France comes to town

Antoine's parents just left on Friday night to fly back home, via Paris.

They called from France this morning while I was engrossed in the big matchup between Milan and Napoli (Milan 1, Napoli 0) and didn't even hear the phone. I have saved their voicemail message spoken in both French and English.

How is it possible to love - and now miss - two people so much, whom I had never met in my life? Their son, my homemate for the duration, has apparently rocked my world more than one might think. Or understand.

These two lovely people with such French names, Pierre and Marinette, first came into my view on the morning of my birthday about 2 weeks ago. Antoine had brought them from their hotel to meet me so we could all go to breakfast together. I was walking down the steps of my building, and I started to cry. His mother hugged me and neither of us wanted to let go. When we pulled away, both sets of eyes had tears in them.

Well aware of the quality of food they are used to, what with life at their farmhouse chateau near the sea in southwest France (that is also a bed&breakfast) and all, we took them to my favorite Euro cafe. Of course. They loved it. I learned where Antoine's passion for lots of butter on his bread came from (his father). They were curious about the self-serve coffee in airpots, but at least it was Alessandro brand, and Alessandro is from Italy. 

They spoke their very best English, Antoine translated, and we all laughed a lot. I loved starting my birthday this way. They had brought me fabulous French bath products,  and chocolate bars, for gifts. Their company = my favorite gift that morning.

The next night we hosted them for dinner. Have I ever wished more, that our home was classier than I did that night? Maybe, but I'm not sure. I did tell them what I absolutely believe to be true - and Antoine translated this into French for them, so that I knew they understood what I meant, for certain: My home isn't that spectacular re: design/decor but, the food and hospitality are really good and, somehow once people are there, they are never in a hurry to leave. They understood. Their son has lived here almost 2 years. But I was referring to dinner guests, as well, and they knew that.

I loved that they loved our meal, enough to ask me to come and be their chef at their Le Petit Puy Loup! (They are serious.) 

They loved the antipasti I set out, the first-course creamy butternut-onion-apple soup with caramelized walnuts, the fish and vegetables en papillote (parchment paper), mashed potatoes which they were too full to eat!, handmade roasted garlic-rosemary focaccia, and ahhhhh, the best tarte tatin (apple tart) I think I have ever made in my life, with fresh spiced whipped cream. Marinette and I had a lively conversation - with Antoine translating + some sign language + even a little of Italian on my part since some words are similar in French - about the extolled virtues of freshly grated nutmeg, which I had used in the apple tart. I promised to buy her some whole nutmeg from Penzey's (where I buy mine) before she went back to France.

The next day they all enjoyed Santa Barbara. I recovered from entertaining and had other work to do. They were gone, traveling throughout Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and northern California for the next 10 days. They loved our national parks, San Francisco, and Las Vegas -- not so much but, the Paris hotel was OK with them. They did OK with dining out too, short of a small pizza in Fresno that appeared to Pierre to equal the size of California. The super-sized American thing will always appear curious to Europeans. 

I so belong in Europe.

Anyway, I only had the pleasure of their company briefly again, this last Friday, on Halloween. Which they said is not a big deal in France. Or in Italy, I told them, which is why I am usually in Italy at this hour...

Here was more presents-exchanging before they prepared for their flight home  - they are very big on See's candy, which I had to send home with them and I hope they didn't eat it all on the plane...I had to send Charles, their other son who visited in August, some homemade cookies because I adore him and he has an October birthday too...I had to send their daughter Elys my Dodgers NLCS rally towel, and my pink LA Dodgers cap went to Marinette because Pierre had bought himself a new blue one...and there was of  course the nutmeg, and homemade banana-raspberry-walnut bread, and cookies for the plane, since none of us are big on airline food.

They gave me more French bath products. Yum. I can never have too many of those.

We had our last meal together at Farm Stand, one of my current favorite places on the planet. How well does my life work: We were supposed to eat there on Thursday night but (long story) but we rescheduled for Friday night. Laurent, our host, was not there Thursday but was there Friday, and he speaks French. My beautiful guests had an even more incredibly delightful time because of Laurent being able to visit in French with them, and what can I say...the food there was spectacular as usual, we laughed hysterically about some slip from Antoine about "37 years of ketchup", and now we love each other all the more from having had another magical experience together around the table.

The piece de resistance- I agreed to sign in writing, that I would visit them in France in 2009. For the record, we both have a signed copy of that contract.  

