Archive for galette des rois

a journal of the invasion year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 24, 2026 by xi'an

Read The Backcountry Rescue Squad at America’s Busiest National Park, a New Yorker long article about a non-profit called BUSAR, for Backcountry Unit Search and Rescue, handling complex search and rescue operations in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (or Smokies). As usual with the New Yorker  articles, very engaging and well-written! (Which is why I keep reading the journal from the day I discovered it at Ann & George Casella’s home.) Following a visit to the House of Japan in Paris for the Isao Takahata exhibit, where its maps were displayed in the entrance hall, I also read the (French) BD Tokyo Sanpo (sanpo meaning a leisurely stroll or walk) by Florent Chavouet, a travel graphical diary (from a map-addict, like me!) of a yearlong stay in Tokyo that is highly original and beautifully drawn, but practically useless as a travel guide since it was written in 2006. And does not include the most popular districts of Tokyo. (Some of the comments are unpleasant and insensitive to cultural differences, though!)

Cooked buckwheat pancakes in muffin trays, while roasting almonds for butter. Turned out edible esp. with leftover tarama (fish roe) jars bought for the Xmas break, if not particularly nice-looking. And avoided most of the office galette des rois parties plaguing the first weeks of January! (Which would have been detrimental to my current training program, starting with a 95km week over the break.)

Watched with some (moderate) expectations the Apple TV Murderbot, inspired from the fantastic Murderbot diaries by Martha Wells, which did not meet said expectations! The humans in the team sounded and acted too idiotically. And the special effects were quite lame. (But checking the synopsis of the original All Systems Red showed a closed proximity between the book and the show, meaning my own memory units may have been corrupted!)

cooking experiments [more fixation on food]

Posted in Kids, pictures, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on January 31, 2016 by xi'an

I received the above bowl (or jar?) above as a[nother X’mas] gift. Not only it is a beautiful pottery from a Norman handicraft centre, at Noron-la-Poterie, but it is specially designed to cook Norman-style rice pudding, and it does it superbly! (The recipe stems from bakers cooking rice in cold and creamy Norman milk while their traditional wood oven was cooling down. The ensuing slow cooking produces a very creamy rice pudding.)

Besides testing this new bowl, I further experimented on the kitchen front this week with a Nutella galette des rois and a red wine risotto, both of which were far from successes! Maybe due to the poor Pic Saint-Loup I used… The most notable achievements were borrowed from two recipes I found in The Guardian. Including a sweet potato tarte tatin. Even though the sausage and kale dish found therein let me [and even more my family] quite dubious about the appeal of kale for human consumption…