Friday, April 20, 2012

THE 2012 FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: A PAPER NAME


A large brown envelope arrives in the mail. Inside are 10 campaign flyers, perhaps an updated voting card and 10 thin slips of paper about the size of an index card. Each carries the name of a presidential candidate.


On Sunday, with your paper names in hand, you go to the local bureaux de vote. You take one last glimpse of all the candidates' faces plastered on the wall before you walk inside, take a small blue empty envelope, enter an 'isoloire', choose a paper name and place it in the envelope. Then you seal it, slip it in the transparent 'urne justement', have your voting card stamped and voila, you're done.

Take that, you sad chad.




It's a voting system that sounds somewhat archaic, but damn, it really works.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

YAY! GUESS WHO CAN BE NAMED HEIDI THIS YEAR?!




In 1926, the Société Centrale Canine (SCC) decided that all dogs registered in the Livre des Origines (LOF) and born in the same year would be given a name beginning with the same letter, excluding the letter Z (not too many name choices in French).

Then in 1976, this practice was standardized for all animals and excludes the letters K, Q,W, X and Y, for the same reason as Z. You can add a nickname between the time an animal is identified with the S.C.C. and when he/she is given a birth certificate.

Pretty wild, yeah?

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

EXPRESSIONISMUS/MI: GIVE ME LIGHT


Often during winter the skies in Lorraine are grey. When grey skies begin they continue well into March. Grey skies can be lovely for awhile but then the grey…well... makes one feel grey. 

I have learned to appreciate this time of year with its coldness and slowness, but the grey still trips me up. I’m simply not wired for so much grey. 

My body expects light, tons of light and color, all the time. In California, color and light are everything. We wear orange in January and pink in February. Our winter skies are normally a clear, bright blue, and though we need every drop, we become terribly grumpy if it rains for more than 5 days. 

Thursday, January 26, 2012

RECIPE/RECETTE: BEET HUMMUS


Beet Hummus
(Based on a recipe by Clotilde Dusoulier)

300 grams beets par-cooked
35-40 grams tahini
1/2 shallot
1 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp du sel
@ 10 twists of the saveur pepper

Mishn everything in a cusinart at pulse. Tastes better the next day.




Recipes on Pedaler probably only make sense to me. They are here so I don't forget what I did.
If you can comprehend my scratch-notes, yay for you! Ask if you have questions.