eG Foodblog: bleudauvergne

[Tepee]

'Scuse me......stumbling.......aaack, I feel like such an Eliza Doolittle in Lucy's elegant presence...... *genuflecting*

The white border you are using to frame your pictures... what are you doing to achieve that result?

←

Just to share what I do by simply using Adobe Photodeluxe. When I click on the Effects menu, there's a feature called Outline, where I can choose how I would like my photos to be framed. There are choices for colors, width, and etc... HTH.

..........stumbling out again..........

[bleudauvergne]

Thank you, Tepee, I have noted this information.

When I left the house it was hazy but the sun burned through the haze by the time I reached the other end of the Market St. Antoine. Several new things this week - Lots of leafy greens, for one, the cherry buds have been trimmed from the trees and are for sale by the branch to bloom at home, the garlic is beginning, I saw a few strawberries, but they're not local, and the mache which was not out last week. I've been choked up with emotion all morning.

I walked down the quai past the book sellers

Went in to look (again) at a portrait of Dostoyevsky. Every time I ask them to bring it out and every time I know I should not do this.

Yep, it's Swiss Chard alright. The Lyonnais call Blettes - 'Bette'. It's the same thing.

It's nearing the end of wild chickory season. In a couple of weeks we son't see this anymore.

Diots de Savoie are wonderful in soup. This vendor gets them direct.

What is the name of this tarte and does anyone have a recipe?

New this week: Mache.

There is a new vendor at the Quai St. Antoine and very welcome indeed. They are selling their products from Corsica! (What a wierd coincedence.) This is a smoked ham called Lonzu. I will try everything they've got.

[bleudauvergne]

[jackal10]

That look like a Tarte Tatin (La tarte des Demoiselles Tatin)...upside down caramelised apple tart. I'm sure there are threads about it here

[johnnyd]

Corsica! I remember reading of a fabulous cheese from there that had bits of forest stuck in it's rind. The Lonzu is displayed on what looks like a piece of cork tree bark. It all looks very delicious.

[daniellewiley]

That look like  a Tarte Tatin (La tarte des Demoiselles Tatin)...upside down caramelised apple tart.  I'm sure there are threads about it here

←

Yes, that was a beautiful Tarte Tatin - one of my favorites, especially served with creme fraiche. YUM.

I have a recipe downstairs I believe - from the NY Times perhaps? I will try to post it later today if I can find it.

[zilla369]

I might be wrong, but somehow i feel that Lucy already knows what a tarte tatin is. Also (still might be wrong) - aren't those tarte tatins in the foreground of the picture?

I think we'll have to wait for the L and L reunion (it's only an ocean away) to wind down before we have the answer

edited to guess: persimmon tart?

Edited March 26, 2005 by zilla369 (log)

[Chris Amirault]

Fantastic again, Lucy. I particularly start breathing more deeply when I gaze upon your produce, cheese, and other shots from the food shops and stalls. That, more than anything, is what I most miss about being in France. There is a respect for foodstuffs that simply isn't found here in the US, even at most farmers' markets.

It's wonderful to see while sitting here in New England, where the chill finally seems to be receding into the ground. Thanks for that.

[Laksa]

Yes Pan, Chinese was my first serious 'other' language.  It was also in China that I first became fascinated with food.

←

How's the Chinese food in Lyon? I did a quick search on the Lyon tourism website and found two restaurants that I could identify as Chinese out of nine under the "Cuisine Asiatique" category. Thai and Vietnamese food seem to be as well represented.

I wonder what fondue royale is? Is fondue chinoise steamboat?

[Safran]

Bleu,

I love all the pictures you've shared with us but I do have to admit that the one of your refrigerator's contents, with the basket, is my favorite one...I think it was posted around Thanksgiving last year. I felt I was looking in to see what could be cooked in your kitchen... and speaking of kitchens, would you show us what it looks like? A 3 x 4,5 foot cooking space mystifies me...

Safran

[bleudauvergne]

Bleu,

I love all the pictures you've shared with us but I do have to admit that the one of your refrigerator's contents, with the basket, is my favorite one...I think it was posted around Thanksgiving last year.  I felt I was looking in to see what could be cooked in your kitchen... and speaking of kitchens, would you show us what it looks like? A 3 x 4,5 foot cooking space mystifies me...

Safran

←

It mystified us too. Figuring out how to make it work was like writing a haiku. I had some experience in boat kitchens so that helped. The first idea was to do some major restructuring and expanding it into the livingroom, but we decided against it because of the woodwork in the room which would have been a shame to mess up. Here's what we came up with. Don't laugh, ok?

REMEMBER YOUR WORK TRIANGLES!

We embarked on an exhaustive shopping adventure, then once we'd chosen our model, I worked it out in my notebook, to have two columns stacked as follows, and this is what we proposed to the 'cuisinist':

One thing that would not work was the bottle rack on top, since it wasn't stable enough to support the weight of the bottles suspended. We made some small adjustments to the upper cabinets to accomodate for not having the bottle rack, but stayed with the initial design.

