Parisian thoughts and lavender chicken.

My bench as I poked my head of my front door at 3.33am as it poured with rain.

Today the constant rain of the last three days finally cleared up and I found time to enjoy the sunshine and do some cooking and clothes cleaning.

Had a lot of fun today semi-recreating le petit Parisian (Willy Ronis's boy with a the baguette). I got a few funny looks from passers by as I posed in the middle of the village as the Baguette Boy now grown up but I don't care. Life should be fun!

Back at home I cooked some chicken pieces in lavender and lemon having marinated the chicken in said mix for twelve hours. It was delish and many thanks to Karen who kindly sent me the lavender. The lemon was the prominent taste but I could detect the lavender pieces coming through. The recipe was one of Rachel Khoo's and I even dipped my baguette in the cooking juices and boy was the experience a goodie!!!!


                                                            

Karen and Steve's lavender

The weather had cleared up from the continuous rain we've been having the last few days and I managed to get some washing out to dry on the line. I sat for a while outside on the garden bench soaking up the sun with a beer with next door's cat, Mr Harris, keeping me company and feline eyeballing a raven on the fence. You can sometimes under estimate the amount of bugs flying about on an average sunny day and most of them seemed very attracted to my orange t-shirt, so-much-so that I retired indoors after a while after getting irritated by the little devils landing all over me.

Tonight will be first time in six weeks that Rachel Khoo and her fab Parisian cookery programme won't be on the telly to watch and drool over so I have been going through my French cooking books and DVDs and would like to recommend some to you. Not all are about Paris but they are all fabulously French and would grace any Francophone's home and kitchen.  Most of the books I have pictured are highly visual (lots of sumptuous photos of food and markets) and the French Odyssey DVD is a must to have. Watch it and you feel like you have been on a French holiday with Rick Stein.

Two great French based dvds

An old favourite.

Two Paris based videos I definitely recommend for any lover of Paris.

Thanks for looking in and lastly a lovely picture of some bluebells that I discovered growing at the back of my house. Life can be beautiful at times. If only I was also lingering around one of those fragrantly fresh French markets.