Yesterday we had 1.25 kilos of truffles to deliver to a restaurant in Nice, so we stopped in Valbonne for a quick bite to eat on the way home. We had lunch outside in the sun on December 31st! Unheard-of, even for the South of France. After stopping for a quick drink in Aix at the home of our delightful friends Mary Jane and Tom, we headed home to celebrate New Year's Eve the way we usually do, with truffle burgers à la Daniel Boulud. They're based on the burgers Boulud serves at his New York restaurant, which go for a whopping $125, and are stuffed with foie gras, bacon and truffles. If you're wondering whether this burger is terribly fat-filled or fantastically delicious, the answer is: it is both. 2012 is off to a great start!
01/01/2012
12/30/2011
More Truffle Deliveries
Les Pastras is the proud supplier of truffles to La Table, Au Sud, a Michelin-starred restaurant overlooking the exquisite Vieux Port in Marseille. We just dropped off their first kilo this morning! If nothing else, this business is filling out our address book with some of France's finest dining.
12/29/2011
Welcome to Les Pastras!
As many of you know, Les Pastras is the name of our property, which produces organic fruit, olive oil and black truffles. Though we both have real jobs (his much more real than mine, as mine involves working part-time from home), our real passion is the land. Since the retirement of our dear Gerard, who worked on the property for 35 years, its upkeep has fallen to us. We are now the proud owners of a tractor, which makes us real farmers in my book, even if only hobby farmers. And in the last 3 years, we’ve cleared fields and planted more than 400 trees. Not bad for a boy born in Paris and an indoorsy girl from the Midwest, wouldn't you say?
As we work toward making the transition from backbreaking weekend pastime to lucrative business, it occurred to us that we needed a web site. It also occurred to us, during our conversations with truffle enthusiasts, that there is a real market for truffle-hunting tours. Truffles are a business that tourists would ordinarily never get a glimpse of, unless they were at a truffle market and had their wallets open wide. And it seems that there is a real fascination for how they're cultivated, how the dogs are trained and how to tell a real Provençal black truffle from its inferior Chinese and Italian counterparts.
So we are now officially in the tourism business and will be conducting truffle- hunting tours December through March. And for guests who want to make a day of it, a traditional Provençal lunch with all the wine you can drink is also available. The menu is based on years of research (read: throwing dinner parties) and features my friends' favorite recipes, all of which are based on originals taught to me by Johann's grandmother. If you have friends visiting Provence, I hope you'll send them our way. We'll have a bottle of Champagne chilling!
Please visit our site! www.lespastras.com
06/12/2011
Stuff I Love
The people up the hill from us made a mailbox out of this old bicycle. Whenever I see it, it makes me smile.
05/29/2011
Bandol
After resolving to update this blog more frequently, I find myself behind already. A few weeks ago we enjoyed a lovely weekend on the coast. We stayed in La Cadière d'Azur, which isn't technically on the Mediterranean, but is just close enough to the beachfront town of Bandol to count in my book.
Bandol is known for its exceptional rosés and the beauty of its beach, which has two beach clubs to choose from. Beach clubs are the way to go, in my book. For around fifteen euros or so, you can park yourself on a comfy sun lounger with a little table and a parasol all day long. There's a restaurant where you can have a bite to eat without worrying about losing your spot or someone making off with your towel when you're not looking, and no fretting about finding a bathroom or a shower.
It's so civilized. No lying on the hot sand. No kids diving for their frisbees just inches from your face. And at the nicer beach clubs, they'll even bring drinks or a sandwich right out to you. Most important for me, though, is the shade. Even with SPF 100 and a floppy hat and a linen cover-up, my skin just isn't made for the sun. I freckle up like an over-ripe banana in a matter of minutes. So that parasol is well worth the rental fee in what I save in dermatologist bills.
Now some of you (the male ones) are probably thinking to yourself right now, "Hey, didn't I hear that there are topless beaches in France? Let's hear about that." Yes. But it's not just that there are certain beaches where toplessness is tolerated, toplessness is okay AT ANY BEACH AT ALL. Anywhere. Everywhere. No exceptions. No wonder France is the most visited country in the world.