How much did I not want to say au revoir ?? I just love them. I wish we had had more time together but, there is that fulfillment of my contract for next year to look forward to. And then there was that brief discussion of their b&b needing my services as chef...Can you guess how much I cannot wait to explore all this further?

The little Figaro experience in the last post? I know it all gave way to this. My heart about swells each time I think of how blessed I am to have this family to love in France. 

And Antoine? He's still here for a while. 

We're both pretty happy about that.

Tante Cose: Figaro, Magic, Music and, Love

Tante cose means "all good things" in Italian. 

Could I guess, out of the blue, that a little Italian fairy tale would impact my heart so much? I could not.

I promised in my last post that my dream about Figaro, the little kitten in Pinocchio, would make a good story, so here it is.

Actually it wasn't a dream really, just a whisper from wherever whispers come from in your sleep (and these weren't the Italian whispers from...oh never mind...whole separate story). 

The week before my birthday, on the Sunday morning, I woke up about 3 or 4 am, wondering what the name of the kitten was, in Pinocchio. I do not know why I was wondering this but, I was. I said to my angels I guess, "please, tell me the name of the kitten in Pinocchio". When I woke up again a couple hours later, I knew that his name was Figaro.

So, being the intuitive, "oh this must mean something!" kind of girl I am...I rack my brain and my Italian dictionary to learn what "Figaro" means, and nothing jumps out at me (from my brain, or the dictionary). Fine.

I write to some friends of mine who post fabulous notes on one of our favorite online forums that is about the Law of Attraction, intuition, how to let more love in...and I ask them if anything intuitive pops out at them about my little story.

Is it the black-and-white - am I living my life too 'either-or' right now? Does the cat - I don't know - totem animal - mean something? I looked that up. Cat represents magic and mystery, and? The cat is associated with mythology and a host of goddesses  - that certainly resonates. Hello, help?

What the ladies wrote back, on two counts, was that my story just reminded them of the song, "When You Wish Upon a Star".  And, they said, they just felt like they should tell me that.

OK!!! Something I can use! One sent me two links for the song on YouTube, and then I found one of my own favorite versions, in French! This one, and the others out there, with their beautiful montages of the Blue Fairy Angel in Pinocchio and, all the other Disney princesses, actually made me cry. And for the record, I have no problem -  feminist or other - with fairy tales, love at first sight, handsome princes, etc., so I loved this. 

And now I wish on stars every night. Why not? One beautiful cousin of mine once told me, if you think it means something, then it does.

Somewhere in there, that same Sunday night when I was finding the star wishing videos, I got another intuitive nudge - curious - to find the song from the movie Music&Lyrics, that I saw last year. It was easy to find, and as soon as little Haley started singing, I started sobbing. When Hugh chimed in, more sobs.

Hmm, this is interesting. Let's look at this, my intuitive me says.

Finding a way back into love. It sounds kind of corny, maybe. But, I am here to tell you, it struck a deep chord with me and I took the message to heart. I love the idea of knowing that if I risk opening my heart wider,  something, someone will have my back. I love the idea that this song could be just what I needed to hear the week of my birthday. I love the idea that its message was just for me at that hour and I especially love that a little Italian-named kitten gently took me there; to a place where I feel more loving than I have in a long time, towards so many people and situations in my life. 

What a gift.

Figurare in Italian means symbolize, represent, imagine. Yes, that works.

In the meantime, sometime during my birthday week, Italian itunes was playing the "Somewhere over the Rainbow" arrangement that sounds kind of reggae.... They call it "Cielo nel Cielo" which literally means, 'sky in the sky'. Beautiful. Just a little bonus birthday thing, I figured. 

The weekend of my birthday, Antoine's parents came to visit from France. 

More to love.

That story is next. 

My New Year

Buon giorno!

Yes it's true...I am back. 

Did I know I was so missed for the last duration? I did not. But, my beautiful friend Tina (can I begin to tell you how much I adore her?) was chiding me in no uncertain terms last night over my birthday dinner at Il Toscano where our host Vittorio (another whom I adore) not only made the birthday girl un piatto speciale - pasta alla sea urchin - yum - but back to Tina...she has very much missed my blog.

