the stem core. Cooking time at 170 degrees was about 16 hours on the oven setting. About 14 hours on the convection setting. After cooling, I used ziplock bags to store them. I cut the used parchment to create layers of them so I can grab a couple of tomatoes at a time from the...
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On August 30, 2013 we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. This is obviously a big deal for us. We never had a honeymoon, so we went to Europe for a month this summer. Also, we decided to take our kids. We figure we have about 5 more years before they’re teenagers, and we didn’t want to leave them behind. I find that even though our 10th anniversary has passed, I am not quite done with it yet. For whatever reason, this 10 year anniversary date had lots of meaning for me. Maybe more than any other date. I am not a person that remembers all the important dates. I remember birthdays for my family and my anniversary. I don’t connect to death dates although I know other people do and try to be aware of those days. My mother connects with those days and she is the family archivist. I am reassured that she has all that information even though I don’t always want to know it. Anyway, I wanted to post a few pictures from our wedding and I wanted to tell you a little bit about it. We got married right after same-sex marriage became legal in 2003. We had been in Canada about a year. We knew we wanted to get married. We had even talked about me establishing residency in Belgium by living there for 6 months so we could marry there. Marriage was an extremely important value for us and if there was a way to marry, we were going to do it. My brother visited in June, right after it was legal in Ontario, and we would have done a small intimate wedding while he was here, but since I had a foreign divorce (we were shocked to find that the USA divorce needed a written legal opinion from a Canadian lawyer), we had to submit the necessary paper work and wait. That led to planning a wedding later in the summer and then we figured we might...
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