Vietnamese green mango salad

The market square was busy and colorful today. I strolled past all the tables, looking at the beautiful greens, reds, purples, oranges..and every hue in between. One of my favorite experiences is walking through the entire farmer's market first, to survey what is available and fresh. Then I will circle around a second time, this time stopping at the stands I am interested in. Today was no different than other days...I love the happy commotion that is the French farmer's market. Whenever I'm buying food, there is no real recipe I have in mind. Instead my purchases are based on color, smell, and shape, and what's in season (if possible). I often pick ingredients that look pretty and/or interesting..or vegetables that I don't ordinarily buy. Like le citrouille (pumpkin) and les navets, or purplish-white turnips I bought last week. Once home with my goodies I'll look through cookbooks and websites for inspiration.

Today when I saw green mangoes at one stand, I couldn't resist buying two large green ones. To that I added four bright yellow lemons, and three heads of broccoli. At the supermarket I purchased jambon cru, des fraises (strawberries), du pain, and concombre.

Har gow recipe

Coucou mes chéris. Le Bise was blowing again today and we opted to stay indoors, as we're going to Geneva tomorrow. So when MC from my mushroom club wrote and proposed bringing her daughter over to meet me, I quickly responded "Oui!" and invited both mother and daughter over for un apéro. MC likes Chinese food and has been very polite in refusing my invitations for un apéro whenever she's dropped me off at the house, so I was excited she was coming for a visit and decided to make har gow for her to try.

Har Gow Recipe, adapted from the recipe by Wantanmien on YouTube. Even if you don't understand Cantonese, I recommend watching the video first to see her technique before following my recipe.

Busy cooking day..

This morning I woke up to snow falling outside!! Not a day too soon because this weekend is Le Retordica, an annual husky race on Le Retord. I've been looking forward to this event for a while now, checking the mountains and metéo each day. This morning's snowfall was beautiful while it lasted but then it turned into mist and then rain during our walk, washing the few centimeters of snow away. Due to the moisture in the air, and the fact that I was also feeling under the weather, I didn't end up taking any pictures with my new telephoto zoom lens.

Upon returning home, I dived into several recipes that I'd wanted to try recently...

Un diner pour dimanche

Une sieste sounds good right about now, especially after a 4 hour lunch, cooked by moi meme. To start, Cerdon, a bubbly pink wine we picked up from the friendly vitner last fall, served with peanuts, preserved plums, and prunes.

Then chilled hiyayakko tufu with shaved ginger, scallions, sesame seeds and soy sauce. Store-bought tofu, but I'll be trying my hand at making tofu next week.

Celebration for CNY and Egypt

Two and a half hours of feasting with my French neighbors. We started off with cassis aperos avec les amuse-geules (literally amuse mouths) of salted peanuts, smoked almonds, and preserved plums which I brought back from Boston.  

Les entrées: housemade shumai with pork and shrimp, followed by lettuce wraps with Vietnamese eggrolls (nems), fresh mint, cilantro.  

Les plats principaux: Chinese egg noodles stir fried with red pork, napa, mushrooms, broccoli, julienned carrots and red peppers, onions, and garlic in an oyster sauce; steamed whole dorade royale in soy/ginger/scallion sauce.  

En dessert: Tarte aux pommes; coconut tapioca pudding perfumed with sliced bananas. Exhausted..but happy. Je suis prête pour une sieste.

Cooking up a storm

After a successful trip to Lyon this past Sunday, my pantry is fully stocked, enough supplies to prepare a CNY's feast for R and the neighbors. Attempting to have oversight of my pantry, I decided to organize the Asian vs non-Asian goods which were haphazardly piled onto one another. Post re-organization, the lentils, red beans, corn meal, couscous, lasagna sheets, and long grain rice (among other things) are grouped together; they live below green mung beans, red azuki beans, soybeans, bean thread, and my 4 precious boxes of tofu (AOT). However, the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, rice vinegar, fish sauce, and oyster sauce all live in perfect harmony.