So here I am, with a pending 4-course meal to prepare for Antoine's parents who are visiting from France ... and Roma and Inter are playing one of THE matches of the season. Ibra just scored. He is so sexy, in that Euro-big-nose kind of way and I especially love him because he's married to an older woman, and yum I just read that he is favored for the Ballon d'Or (Euro footballer of the year; that video shows a recent goal at the very end) but I digress, again. I do have a big dinner party coming up this evening and do I appear concerned about having all those 4 courses prepared well and on time, setting the table, etc? I do not. Did I mention Roma and Inter are playing live at the moment?

So it's my new year, yesterday was New Year's Day. This is usually when I set my resolutions but considering that this calendar year (as of January 2008) I hosted SportsBites radio for 28 consecutive weeks, started Melting Pot Tours with my sister Lisa (have I ever mentioned that I adore her?), have hosted house guests from both Italy and France more than once, started this blog and will soon be starting a new one for our Tours website, have cheffed on a yacht, and I'm sure I've done a host of other things that do not come to mind right this instant...I am sure that it's OK with the gods that I don't make a new to-do list at this hour, I think I'm good for resolutions.

I think I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and ramp up ways to have fun. And laugh. And how to do more of that with the people I love most in the world. Even take it to Italy and France again. Maybe Spain too.

And while we're talking of a perfect world, here are the plans for my special birthday next year. Party for lots of my favorite people and me at the Casa Del Mar Hotel in Santa Monica. Saturday night, 17 October 2009. Rooms and parking for everyone who wants to stay overnight and have brunch the next morning. Amazing tapas, paella, Sangria, birthday dessert, live music and dancing for the party. Spectacular party favors for everyone who comes. Individual (non-coupled) guests of all ages invited to bring a guest. Too much fun.

Before I break here - squash+apple+shallots+sweet potato for soup...then tomatoes, then garlic for antipasti, are waiting to be roasted - here's a quick update in case you were as concerned as Tina that the world was gypped for several months while I didn't blog:

The Soreal Cafe is no longer. It appears to have been replaced by a Botox Center. No further comment.

Sundays are still sacred and I now am even more annoyed when I'm asked to be somewhere since Doll and I usually work on Saturdays now; men, money, family (remember, not necessarily in that order) still being the only things I allow to interrupt my sacred time and space. Antoine's parents are considered family and, yesterday was a company holiday.

My sacred box of Cream of Wheat had to be thrown out because my pantry had a bad case of bugs this summer. I hate that. Rest assured, when we finally have some serious fall weather around her, Red Chef Cream of Wheat Man and I intend to get seriously re-acquainted.

Some friends who are on the same spiritual page as me at the moment have taken to wishing on stars after I shared a dream that I had last Sunday morning about Figaro, the kitten in Pinocchio. Come to think of it, that would make a great story to blog. Like me, if you have no problem with fairy tales, princesses, magic, and discovering a beautiful new voice, I hope you will enjoy one of my favorite new videos here.

Finally, just to assure you that not everything has changed since we last met, I leave you with this ... SportsBites radio may be on hiatus and I don't get to say this out loud as often as I used to, but I still think Alessandro Nesta gives whole new meaning to soccer being the World's Most Beautiful Game.

Inter has scored 3 more times (Ibra - 2 of the 4 goals) in this match which yet again gives credence that some things are destined to stay the same, for at least a while longer. 

Life for them, and me, is very very good and keeps getting better and better.

Dreams do come true: A Cereal Cafe

So Doll (my sister Lisa) and I are around town today, having been interviewed by the Beach Reporter for our new Melting Pot Tours... a fascinating Business Profile (complete with photo) for this Thursday's paper I'm sure, and there we saw it - The Soreal Cafe. A cereal cafe, in Hermosa Beach. (There is no website link, I am so sorry.)

I said to Doll, "you know, I had a thought one day, that every time a new business opens, someone's dream comes true!"

Isn't that a nice thought? Just imagine. Someone wanted to open a cereal cafe. And now they have. This is a wonderful world. I understand that this place has 30 or 40 cereals to choose from, and you can select a combination if you'd like. You can even have your selection with some frozen yogurt. You can, I am sure, have a choice of milks to go with your cereal. You can also have some fresh fruit with your choice or combinations of cereals. The possibilities are probably endless! Unlimited!

Imagine how blessed this cafe's customers must feel. Maybe their (the customers') dreams are coming true, it is entirely possible.

This reminds me of a woman I knew many moons ago who was telling me a story about how she liked to eat oatmeal for breakfast sometimes. Her mother used to make it and she had loved it as a child and so on the morning of this particular story she spun to me, she had gone down to some restaurant and, ordered oatmeal....

