Papilles en Éveil – May event

While in Lyon I (Anna) have been  participating in an AVF cooking workshop,  Papilles en Éveil (roughly translated as “awakening tastebuds”), led by an incredible (force of nature) woman named Brigitte.  Brigitte has managed to organize a very diverse group of women to meet monthly to prepare and enjoy a three course lunch.  Each meeting is limited to eight of us to keep it manageable and typically lasts from 10 AM to ~3 PM.  We each chip in to pay for the ingredients which are supplied by the person in charge of that course.

Last week we met in the beautiful apartment of Marie-Noëlle.  Her apartment is without a doubt

Enjoying an apéritif before lunch

the most lovely apartment I’ve been in in Lyon – and perhaps anywhere.  It is in a gracious, old building and retains the large rooms, high ceilings, and decorative detail of an old building but has a very modern kitchen that would be a joy to have in any country.  (Alas, the French are known for their cooking but not for their kitchens - although they are making progress and one sees apartments advertised as having “Cuisine Americaine”.) Marie-Noëlle (French) provided the ingredients and recipe for the main course (and of course, the wine); Gillian (English) was in charge of dessert; and Isabel (French) was in charge of the first course, or entrée as it is known in France.   (I am the only American and, without a doubt, the least fluent in French.  Our group also includes ladies from China, Brazil, and various other countries.)

The lovely table

 

 

 

 

 



L-R Isabel, Anna, Gillian, and Marie-Noëlle
 with the entrée with accompanying wine.

Isabel’s entrée, Gougère Béchamel Jambon, was a delicious (rich!) pastry ring with a ham, cheese, béchamel sauce filling. Marie-Noëlle added the dried flower petals that provided the perfect finishing touch.  It was delicious and could easily serve as a summer meal with a salad.

 

 
Then came the main dish (plat, in France),Veau au Pamplemousse et au Poivre Vert (veal with

Veau au Pamplemousse et au Poivre Vert

grapefuit and green pepper corns).  Marie-Noëlle had us prepare  spätzle  for the starch, although one could also have potatoes, noodles or whatever.  This dish not only looked lovely, but was incredibly tender and tasty.

 

 

And then, on to dessert.  Gillian had us preparing Tarte au Citron Meringuée (Lemon Meringue Pie) – but the recipe was completely different from any I’ve ever used.  For a start, the pie crust included

Tarte au Citron Meringuée

egg yolks and was totally mixed and shaped by hand – no rolling pin!  Then Brigitte did some artistic magic with the meringue and added some sugar crystals to the top of the pie before it went into the oven. The result was impressive and tasted delicious.  (David was the happy recipient of the leftover pie – thanks to Gilllian.)

 

 

 

 

Enjoying the fruits of our labor. 
 L-R Marie-Noelle, Isabel, Anna, Gillian, and Ling

As usual, we lingered over coffee and conversation before we said à bientôt  (see you soon) and went our separate ways.  Another very successful, and delicious, Papilles en Éveil gathering.

Sentier Géologique, or Geology Trail

Since David was educated as a Geologist, we jumped at the chance to go for a Geology hike in the Beaujolais hills north of Lyon.   We rented a cute little Fiat 500 (bright yellow) and drove, with a backpack and picnic lunch, about 25 kilometers to the village of Chasselay where everyone was to meet at 9:15.  What with the usual formalities involved in picking up our car, at the FranceCars agency near us, we arrived in Chasselay with only a few minutes to spare.

Chasselay Village Gate

We joined the group of about dozen, plus our leader Nicole, and set off up the hill.  This was a marked hike with a series of eight stops with descriptive panels explaining the geologic history of what we were seeing on the trail.  In addition to the geology, we also walked through very scenic woods, with occasional views across the lovely Beaujolais countryside.

Our Leader & Group at one of the Signs

It was an interesting group – all people who were new to us, all French, mostly couples.  We each chatted with various people during the day – everyone was very friendly and curious as to how we came to be in France and in Lyon. 

David and Sign

The geology was interesting – we were in an area mostly from the Jurassic Era when the region was covered at times by seas of varying depths.  Many shellfish fossils were observed and our leader had other types of fossils in her backpack that she had found on other outings in the area.