As for what we did during our weekend on the coast, the list of activities is short. We walked around Bandol. We browsed at a boat show. We had lunch. We got ice cream. We bought Johann some flip-flops. We read books by the pool at our hotel. That's it. And I have to say, it was pretty great. There were all kinds of other things to do there, like a zoo, a botanical garden, boat tours, winery visits...
Maybe next time.
05/04/2011
09/28/2010
Bonjour From Geneva!
We've just returned from a long weekend in Geneva, thanks to my brilliant husband, who somehow managed to get us front row center seats for the Sting concert there (more on that later). I often say that one of the best things about living in Europe is its proximity to, well... Europe. Geneva is just a four hour drive from here. But in spite of the short distance, neither of us had ever been to Switzerland before. We didn't really know what to expect. After all, what is Switzerland known for? Chocolate, skiing, cuckoo clocks, army knives, chalets, secret bank accounts, fondue, precision timepieces, neutrality and boarding schools where one can acquire the sort of generically European accent that Madonna now has. As a list of accomplishments, it doesn't exactly bowl you over.
And neither does Geneva. Don't get me wrong, we had a great time there. But it was the sort of great time that you could have anywhere. Geneva doesn't have a strong sense of self, and when you're there, it's easy to forget exactly which country you're in. The people speak French, English, German and Italian. Like the French, they are thin, well-dressed and tend to smoke. Like the Germans, they have an affinity for tidiness, order and rules. Like the English, they are polite and posess the ability to wait patiently in line. Like the Italians, their restaurant menus heavily favor pizza and pasta. And just to mix things up a little, like the Dutch, they like trams and tolerate prostitution. Yes, you read that right. The legal age to enter a bar is 18, but the legal age for prostitution is 16, though only in the state in which Geneva is located, not all of Switzerland, as we were informed by the man at our hotel who answered our question about what was up with the scantily clad ladies on the street outside.
Lest you worry that our hotel was in a bad part of town, let me assure you that it wasn't. In fact, I highly recommend the Hotel Windsor if you are ever in Geneva. For a city as expensive as Geneva is, the newly renovated hotel (which has a sauna and a fitness center that's nicer than my gym) is chic, comfortable, and the quietest hotel in which either of us had ever stayed, real value for your money. It also had free breakfast, free Wifi in each room, free passes for the tramways and a bar (though the bar was far too expensive to do any serious drinking in - perhaps how they correct for all the free stuff).
Our street looked just like every other street in Geneva, where there seem to be only two types of architecture. First, there are some lovely-ish designs that appear to have been done by people who were inspired by Haussmann's Parisian constructions but too afraid of being accused of plagiarism to execute them fully or to extend them for a full city block, as he did. These buildings stand side-by-side with the other type of design, a drab, featureless rectangle that is the product of whatever brain-wasting disease was affecting the architecture profession in the 1970s. The overall effect of this combination is underwhelming and bland. Even along the lakefront, where the former, more appealing type of buildings prevail, they have spoiled things by topping each building with a large corporate logo, ruining what might otherwise have been a lovely view of lake and city framed by mountains.
Now you might think from reading all this that we didn't like Geneva, but we did. Sure, Geneva may be a generically European city, but you could also argue that they've taken some of the best things from their surrounding cultures and combined them. (With the exception of teenage prostitution, of course.) The city is clean, the people are friendly, the food is good and there's plenty to see. We saw a very comprehensive exhibit of Corot's work, visited the Modern Art Museum, had a drink at the infamous Beau Rivage hotel (for those of you who visited Austria with us, this is the hotel where Empress Sisi Habsburg was shot), had lunch in Geneva's oldest restaurant (where the Clintons dined when they were in town), enjoyed a traditional Swiss fondue, took a lunch cruise of Lac Leman, strolled through several parks (including one with some serious chess matches going on), snapped pictures outside the United Nations building and windowshopped in the city center.
