France

I dropped off my framed photos to the gallery on Tuesday afternoon and handed them to Laurie to hang. I didn’t know how they would be displayed but when I arrived on Thursday before the opening started, the photos were brilliantly integrated into the wall of flower paintings. It was hard to recognize the photos from the paintings, which I thought was perfect. At 6PM, people started coming and by 8:30 there were so many people in the gallery, they spilled over into the street. Many friends and acquaintances were there and I was so touched so many people came. Best of all some blog readers were there, which I was so thrilled and also some of my tour clients from that week showed up. In fact, three women who were my tour clients the day before were so sweet and brought a bottle of Champagne as a congratulations. By 9PM the festivities were mostly over and I had dinner with Vincent and a few friends to celebrate my big night. If you didn’t make it to the opening, the show runs till June 15. 14 rue Servandoni, 75006Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday 2PM to 6:30PMMetro: St. Sulpice Here are images of all four photos from the exhibit. Each photo is a signed edition of 15. If you would like to buy a signed, unframed photo printed here and shipped to the U.S., the cost would be 125 euros plus 25 euros for shipping. If you would like an unsigned and unframed copy printed in the U.S. and shipped, the cost is $50. You may email me at r.nahem@gmail.com to order. Urn with Flowers in St. Germain Flowers in door at Montparnasse Cemetery Lily pad in Menton Garden Man with Green Umbrella among Red Flowers my fun tour clients I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more. Tours cost 210 euros for up to 3 people, and 70 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.  Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking ClassesI am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte's professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines. Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours) Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the marketClass days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday,Friday, Saturday, and SundayMinimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.   New Eye Prefer Paris Photos for Sale I am happy to announce the sale of a new set of prints of my Eye Prefer Paris Photos.  I am offering 20 of my most popular and iconic images for sale including my doors, architectural details, statues, and monuments. They will make great gifts for all your Francophile friends, relatives, and colleagues but don't forget to buy some for yourself. Click here to see photos and for full details including sizes, prices, and shipping. Here is a sample of some of the photos.  

You’ve heard of the proverbial woman with a past. Well, these jewelry pieces have a past. A jewelry designer in L.A. made the cuff bracelets from vintage French sequins and beads (among other materials). The person she bought the elements from told her the provenance was decades-old stage costumes from France. I love imagining what sort of settings these sparkly bits have inhabited. The dressing rooms…the smoky nightclubs…nouvelle vague films come to mind, though some of these beads are more than 100 years old than those early 1960s movies. My favorite beads are the ones that appear to be see-through orbs with pearls inside. It’s an optical illusion. They are glass that has been gold leafed on the inside–who knows how! The designer, Andrea Gutierrez, has her own French connection; she grew up in Switzerland and speaks francais. And her way of working–spending days on a single piece in her studio–seems very Gallic. Have a look at her other designs here.

                          Boulevard is a place we last came to some years ago and quite liked it so when we were told this is where my professional association's past-presidents luncheon was being held we considered it a lucky stroke of luck.  The menu was restricted as befits a special meal for 30 in their special room - L'Avenue - but was OK and there was no booze since we were considered to be working.  

If you were in Paris at the moment (maybe you are!) you'd hear people complain about the terrible weather, for sure... Today I had to go to the left bank to meet an old friend of PDP and, well, I passed by the Louvre and almost drowned the engine of my scooter there! Here is why! And this shot was not taken after a big storm, just the result of a non stop rain! There are worst things in life, but it's really getting my nerves! Time to go back to Miami?!

Me scribbling in Venice, by Doug StirlingA few months back Samar A Abulhassen sent around a set of questions about notebooks and our relationship to them as authors. I thought I might post my thoughts on them as I feel right now like my current journal and I are close friends, the kind that are irritatingly inseparable and who keep secrets from the rest of the world. It is a curious interaction given that last summer and even most of last year I felt estranged from my journals and notebooks. But a few thoughts I had when Samar asked her questions are below--with hopes that other authors might post comments back about their own use of notebooks and thoughts on journal keeping.Jen and her Journals / notebooks:One of the things I tell authors who are stuck is "get a new notebook, one that is a different shape". I thus can say there are notebooks galore chez moi. I have lots of little "unfinished" notebooks--long thin ones to change the shape of the prose poems or poems I was writing at the time, or conveniently small ones for scribbling on the metro, or gigantic ones so I can write randomly and large--all of which really serve the purpose of getting me going as I finish one project and lean into the next. But I also have an entirely different relationship to two kinds of notebooks that go through the Writing at Kate Van Houten's house in Normandyages--one is the journal notebooks. These are collaged, painted, scribbled and written in. My one consistency is that I prefer they be unlined, around the same size (6x8.5cm in general) and I have moved away from any sort of spiral though I did have a phase of that years ago. I write in them in many directions. I stick notes in them and glue ticket stubs in them. I generally line the insides of the outer covers with stamps from letters received during the period I was writing in that particular journal. I have notes in French and English from conferences or good books, and bits and pieces of poems or stories or whatnots. I also have the dulllllllll dulllllll self-depricating "I should be..." to do listing moments and the repetitions that people them, alongside the far more exciting (at least to me) writing of dreams, which I like rereading from time to time. I do at times use them to reflect through something in my poetry. They do however feel stacked along shelves to no decent end. But then again,perhaps that is just what they need to do--wait until I am ready to go pillage them again?But I also have another sort of notebook--they are really the ones where things happen. Lined in general and A4 size as I need the space, they are where the drafts of most poems really are, and they are in no particular order and sometimes the things pulled out of them get typed up which is already a first revision and other times they just linger there until I toss out the pages.In the end, notebooks function like sketch pads for me, places to doodle and what emerges may or may not get worked on later.

