Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Mother's Day

Pages From Jan's Travel Journal: Sunday, May 8 2016

My first Mother's Day in France! America celebrated Mother's Day on May 8, while the French day to honor mom was still a few weeks away. We began the day with coffee and then a short walk across the Loire to Au Petit Duc to purchase pastries. Desmond bought another mug for me; it was decorated with a brightly colored owl. Home again, we enjoyed our pastries with more coffee and Des presented me with another gift: a bound book containing the emails we had exchanged since he first moved to France. It is something that I will always treasure.

A Paris Brest and coffee in my new mug!

We gave Craig a call and had a nice visit with him. He was preparing to drive up to see his own mother and to cook a steak dinner for her and one of his sisters who was visiting from out of state. Later, we played a game and listened to music. It was nice to relax a bit after our busy day on Saturday. At lunchtime, we finished off the pizza from the day before. Afterward, I enjoyed reading from the book Desmond had given me. It brought back a lot of great memories. 

We had been invited to Arno's that afternoon for tea. We enjoyed the scenic walk to his apartment in the ancient part of town, close to where Desmond used to live. We had a lively discussion as we lingered over tea and pastries. 

I love this part of town!

That evening, I helped Des peel shrimp for the scampi he was planning to make. It was a wonderful meal; no restaurant could have done better! We began with glasses of kir and appetizers of chips and delightful little verrines. The tiny glasses were filled with a mixture of cream cheese, minced ham, tomatoes, roasted red pepper, and pine nuts. They were garnished beautifully and were as tasty as they looked. Des served the shrimp scampi over jasmine rice, with a side of roasted broccoli. Everything was delicious! For dessert, we enjoyed chocolate lava cakes, which were a sweet ending to a wonderful meal. Later, we watched a couple of episodes of a favorite sitcom. It had been a perfectly wonderful mother's day and I went to bed feeling very loved. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Darci and Mathieu are such accomplished chefs. You've been really spoiled Jan. Your record of emails is truly a treasure.