Chateau d'Oex Balloon Festival

On Balloon Sunday R and I awoke to gray overcast skies with plenty of fog. Not a good sign for the 9th and last day of the 33rd annual Chateau d'Oex hot air balloon festival. Despite the real chance that balloon flights would be canceled due to clouds and wind, we took our chances and hoped the weather would improve in a few hours.

The humble pig's feet

The Chinese don't like to waste any part of a pig and it seems the French don't either. At the marche yesterday, while searching for plain ground pork to use as dumpling filling, I was surprised to see some fresh pork butts and pale pink trotters (that's pigs feet) in the meat case. From the case's contents, it looked like the marche had butchered 4 pigs that day. Side note: I have yet to find ground pork without the sausage seasonings!

I've never tackled cooking pig's feet, but I've eaten them a few times in my youth, and recently I had a sublime 5 spiced braised pork shoulder served with Shanghai vegetables and super soft mantou buns. With a vague idea of how I wanted to cook them, I bought a package each of the pig's feet and pork butt.

Cupcake times...and dumplings too

I had a m-o-n-S-T-E-R craving for cupcakes the other day...and nary a Flour or South End Buttery in sight! My favorite is SEB's carrot cupcake with cream cheese frosting, after a certain Katie's delicious carrot cake. Mmmm. I prefer any cupcake at Flour and SEB over the highly hyped, but rather disappointing ones I've tried during my cupcake R&D period in NYC - Billy's Bakery, Magnolia, Two Little Red Hens, Crumbs all came up short. Either too dry and/or too sweet. I had a yummy one once at Blue Dog Bakery, and then another pretty good one on 7th Ave and 20th..I think. If Chikalicious or Kyotofu had cupcakes, I bet they would taste awesome. If you're ever in NYC, you absolutely have to try the black sesame tofu dessert at Kyotofu. Any dessert at Chickalicious will make you swoon.

It's so funny, but since moving abroad to the land of food, I've been obsessed with...American and Asian foods. And I'm not alone!

Afternoon in Chambéry

After a few days of wind and clouds, we've had an incredibly beautiful and sunny week. While Boston is being buried in yet another snow-calypse, or snow-maggedon, here in the Juras, we've gotten nothing but some flocons here and there. I am praying for a bit of snow in February so we can go alpine and cross-country skiing and maybe snowshoeing too.

Anyway, I'm digressing. On Wednesday, R was seeking a study break and suggested we take a daytrip to Chambéry, a town south of Aix-les-Bains and Lac du Bourget. Even though it's only 1.5 hours away, we still hadn't visited it yet because we're always drawn to Aix and the lake and because R hadn't remembered it being such a nice town. Happily, we were surprised to find it had cleaned up really nice since his last visit 10 years ago. Chambéry is the old Capital city of the Counts of Savoie, and is now the Prefecture of the Savoie département. It's a pretty Savoyard city of 60,000 people, with many independent boutiques, and a wonderful old city dating from the 14th century.


So what will I remember of Chambéry?

On my Tiger Grandmother

There's been much controversy lately about "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", a memoir written by Amy Chua, a Chinese-American mother of two and Yale law professor. I haven't yet read Ms. Chua's memoirs, but I've read several NYT articles about it. It seems Chua prefers her "Chinese" way of parenting compared to the "American" way of parenting. In her book, she recounts how she pushed and challenged her kids, sometimes inducing them to tears. If I'm lucky enough to have my own child(ren) one day..I hope I don't induce anyone to tears and I hope I adopt a healthy balance of building up my child's self-esteem along with challenging them to do their best.

In my family, we have a Tiger Grandmother, my Mom's mother.

New year, new look

The Tiger is waning and the Year of the Rabbit is rising! One of the benefits of growing up Chinese is celebrating New Year's twice, sometimes even in the same month! For those of you in the dark (like I was until my Mom informed me), Chinese New Year occurs on February 3, 2011 this year..that means it's only 8 days away!

Basic Facts
In 2010, we welcomed the Year of the Tiger (and year 4707 in the Chinese Lunar calendar) on February 14
In 2011, we will welcome the Year of the Rabbit (and year 4708) on February 3 (with CNY's eve on February 2)

A is for awesome and for David A

My friend David recently tuned me into a great blog called 1000 Awesome Things, thanks to the TED Talk link he posted via Facebook. Unable to sleep one bleary morning, I watched Neil Pasricha's TED talk and loved it! You should too!