You know, I have no recollection whatsoever of what other pearls her story contained because I had so much trouble getting past her craving homemade oatmeal and going out to order it at a restaurant. She owned a fabulous home, with a gourmet kitchen. It's just not right.

Imagine if I had a day where I woke up craving hot cereal and did what? Got out of my jammies, dolled up enough to be seen in public (on a day when I'm craving hot cereal; how long would that take?), and drove to where? The Soreal Cafe?

It has occurred to me whether they serve Cream of Wheat. From the red box. The 2 1/2 minute version. I doubt it.

Oh never mind. 

Let's just leave it at...someone wanted to open a place that served cereal, and now their dream has come true.

Once again we have pure proof, and another reason to absolutely believe what I always claim to be true.

Life is very good.

Euro Cup and Cream of Wheat

This month's oomo (see my post on Objects of my Obsession for more on that) pretty much keeps getting better and better. 

My week, as I've stated earlier, has not been one of the best on record and there are those of us who, oh I don't know, cook something up, to make ourselves feel better. 

If you saw the movie Sex and the City, or even if you didn't...there is a scene where our heroine is being spoon-fed some breakfast by one of her friends. She's had a really bad fall and they take such wonderful care of her. I was whining last week to my friends that I would not mind at all if someone spoon-fed me some breakfast right now.

My point - it looks as though she's being spoon-fed some creamy white cereal, and it reminded me of Cream of Wheat, the hot cereal that I ate as a child, and one of my favorite kid meals.

My mom used to make eating it really fun for us. She'd tint it with a little food color - blue one morning, green the next, then pink, etc - and we'd eat it with milk and sugar. And all would be right with the world.

So I've been thinking of how I need to go buy some Cream of Wheat, not even sure if they still sell it...but I could get very used to a habit of creamy white bland cereal right about now, even if it's already getting warm at 8 in the morning. Never mind. I need that comfort right now.

Last night I found it. Expensive! But there. The red box with the little man-chef smiling at me. My only choice was the original 2 1/2 minute recipe. I hugged it all the way home.

Euro Cup sidebar: Italy vs. France at 11:45 today. This was a do-or-die match which had a lot to do with both teams being in Group C - The Group of Death. And France is their nemesis, to put it mildly. Italy had to win today, or pack their sorry bags and go home. If they did win, they'd advance to the quarterfinals which begin later this week.

So, it occurred to me, this morning, why not, oh I don't know, tint my Cream of Wheat blue? 

Because France might wear blue jerseys today. This happens sometimes; their national jersey is blue and so is Italy's.

Oh.

Well then, I'm clever, I can think of something else. 

How about the Italian Flag? Green, white, red.

I made my little pot of cream of wheat, put some cereal in one bowl to tint it red. Some in a second bowl to tint it green. The remainder, white, in the pot.

Now the tricky part was getting the three colors to sit just so in my cereal bowl, but they did, for just a minute. It was beautiful.

I blew a kiss, to my Italian team that I just love, and enjoyed my cereal, all mixed up (so pretty!) with sugar and milk.

France wore blue jerseys today. Italy wore white. With little Italian flag emblems on them.

Italy beat France 2-0.

Color me happy.

Hurt, Pray, Cook

In Elizabeth Gilbert's brilliant book Eat, Pray, Love she takes her reader on a virtual trip through Italy, India, and Indonesia. She spent four months in each country to basically heal her life, and her story is a great read and even better inspiration.

These last few days I've borrowed some of that, not only limited to the title of this post...

I mentioned this on one of my SportsBites radio shows as well. When I am hurting, I do two things. I pray and I cook. More often than not, I do both things together and not only because it makes the food I'm preparing taste even better. It just makes me feel better.

Having been raised Catholic with strict rules and regulations on how to pray (and how to do everything else), quite honestly I have tossed all of that and am pleased to report that for years now I have just made up my own prayers (and my own rules and regulations). So far that has worked out really well for me.

Cooking is one of the most sacred activities I practice. My cookbook is titled Angel Food. It has nothing to do with angel food cake and has everything to do with invoking and welcoming Divine presence when I cook. This is both for my benefit and healing, and usually for the people I am cooking for as well. But since I regularly cook for just me, and lately my heart is hurting, my kitchen has felt like one of the safest places to be. 

