Papillote, a cooking magazine for children

There's an amazing choice of quality magazines here in France, for both adults and children.  Our children receive quite a few magazines each month that are just brilliant, for example Virgule, a French literature for 10 to 15 year olds that's fantastic.

 It's appealing from the outset, extremely ludic and richly illustrated. We love this magazine, and it's one we couldn't go without.  Enough about that, because I wanted to talk about a brand new magazine called Papillote that's just been published and it's super....why did someone wait so long to come up with the idea, I mean a cooking magazine for children in France, it just has to be a success, no?

With over seventy pages of recipes and info, this magazine is adorable and everything looks yummy.  This is the first one out and timed perfectly for Christmas, with emphasis on chocolate, salmon and foie gras and much more

 The White Chocolate Charlotte above, is the first recipe we're going to try out tomorrow.

 This sweet potato recipe could be served up in a starred restaurant

 There's even a recipe by a Michelin starred chef to boot

 A bit of science

 A yummy foie gras Christmassy recipe

 and orange tarts to die for.

At the end of the magazine, there's a list of ingredients and children are asked to come up with a recipe using them and send a picture or drawing in, and the best one will be published...such good fun... and all this just for 3.60 euros.  

We whall certainly be cooking lots of recipes from Papillote between now and the new year.

Lunch with Marie-Kate, her berry fruit nems

Marie-Kate can be rather bossy and she certainly knows her own mind and my, she loves to eat, especially pasta and  she's crazy for cheese. This lunch-time, if she had eaten at school, she would have had cervales sausages (pure pork one spiced with garlic and coriander) for starters, followed by caramel beef with couscous and a petit suisse and some fruit to finish off with...but she eats at home on Mondays and Tuesdays and today she had pasta with a tomato pesto sauce, rocket and parma ham salad and an omelette.  Before eating she insisted on rolling up her berry nems and put them in the oven....she ate everything apart from her vanilla ice-cream, too cold for her teeth she said.


Next Thursday at school, Christmas lunch will be served and this is what they will be eating

LUNDI	MARDI	MERCREDI	JEUDI	VENDREDI
Pâtes du soleil	Carottes râpées		Apéritif de Noël (boisson)	Salade composée
Rôti de porc sauce charcutière	Pané moelleux Toscana		Terrine de saumon	Beaufilet de hoki sauce brunoise
Chou-fleur	Purée		Escalope de poulet sauce aux marrons et Pom'pommes	Haricots verts
Tartare ail et fines herbes	Yaourt sucré		Camembert	Petits filous au chocolat
Spécialité de fruits pomme-vanille	Fruit		Bûche de Noël	Fruit

If only I'd been able to eat food like that when I was at school in the UK. Lucky children.

Astrance, amazing restaurant in Paris

Last Thursday, Alain and I got to eat at Astrance.  The table was booked in October, we had intended on eating there for our anniversary, but the restaurant was booked up for lunch until December, so instead we ate at the cinq, and although the meal was good, I think it's reputation is  way over hyped.

This was going to be our last shot in a starred restaurant, mainly because of our experience at the Cinq, but after eating at the Astrance, we've been blown away by the food, the service and the incredibly relaxed atmosphere that we're going back in February (booked till then) and I just can't wait.

As soon as I figure out how to transfer the photos on my phone to my computer, I'll put some photos on the blog of what we ate, however the food was so amazing, there aren't many, I just didn't want to spoil the experience by taking photos of every course, amuse bouche et cetera.

To be updated soon

Christmassy

 We bought our Christmas tree on Saturday, the biggest one so far, measuring over 2m50.
Every year, one of the children get to put the angel on the top and this year it was Alexis' turn.
Charlotte made this angel when she was almost 5 and it's been part of Christmas ever since.

 Alexis had a little help to get up so high.

 And voila, there she is.

 Gaby decorated some cookies so they looked like melting snowmen and Charlotte took millions of photos of them, but here's just two.

Scary/Messy Mudroom and basement, so embarassin

 This room is so untidy and dirty, I really hate it. 
There's a window that looks out on to the garden, one door that leads into the entrance hall  and another that leads you outside (under the studio) next to the where we park. See the horrible wall, well after cleaning it up, I'm going to put tongue and groove over it and then paint it in skimming stone.  We haven't yet decided if to make a  fitted shoe storage system with bench or just buy an Ikea room divider and pop it against the wall.

 Oh yes, nearly forgot, there's a third door that leads the way down into our basement.

 There are three rooms down there.  One is a wine cellar (messy), one a children's toy stockage room which is very big and has a window which looks directly onto the street (small and full of cobwebs usually, but the room is tidy) and a third room which is where Alain keeps all his power tools. 

 At the bottom of the stairs it's bad too, bags everywhere, books to give away too. I did manage to give all of my Gordon Ramsay and other cookbooks I hadn't used since we've lived here to friends (thanks Cedric and Cecile) so just a few hundred books to go.

Ikea lamp and cushions

Last year, we bought some expensive cushions and cushions covers from The Conran Shop. The children used them sit on, flopping down on them, especially when you are a 17 year old who weighs over 80 kilos can kill a cushion cover, that's what happened here. They just gave away at the seams, such a shame.  One lesson learnt, no more expensive ones, instead a trip to Ikea and two new covers that cost 5.99 euros.  Alexis choose them, I preferred the orange velvet ones, though they were double the price.  Marie-Kate chose the lamp, and I love it. I kept my Tse Tse garland in the same place and our tv room cosier now with two light sources

Marie-Kate, Miss Geek, at her favourite place, in-front of the Mac.  Lunch-time at home isn't that bad, she told me today, especially when two boxes of chocolates arrive from the UK for Christmas and she gets to eat two before I hide them.

Landing wc finished

A very small room, our downstairs wc, well on the first half-landing is finished at long last, yes, I had been procrastinating about finishing the painting for months but last week I decided to take the bull by the horns and finish it before December arrived.

We kept the tiles, the sink and the toilet and just bought a couple of things from Ikea.

With some Sophie Blackall prints, a 1945 Alexandria water colour (that's been on the top of my wardrobe for ages ...lots more to frame where this one came from) and one of Marie-Kate's paintings the room is so much nicer. I used White Tie on the walls and Down Pipe behind the shelves and on the door.

Now I've attacked the mud room and I've got my work cut out in here. I am doing it now as I've enough paint left over from other rooms, it's going to look good I hope, painted in Skimming Stone and Charlotte's Locks.