Then the work began, or the work of lining up the work. At first we were going to put in a stone tile mosaic floor, I figured if we had such a small place, we might as well put the best of the best in. We quickly figured out that it would cost the price of a new car to have it, even for a kitchen that small. Furthermore, we could not wait about 8 months for a 'stone tile artisan' to have a spot on his agenda.

I got fixed on this idea of a rubber floor, since my dad had installed in the downstairs kitchen at our summer lake house when I was a teenager. So we located this absolutely perfect rubber floor made by an Italian manufacturer called ARTIGO. It was pretty expensive by the square meter, but we figured we could swing it, because it was perfect, after all. But when we tried to buy something like 5 square meters of it, the French distributer refused. I then spoke to the France headquarters, who also refused. "We do hospitals, theaters, and airports, madame," he sneeringly crooned. "We do not sell to individuals like you." So I asked him if my next call was to be to the headquarters in Italy. He lied and told me he was the President and General Director of the whole company "Voila. Fin d'histoire.". Duh. Italian companies don't have French PDGs. So I just wrote a general e-mail to the Italian Headquarters and explained in detail with illustrations etc. the reasons why I loved this particular model of Artigo Flooring. Then I explained my experience in trying to obtain the floor, telling them that if their President and Director General treated regular people like peons like that, I wasn't sure where their company was headed. The next day I got an e-mail from the Italian Headquarters telling me that their President and Director General, who was indeed Italian, liked my project and that they would like to give me the floor, for free. Finally someone talking sense here! So Loic took a day and drove down to Italy and we got the floor.

It's a bit dirty in this photo but you get the picture. It reminds me of linoleum but it's 100% rubber.

We picked up the wall tiles from discontinued stock at a villeroy boch factory outlet. Quite cheap.

I have documented the whole work process but it's too long and detailed to get into here on the blog. Anyway I'll take you on a tour of the kitchen tomorrow.

[bleudauvergne]

Oh, by the way, Lunch.

Magic Love Soup. Look familiar?

To celebrate Loic's return to Lyon, the soup was followed by a Salade Lyonnaise.

[Daddy-A]

It's a bit dirty in this photo but you get the picture.  It reminds me of linoleum but it's 100% rubber. 

We picked up the wall tiles from discontinued stock at a villeroy boch factory outlet.  Quite cheap. 

I have documented the whole work process but it's too long and detailed to get into here on the blog.  Anyway I'll take you on a tour of the kitchen tomorrow.

FINALLY, something about which I feel "qualified" to comment!

I am very familiar with the ARTIGO product. Yes, it's typically used in institutional applications, but I have done a couple projects with it. One was a laundry room that was about the size of your kitchen Lucy!

Good for you in going to the top to get what you wanted. The local distributor was an ass, and could have made a friend and a terrific reference had he just given you what you needed. Is that attitude common in the business world in France? I know the hautiness is a stereotype ... most shop owners I met in France were really friendly. But how about the business world?

Looking forward to seeing the kitchen! Small spaces produce the most ingenious solutions, and the drawings (glad you kept them!) indicate your kitchen will not be an exception.

A.

[Bux]

The Coriscan smoked ham called lonzu appears to be loin and not unlike the Spanish lomo.

Lucy, Anton Mesmer would be proud of you. I found myself pausing and staring out your window for the longest time. It's an evocative view and a poetic way to mark each day in the blog. It's a blog that makes me want to share a cup of coffee with you and at the same time makes me want to stay silent and even ask everyone else to shut up, as if they'd be more of you to fill up the space. Of course there wouldn't be and you deserve to know how you touch others with your poetry of text and photos.

[Arey]

Of course there wouldn't be and you deserve to know how you touch others with your poetry of text and photos.

←

It lasts much longer using a dialup modem, and IE6, especially when you have to hit refresh a couple of times to get IE to keep on loading pictures. I'm not complaining mind you, I think of it as "slow blogging" where I savour every paragraph and picture. The cheese pictures I find especially arousing. Wouldn't Bleudauvergnes blogs make a great coffee table book to browse through with

Canteloube on the CD player, and a glass of red wine and a wedge of Tomme de Savoi close at hand.

Unfortunately being only two weeks away from my biannual weight in and cholesterol check, there's no cheese on my plate, just drool on the keyboard.

edited because my fingers were on the keyboard but my mind was on the blog.

Edited March 26, 2005 by Arey (log)

[percyn]

Lucy,

Amazing blog !! I suddenly have an urge to visit the restaurant of George Perrier, a famous local French Chef from Lyon.

