During the Holiday break, I thought I’d do something with my time while watching movies and chatting with the family. I dug out my long buried crocheting talents (taught by grandmother when I was 10 or maybe younger) and started crocheting away.
I thought it would take me a couple of days to make a scarf, but when I realized it takes me a couple of hours, I had a problem. I needed to make more scarves. I then started taking orders from people and ended up crocheting 7 scarves in 9 days. My left pinky finger got a little sore, but look at the beauties! Lots of earthy colors and warm snuggleness for everyone. Purrrr.

And to kick off the New Year… I’m not making resolutions because I know I will break them and I don’t like to be disappointed. Instead, I got a hair cut (well, before the New Year, but it still counts) to have a fresh look on myself. The new me will do all sorts of cool things that won’t even fit on a list…. I will let it unfold as it comes.

Off for the wonderful year of change that I’m hoping 2010 to be. Happy New Year everyone!

I know, I know, it’s been way too long since I posted last. Lots of things happened since then, but I wanted to find something positive, something fun, something silly to talk about. I finally have something for you!

Cirque du Soleil is in town, presenting their new show OVO, which we’re going to see tomorrow night. I’m so excited! This time, the show is about bugs. I love bugs! Especially when they’re not around me.

As part of their presence in SF, they made a little dance you could learn – The Bug Dance – and “perform” with a bunch of people and performers on Union Square. Those of you who know me… you might not be surprised… I had to go!

And so while I couldn’t take pictures or videos while I was dancing with incredibly light hearted people, I took some shots in between groovy bug moves.

I got to meet… uhh… a bug. She was making lots of weird noises but was very cool.

Some other bugs had crazy lashes! I mean, check out the lashes!

And then came the frogs. Oh dear… those frogs are COOL! I can’t wait to see them bounce around in their “natural” habitat.

Oh wait, this frog is hungry! Ahhh! I like you, but I don’t want to be your meal!

Pheww, I’m intact. What can I say… I felt like a kid and had a lot of fun!

This whole year’s recurrent theme has been cheese, therefore I felt like I had to honor that for Halloween.

What could I do? Wear a cheese hat? Be a cow? Be milk? Sure all of those would have worked. But nope, I decided to be a cheese fairy. And what would a cheese fairy do? Bring cheese to people around her, which is exactly what I did. For the work festivities, I dressed up my little fresh chevres with a pumpkin gummy hat (and some spiders).

It made for a beautiful and colorful tray!

And for our friend’s party, well the fairy turned into an angel. That halo isn’t very fairly-like. A cheese angel, that works too, right?

(See those circles on my shirt? Yeah that’s my attempt to illustrate swiss cheese holes… not sure that worked out, but anyways, you get the point.)

I brought some more cheese for the fine palates I knew would be there. In my right hand is a goat brie and in my left, a Chaource, my two latest experiments.

What can I say, bringing creamy yumminess to people makes me really happy!

Crottin, especially “Crottin de Chavignol” is one of my favorite goat cheeses. It is small (about 2 inches wide and 1.5 inches high), it can be eaten at various stages of maturity – either mild and soft or strong and dry.

It normally looks like this: (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

The rind is slightly moldy, the shape is fairly even and the center is fairly solid and smooth. It actually can get quite chalky and crumbly as it ages. A beauty.

I found a recipe in my favorite cheese recipe book right now, “200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes” by Debra Amrein-Boyes. I also got 4 crottin molds from The Beverage People a couple of weeks ago when we visited our friends up in Santa Rosa.

Yesterday, the crottins reached their 10th day of maturity, which is technically when you can start eating them. The result looked pretty good!

Except, it looks not as high as the one above and a little softer/wrinklier than intended.

Uhhh maybe a lot softer?

I mean look at this gooeyness!

This looks way more like a mini goat camembert than a crottin.

It also tasted like a mini goat camembert! Super creamy, with a strong tasting rind and deliciously balanced with a glass of Côtes du Rhône.

I’m not sure what I did wrong in the process, but I am embracing the mistake.