France and England have been inextricably linked for hundreds of years, so when British landscape designer, Deborah Hart, bought her French country house 5 years ago in the small, southwest village of Estang, she seamlessly brought the best of both worlds together. Read More...

Falling in love with a little custardie cake, le Canelé, can be quite deleterious to your health. I'd resisted the flirtatious wiles of the canelé for a long time, but at the Perigord Foire the old coup de foudre/flash of lightening hit and it hard. Handmade by Lucette of Hautefort in Perigord using walnuts picked from her own grove (usually only vanilla and rum are the only addends to the egg and milk mixture), these rustic babies were irresistible. I even went back to the well for a third helping(!) and decided I must do some caparitive analysis with Parisian canelés. Research began Sunday morning right after a dunk in the pool at nearby boulangerie, Le Moulin de la Vierge. Le Moulin is one of the prettiest of Paris' boulangeries but see the yellow tops on these canelés? That's a no-no according to Paula Wolfert and top pastry chefs of Bordeaux. These little cakes originated over 300 years ago either by nuns (nuns get a lot of credit for creating cakes in France by the way) or else by poor Bordelaises down by the waterfront with bits of leftover flour and egg yolk etc. Next stop Maison Lemoine originating in Bordeaux with branches in St.-Emilion, Sarlat, Cap-Ferret.Even Lemoine's logo is a canele cakeThey sell the preferred copper molds or moules to make these puppies or you can find silicone molds in any Paris pastry supply shop.Lemoine makes a soft/moille canele and a crispy or croustillant version with a more crunchy caramelized outer shell. Both had a cakey aroma or nez. The crispy version can be quite chewy.Just across the street on rue St. Dominique patisserie Jean Millet is a member of Relais Desserts so anything they do is generally delish.Note the spelling here all you ex-French teachers!Only authentic cakes from Bordeaux are allowed to use the single N in the spelling. It's the law according to 88 pastry chefs of Bordeaux who hold dear the secret recipe to this little cake.Only about 1 1/2" high but there's a lot of protection for this recently back-in-fashion pastry - just the past 20 years or so.The biggest Bordeaux brand of canele is Baillardran. They have a shop in gare Montparnasse.They offer 3 levels of quality. I got the 'traditional', their top canele with visible flecks of vanilla, a rummy aroma and a little red paper crown for 2.30 euros.Still after tasting as many of Paris' best example to be found on a rainy Sunday afternoon none comes close to the artisanally made canele by Lucette from La Noix Patiente/ the patient nut of the Perigord fair at Montmartre. I should have known and not gone off on a tasting tangent that has left me with a tummy ache. These little cakes are meant to be eaten just one at a time. And multiple taste-testing by one person is not such a hot idea. I guess I'll have to visit Perigord if I want another ONE!

Appearing on Charlie Rose last week, the chef of Spring Restaurant joked with his interviewer about hosting a dinner for people who share the name, or a connection with the name Daniel Rose. At the time, the American chef was unaware that a new restaurant had just opened in Paris [...]

Jacket: Sandro | Jeans: DL1961 | Shoes: Rolando Santana | T-Shirt: Citizens of Humanity | Corset: H&M Trend (old) | Bag: Neri Karra | Beetle necklace: Rachel Entwistle via Boticca I've been wanting to wear this jacket for close to 4 months and I cant believe it had been hanging in my closet all along. In all fairness, winter wasn't really the perfect time to wear it and since I have the matching shorts as well, I really need some better weather to sport them out. Do you also have certain pieces you have been saving for Summer? FACEBOOK ? TWITTER ? BLOGLOVIN'

I have always loved Middle Eastern foods. The fresh vegetables, the liberal use of herbs and seasonings, including a touch of spiciness at times, and the casual way of eating that the food encourages. Meze is the term that’s used to define all the “little plates” that get brought out to begin in a meal, served in little bowls often with pools of olive oil in the middle, waiting to be sopped up with soft pita or other flatbreads. When I wrote about the Lebanese meze I’d had on a trip to the Middle East, I didn’t realize that a number of people were all that interested in what vegetables went into it. (But who can blame them? I wanted to remake it, too.) Like a lot of those foods, people aren’t necessarily following recipes – they’re following their nose, and yup, you got it – they cook by taste. Continue Reading Labneh...