After a couple of hours, we reached the top of the hill, which sits, by the way, on a buried military command-and-control center for the French air force, and we looked at the views and found a grassy area on which to sit and eat our picnic lunches.  [Surprisingly, we were the only ones to have included a bit of wine with our lunch!] 

The Group Having Lunch

Military Area - No Photos!

After lunch, we took a different route down the hill to our cars and convoyed off to another village, St Jean-des-Vignes and its museum of the geology of the area.

The museum was a small, well-done facility exhibiting mostly minerals and fossils from the nearby area.  We had a volunteer guide who explained things in great depth.  The museum is near a limestone quarry run by Lafarge, a French worldwide cement company.  They often uncover fossils in the course of their excavations, and when that happens, the experts are called in.  They also bring amounts of fossil-rich rock to an area outside the museum where children can make their own discoveries.  Seems to be a great partnership.

One of the highlights of the museum, and this could only happen in France, was a wine tasting, presumably to show the effect of the terrain on the wine!  Our guide led this also, explaining the wine, how to taste, and what to look for.  We enjoyed two excellent Beaujolais wines, a red and a white.  A perfect way to end our visit.

Wine Tasting - Museum Guide in Center, Walking Guide to Right

We spent a full day hiking and learning and generally enjoying ourselves.  With a rental car, we had to leave just a bit early, before the walk through the botanical garden adjacent to the museum, but we certainly got in most of the activities.

Philippe’s Maxi Burger and Lunch with Bernadette and Delphine

Our friend, Philippe, at Viténature across the street, makes an amazing hamburger.  It’s different from an American hamburger although it has many of the same ingredients, but it is delicious and very popular with his clientele.   We had been watching for it to appear on his schedule, but, since we hadn’t seen it, we decided to ask when he was planning to serve it again.  After some calendar

Philippe's Maxi Burger

consultation and head scratching, the date was set for Tuesday, May 27^th.  We made our reservations (definitely necessary when his hamburger is advertised!) and were happily contemplating diving into a “MaxiBurger.”

In the meantime, we had been hoping to bump into Bernadette, a friend who lives just down the street from us.  Although we all go to Viténature  often, our paths had not crossed.  We especially wanted to connect with her since we had heard that her husband had recently died and we wanted to spend some time with her.  (See blog posting “Guests of a Chef” July 4, 2012 http://aubrysinfrance.blogspot.fr/2012/07/guests-of-chef.html  )  Then, coming home from the local MonoPrix grocery store the other day, Anna just happened to meet Bernadette in the street outside her apartment building.  After hugs, bises, and a nice long chat, they agreed to meet for coffee (with David, of course, and Delphine, Bernadette’s daughter) the next morning at Viténature .  That meeting for coffee lead to a plan to meet for Philippe’s burgers.  Now you have all the pieces – WHEW!

So, at our reservation time, we arrived at Viténature to find our favorite table waiting for us with a “reserved” sign on it.  We chose our drinks (Anna had a beer, the rest had wine) and settled back for

David, Delphine, Bernadette, and
 Anna getting ready to dig in.

some fun conversation in anticipation of a delicious lunch.  We always have a good time with Bernadette, and it was great to see her laughing and enjoying herself again.  Then the burgers came - Philippe calls them “Maxi” for good reason.  They were every bit as good as we remembered.  From what Angeline said, lots of other customers thought so, too, and the burgers had been selling very well.  We took our time working our way through the burgers, frites, and salad and then moved on to dessert.  (This IS France remember.)  Anna had a slice of their delicious tarte au pomme (apple tart), one of her favorites, and the others had eclairs.  And, then on to coffee..…    

Delphine had somehow pre-arranged to pick up the tab for everyone for lunch – not at all sure how that happened!  But, that just means we’ll have to set up another lunch date with OUR turn to pay.

Découverte de la France – Art Nouveau

We’ve enjoyed attending our twice-monthly Découverte de la France (Discovering France) classes at AVF since we first came to Lyon.  Andrée-Anne, our very able maîtresse, has been a wonderful guide as we learn about various regions, architectural and design styles, history, geography, and culture in France.  This month we have been discussing Art Nouveau and, to a lesser extent, Art Deco. 