We also went to Sting's Symphonicity show, an event that really deserves a blog post of its own. How to sum up the feeling of being mere feet away from a singer you have adored since you were 15 years old? And seeing your favorite songs performed by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra? It was breathtaking. Put simply, they rocked. Johann even talked to Sting! At one point, when introducing the next song, Sting searched for a word in French. Johann told him what it was. Brush with fame! And we got a good look at Sting's guitarist, Dominic Miller, who lives just five minutes from here. Now we'll recognize him the next time we're all at the Lourmarin market at the same time. Viva Geneva!
09/06/2010
08/17/2010
Staycation! Day Six.
I'll keep this short and sweet, since I have a bit of catching up to do already, here. The highlight of day six of our Staycation was the International Piano Festival in nearby La Roque d'Antheron. How lucky can you get to have an international music festival held in a village five minutes away every single August? This is the third year that we've gone. It's sublime. We heard Polish child prodigy Marcin Koziak (who made his formal debut with the Krakow Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra at age 11,) now 21, perform the music of
Chopin (2010 is the year of Chopin in France, apparently). The open-air concert is held beneath massive old plane trees, filled with the sound of cicadas and framed by the setting sun. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more charming, don't forget about the grassy field for picnicking and the wine bar serving glasses of very pale rosé for just €1 each! Wish you were here! (Special thanks to my friend Scott for telling me how to achieve this cool effect with my iPhone photos.)
08/12/2010
Staycation! Day Five.
On day five of this summer's Staycation, we drove an hour and a half to the coast, to St. Raphael, to be specific. St. Raphael is a port city, and like most port cities in the French Riviera, it's set up for tourists. This is the place to be if you want to shop, have a seafood lunch, hit the beach or pick up some souvenirs. This isn't the high class St. Tropez shopping, though. You won't find a classic Saint James sailor shirt, a Missoni bikini* or a pair of Chanel sunglasses here. But there are plenty of nice things to be had for very reasonable prices in St. Raphael. That said, we searched high and low, behind every beach towel display and each rack of sunglasses for a decent pair of flip-flops for Johann and managed to come up empty handed. Oh, well. You can't have it all.
Besides, we weren't there for the shopping. We had booked a sailboat for a sunset cruise, so along with our eight fellow passengers, we hopped on board this three-bedroom, two-bath boat and set sail. Our affable and Jeffrey Lebowski-like captain encouraged Johann and I to plant ourselves on the deck near the bow with some loungy mattresses, an invitation we didn't hesitate to take him up on. We sailed out to what looked at first like a small peninsula, but revealed itself to be a tiny island called l'Ile d'Or, "the island of gold," in French. Captain Dude (I didn't catch his actual name) told us its story.
Formerly a military base, the French government sold the island to a private citizen in 1897 when they found they didn't have much use for it anymore, obviously not foreseeing the "fool me twice" situation that would unfold with Germany in the years that would follow (the Allies landed there during WWII). The island's owner had what could be considered a bit of a gambling problem and ended up losing it in a card game. I can't help but wonder what was in his hand. The man he lost it to had problems of his own, though. After taking possession of the property, he commenced to build a castle-like tower on it. When construction was finished, he declared the island its own sovereign nation and proclaimed himself King August the First of the Island of Gold (population: batshit crazy). He had a flag made and even had stamps and money printed. Today, that island is known as the country of... France. Because, dude, you can't DO that. You're delusional.
Our boat stopped to let its passengers out for a swim and then set sail back toward St. Raphael. Captain Dude even let one of the passengers steer while he prepared a little apéritif of Champagne, rosé and tapenade on toast. Once back at the port, we bade farewell to the captain with promises to join him for the St. Tropez Regatta in October. As it wasn't yet ten p.m., we were still able to get a table at one of the many restaurants along the port serving the traditional mussels steamed in white wine with a side of French fries. We treated ourselves to an ice cream on our way back to the car, where Johann dozed as I drove home (he's more of a morning person). All in all, it was a wonderful day and I hope we'll make the sailing trip a regular feature during our future Staycations. As always, wish you were here!
* Just a side note on the subject of bikinis, while we're at it. It's interesting that you don't often find bikini tops and bottoms sold separately here, like you do in the States, which is convenient if your top is bigger than your bottom or vice versa. The reason it's interesting is that French women rarely seem to ever wear the top and are forced to buy both pieces. I'm just sayin'.
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