Lyon sights and tastes

Beautiful Lyon on a spring-like Sunday in early February.

One of the best things about living where we live—although we enjoy a quiet country lifestyle, we are centrally located. To the North, Geneva and the rest of Switzerland. To the Northeast, Paris is a short 2.5 hours by TGV. And to the South, about 90 minutes via the A40 and A42, is Lyon, highly regarded as the gastronomical capital of France and home to many Michelin-starred restaurants and Les Halles of Paul Bocuse fame.

I am charmed by its people, history, architecture, and colorful arrondisements. Besides being a foodie lover's paradise, it is a very livable French city as well with a lovely waterfront which has been given back to the Lyonnais (sort of like how the Big Dig gave Boston back some green parks). I will be writing more on Lyon and French food soon, but for now, I'll expound on what I found in Chinatown.

On this fine Sunday, some Lyonnais were enjoying the cafes along the beautiful riverfront, while others preferred to leaf through old hardcovers and paperbacks at the book market. Still others were taking in weather in the high 50s F by walking, jogging, or bicycling along the water. I had good intentions to check out les traboules, l’amphithéâtre des Trois Gauls, and revisit Les Halles. However, the weather was so nice that we decided to stay close to the Rhone. Shedding our wintry layers, we strolled around La Presqu'île, Chinatown, and then the nearby Middleastern and Indian quartiers. Our mission - watch the dragon dance, shop at local supermarkets, get a feel for the different neighborhoods, and dine well.

My love of lists

I loves lists...em-dashes...ellipses...and exclamation points!! But most of all, I love lists (not so much Post-It notes..those I leave for my sis!) because as I get older, it's easier to remember things if they are written down

Here are some lists I find interesting.

• 1000AwesomeThings. Too funny.
• Stuff Asian People Like. I found SAPL after reading SWPL which was introduced to me by way of 2 writer friends. Hilarious because I found myself identifying with many things on the list.
• Stuff White People Like that I also like. David Sedaris. Coffee. Moleskin Notebooks. Grammar. Farmer's Markets. Traveling. Tea. Apple Products. Recycling. Bicycles. San Francisco. Sushi. Modern Furniture (or Mid-Century Furniture).

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.

August 22 harvest and food, food, more food!

Yesterday was a good day. Before R and I drove to Lausanne, a French-speaking Swiss city north of Geneva, I had the best omelette I have ever had. On Friday, at R's invitation, our neighbor Pierre came over to pick the mushrooms in our backyard. And yesterday morning, his wife Denise made the omelette below using eggs from the chickens that they keep! The mushrooms were tiny, but full of flavor and this is a taste memory that will last a lifetime for me. Mmmm.


Pierre and Denise's chickens and rabbits - the eggs came from these chickens, which ones exactly, I don't know! The big breeder rabbit is going to have a new litter in a few days and I can't wait to go over there and meet the new bunnies.


It's been a strange, wet month...but now the sun is out and my garden is thriving. The past week, I've been harvesting 5 tomatoes daily; smaller in size than the ones you may find at the market, but these ones taste so much juicier and full of tomato goodness. Yesterday I harvested another monster zucchini, or courgette in French.

To combat the heat today, I decided to make something fresh and healthy using ingredients picked fresh from the garden: Vietnamese summer rolls with peanut sauce. Everything you see on the plate was picked this morning (except for the store bought red peppers and carrots): garden lettuce, mint, baby tendrils of cilantro, tomatoes, 1 lonely baby beet with beet greens, and zucchini.


With so much zucchini, I wondered what I could make. After a quick Google search, I found a great recipe for Korean zucchini pancakes, or Pa Jeon. Has anyone made these before? Looks simple enough...if only I could also have Korean BBQ and all the side dishes with it too.

