Paris

Although Paris was not on my lifetime travel list, I found myself pleasantly surprised to enjoy her charms.

From a small window, this serious fellow made us many delicious crepes over the course of our stay. My favorite being the crepe with chestnut paste. On the first day, EJ and I took buckwheat crepes (galettes de sarrasin) and sat by the River Seine.

Picadilly Line to Cockfoster

There is nothing so British sounding as taking the Picadilly line to Cockfosters.

My first day in London, I promptly went to Waitrose and raided the cheese section.
Gorwydd aged Caerphilly - although advertised quite promisingly as being "tangy with lemon undertones", I'm wondering if there had not been some sort of mistake or perhaps this is the way they unloaded no longer needed models at Madame Tussads. Cornish blue was a very reliable blue and the
Lincolnshire poacher was the most tangy and interesting

British food has much improved in the last decade. I munched on some rather fantastic almond croissants regularly, some examples better than the ones consumed in Paris. But you can still fall back on hearty pub fare with various deep fry.

Wildcrafting 2011

There is a hyper abundance of berries at the Albany bulb due to the late rains. Why let such sweet lovely things just rot to the ground when they can make their way into your pancakes and make so many people cheerful?

But of course you have to tolerate a bit of scratching but one has no right eating wild blackberries without it.

Bowl full of Nuts

Hugo had microwaved a generous bowl of ginko nuts which he invited me to share. We were both chowing down contentedly agreeing on how delicious they were. Hugo casually mentions, "Your Mom says eating too many of these can be poisonous but I eat this much all the time." as he waved his hand over the bowl.

I worriedly check the internet which advises somewhere between eating only 5 to 10 maximum nuts or risk internal hemorrhaging, tonic-clonic seizures and sometimes death. I had eaten about 25. I look at Hugo quite seriously and say "You know this doesn't look good for you if I die tonight. Mom's going to be really mad." He thinks about it for a bit and says quite gruffly, "Drink water."

Wild albany fields

Strange how lovely a landfill can become.

Back from South Africa