sacré Champagne

 

There is a saying that goes: start your day with a smile and finish with champagne, but I say: start your day with champagne and it is sure you will finish your day with a smile :)

to spank the sparkle of Paris

Unedited history of Paris.
I like to bring people to the north of Paris. I like to add this component to their  romantic image of the capital of culture, fashion and gastronomy. The multicolored billboards, all type of glittering wedding clothes, African beauty salons, roasted corns wrapped in folio, local markets full of nothing and everything, police patrols, kebab and crepes behind one counter. For me, from a town of Panevezys, it is the whole new universe that opens up. It spins, it smells, it shouts, it sings, it whistles, it scares, it attracts and it gets me lost. And when I look around I have a feeling we all here are sort of lost, sort of alone, sort of unknown. There lies certain beauty in it. Beauty of unity in chaos, beauty of being that no one with everyone.

No surprise that after hours spent outside walking in Paris you find yourself blankly staring at the white wall to digest all these 5000 faces that your mind encountered today.

Stay in peace, Paris.

Paryžiuje jau vėlyvas ruduo. Kavinių terasos tuštėja, visi spiečiames vidun ir paskandinę smakrus šalikuose siurbčiojam kavą. Aš ir dar keturi tokie pat, po vieną. Tada dar yra tie po du, ties kažkur susilietę, į kuriuos man vis nejauku žiūrėti. O daugiausia vietos užima tie, kur po tris ar penkis. Garsiai juokiasi, gestikuliuoja ir būtinai ant jų stalo stovi cukrus, kurio tau reikia, ir būtinai jie iš pirmo karto neišgirs, ko į juos kreipiesi, ir po sekundės subes smalsias akis į tave, o tau, vienui vienam čia, ir dar ne vietiniam, būtinai susivels tas prancūziškas žodis. Bet tiek to, jau ruduo, kitą kartą ateisiu su kažkuo.

when he still spoke to us, and we still spoke to God

"i miss the days before every land had been mapped; when you could go explore, and know the world was still untapped.
i miss the days before men couldn’t outwit God; when he still spoke to us, and we still spoke to God."
— John Lucas

when home is no home

This year has been the most nomad year in my life.
In April I moved to live in Paris and ever since I have moved in to and out of Parisian flats for 7 times. The 8th is there to come in a month.

Every normal person would go crazy with such a dynamics of life. It is true that madness in this state is tempting, but there is another side to that too. Humans as we are, we are the most adaptive species of all. So first of all I adapt. Second of all I like the action of moving. It kicks you out of bed and makes you go and challenge yourself. Third of all I like to invade new spaces and become a part of it. Every new place has it's own angles, corners, shells that are being filled with my little belongings. Every new place is a new riddle starting where do I find a cup, how the oven works and where is the closest metro, bank, post office, shop, bar. It keeps your eyes open and brain stirring.
Perhaps I have already lost that "normal" feeling of home, because I feel home everywhere I come from the first to the last day when I pack and unpack my red luggage. And yes, half of me is going crazy for not having "normal" home, but at the same time another half is calm to have found the another concept of home which is not defined by walls, coffee cups or location. The concept of home that comes from inside you, that you radiate to place.

10ieme

Levallois

11ieme

5ieme

18ieme

19ieme

20ieme

kido

 

Jenny and no wolf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZA3BV0gTv0&feature=youtu.be

 

Testing the Tasting

Food. Food. Food. It doesn't matter how much we talk, write, photograph food, and even though sometimes it is just too much to handle, still we can not resist to it. We all need to eat and we all know the old saying   We are what we eat. So why don’t we spare a moment and gather a bunch of good friends to share tasty food concentrating on what and how we eat.

On Friday night Ugne cooked some simple and beautiful food for some simple and beautiful people. She is one of my friends that is passionate and patient leisure cook.

We started the evening with spicy vegetable-noodle soup to kickstart upcoming winter season.  Aromas of sweated in pan onions, ginger, chili, garlic and cumin filled the air. The soup was made as follows: Sauté all the mentioned ingredients in the pan, add 1.5 vegetable stock and rice noodles and bright to a boil. Add thinly sliced celery and carrots at the end to keep the vegetables crunchy. Leave aside to sit for few minutes with a lid before serving. Crunchy, spicy and very filling.

For the main course we had Sous Vide Salmon with green peas mash. The inspiration came from one of the cooking websites that Ugne follows (http://www.chefsteps.com). Cook sous vide salmon for 35 min. and then fry it for 1 min. on the skin side just before serving. While salmon is cooking (sous vide), on the side in another pot cook peas with a pinch of salt, water and knob of butter over medium-high heat until peas become tender. When peas are ready remove from heat, strain, add lemon, pepper, coriander, mint and mix with an immersion blender. Flavour green peas mash with few knobs of butter. Garnish with salad on the side seasoned with olive oil and vanilla flavored balsamic vinegar cream.

To finalize this evening with a sweet note I made (under the supervision of Ugne) an Apple/Raspberry Crumble with mint ice cream. Recipe found in Ugne's notebook goes as follows: sauté six apples in the pan with half of a lemon juice and knob of butter for few minutes to make them tender and shorten the cooking time in the oven. For the crumble mixture combine approximately 100 gr. of flour and 75 g. butter.  Mix in few crushed oat cookies with 4 Tbsp of light brown sugar. Lay apples and frozen raspberries on the large pie plate and cover everything with the mixture. Cook in the oven preheated up to 180 C for 15 min. Add mint ice-cream just before serving. Voila Voila. Bear in mind that I made all the measurements based on my inner instincts because you always gotta trust your own guts in the end :)

Thank you Ugne!

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