Yesterday, before driving to Lausanne, R and I stopped at Mekong Market at Ferney-Voltaire so I could stock up on a few Asian staples. I got nori, pho paste, cha lua, rice flour, and tapioca starch to make Bánh Cuốn, steamed Vietnamese rice rolls with pork sausage.

I also got some nems, yellow mung mean cakes, sate paste (to make satay skewers), and a Chinese pork bun with Chinese sausage, egg, and pork in it.

And finally a view of the mountains from a skylight in my bedroom - the mountains you see are the Juras, a chain of mountains that are older than the Alps but much lower. They run from this area all the way to Basel, Switzerland, which is near Germany. I often hear and see cows grazing on grass on these meadows between our house and the mountains.

Rendez vous success

Yesterday I passed my interview with OFII and left with a brand new resident permit sticker. Youpie! With this residency permit affixed next to my Visa, I'm able to legally live in France and get a French bank account, etc. And I can legally travel in and out of France for the next year (or during the validity of my French Visa).

Before moving abroad I read stories about other peoples' nightmare experiences with French officials while trying to secure a visa or residency permit. With this in mind, I expected a lot of paperwork and encounters with unpleasant bureaucrats. Today I was also afraid I'd have to return at another date if I didn't have everything they wanted on the day of the interview.

On the contrary the two officials I met yesterday were very friendly and professional. The medical exam was a breeze. The doctor asked me questions about my health and my family's medical history. He took my blood pressure, weight, height; he listened to my lungs and heart. He tapped around to make sure my organs were in place. To my surprise, I did not have to disrobe or get a OB/GYN kind of exam. I had been prepping myself to disrobe in front of him and whoever happened to be there at the interview. Apparently, in France, doctors do not leave you alone to disrobe. They don't give you a drape cloth or tissue thin robe to wear either. You are expected to undress in their presence which seems a bit awkward to me but then again Europeans think Americans are prudes. Today's doctor also asked to see my vaccination papers and chest xrays even though the letter from OFII said I only needed to bring them if I already had them. Since I did not have them, I was unable to produce them for him. Thankfully, he was nice and took into account of the fact that I was American (and would have been vaccinated appropriately during childhood and beyond) and that tuberculosis is nearly non-existent in the U.S.

It was a beautiful drive to Bourg-en-Bresse. The heat and humidity has disappeared for now—it was all sunshine and blue sky. On the way to Bresse, we drove past fields upon fields of sunflowers saluting the sun. On the drive home we stopped in Cerdon and visited a cave to taste some of the rosy champagne-like wine. The vitner was incredibly nice and funny. Like many French, he is living the dream and is passionate about his work. I took a bunch of photos of the cave and the sunflower. As you can see in the photos below, the vineyards are set in the mountains.

Even though it's been hot, I've been cooking after getting home from a long day of classes: pad thai with shrimp, marinara with meatballs, chilled cucumber soup (no heating required for that, thank goodness, and tonight, I'm marinating some Chinese red roast pork to grill tomorrow. If there's any leftover roast pork, I will use it to make fried rice. R is a good eater and not overly picky, which is great, because I get to cook and experiment as much as I like. He is such a love, eating everything I make, even recipes that don't come out quite right. For instance, pork Morrocan style with honey and olives. I knew it was a bad combination in the middle of the cooking process but I couldn't turn back or throw it out. I tried a little at dinner, but god bless his heart, R tried at least half of it.






En route to school, we also drive by fields upon fields of sunflowers. In French they are called turnesols because they turn in the direction of the sun at different times of the day. Isn't that just beautiful and poetic? The tournesols are turned into cooking oil, tournesol margarine, and probably other things too.

At Home

It's a nice drive up to our house—we take a small windy road from town to our village, and then a left turn onto our small private lane which leads to the house and large stone-paved driveway. With all the rain we've been getting, we're growing a garden of weeds and grass in between the stones. The moss is also threatening to take over.

