OBAMA

Bush est donc out et Palin va retourner regarder les Russes de ses fenêtres.

Côté privé, Olivier , pas très américanophile m'écrit 'Vous nous redonnez l'espoir' ; ma mère souvent radicale côté minorités quelles qu'elles soient, me dit 'c'est bien qu'il ait été élu, ça va me faire du bien'

je suis contente de vivre à une époque où Bertrand Delanoé, Rama Yade et les autres, jusqu'à Obama aujourd'hui, me remettent à ma place de petite blanche hétéro un tout petit peu diplômée, pas totalement nulle. Ces personalités m'écrasent. Merci les années 2000.

Planète bleuâtre, saumâtre, verdâtre

On file un vrai mauvais coton. De Moi à Vous, s'il n'y avait pas de petits enfants autour de moi, ça ne me dérangerait que moyennement. Ne portant pas aux nues l'espèce humaine, je me dis que l'homme n'a que ce qu'il mérite, et que plus vite sera la chute, mieux cela sera.

A vous d'écouter Al Gore, dans toute sa splendeur,et sans notes.

les 100 meilleurs films étrangers

If you are into foreign films, and you SHOULD, check out this list.

http://eddieonfilm.blogspot.com/2005/12/foreign-art.html

That's a gem.

Some are missing but you are already in front of some pretty good time in front of your DVD player (no you do not need a flat plasma HD whatever television, GD !

Ceviche

Bref,

avec 450 grammes de daurade, saumon, et halibut à mariner pendant environ six heures au frigo dans le jus de 12 citrons verts
10 crevettes moyennes coupées en cube,

un twist d'huile d'olive (ça c'est mon truc perso, mais y'a pas d'obligation, vraiment)
de la coriandre, du persil plat, de l'aneth, de la ciboulette, de la menthe, le tout coupé très fin (un tasse à café environ)
un demi concombre coupé en cubes,
idem avec un oignon moyen,
du piment, du sel du poivre

contrairement aux recettes que j'aie bien pu voir, je commence à mélanger tous les ingrédients au bout de 4 heures de marinade. En général vous lirez que l'on ajoute les reste des ingrédients au moment de servir. Je ne comprends pas puisque…comme beaucoup d'autres choses, c'est meilleur le lendemain.

dites moi ce que vous en pensez…
J'en suis à mon troisième...celui qui fut le meilleur.

l'été, c'est ça, entre autre.

Oui, les herbes aromatiques. D'ailleurs, c'est l'un de mes premiers actes estivaux : planter de l'origan, du thym, de la coriandre, de l'aneth, du persil, de la marjolaine et le roi Basilic bien entendu.
m'en servir? quelle question. Soyons bien clairs, je ne suis pas une grande cuisinière. Juste un amateurisme de bon aloi lorsque ça me chante, mais si je m'y mets, ce n'est jamais sans mes herbes.

Demain, je nous prépare un ceviche pas piqué des vers (*) avec mes herbes et l'un de mes autres parfums préférés : le citron vert. Je vous en donnerai des nouvelles. Hum, entre Moi et Vous, on devrait s'échanger des idées, maintenant que j'y pense.

(*) Pas piqué des hannetons, nous dirons des hannetons, en fait, je préfère. Ca me rappelle l'enfance, et l'été...

(c) crédit photo - Gastronomades

Bensimon

Je regardais la suite de l'Auberge espagnole il y a deux jours, Les Poupées Russes et à un moment on voit Audrey Tautou portant de mignonnes-comme-tout tennis Bensimon. Ca fait des années que je les adore et que j'en porte. Pour moi, c'est presque un signe de reconnaissance de la parisienne rive gauche. Me souviens avoir arrêtée une fille, tout de rouge vêtue, en plein milieu de la vallée de la Matapédia en Gaspésie, parce qu'elle en portait. Genre " T'es française toi? - comment tu sais? - Bensimon " Coïncidence des plus délectables, il s'est mis à faire beau depuis...ben on dira deux jours aussi. Du coup, j'ai ressorti les miennes, les couleur caca d'oie. Elles vont du tonnerre de dieu avec mes baggy pants kaki. Super cool, on ne les trouve pas ici; pénible, impossible ou presque d'en acheter par correspondance. Rooh la la , va encore falloir se taper un voyage en France pour faire provision.

C'était l'article existentiel du jour.

From Costa Rica with love, written by Syl

This will tell you about our recent trip to Costa Rica where we stayed, visited and ‘played’ with Damian, Samantha, Stéphane and their wonderful parents Ghislaine (my very dear and only cousin) and her soul-mate and hubby Dominique...they are all some of the most endearing and efficient people one would eve meet and the Damian, Samantha, Stéphane gang (‘dem kids) could/should rule the damn Nicoya peninsula (and produce the best Costa Rican film) for the next 20 years....see below for some script starters....

Essential Quote: from Damian Geneau (son of Ghislaine & Domi’ , World Class Chef, explorer of his universe...

“the beans, Mum, the beans, they have to go first...the beans...the water...Over the beans...you Must keep the water...”