Art Nouveau is a special favorite of David’s so we tend to notice it in our explorations around

In the entry hall to side of building

France.  (Very simplistically, Art Nouveau was in vogue from about 1890 to 1910 or so and incorporates asymmetrical designs using elements of nature and flowing lines –in the US, Tiffany is a good example.) It was a very popular design form for furniture, buildings, stairways, stained glass windows, lamps, vases, etc.   We often walk past a building near the Prefecture with some beautiful Art Nouveau windows as these photos show.

Lovely gates to the main entry.

Stained glass door seen 
through the front gates.

Front of Salle de Rameau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

School building and gate.

During our last class we walked around Lyon with Andrée-Anne pointing out Art Nouveau features on various buildings.  Two buildings across the street from each other are particularly interesting.  The first building, Salle de Rameau, was built as a concert hall in 1907-1908 and has lovely mosaic designs and ornamentation on the exterior.  The second building was built as a school for girls and has a very impressive gate as well as mosaics and other ornamentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our favorite example is also one of our favorite restaurants, Brasserie des Brotteaux, which celebrated its 100^th birthday last year.  And, that’s where our class gathered today for coffee.  Very civilized way to learn about France – don’t you agree?

Exterior of Brasserie des Brotteaux

 

One view of the interior of the restaurant.

The Next Great Bike Trip - To the Loire Valley

Roger, our landlord in France, and I been planning a bike trip down the Loire River ever since we finished doing the Rhone River valley [see blog posts in June 2012 and 2013.] This is a mythic region in France, renowned for its châteaus, wine, cuisine, and beautiful scenery.  From our standpoint, it is a fairly flat area, has a system of bike trails, and, as we discovered, an excellent guidebook for the trail system paralleling the river.  We each bought a guidebook last fall so we could become familiar with the route and the area.   

Just an Idea of the Scenery

Meanwhile, Roger had discussed it with Gerard, his brother-in-law, and with Tom, a retired American doctor with a British wife now living in Britain.  We knew both people as Gerard lives in Lyon, and Tom had lived and worked in Lyon up until last year.  Both men expressed interest in joining us, so we now had a group of four.  Or, as Dominique, Roger’s wife put it, ‘now there will be a doctor in the group to patch up David when he crashes’.  [As it transpired, the only injury we had was to Tom himself who lost his balance at one point and wound up with a scraped knee.] 

We had two different skill levels, as Gerard was a real bike enthusiast, and Roger bikes regularly. [Roger took it upon himself to see that everyone stayed connected while we biked by ensuring that we did not get too spread out.] I had only begun biking again three years ago in preparation for these excursions, and Tom had not done much adult biking.  Tom and I were using borrowed bikes while Gerard and Roger had their own good-quality bikes adjusted to their sizes and styles.  [I was completely familiar with the bike I used, as it belongs to Dominique, is a quality Dutch bicycle, and I have been using it here for three years.  It has only three gear speeds, but since that is what I am familiar with, it was fine.  Gerard professed himself impressed that I could undertake trips like this on a three-speed.]

Over the winter and early spring Roger and I exchanged emails with various ideas for the trip.  The trail covers about 680 kilometers from end-to-end; we decided to start in Nevers, a good-size town at the eastern end of the river and trail system, and cover about half the trail in five days this year, and look at doing the rest next year.  We needed to begin and end in towns with train stations as even Nevers is about 250 km from Lyon.  We decided to drive to Nevers in Gerard’s car, with the rest of us paying his expenses, as Gerard’s car had bike racks that could hold all the bikes.  We would then bike down the valley for five days and take the train back to Nevers and the car on the sixth day.

We had been watching the weather warily as it had been quite blustery and showery, but with Tom and his wife Christine coming from Britain just for the expedition, we had to do it on the dates chosen.  We did have a fallback plan of going south if the weather proved impossible in the Loire.  The predictions for the week said that Monday and possibly Tuesday were showery, and improving the rest of the week, so we decided to go to the Loire.

Spring 2014 - Back in Lyon!

