This is What Happens When a Mann Comes to Town

Ok so maybe she did get married and change her name to Timson, but shes still Kristen Mann to me! 

At the most perfect time in my summer, my cousin Kristen has come to visit me in Paris. I was getting a tad homesick and missing my family and Kristen decided to take off of work and pop over to see me :) 

Day 1:

The first day she arrived she was a bit jet lagged so we walked to Luxembourg Gardens, ate a picnic, and got a nap in the reclining chairs by the gardens. I was kind enough to not take a picture of her sleeping. 

We then walked over to the Pantheon. It was raining and very cold so we got hot tea to go. While we were sipping the tea on the porch of the Pantheon in an attempt to get out of the rain we were scolded by a French security guard. We had no idea what he was saying until he pointed at our drinks and yelled "FORBIDDEN!!" We then proceeded to chug then flaming hot teas under Kristens umbrella so we could go inside the Pantheon. As we walked up we saw the sign with the entrance fees...10 Euro....stuck our head in, decided that was good enough, and walked right back out.

Day 2:

St Eustache Church

Pompidou Center...also another 12 Euro to enter. We took great photos of the exterior and kept on our way

Hotel de Ville. The city currently has beach vball courts set up in front :)

Hotel des Invalides. Ben used his best tour guide voice and told us all the history of the building and the dome church behind where Napoleon is buried. We bit the bullet and paid the entrance fee at this one

Napoleons Tomb

Before dinner Eiffel Tower pic

Day 3:

Arc de Triomphe

One word: COFFEE. Kristen has made great friends with the McDonalds a.m. staff...

Kristen: "Parlez Vous Anglais?"
MCD: "A little"
Kristen: "Coffee. Large"
MCD's inner thoughts: "American...."

Sorry Ralph :)

L'Orangerie

 Kristens new fantasy favorite :)

Eating macaroons at La Duree on Rue St Honore. Kristen got chocolate and pistachio. I got vanilla and minty strawberry. Actually, a good combo!

 After a long day of sightseeing and shopping we ate a poor man's meal of caprese sandwiches with sausisson and wine.

Tomorrow we head to Versailles!

One on One with a Cordon Bleu Chef in the Making!

So I am really enjoying my cooking classes at the Cordon Bleu and at the Cooking with Class kitchens….but I have to say, my favorite so far are the one-on-ones I am getting to take from a good friend and sister in Chi Omega who is in culinary school at the Cordon Bleu. She is going to be a famous chef one day-no joke! She is living with an American family working in Paris so she has access to a HUGE kitchen which she lovingly opens up to us lowly girls in our studio apartment where 2 people cannot fit comfortably in the “kitchen” (its more like a half hallway)

She called me the other day and invited me over to eat pizza that she wanted to try making because she saw a picture and thought it looked tasty! We homemade the pizza dough, let it rise 2 hours and then baked it to perfection! For the sauce we peeled 7 tomates, quartered them and sautéed them with olive oil and garlic. That was then spread on the dough, topped with sliced mozzarella and fresh basil. Oh. My. Gosh. It was good!! One of the pictures shows half pizza/half cheesy bread…that’s because I didn’t buy enough tomatoes, darn it. 

Appetizers

Next class: homemade peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies. Mom-there was no slice-n-bake to be seen here! We put together all the ingredients, including spoonfuls of PB and chunks of lovely Milka Lait Chocolate bars. Bethany insisted on hand stirring the dough so she was given that responsibility. They turned out gooey and warm and perfect. Absolutely delish! 

Anxiously awaiting the time when they would come out of the oven!

The family's dog, Ollie. A very close 2nd to Miss Tia

 

Next class: Breakfast for dinner. We will skip quickly over this class due to the accidental baking powder/baking soda incident which left the waffles tasting like pretzels. Covered in syrup they weren’t half bad though. And the scrambled eggs proved to be a tasty substitute

Next class: Chocolate Soufflé. MC calls me and says…”hey, I really feel like making a chocolate soufflé, would you want to come?” Hmm…let me think about that one MC…YES J She did most of the work but I took notes on how long to whip the eggs and sugar and how to heat the chocolate with butter without the chocolate separating. Let me tell you…this was the most amazing soufflé I have ever had (mental question: have I ever had a soufflé? Probably not) 

Needless to say, Mary Cameron has been a huge blessing to have in Paris. She is always so welcoming into her apartment, lets us do laundry, cooks for us, lets us sleep over…kind of sounds like a mom away from home…except Im older than her-shoot. Oh well! Love you MC, thanks for all you do!!