I'm all about the little joys in life and this blog is a champion of that! It's easy to be happy when things are good..but when the going gets tough, look to this site to cheer yourself up, or better yet, check your three A's and cheer yourself up: Attitude, awareness and authenticity.

You can start anywhere really, but why not start here. I nearly peed in my pants reading it!

What's your awesome thing? I have too many to list...but I'll try to list one on each blog update.

Today's awesome thing: Free TED Talks to broaden my mind and feed the soul. :)

Les soldes

Over the Christmas holiday, I experienced sticker shock when I went food shopping! Is it me, or have food prices along with everything else risen by 15-20% over the past 8 months? The cost of food and dining out was on par with French prices...but clothes and gasoline are still comparatively cheaper in the US than France, and much much cheaper compared to Switzerland.

Anyway, with the Euro rising against the USD (bad news for me and R), I was happily surprised when I returned home to find Les Soldes have started. Youpie! In France, sales are regulated. Stores are allowed to have major sales twice a year, and the first one starts in mid-January and lasts to mid-February. When we went to Annecy the other day, I noticed huge prominent SOLDES signs everywhere, with additional 40-70% off the lowest prices on the tags. I looked for shoes but haven't found anything that I LOVE yet and if I don't love it, I'm not buying it.

Le Bise, le biatch

I returned to France on a Winds-day....remember Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh movie? In it, lovable Pooh is getting blown around the Hundred Acre Woods wishing everybody a Happy Winds-day!

We had our own version here this week. Le Bise, a cold northerly wind that blows from the north of Switzerland, gathers strength as it makes it way down through the Alps and Juras, creating a giant wind tunnel through our region. Le Bise is present year round but is especially strong during the winter months. Sometimes it's associated with hail..which left tiny white pellets everywhere, but didn't cause any damage. For 2 days Le Bise swirled around the house, making extremely loud and scary swooshing noises, rattling the copper gutter pipes. Despite wedging ear plugs in my ears, I had a hard time falling and staying asleep. The next morning R surveyed the damage - a cracked birch tree, lots of branches strewn all over the grounds, and 2 broken terracotta tiles. R climbed atop the roof after the winds had died down, replacing the broken tiles and re-aligning/re-gluing others that had shifted and become loose. Le Bise also blew 2 patio chairs and the trash barrel down the street. Though bad, this past storm apparently was not the first worse R's ever experienced. Eight years ago, after a particularly strong storm, R found much of his roof tiles strewn all over the garden.

On Friday, feeling fed up with the winds, we headed o Annecy which is located in the nearby département of Haute-Savoie. We had a great day walking around Annecy - France has 2 major sales a year, and the first one is happening right now in January.

Souvenirs de Boston

I'm back home en la France! Actually, I've been back 2 days, arriving Wednesday morning after a pretty bump ride across the Atlantic. Recall my last blog update rating AA and BA? Well, maybe they read it, because on my transatlantic flight my wishes were answered! There were no less than 5 pretty hot looking male flight attendants. Super friendly, service-oriented, and easy on the eyes too. And the fun didn't stop there - since the flight was very light, I even got an entire row to myself....it was so good to stretch out. I fell asleep watching Eat, Pray, Love.
 

Another cute moment captured...

What a great trip to Boston - extending the trip by an extra week was so worth it, allowing me to spend more time with friends and family, including the littlest loves of my life (my 2 nephews with their Mom andDad), and eat Mom's home cooking. As an early birthday celebration, my sis and nephew I baked me some dinosaur cakes. Yum.

Seeds of change

It's one week into 2011 and I'm still here in Boston. The original plan was to return to France on Mon Jan 10th, but I decided to prolong my stay for a bit longer to see more of my friends and family! I'm flying American and BA and I just want to say what a pleasure it has been! Actually this is the 3rd time I'm flying them this year (same itinerary from Boston to Geneva) and I love them. See my PROS and CONS list below.

With an extra week, what to do? This Saturday, my awesome sis treated me and my Mom to a facial and massage (2 hours) followed by Oga's Japanese Cuisine in Natick. Then today, shopping with my sister and helping my nephews get ready for bed. I received and gave giant wet kisses from my two awesome nephews.

A Bostonian in Boston!

Happy new year! 2010 was an amazing, eye-opening, romantic, life-changing experience filled with laughter, love, learning, challenges, great friends and family. Excited and hopeful for 2011.

WORDS TO LIVE BY

• Live fearlessly
• Welcome change and all adventures
• Consume less, save more
• Be creative—make more