Andrus Foe Paws

Moving when the elevator is too small and the stairway too narrow

We just got back from Holland.  In Amsterdam, we took a boat tour of the canals.  All along the canals we saw hooks mounted to the tops of the front facade of each house.  We were told that the stairways were so narrow in these old houses that people moved furniture through the windows using the ropes and  hooks to haul stuff up from the street.  In Paris they use a pully type system also.  Can you imagine moving a piano that way?

The Cluny

One of my favorite museums in Paris is The Cluny Museum which is a museum of medievil history.  Jen Hansen, Abi and I went there in November.  Among the things to see are the Unicorn Tapestries and the heads of the apostles that were chopped off by the mobs during the French Revolution.  The apostle’s statues were arrayed around Notre Dame and the revolutionaries thought they were kings…so they chopped off their heads.  The heads on the current statues at the cathedral are replicas.  The original heads were discovered buried in someone’s back yard and are now displayed at the museum.  Here are some pictures from our trip to the museum. For more info see http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/paris-cluny-museum-of-middle-ages

More of Abi’s drawings

Art Class in Paris

One of the things I wanted to do when I came to Paris was to take an art class.  My grandmother and my mother have some artistic ability as do some of my nieces and nephews so I brought my “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” book, some colored pencils and some drawing paper.  I have taken a water color class in the past and was frustrated with my inability to draw.  Abi and I joined WICE when we first arrived in Paris.  WICE is an established English speaker’s group that offers a variety of classes to the expat community here in Paris.

While I was getting settled, I thought I might meet some new friends at the introductory drawing class that was offered by a woman by the name of Claude Pollack.  She actually grew up in NYC where he father was an art dealer.  He passed away when she was 16 and her mother moved the family back to France.  The people in the class were very nice…one a stewardess who has an apartment here, one a retired US military woman, an Austrailian wife of an International Atomic Energy commission type and a long term resident of Paris from Idaho…who went to Idaho State.  The first class was all about perspective…after that, the class wanted to do things like portraits and the still lifes got more and more complicated…which was totally frustrating to me…not fun.  The interesting thing is that Abi decided to join the class and she is quite good…see for yourselves…guess all those art classes at Norwood paid off! 

Brita Classique

We are users of the Brita water filtration system.  We have a little pitcher in Boston and are religious users.  Over the past year, as we have moved kids home from Syracuse and from Vermont, we have collected quite a few extra filters from their pitchers.  What better way to use them up than to send them to France.  No sense in taking up space to pack the pitcher, but the filters could be useful….

Faux Pas # ?

This is what the “new and improved pitchers look like!

Who knew?  The classic filters went home in Abi’s suitcase…

Thanksgiving in Paris

We hadn’t been here very long, and it was a regular work day for Joe, but Abi wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner on THE day.  Joe came home a little early.  Abi and I went to the butcher and bought filet mignon…au porc to make our favorite herbed pork medallions (pork tenderloin) out of the Best Recipe Cookbook.  We bought apple pear sauce…apple sauce with chunks of pears in it, had roasted veggies and lit candles.  We also made Missy B’s  very delicious apple crisp for dessert.  A turkey for three seemed a little silly and you have to order turkeys weeks in advance.  Good thing our boxes came from Paris so we could break out the pie plate! Since this was our first baking effort we learned that it isn’t a good idea to  use the fan (kind of like a convection oven but not really) when you bake unless you keep a careful eye on things…it will be very done on the top and not so done in the middle.  We also had to experiment with brown sugar substitutes…we are using something called  muscovado which you can buy at the Bio…(pronounced like the abbreviation for body odor) which is a health food store.    It has a hint of molasses taste in it and is a similar texture to our brown sugar.  Since then people have told me that you can make brown sugar with white sugar and molasses…but we haven’t found molasses at the local super market.