Poverty soup

I think I might have mentioned - oh, just once or twice - how crushingly expensive Paris is?  Well, I really noticed it on my recent trip to London, when I kept thinking how reasonable the prices were there.  Yes, IN LONDON.  I seem to have this unnervingly accurate gift for moving to cities just as they become the most expensive in the world - I'm sure if I moved to Bangkok tomorrow the cost of living would shoot up just to spite me.  

But Paris used to be cheap - I have recently been reading A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway, which is a memoir of his time in Paris in the 1920s.  It's hugely entertaining and I am enjoying it greatly - in fact, I only occasionally allow myself to dip into it because I don't want to finish it.  He writes a great deal about how it was to be a poor writer in Paris and it makes me laugh because he truly had no idea.  Um, Ernie?  If I may call you that?  You are not poor if you can afford to rent an extra hotel room just to write in.  You are not poor if you are writing in a café where you can afford a café au lait, two rum St James, a dozen oysters and a half carafe of wine.  Even in the 1920s, that ain't poor.

Let me tell you about poor, Ernie.  Poor is when you are at the grocery store trying to figure out what you can buy for a euro, because that's all you have.  Answer: a large tin of chickpeas (which I loathe unless they are in hummous, but really, what doesn't taste good with enough garlic and lemon juice?), for 77 centimes.  What to do to make the horrid things into a palatable meal?   Well, I foraged in my kitchen cupboard for whatever ingredients were already there, and I give you my recipe for Poverty Soup:

2 onions and 3 cloves of garlic - chop and sauté until golden
3 cups chicken stock - made from cubes (use what you like, that's what I had)
1 large tin chickpeas, drained
1 tin crushed tomatoes
1 tin coconut milk

Mix it all together in a large pot and heat, then puree.  Add salt, pepper, curry powder and tabasco (or whatever seasonings you like, that was all I had) until you can choke it down. 

So there you go, Poverty Soup - it actually ended up being (much to my surprise) quite tasty and that recipe makes about 2 litres, so you will have lots of leftovers for the freezer.   Hey, in these credit-crunchy times, I thought I might as well share the recipe...

Technical difficulties

Okay, I'm back from London - huge thanks to Mr & Mrs B for housing me, and to my many lovely friends who fed me and watered me - all much appreciated!  However, having said that, it's probably a good thing that I don't intend to go back there again until June (when I am being lured back by Ladies Day at Ascot and a friend's wedding - two excuses to wear a hat in a 10 day timeframe?  AS IF I would miss out on that!) because when I'm there I have no time to write and it's quite hard to get back into the habit of doing it again once you stop for a few days.

So it's my own fault I didn't write while there, but I am now having technical difficulties here - for some reason my wifi connection seems to have completely deserted me, which is making blogging somewhat difficult.  I am currently writing this from my landlady's son's room, because that's where I had to plug in to connect.   And he'll be home this weekend so even that won't be an option then.  I am literally being forced to go to a café to write.  And in the café one must buy something - and since I am very poor and the cheapest thing on the menu is wine, I am literally being forced to drink in order to write.  Honestly, gentle readers, the things I do, and it's all for you.  I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make...

So, this weekend I will be blogging from a café in the heart of Paris (hopefully the nice waiter who gives me free peanuts will be working then so that I will also get to eat - yay!), with wineglass in hand.  And if the post starts off with perfect spelling and good punctuation and then degenerates into something that looks like shegoapbr drgijeroigbn irghalbi, then you'll know I might have ordered a second....or possibly third glass.  What?  I'll be writing, it's thirsty work!

Awesome outfit of the week - London edition

You might think I would select one of the many fabulous young fashionistas who make the streets of London so trendy, but no.  Today I salute this lovely lady; from her elegant snow-white coiffure to her scarlet gloves, this is a perfect example of keeping your fashion standards high at any age.  But the true awesomeness?  A woman of eighty-something years being tough enough to rock bright red high heels on an absolutely freezing February day.  That is true fabulosity - look and learn, youngsters...

Off to Jollye Olde Englande

And just when I was getting the hang of this posting-every-day thing, along comes another trip to London to mess things up.  The place I'm staying doesn't have internet so until I get my act together to find a wifi spot, I will be a little behind on posting but I will try not to go more than a day or so.  Deal? (I will also be extremely busy with eating and drinking and socializing but never mind that, let's blame it on the internet thing.)

Awesome outfit of the week

This lady is a vision in neutrals - brown tweed trousers, camel coat, dark brown leather belt and bag and gloves (gauntlet-style gloves, no less - LOVING those), and a jaunty little leopard-print chapeau to jazz things up just a touch.  Madame, that is some stylish and warm winter dressing...

(PS - there's nothing wrong with her face, by the way, I just blotted it out because I hide identities to protect people's privacy)

Look down at the feet

Yes, those are Parisian policemen on rollerblades.  Who knew??

Paris: City of Love. Really?

Most of the time I am pretty happy about being single, but on Valentine's Day in Paris?  Arguably the most romantic city on Earth?  It's a little rough.

In fact, Paris has been a complete bust in the romance department thus far.  All those Pepé Le Peu clichés of the amorous Frenchman have been nowhere to be seen.  No leering, no suggestive eyebrow-raising,  not even a good old-fashioned ass-grab (admittedly I moved here in November and it would be pretty hard to locate my ass under my winter coat, but if you lack a work ethic in your ass-grabbing, then really, then what kind of lascivious stereotype are you?).  I am starting to get a complex about being invisible.  Or worse yet, that I am Quasimodo's uglier sister.  I check the mirror every so often to ensure that I still have all my teeth, all my hair, both my eyes and no sign of a hunchback  (so far, so good) but if I am in the vicinity of Notre Dame, I admit that I do scurry quickly past just in case someone from the church sees some kind of resemblance and tries to bring me in to ring the bells.  Because that would just be embarrassing.

But is it just me?  I think it might be, because people are getting a whole lot of loving all over Paris, judging by the plethora of condom machines which are ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE.   I mean, I can see why you would put a condom machine on the outside of a pharmacy - you're about to get busy, realize you have no condoms and the stores are closed?  No problem, you run down the road to the machine at the pharmacy and all's well.

But do you know where else you find condom machines in Paris?  At the exits from the Metro.  And I asked myself: is this really necessary?  Surely you just go to the one outside your local pharmacy, non?  Then I realized why - you need a machine at the Metro for when you are on the way to visit your illicit lover.  From my experience with the French throughout my life, they are either having an affair, thinking about having an affair, or ending an affair  - it's just how they roll.  I once had a conversation with a middle-aged French divorcée, who told me about how her husband's mistress used to call up crying because he wasn't with her (the mistress), he was off with his girlfriend. And then he divorced the wife to run off with another woman, who was neither the aforementioned mistress or the aforementioned girlfriend.  Ah, romance.  Alive and well, here in the city of love.

So, reflecting on this, I guess being single in Paris on Valentine's Day isn't all that bad - it's better than having a French boyfriend or husband, anyway.  Although I wouldn't mind a French fling...  Oh, Pepé?  Where are you?