While I love to garden, I loathe weeding because weeding is the opposite of growing something good to eat! While I cursed the state of the driveway (and weeded), R used the high water pressure jet to clean the stones and border wall in the driveway. After working outside for many hours, we were famished and ate a big lunch—grilling outside is wonderful and I hope to BBQ more this summer. Today we grilled pork and chicken marinated with my homemade Teriyaki sauce, a nice steak, prawns, onions, potatoes, and tomatoes. 

After lunch, I ran inside to clean up so I could Skype with my sister, brother in law and nephews. I was "seated" with them at the table while they had their breakfast. The video quality was much better this time, so it was a nice experience. I even played peek-a-boo with nephew A just like I was there...except I couldn't pick him up after to give him a kiss. Nephew I said "You could come back to Boston now." I miss my family and can't wait to visit them soon.

After dinner R and I tried to visit neighbor P who helped plow our vegetable garden. When we were greeted by their three-legged dog Oxanne, we knew they weren't home. Instead we took an evening stroll, past the cows in the meadows. It was 20:30h and still daylight as the crickets started singing their evening song.

Tomorrow R and I are driving to Germany for my friends' J and M's wedding. Have a good Sunday.

Crazy French drivers and market day

Thursdays are Market days in our little valley. Yesterday R and I hiked down to town and then back up home after our errands. It was a 2 hour roundtrip. We made two stops, first at La Poste for stamps. It costs .58€ to send domestic mail up to 20 grams and .87€ for international mail up to the same amount. Then a quick stop at the Turkish bakery for baklava and sweets shaped like a mini-eggroll. At the bakery, the daughter of the shopkeeper served us—she was quite young (maybe 9 years old) and barely reached over the tall counter. She was adorably pudgy and super polite. We'll be returning soon because the baklava was great.

This morning R and I planned to walk down again and take the market bus back up to our house, but we were too late. The market bus picks up the residents in our little village at 9am and drives them back up around 12pm. We drove down instead and it was an adventure—luckily we and the car made it down (and up) in 1 piece.

The roads in our area are narrow and seriously hilly with some blind spots where the road curves sharply. From what I've experienced so far, the French drivers here are seriously crazy drivers!! They claim their side of the road as well as part of ours, and they do not yield, instead continue doing what they're doing and hope you move out of their way.

As we were driving down to the farmer's market today, a car came flying up the hill, narrowly missing us by inches. Then the market bus (the one we had planned on taking earlier) drove up at top speed even though he saw us and should have seen that there was not enough room for him to pass us. The bus driver continued ahead anyways, and R had to quickly drive over the curb to avert a collision. Then bus driver just continued, not stopping to see if we were okay. I was pissed—and tomorrow, we're going to stop by the Mairie to lodge a complaint because this has happened way too many times and it's just not safe.

Anyway, we and the car are ok—so we head to the market which is already in full swing with many more vendors this week than the past month. R says it gets bigger in the warmer months as farmers bring more vegetables to sell. Today we spent 20€ for 2 pineapples, 2 kgs of tomatoes, whole wheat baguette, 2 fresh garlic heads (purple in color with tops on them), 5 apples, 2 pears, 4 peaches, 4 nectarines, 5 kinds of cheese (total price 7€), 4 avocados, and a dozen free-range chicken eggs.

Back at home, we had a nice lunch: salad with beets and tomatoes, cow's cheese with nectarines, peaches, and pear. And on the side, some pork terrine, smoked sausage, and pâté de canard.

For dinner I made a Vietnamese tamarind fish soup with prawns (heads still on). My mother makes a great version, and I tried to recreate hers tonight using jumbo prawns (which I purchased earlier today, 3€ for 300 grams which seemed like a great deal to me). I briefly looked at the recipe here and then used what was available in my fridge and pantry. I only used half of the prawns tonight, so maybe prawns for lunch tomorrow.

Last thing, the tail pipe is now fixed. Today I did much better driving the car, only stalling twice. R says I need to shift more smoothly and quicker. Still driving on an empty road, but hey, I am driving and on my way to mastering the clutch and gearbox!