Chufi/Lucy, on the topic of food language translation (or in my case any translation), I find that the thoughts in my brain are somewhat language independent come in "flashes" or ideograms, then I need to pick one of 5 "language" adapters/translators depending on whom I am communicating with (which sometimes slows down the parallel streams of thought). Interestingly, with family who also converse in 4-5 languages, I sometimes find myself inadvertently using vocabulary and constructs from 2-3 languages in a single sentence.

Anyway, back to the food....

All those in favor of a trip to Lyon to visit some of the places and taste some of the food in this blog say AYE !

[Abra]

Magic Love Soup? I need that recipe, s'il te plait!

[Safran]

Merci, bleu, for sharing the kitchen plans! And I LOVE the floor. Is it easy on the feet? I would assume so...am looking forward to tomorrow....

[fou de Bassan]

I love the Corsican theme in your photo. The ham, the plate, c'est un vin corse/corsé, n'est ce pas?

[bleudauvergne]

I love the Corsican theme in your photo.  The ham, the plate, c'est un vin corse/corsé, n'est ce pas?

←

Actually it's Porto.

[bleudauvergne]

They're calling it 'Brocoli Francais' but I'm calling it Collard Greens. First time I've seen it at the market - love it.

Chevre plate - Le Villegeois, and upwards, Le Galletout, a chevre made 'dans le respect des regles ancestrales' in the Cazillac region, A crottin d'Antin made by Poitou in La Mothe St. Heray, in the center a Rigotte sold by a new (to the market) farm vendor today, and a Picodin sold by the same farm.

Around holiday time, there are always vendors who come in to fill space left by people who have left on vacation. I'm not sure how this works but it would be something interesting to find out.

[bleudauvergne]

Goodnight!

[Mayhaw Man]

Those are absolutely collards. That's pretty funny. I've never given much thought to them outside of the American South, but I suppose as it is just a green, and probably not native, that other people in other parts of the world eat them, as well.

[Eden]

Those are absolutely collards. That's pretty funny. I've never given much thought to them outside of the American South, but I suppose as it is just a green, and probably not native, that other people in other parts of the world eat them, as well.

←

Nor had I, but apparently they're pretty widespread.

Per Alan Davidson's wonderful Oxford Companion to Food, Collards are a member of the Kale family, and the name derives from "coleworts" which in turn derives from the Greek word for brassicas which is Cole .

It's all brassica to me

edited because I can't use a keyboard today...

Edited March 27, 2005 by Eden (log)

[edsel]

I have a simple question I've been dying to ask for days, Lucy.

The white border you are using to frame your pictures... what are you doing to achieve that result?

While it perhaps cuts into your picture size a bit (the pictures are all scaled to a certain maximum size no matter what), I think the effect it gives your pics is great.

P.S. - love the scribblings ←

It's quite a simple process, Jon.

I know this might sound insane but I recently took stock of and made backup CDs of the photos I've taken here in Lyon. It all started as a way of recording the things I'm cooking and what I see at the markets here. I come to realize that I have taken more than 51,000 photos, yes, that's right, 51K, in the last three years, most of them food photos. Taking into account the various friends' weddings, where I can take a few thousand over the course of a couple of days, I calculate that his averages to about 300 photos a week. Now that's not too wierd is it? Up to a few weeks ago I never even considered photography even a hobby, it was just something I do, and well, now, I see that I can call it a hobby. You read about how they find people in houses full of thousands of cats. Well, I'm that lady who takes thousands of food photos.

Since Loic got me a 1.5 gigabyte card for the camera, I take print quality photos in general, and then go through the photos I have every day, and for each one that I like, I put a border on it. I change the number of pixels per inch to make them easier to share on the net, and I resize them. I then save them in special folders for uploading. I back them up once a week.

We can't afford any special software. So I use Microsoft Photo editor which came with our software package on the computer. There is a feature on that software where you can add the borders, which do not cut into the image, they are added on the outside. I have tried and tried to add black borders, Like Paula did on her clafouti photo. But I can't figure out a way to do it. I loved that clafouti photo.

My software is in French. But I think the feature is called 'crop'. It doesn't really crop though, because it adds the border to the oustide if you don't choose an area to crop. be careful to tab down and set the 'corner' setting to '0' because it makes stupid looking corners if you don't. ←

Lucy, after hearing your mention of Paula's clafouti picture, I had to go searching for it. The black border is very elegant, but I find the white "matte" around you pictures very appropriate.

As for making backups of your photos, even CD-ROMs don't last forever. Make prints of your favorite shots on acid-free paper using the most permanent inks available. Electronic media are marvelously convenient, but the permanence issue troubles me. I say this as someone who works with computers for a living. Your photos are a wonderful document of your circumstances, and I hope they last for generations to come. Sometimes the most mundane photos turn into treasures for future generations, and I'd say that the pictures you've published here are a fair bit better than that! Thank you so much for this blog.

Oh, and one little request: you've shared pictures of all of those gorgeous cheeses (I am

so envious!) - could you elaborate a bit on how you chose them and what qualities you like about them? Did I mention that I am so envious?