While we were in France, I wanted to take advantage of my grandmother still being alive, to tell us some stories of the “good ol’ days”. My grand parents’ experience (like for most of our generation) has the particularly interesting layer to their past, being that they went through World War II. In fact, WWII was when my Mamie Lise and Papou Robert met and fell in love.

I don’t feel like I ever got the full story, or at least not consciously – you know, when you’re younger and hear your family’s love stories, you say “yeah, yeah, very cool, mmhmm, that’s really cute” – so this time, I didn’t want to miss it.

To paint the picture a little bit, my grandmother’s family owned a farm for several generations in the town of Egaules, central France. My grandfather’s family lived in Clermont-Ferrand and his dad was a train mechanic. Now in those days, we have to realize that there was a big difference in social class between industrial workers and farmers. This will be relevant later in the story…

Part of Mamie’s family business was to deliver butter and other foods to people in the towns nearby. One day, in 1942, the government required young male students to join a farm to help out during the war. At the time, Papou was studying medicine to become a family doctor. He had to drop his studies and his mom sent him to Mamie’s farm, since she knew the “butter lady”.

Papou ended up spending 3 years at the farm, leaving lots of time to get to know the daughter… one thing led to another, they started dating when she was 14 and he was 20. He got to return to college for a short while during this time, but only to come back to the farm instead of being sent to work for the Germans.

The photo below was taken with Papou’s camera… on self timer. Notice Mamie’s dress and how the fabric wasn’t uniform? She told me they didn’t have enough fabric at the time to make full dresses, so they would patch up different pieces. Turned out quite nice if you ask me!

Papou would take her to his family once in a while, in Clermont-Ferrand. But one day, his Dad decided to refuse to ever see her again. The reason being they were getting too serious and she was the daughter of a peasant, which was too disgraceful to approve of their love. They ended up getting married at the farm, with close family, except for Papou’s parents who didn’t attend the ceremony. His sister walked him down the aisle instead.

Below is a picture of their very modest wedding, with Papou on the left and Mamie’s brother on the right. It was on July 23rd, 1949.

Papou and Mamie ended up having 3 children, Bernadette (center), Christiane (right-Mom) and Alain (left). They were all three born in their house with the help of Dr. Roux at Ardes-sur-Couze, a very snowy part of France in the winter.

To get away from the snow they would take vacations on the French Riviera in little towns like Seillans (which is their current next door village) and Le Bar-sur-Loup. I believe that this picture was taken along the shore, near L’Esterel. I love the Vespa leaned against the wall! Classic.

So can you believe it? I was born because my Mom was born because her Mom’s Mom delivered butter to my Mom’s Dad’s Mom!
I think that’s pretty cool.

I did something bold. I brought Camembert… to France. As if France needed more Camembert! Ha! As if France didn’t have enough delicious, fine Camembert! Ha! Ha! Well, I just thought that if I could make Camembert, bring it to France and share it with my family (provided it survived the trip), then yes, France needed one more Camembert. Mine. Not because it’s better (definitely not… although turns out, quite close), but because it’s something I made with my hands, with care, with love and with my family in mind the whole time.

I packed two of them tight is a double zip-lock bag for both exposure to air and to prevent the smell to leak! Uh yes, it was smelly. I didn’t want any airport dogs detecting it and wanting to eat it, so I sealed it really well and put it in one of those thermal lunch bags. Turns out it came out pretty soft and stinky, but apparently, so my family says, pretty good!

I loved writing on that label, origin: USA, producer: Stephanie, and crossing out “purchased” for “made”. Ha! So funny… to me.

The first glimpse of the small wheel was promising.

A nice white and yellow, wrinkly crust, wrapped a soft body when pressed down gently.

Indeed pretty soft when the knife went through.

Ta-da! A really creamy, gooey thick edge with a slightly firmer center.

By now Justin was in another room pinching his nose. Just kidding, he had a piece. I think. Hmm I’ll have to ask him. Maybe he’s traumatized forever with my stinky, but – so my Mom, Dad, Sister, aunt and grand-ma say – accurate cheese.

I can’t believe it! I made Camembert! In my kitchen! In San Francisco! I put it on a plane for 14 hours and it made it onto plates in France! And people liked it! Or everyone was very polite with me. Hmm…