On La Poste and motorcycle riding

Clouds hung overhead as R and I made our way to La Poste today on the motorcycle. La Poste, or the French postal system is more than just a post office. Not only can you buy those pretty French stamps and send letters and packages, but you can also make copies and do your banking there too. The reason for today's visit was official—I have a long stay visa (visa de long sejour) that entitles me to stay in France for a year. However, such a visa is only valid if OFII (Office Francaise de l'Immigration et de l'Integration) grants me a residency permit. 

Which leads me to La Poste. I'm here to make copies of my passport, French Visa, and the passport page displaying my entry stamp into France. The cost for copies and mailing the OFII form: 5€ by registered mail to the local OFII office in Bourg-en-Bresse.

At La Poste, we queued behind a long but orderly line. La Poste was extremely efficient—while two tellers at les guichets were helping people, an additional two employees were roaming about, answering questions for people in line and directing them to the automatic stamp dispensing machines. I've read about the French way of cutting the line. Was that in David Sedaris' book "Me Talk Pretty One Day" or was it in the "Sweet Life in Paris?" by David Lebovitz. This time I didn't see any of that...perhaps that only happens in Paris or bigger cities, but not in a small town like mine.

Now that I've sent in my form, the waiting begins. OFII will contact me in two to three months for an interview and medical exam which will take place at Bourg. At that interview, I'll need to produce additional documentation/proofs of identify, and pay a tax/processing fee before receiving my residency permit.

After La Poste, we continued to the bank but forgot it was closed Mondays. With the sun now out, and the temperature in the low 60s, we sat outside, sharing the small lunch I had prepared. Food tastes better when eaten outside with your fingers and with the one you love. We shared a baguette with pâté du canard and terrine du porc; an apple; smoked almonds from Mom; and milk chocolate with hazelnuts/raisins.

As R and I are going to our friends' wedding next weekend, we drove vers Annecy to purchase R's early birthday gift from me—a TomTom, good for this trip and others I hope we would take together this summer.

On motorcycles. My first time riding on a motorcycle was in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I rode behind my uncle and it totally freaked me out as the traffic in HCM is intimidating (kind of an understatement). Bikers, motorcycles, trucks, cars all move together in total chaos—there are no marked lanes, and traffic moves in all directions.

Even though R is a very careful and good driver, I felt pretty nervous on the motorcycle the first few times. Now that I'm more comfortable, I've learned to lean into turns with him, sit so my helmet does not knock into his, and hold onto my handbar firmly without overstraining or gripping too hard. R and I have signals to indicate 1) something pretty to see 2) if I need to reposition my weight 3) if I want to stop for a minute 4) when going over big speed bumps. My behind is a little sore now after today's long ride. But it was so worth it—I like the thrill of the ride and the 360 degree view of nature around us. We drove through beautiful countryside, up and down mountainsides overlooking farms with cows resting under trees. At some point, we saw free range chickens roaming next to the side of the road. I always knew whenever we were approaching a farm—I smelled cowpies as we approached the farms!

Since we were so close to Annecy, we took the motorcycle to Lac Annecy. Picture a lake set at the base of the Alps with sharp peaks reaching out to the sky, some with snow still on them. Imagine living here —skiing in winter, watersports in warmer months, and hiking all year long. Annecy has been called the Venice of France due to the many canals in the city center. Even though I am in France, I still had a craving for rice, so R and I had a nice sushi dinner in a cute modern sushi bar (run by Chinese people). We were happily surprised by the quality, portion, and the cost 20€ (for a big plate of sushi with miso soup and salad).

Returning home, we found our vegetable garden had been tilled during our daytrip. Tomorrow's plan: plant our veggies, stop at neighbor P's to thank him for tilling the veggie garden, and then head to Geneva. While R meets with former colleagues, I'll look for a Swiss mobile phone and tour the University of Geneva (UNIGE) where I may be taking French classes this summer.