It's Me, Sara Louise

It was a hot one this weekend, and not only in The LPV, all over France it was steaming. Even where Gregory’s mother lives outside Clermont-Ferrand got hot, like 30+°C (90+°F) hot which practically never ever happens up there in her cool Thermal town. And here, it reached 35°C, which without AC is pretty unbearable. Besides sitting around in my old barn house misting myself with Evian Spray, this is what I got up to…

We popped over to Papa’s house for dinner on Friday, I was trying to avoid turning on the stove and so was Papa’s Wife, which meant a dinner of salads, jambon cru, and saucisson sec. Want to know the great thing about light dinners like that? They go perfectly with Rosé. But the thing is, it’s so hot that it’s really hard to keep your glass chilled, even with an ice cube or two plonked in it, but Papa has found a way, he has started drinking his out of the insulated Texas Longhorn tumbler I brought him back from Texas last year. That’s right, he is drinking his wine out of a tumbler. Homeboy is not messing around.

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Dinner was topped off with Häagen-Dazs créme brulée ice cream which is much more practical during a heatwave than real créme brulée and it’s oh so delicious.

Since I still didn’t feel like cooking on Saturday night, Gregory and I decided that we’d go out for dinner… alone (it’s a rare treat to be sans Gatz, sans Honey Jr, sans tout le monde). And then we decided to make it special. Remember when I told you that I won €100 from 52 Martinis for a night out? Well we decided to make Saturday night our night out and return to Auberge Pierry; the restaurant that Gregory took me three years ago, on the last night of my holiday here when I stilled lived in Dublin. I’ve always wanted to go back, but for one reason or another, we just haven’t, but I’ve spent lots of time dreaming about eating that creamy garlic escargot in puff pastry under the fairy light lit trees again.

All smiles and joyful anticipation, we headed back to the restaurant of happy memories… except it had changed (of course it had), the fairy lights were no more, the pebbled ground had been replaced by a wooden deck, and I’m pretty sure that the chef had been replaced too… no creamy garlic escargot in puff pastry for Sara Louise.

But, two good things did come out of our disappointment. 1) we realized that we were simply happy to be out on a date alone together without the entourage even if the food was a bit blah and 2) because it was oh so blah, there is no way I’m counting it as my 52 Martinis night, so we’ll just have to go out again. Bonus.

Clearly in the mist of some sort of psychotic break, I woke up Sunday morning deciding that I should bake something while France was in the middle of a heatwave and living in a house with no AC. Papa had given me a basket full of mirabelle plums that were just dying to be turned into a clafoutis aux mirabelles, so I obliged. 

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after

(When looking at the ‘after’ picture above, please keep two things in mind; 1) it was my very first clafoutis, and even though Gregory asked me, “is it finished cooking?” after his first bite, it was delicious, and 2) I am a terrible photographer.)

Since I baked something in a heatwave, I thought I deserved a little treat, and that treat was Fifty Shades of Grey. I read it all day yesterday and finished it. There is so much to say about this book – let’s discuss… it’s utter crap, but totally addicting like McDonald’s and I’ve already downloaded Fifty Shades Darker, but I swear if I have to read the words, ‘inner goddess’ one more time, I’m going to punish Anastasia myself. Also, Christian Grey reminds me so much of an ex-boyfriend (minus the Red Room of Pain… please get your head out of the gutter), it’s disturbing.

And since I finished the addictive trash that is Fifty Shades of Grey, and had quite enough of Anastasia’s inner goddess for the day, we watched The Intouchables.