We returned to our “second home” in Lyon on April 23^rd.  People often ask just where Lyon is and what we do here for three months at a time, so we’ll attempt to give you an idea of what our lives in

France are like.  We won’t bore you with every detail, but here’s a quick rundown of our first few days…

We left on the non-stop from Seattle to Paris on the 22^nd, and then took to TGV (fast ! train) from the airport to Lyon and arrived 2 hours later on the 23^rd.  As always, we were pretty wiped so our plan was to go immediately to the apartment, unpack some essentials, get our stuff out of storage in the basement, catch our breath, and then go across the street to ViteNature  to say hello to Philippe and Angeline, pick up something very light for dinner, and crash.  Well, we did all that, but not in the planned sequence.  Philippe and Angeline were sitting outside and saw us dragging our rollerbags to our apartment building; they rushed across the street and greeted us with bises and hugs.  What a lovely way to begin our stay!

The next day, Thursday the 24^th, we had lunch with the Del Cano Club, an organization primarily for British ex-RAF folks and spouses that has kindly adopted us “colonials.”  Del Cano meets monthly for lunches, often has a speaker, and is always reliable for interesting conversations.  No speaker this time, but we did have some fascinating conversations.

A View of lovely Lyon - our apartment
is near the building that looks like
a pencil, and is called "le Crayon"
 (French for pencil).

Then on Saturday we had lunch at a local café with Dominique and Roger, our landlords and good friends.  We’ve communicated in email, of course, but it’s always good to see them and chat in person.

Then we sort of settled into the pattern of our “French lives.” Word got out that we were back so there soon was a note in our mailbox to set up tea and conversation with Anna.  We checked in with Estelle, our French daughter, and set up a lunch date.  David took some bike rides (with and without Roger).  And, soon we had lunches/dinners with friends, explorations, and events and classes at AVF scheduled.

So there you have our first few days in Lyon.

Civitavecchia/Rome – November 10-11th

We walked around the Coliseum and came to a huge arch, possibly the most famous in Rome, the Arch of Constantine. As you can see, it has a large central archway and small ones on each side.  It

Arch of Constantine

 was started in 312 AD and completed in 315 AD.   Very impressive!   (And, how long do they think it will take to complete the new  section of 520 and Evergreen Point Bridge?  But, we digress.) In order to speed up its completion, the builders reused works of art from other Roman monuments to decorate the facades, inside the attic (yes, it has an attic!), and inside the large central archway.  They have actually identified pieces from the period of Hadrian, a tribute to Marcus Aurelius, and pieces from the area of the Forum of Trajan that are used in various places in the Arch. There are six sections in low relief over the side arches that tell the story of Constantine's military campaigns and his arrival in Rome. The inscription in the attic says (with the help of a translation), “To the emperor Flavius Constantine, the Great, pious and fortunate, the Senate and People of Rome dedicated this arch to mark his triumphs, because by divine inspiration and his own great spirit he simultaneously freed the State from the tyrant and from all factions.”    Quite an impressive tribute and monument!  As you can see, it is undergoing repair and restoration work.

The Via Sacra

From the Arch of Constantine, we walked along the Via Sacra (Sacred Road).  This was actually the main street of ancient Rome, leading from the top of the Capitoline Hill, through some of the most important religious sites of the Forum, to the Coliseum.  It was part of the traditional route of the solemn religious festivals and the magnificent triumphs of victorious generals.  It was paved and, then during the reign of Nero, it was lined with colonnades.  It also served the locals as a place gather in the Basilicas to chat, throw dice, engage in business, or secure justice.  The road is lined with ruins in various stages of repair, including the colonnades, shrines, temples, and other buildings.   Since we began at the Coliseum end of the road, we saw another impressive archway at its end.  This turned out to be the Arch of Titus.

The Arch of Titus was constructed around 82 AD by the Roman Emperor Domitian shortly after the

The Arch of Titus

death of his older brother, Titus, to commemorate Titus' victories, including the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD.  It appears to be in pretty good condition and remains imposing although  we are told the original gold and silver lettering and decorations among other features have vanished through the ages.  Interestingly enough, the Arch of Titus has provided the general model for many of the triumphal arches erected since-perhaps most famously, it was the inspiration for the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

As you can see, we did see a lot, but as we explored, we became more and more aware of what we hadn’t seen and still want to see.  We’ll have to save that for our next visit.