Tour de France

Sunday was the end of the Tour de France and all the riders ended in Paris riding from the Louvre up to the Place de Concorde and up the Champs Elysees. It was pretty neat to be there because I dont think I will ever get to see the finish of the Tour de France again. There are literally thousands of people camped out all over the final loop of the race for hours and hours. People in our group got out to the spot sometime in the morning and the bikers did not even ride through the city until 4:30 pm....

So it was alot of standing around and people watching and then about 10 seconds of bikers coming at you at 30-40 mph. Since they do the lap 8 times, we got to see them race by 8 times...so 8 times at 10 seconds, that comes to 1 minutes and 20 seconds of action for the 4 hours waited :)   

Lined up on Rivoli

We were standing at the 1km marker

Ben came up with the genius go under the guard rails to get pictures and videos of the riders

A video screen of the finish line

The winner in yellow

Chateau Fontainbleau

Ben and I (well really just I, but Ben was nice enough to go with me) decided to take a day trip out to the Chateau Fontainbleu, which will now be referred to as FB. FB should be more famous than Versailles since more French royalty and monarchs have actually lived there, but it isn’t. FB has housed the French monarchs from the 12-19^th centuries and all of the royals left their mark on the chateau and gardens.

When Ben and I arrived we grabbed a sandwich and fruit and headed to the gardens of FB for a picnic by the lake. We didn’t see a soul during our picnic. We were thinking “hmm this is odd…at Versailles you couldn’t walk 2 steps without seeing someone…” Then we walked around the FB gardens, still not seeing too many people. I was sure that it wasn’t closed because I checked online but Ben and I couldn’t find the entrance to the chateau so we were starting to get convinced it was closed. As it turns out, it was open-thank goodness-but just not that many people know about FB or just choose not to go. We were able to walk around the chateau at our leisure and weren’t being carried through the rooms by tourists speaking a hundred languages with Nikons and Canons glued to their faces.

Our lack of planning ahead skills came back to bite us on the way home and we waited on a bus for 30 minutes to get to the train station just to wait an hour for the train back to Paris. Overall it was a nice day trip to get out of the hustle bustle of the city, but I would only recommend it to someone who has already had their fill of Paris J

Hi Anna!

Bastille Day, Cooking With Class

I totally forgot to do a recap of Bastille Day and of my 3rd cooking class before I left for Prague!

Bastille Day

It is similar to July 4th in the states where no one works, everything is closed, and its a huge excuse to be outside, party and watch fireworks. Fat Tire catered BBQ to the Champs de Mars for all the Fat Tire and "guests" to eat so I was well fed :) But now comes the good part: The French do their fireworks to music. Watching fireworks with the Eiffel Tower as the background seriously puts the Lakewood Country Club fireworks to shame. It was so perfect because the music they chose to perform the fireworks to was a medley of American musicals including but not limited to: Sound of Music ( I freaked out), Chicago, West Side Story, Hello Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof, Sweeney Todd, New York New York, with a finale (ironically) of "I Want to Be in America" from West Side Story. I was having so much fun singing along that a French woman in front of me shushed me. And when I didnt stop-she moved! Ha!!

Cooking With Class

I took this class with Mollie, her mom and sister. We started at a market, picked out all of our ingredients and then went back to the kitchen to cook, eat and drink. Mollie and I liked this kitchen better than Cordon Bleu because it was more personal-there were only 5 of us in the class total. Also, we got to eat our food as we made it, all 4 courses, with a different bottle of wine with each course. I didnt eat it all BUT I did try everything. Including: Veal, Sweetbreads (Baby Cow Glands), mashed potatoes, Mussels, some kind of Fish I didnt know, a 3rd course of eight different cheeses and a lemon curd for dessert! All in all such a wonderful day!!! I probably will only make the lemon curd when I come home, but thats ok :)

Pictures I accidentally left of of Prague Post: Cantina Czech Mex!!!!

 Cheese Enchiladas!

 Chicken Fajitas