There is something about working with dough or pastry or chopping vegetables or folding a perfect omelette that just feels really good. The other day I made chocolate chip cookie dough partially just because I love that it was the first recipe I ever learned with my mom, and partially because I wanted to bring cookies to people I was meeting at an Italian festival on Saturday. 

I made the cookies, packaged them up, and forgot to take them with me. So my lovely friend Tina, whom I shared the evening with because it felt really good to have someone for dinner, happily took them home. 

This was after we learned that our evening's other main event, the encore broadcast of the Euro Cup match between Spain and Sweden was on at 10:30pm EST, not PST, and we'd completely missed it. Oh well. Our Greek tacos for dinner followed by Tina's gift of cherry pie had made for a wonderful meal, so we were happy.

I spent the part of Fathers Day that I wasn't a zombie-slug, making homemade Bolognese sauce for spaghetti, with some little homemade rolls, which leftover I will love enjoying tonight. My dad loved pasta with meat sauce. At home in our family we always loved spaghetti left over, the next day. Personally I love it anytime. It was the perfect meal to think of him by.

Yeah. Just some notes on feeling better through cooking and food I guess. Not what pop culture would necessarily subscribe to but surely we all know how much I care about that.

By the way, in case you haven't read it yet, I can't begin to tell you how happy the ending is in the book Eat Pray Love. And it's a true story. Everything that unfolded for her, she absolutely deserved and had coming to her. I love that book.

I trust that the good news in all of this, is that we all deserve an ending at least that happy. 

I very much look forward to mine. 

Euro Cup + (Other) Objects of My Obsession (oomo)

I am really not big on signature acronyms, cutesy alliterations or, anything cutesy for that matter. But, I use the reference 'object of my obsession' so often that I've decided to give it the label oomo from now on.

Starting today, Euro Cup - headline/top-story/main event of SportsBites radio this last Thursday and one of this month's oomo - deserves a lot of my time and attention, so much so that Antoine (quite easily) talked me into going to English pub The Underground to watch the Portugal-Turkey match. I hesitated (English pubs are not usually my favorites) for about 5 minutes at his direct orders ("let's go!"). But, they do have many big screens airing soccer for this duration and, upon finding free parking (miraculously) only about a mile away, we walked in and there on all those screens was the beautiful Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portuguese teammates all lined up for their anthem. 

I didn't need any more coaxing to just sit my little butt down and settle in for the afternoon.

A yummy BLT, really good fat fries, and about 3 cokes later, I was happy and Portugal had won, 2-0. I started taking mental notes in there for future reference: Mon-Fri, 2 for 1 burgers 11-3, and that Manchester United burger on the menu with blue cheese and bacon did sound pretty good...Italy plays on Monday at 11:45...matches go on most of the month, often on weekdays...happy hours after about 3pm....chocolate volcano cake was today's special dessert...the service was good and soft drink refills are free....hmmm....

Plus, there is really something to be said for watching Euro football players on the big screen which I learned 2 years ago when I fell in love during the World Cup. And herein lies another oomo. Steve Amoia was my very welcomed guest on SportsBites the other day, and we got to talking about the new short, incredibly hilarious film that is probably aired all over Europe at the moment (they are so lucky), starring Franck Ribery (from France and, not the most handsome man) and Italian Luca Toni who, gives whole new meaning to um, dreamy. 

The two amazingly talented footballers are teammates for Bayern-Munich in Germany's Bundesliga and are quite the duo, both on and off the pitch. It is tremendous fun to watch them play together and their goal-scoring is just, spectacular. Their short film begins with Luca taunting Franck with the World Cup 2006 Champions shirt he wears, reminding his French friend of "second". They speak only Italian and French, respectively, but clearly they understand each other very well. The whole little episode cannot be enjoyed without laughing out loud even if you can't understand a word of French or Italian. Luca Toni is known for his gestures and facial expressions anyway and Ribery is famous for his practical jokes and being a clown.

My point is, their website and film, The Grand Final, is the new oomo. I am addicted to it.

Oh and by the way I saw Sex and The City - the movie - for the second time today. It's not an oomo but I did like it, I thought it was just really fun with great one-liners, hair, clothes, shoes. It made me laugh, and cry. A couple of my favorite parts were the reference about almost never looking back,  and, the guacamole.

Yeah. I will leave you with that. Stay tuned for more oomo, I'm sure I'll be addressing those from time to time....

Buona notte!