"Feed the Birds - Tuppence a Bag"

My brother Joseph: "Keen, are you blogging about how you suck at feeding the bird?"

Me: "Yes Joseph."

Mom: "She's blogging about how she keeps me young by giving me extra work to do."

THE SCREENPLAY:

18.45: Mom asks me to feed the family bird who is starving. 

18.46  Bird: "I'm starving."

KIDDING. This is our bird: 

BIRD: "Yo. It's feeding time. You know what to do". ... (Or do I)

THE PLOT THICKENS


18.48 Dutiful daughter goes to get bird food, opens a new bag - and then this happens:

18.51: Typical.

18.52: Let's get a close up of that. This is abstract art baby. ABSTRACT.

18.54: Then I move the bag to try and catch the seeds, and this happens.. PERFORMANCE ART BABY!

18.55: Mom steps in to try and clean up the mess. Because I'm 12.

19.00: I've moved on. 

Mom isn't even mad - she's DISAPPOINTED.
And even worse - the seeds got stuck in the sifter and now she's trying to unblock it with a knife.
It's 19.04.

FIN

Mom's World

Greetings from Canada.

As we enter another kitchen...

Mom's.

My mother can drive me nuts, but at the end of the day I'm crazy about her - and she is such a HUGE inspiration for me. When she does something - she goes all the way and has taught me the same. In almost everything: school, art, music, dance, sport, work, everything - with of course the exception of the kitchen ; )

Perfect homemade meatballs. 

Perfect homemade cookies. 

Perfect homemade cookies stored in old fashioned Christmas cookie containers. 

Perfect little deer decorations lit up in the backyard (grazing in the snow).

In case we forgot that Christmas is about the birth of baby Jesus - Mom has no less than five nativity scenes strategically placed throughout the house. I bring you - what everyone always wants to see.. the baby!

Jesus glued to the nativity scene and being watched over by two cows.

Jesus handed down from Nana. RIP Nana.

Jesus bought from an expensive store. Can't say where, Dad will get upset when he finds out he cost $200.

Mexican baby Jesus. I got him and his family from Guadalajara.

Who could this little glass baby be? JESUS.

and for the finale..... tonight Mom asked me to set the oven timer for 15 minutes... A short while later she asks - "Caterina, why has this only gone down a few seconds?? Oh, it's because you set it to 

15 hours!!!"

Merry Christmas : ) !

Hugs from Canada - one of the best places in the world to spend Christmas - and then leave before the six months of ice and snow drive you mad.

Cold, Hard, Reality

Mom Shows Me How It's Done for the #76545676 Time

I know I haven't been blogging - I'm just getting bored with the whole cooking thing. It's not sticking. It's exhausting. ugh, I'm whining I know. On top of that, I'm not even in Franck's Kitchen anymore - I'm in my Mom's and she doesn't even think I know how to properly wash lettuce.


What's the point of even trying. 


And then today, after waking up at 5am and going to work at her super important/stressful job - she came home, made coq au vin, a tiramisu and then at 8 when I was using the "I'm jet lagged" excuse to not clear the dishes and go to bed, she announced - I'm going to the basement to work out and then iron for an hour.

No, you don't go from the below cake to this in a week. You go from the below cake to your mother's house and try and forget about the past while diving head first into pure sin.

Let Them Eat Cake

And now for another disaster...signed the Anti-Chef.

Sunday morning... who doesn't like the idea of waking up to the smell of a fluffy cake cooking in the oven? And so, with my heart in the right place and my head somewhere out in left field, I emptied the pack of cake mix (don't judge me) into the pan and slid it in the oven. Timer said 45 minutes, easy enough. Except I didn't see the fine print, which read: Cooking time 45 minutes, but if this is Caterina - stand beside the oven because you will surely manage to screw even this up. Next thing I know, the house is full of smoke, and Franck is waking up screaming "Merde! Merde!" and there I am, with my burnt cake in my hands, cursing "Les recettes Bonne Maman" under my breath. 

To make matters worse, with the onset of cold weather, I'm morphing into a tea drinking yuppy and have been trading in my Louboutins for slippers. Glerups to be precise.  Made in Denmark, these booties are felted in pure, natural wool. I picked them up at my favourite Scandinavian boutique in Paris' St. Paul neighbourhood. Sexy ja?

Tisk, TISK!

et Merde. This happens to me every single time. What is the point of putting these things if they always tear off before doing their job! Frustraaaaaation!!!!! 

Deep breaths Cat, deep breaths. 

Dog's Breakfast

Franck is off in Denmark for the week, and I'm starting to get hungry. Whenever I'm not here, he says that he basically stops cooking and whenever he's not here, my diet turns to pasta, cheese, bread, (and cookies!). Cooking for one is never inspiring, but luckily - I have a dog to take care of!  

Presenting Emile. He's kind of like a skinny model - "I eat all the time, whatever I want, and never get fat." Ha! Of course, Emile doesn't like regular dog food, so tonight, he will be served pasta mixed with hamburger meat.  He is an Italian greyhound after all.

Hiatus

Wowza. 

I realise that I haven't posted in almost a month - but what can I say - I needed a break from cooking once a week. I've spent the past while back and forth between Abu Dhabi and Dubai - living the good life and eating in restaurants night after glorious night. You know how sometimes you miss a home cooked meal? Well, sometimes I miss two weeks of non-stop eating out. And when I say eating out - I mean dress your best, jump in a waiting Mazarati, check your coat (Kidding! Weather was gorgeous in the UAE) dive into prawns, sea bass, and sake, and order everything off the menu that you can't pronounce. Dubai is all about working hard and working it harder. Now I'm back in grey, rainy Paris and staring at Franck's Kitchen like it's a foreign, inanimate object. I am going to need to get my mojo back and start getting inspired again. Though I won't be cooking this evening as Friday night Parisian life is calling me - I will be slipping on these Louboutins. Yes ladies, Christmas came early. Back from Dubai and three pairs richer. (Bank account is a whole lot poorer.) But the morale is high and sometimes that's all that matters.