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.

Planting and a hidden economy

It's almost 1am. My circadian rhythm is still off, and I find myself waking up late, staying up later, and napping somewhere in between. But at least there is sun today. R and I postponed going to Geneva until later this week, opting to work on the garden and researching French language classes instead.

How does our garden grow?
Neighbor P's rototiller did a great job of turning over the grass, weeds, and compacted soil to unearth the black gold in our vegetable patch. Life was teeming underneath the super aerated rich soil—in addition to lots of worms, there were snails, ants, and beetles including one beautiful metallic green/blue/yellow beetle.