We had an absolute fabulous time in Costa Rica at my cousin's house in Malpais, in the Nicoya peninsula, home of some of the best surfing in the whole region, continent, world...we ate, we drank, we had fun running around the countryside in Quads (ATV's), fishing, swimming, watching iguanas, monkeys,birds of all colors n’ shapes...etc...etc...and with three of their four kids (past the growing-up age all of them...the oldest is about 28), who all live there and who all work in some of the good resorts there (yoga/meditation/surf/fancy food)...and they are all about to open a fishing store in the town of Santa Teresa for oysters, lobsters and fish....and part the heavenly waters with their good and sharp souls... and with the expert and kind help of Dominique’s (cousin’s hubby) almighty knowledge, savvy, business knack, and overall technical know-how....and Ghislaine (allmighty dear cousin)’s drive, elegant forcefulness, keen eye and tongue, design elegance n’ taste, savvy n’sharp man-handling skills n’ socio-linguistic otherwise sharp tongued subtleties....

We could move there tomorrow and be happy for the rest of our lives...and I so damn happy I speak fluent Spanish to this day!!!!

Back in Michigan now where it is 6 centigrades, when yesterday we were in 35 centigrades!!!...pheeeeww...

By the way Costa Rica is great, very very “civilized” (neat and nice people/open atmosphere) and yet completely wild/frontier in other ways with small, very dusty roads, little shops and tiendas along the 'caminos', iguanas running about, birds of all colors, warnings about scorpions in your shoes in the morning, howling monkeys in the trees, gigantic manta rays by your fishing boat, electrical power failures with your fish soup... absolutely beautiful countryside, mountains and valleys included...a very very refreshing place...one of the most endearing places I ever saw, along with Arembepe in the State of Salvador in Brazil, some years ago, and the little village of Soulan, in the Ariège, a few years before that....where I spent enlightening, wonderous days...

This tropical sweltering purgatory is blissful .

Never saw a soccer game in Costa Rica, but I saw the fields and they were like the ones I played on as a kid or in 66 in Villaseca, Cataluna: dirt, burned grass, plummer-pipe goal posts, shovel-dugged lines, faded Imperial Beer ad on scoreboard...off-blue painted plaster latrines a throw from motorcycle dust - you can already imagine the smell on match day - pure heaven in my book....hopefully, I’ll see one of those games right there....and piss my Imperial in that latrine...

While in Costa Rica read another book by Ken Bruen, Irish noir/crime writer...the best of the best in many, many years...read “The Guards,” the book that made him famous...in Ireland, in UK and now he has a following here [although I doubt it would ever go outside of the ‘crime stories ghetto’ in the US, where they basically want their entertainment to be ‘religious’ i.e...no more than Presbyterian (if you see the French sexual joke in the word????...presse-bite....)]...the book is gorgeous and should be required reading anywhere in the English speaking world after 10 y.o.....here’s tha exam/baccalauréat: once you’ve uncovered all layers...you’ve graduated, you done, cooked, blessed....whatever your releegions’ gotta be...get it next week Rich and read it...ESSENTIAL!...after that...nothing and absolutely everything matters...which is the way is has to be....so you can ride that 328 longer and faster...

Went to Cementerio Island in Nicoya peninsula over there (look on you map west of the town of Montezuma, east of to Cabo Blanco....Mont-Saint-Michel for the conquistadores...an istmus washed in 30 C bath water...you gotta get in at low tide and fuck-off, before you’re trapped...You walk in in the bath water, you drag up the hill through the cementerio gate, glance about at the white stones...the lives, the people, the shit they endured... and Papillon (the movie) is crawling in... “feu-follets” dance around your nostrils (check this if you don’t know what they are: http://www.geocities.com/old_time_time/feu.htm), pure heaven, pure heat, your lungs burn and you wanna walk in that bath water forever...endlessly....for some taste of their hell...
Woke up real early the next day to Werner Herzog tunes and...checked for them scorpions in my shoes...

Friend, your news are good and I’m about to down some casado we cookked up since we bean back...(black mean beans and rice...etc...etc...)...I hope you were here to share it all for your upcoming B’day....You’d like them ticos’ (the people of Costa Rica)...and ‘dem iguanas would climb up your pants...

Brother Damian, son of Ghislaine, master of the Heaven’s furnaces, a yakuza type painted man himself, (he was the Exec. Chef of a major resort here for eons, after ruling the taste buds of the top Vancouver eatery through many seasons), a true seductive bon vivant, surf sea & snow master, fearless explorer, original map drawer and straight-fast talker/dealer and prolific poker gambler (a character close to Cusacks’ Roy Dillon’s from Frears’ screen rendition of Jim Thompson’s book)....Damian, cooked, sliced, & slithered, for us all a mean sushi dinner, in less time than we all bake-a-potatoe....the food, the style. the colours, the layout, the sauces....all swats of the cooking sword that d’Artagnan would have been proud of....Damian dazzled and his words still rule...

The fish came from our own fishing...blue boat...darting eyes of the captain/owner/master scamming the rollers, jiggling bait, dervish on steroids....with the sad eyes of a fado singer....

We will talk to our cats about the iguanas...they must be prepared...we’re on the way...

Love and muchissimas gracias from this frog...and from ‘la familia’....

Think Positive

Being back is hard. Harder than I thought.
Difficult to explain. I'm not really back.
I have many clichés that you would enjoy about Costa Rica :the beaches, the surfers, the weather, the monkeys, the iguanas, the mango, Pura Vida...

I just saw people there from my own family.They are living a great life...they did from day one I would say. They managed to live and work, loving what they do. They raised four kids as freely as possible and the grown-up kids are healthy, balanced, successful, beautiful.

We left, they all stayed there. In their beautiful wood house by the waves, the mango trees, the monkeys, Pura Vida...

I want the dust, the bad roads, the Spanish language that I'm far from mastering...

The sad part (and boosting one) is if I don't do it myself, it's only my fault. It's possible. If I don't sleep on it. Food for thought.