Life lately.

 

Sleep schedules are being conquered, as well as bronchitis.

 

Snow is thawing.

 

Our favorite self-proclaimed "third wheel" is embarking on new and exciting adventures, and we're trying to soak up as much time with our dear JimmyDegs as we can before he officially leaves his five and half year expat-francophile existence in the dust.

Sweet new french vintage finds were found.
 

Green juice was drunk in mass quantities.


Re-reading "The Walking Dead" never gets old.

Lots of tea, redecorating and relaxing.

Lots and lots and lots of cheese at both our house and Le Refuge de Florimont.

It's been harder getting back to our life in SwitzerFrance than I had thought it would it, probably because I was in the US for so long. I really needed this week to just get reacquainted with life here, as well as to get reacquainted with this house. Which would also explain my need to completely redecorate the second floor (first floor by french standards). One thing is for sure, my french has gone to complete merde in my time away. Food shopping last week marks the first time in years that I've been nervous holding small conversations with cashiers and neighbors. It'll take some time, but I know it will come back to me.

Luckily I picked up these two old french textbooks at The Book Trader in Philly over the holidays, so I'm excited to jump back in to the linguistics game.

But not today, today is for catching up on my zombie comics. After all, it is Sunday.

A la prochaine friends...

Honey

Drinkin' the Juice.

 

We got a new kitchen toy over the holidays, an anniversary present from my parents: a juicer!

 

I'm not really into the whole juice cleansing thing, but I do like adding juice to our already healthy diet. When I was at Bikram Yoga Teacher Training in the fall, my roomate made us green juice most weeks, and it was great before our morning bikram class - not too heavy to make me feel nauseaus during class, but still packed with nutrients to get me through and hold me over until being able to eat a real meal after class.

 

Do any of you make juice? I'd love to hear your favorite recipes! So far our favorite is a green juice, it's so refreshing before or after practicing yoga. Here's the recipe if you're interested!

 

Green Juice:

(As adapted from my BYTT roomie!)

(Makes about 2 liters)

 

5 cucumbers

4 granny smith apples

1 inch sized piece of ginger

Juice of 1 lemon

If you try it, let me know what you think!

FYI: It's also super fun to drink it out of a wine glass. :)

Happy juicing tout le monde!

A la prochaine friends...

Honey



Three Year Anniversary.

{Ventnor, NJ}

The last few days of our three and a half week Duggan US Tour were spent on the east coast, visiting my parents in Southern New Jersey. We walked on the boardwalk to Atlantic City, visited with the fig trees I planted in the yard before Hurricane Sandy (Update: I think they're gonna make it, but we won't really know until they hopefully bud in the spring), and relaxed with some football and old black and white movies, because frankly, we were exhausted.

 

I'm a good traveler, I've come a long way in terms of packing light and being able to handle long stints of living out of bags, but it starts to wear on me after about 3 weeks.
 

 {Mom and I}
 

It did however do me a lot of good to be able to breathe a little salt air, see the ocean, walk on the boards, hang out with my parents, and see how the island is faring post hurricane in the recovery efforts. For instance, the water line that is still on the side of my parents house shows that two out of the four fig trees I planted in the yard were completely submerged in flood waters. There's a lot of work still to be done for some of the local businesses and private homes alike, but things appear to moving forward as fast as is bureaucratically possible.

 

Just before heading back to SwitzerFrance Doc surprised me with a night in Philly to celebrate our three year wedding anniversary. 

 

Sushi is something that we don't get too much of in France, mainly because our close proximity to Switzerland makes the prices astronomical, so we took advantage of being able to gorge ourselves on sushi without having to take out a loan first. We tried out a new-to-us place in Old City called Zento, and it was amazing!

 

The sushi was great, the staff friendly, and they played old black and white Kung Fu movies on one of the walls during dinner.

 

After dinner we grabbed drinks at Amada, somewhere I hadn't been since my 24th birthday...

 

...where I had an incredible cocktail that we are definitely going to attempt to recreate at home: lavender infused gin with celery water.

 

We finished with scotch at the hotel bar like we did three years ago, and sipped our drinks by the fireplace, and called it a night by midnight...

 

...because we're old.

The following morning, before heading to the airport, we grabbed brunch at my favorite brunch place, Sam's Morning Glory, in the Bella Vista neighborhood of the city.

{Frittata and biscuits}

Until next time Philly!

 



A la prochaine friends...

 

Honey



New Year's 2013 in Omaha.

Of our three and a half week trip to the US, ten days of that were spent in Doc's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
 

{Cool western store, incredibly pushy and annoying salespeople...what a shame. I'll buy my turquoise cowboy boots online thank you very much!}

{Treats at Caffeine Dreams}



We spent time catching up with family, watching Bowl games and college basketball, and eating some really good food...

 

...and there were cupcakes.

 

Cupcakes!

 

We don't get cupcakes in France, unless we make them ourselves, and even though I am much more of a savory loving than sweet loving person, I do love me a well made cupcake.

 

I'm very particular about cupcakes, kind of a cupcake snob if you will, and at the moment, since my favorite cupcake joint in Philly closed, my new favorite cupcake magasin is hands down Jones Bros. in Omaha.  They've got your typical flavors like chocolate, vanilla and red velvet, but they've also got killer cool flavors like maple bacon, sweet and salty (my personal favorite), caramel apple and tiramisu, among others. (There's an Elvis Special that I'm also dying to try!)

 

One of our other favorite places in Omaha, and dare I say one of my favorite burgers in the US, comes from a little dive bar called Dinker's...

 

...it's nothing fancy. But what it lacks in aesthetics it makes up for in delicious, juicy, incredibly reasonably priced burgers and pitchers of beer.

 

Something we did not get to do enough of in Omaha? Thrift store shopping. There are TONS of thrift and antique stores (as well as used book stores) in Omaha, and we only got to one. Le sigh. But I did find a pretty sweet Pyrex divided casserole dish for $6, as well as an adorable/horribly kitschy squirrel sitting on top of an acorn cookie jar at Caffeine Dreams (they have a small little handmade and vintage section of the coffee shop), so that helps the thrifting withdrawal pang a bit.

{I mean seriously, who can possibly be this happy at the airport at 5:00 am?!}

We ended our Omaha portion of the Duggan US Tour with a 5:45 am flight out of Omaha (oie veyishmeir). The plus side? Three trips to Omaha in three years and I've only just discovered the old school Pac Man arcade game in our terminal - SCORE!

A la prochaine friends...

 

Honey