From Kathryn’s kitchen

April 5, 2012 //
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There I was, just tweeting my joy about Snapguide, which Vincent pointed out to me yesterday, wondering “out loud” what I might make a guide about, deciding, finally, it would have to be my son’s favorite holiday dessert, a recipe nobody I’ve ever met has ever heard of: my grandmother’s sour cream raisin pie.

GramKathryn on the left, me, mom. As you can see, I grew up during Mad Men. The white trash, west coast version. That’ll be coming out soon, I’m sure. I seem to be doing a lot of nostalgia posts these days. I must be getting old. Or maybe I’m unconsciously mitigating the future shock.

Anyway. I figured if the tweet got a response, it would be about the app, given the geekish people who follow that account. I was sure the recipe, if it was noticed at all, would elicit “eeeews” as usual. It’s just not something you can understand till you’ve tried it.

But then Jeremy Meyers (a total stranger) asked for the recipe! He was right not to wait for my Snapguide. It could be a year before I get to it, if ever.

I thought I remembered putting it on this blog, so I looked but it wasn’t here. Then I dug through my old Christmas letters (the ones I used to send before I started doing an annual update online), and there it was, in 1997. (Fresh out of grad school. Newly married to my last husband. A kid in junior high. Somebody else’s life entirely. Totally freaky.)

My GramKathryn will be 92 in May. She’s outlived two sons (one my father) and even a grandkid. She’s a kick in the pants. Here’s her recipe, in her handwriting (transcription below). I must have been carrying this around for at least 20 years…

Hope you like it, Jeremy.

1 c raisins
½ c water
1 c sugar
1 T flour
1 t ground nutmeg
1 t cinnamon
¼ t ground cloves
1 t salt
1 egg (well beaten)
1 c sour cream
1 t apple cider vinegar
pastry for 2-crust 9” pie

Combine raisins and water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. Simmer partially covered (5 or 10 min) until water is absorbed. Remove from heat. In a medium mixing bowl, combine sugar, flour, spices, and salt. Add to raisins and stir. Add beaten egg, sour cream, and vinegar. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Cool. Pour filling into unbaked pie shell. Moisten pastry rim with water.  Roll out top crust, cut out design, and adjust top over filling. Seal and crimp edges. Bake at 375° for 35 minutes until crust is golden brown.

Notes: The plumper the raisins get, the better the pie. For some time, I’ve been putting them in the water in a microwave and nuking them for a minute or so, then letting them sit, then nuking them… Lastly, the pie crust shouldn’t be sweetened. The pie’s really sweet (and tangy). Very nice served with unsweetened, freshly whipped cream.

Special bonus! The turkey I cut into the top crust at Thanksgiving.

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The day I said NO to writing for free

March 18, 2012 //
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Out of the blue, a producer at a major international media company asked me if I’d be interested in writing an article for their website. He described the assignment in detail: the subject, the tone, specifics about the kind of content, the length… He stated that the deadline would be “about a week.” He said he thought I’d be “perfect” for the project. I was flattered and interested. It sounded fun.

This was not blogging. It was journalism.

Then, at the bottom of his e-mail came the kicker: “Unfortunately we do not have a budget for the project at this time so I doubt we will be able to pay you.” But, he added, they get a billion hits a month and could link to one of my sites if I wanted…

That torqued me off. I went looking for info on that company’s profits for 2011 (turned out to be 7B+ in one quarter alone). And I started writing a response. And then I sent it. OK, so it wasn’t terribly professional. In fact, it was not at all professional. It was also very unladylike. The first paragraph contained rather indelicate references to group sex and prostitution.

I guess I went a little over the top because, despite the fact that I sometimes choose to write for free, I’m a professional writer and writing is skilled work that should be paid for.

In the next paragraph, after my outburst, I (level-headedly) explained why I thought I’d be the right person for the job and said if they could find a budget, we could talk.

On the bright side, this episode gave me a good reason to translate and recreate the table below, which I included in my response. I initially saw it in a French article, Faut-il payer les blogueurs ? Du “Huffington Post” au “Plus” (Should bloggers be paid?), by Aude Baron, Editor-in-Chief of Le Plus, the blogging platform of Le Nouvel Observateur, a highly respected left-leaning French magazine.

I (calmly and rationally) told the producer that the table illustrated the best formula I’d seen yet for when bloggers should and shouldn’t be paid. I pointed out that, from what he described, it looked like this was a four-X situation. I then added that for HuffPo, I have one X.

OK, so the lady didn’t say “you’re being screwed.” She said, “you’ve been had.” Maybe I overtranslated a little. Or I localized it. For my reality. Regional differences, you know… (And that’s not how I translated it in the version I sent to the producer. I had calmed down by then.)

I guess this incident pushed me over the edge. Or else the producer just got in the path of some hormonal fluctuation shrapnel. Poor guy.

But guess what… They ended up paying me.

I do write for free for some sites, big and small, and for others I get paid, despite having only one or two Xs. The “exposure” I’ve had from writing for big sites has, in fact, helped me in different ways. Plus I enjoy the freedom of writing only about things that interest me, only when I can or want to. It is definitely a quality-of-life issue. Would I want to be a journalist? Not really. Too stressful. And I doubt the pay compensates for the pain. Would I want to be assigned to write about a sanitation scandal at a chicken farm? Hell no. I’d rather write about things that inspire me.

Here’s a list of previous frogblog posts on the issue of blogging for free, in the order in which I wrote them:

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Dear Free Mobile:

February 4, 2012 //
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How can you treat me like this? I was one of your first!

I’m a devoted fan, a certified geekette, a tech blogger… And already a Free client for Internet and TV.

I linked to Meet France’s New and Awesome Super Angels in my post Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Paris on ReadWriteWeb!

From the day I heard you were applying for the fourth license I was rooting for you. I knew the oligarchs would do whatever they could to keep you out of their club. Then you got the license! And I waited and waited for you to launch your mobile service, knowing that when it happened, I would make the switch, even if it meant buying my way out of my old contract…

I watched your live announcement of the Free Mobile services on TV. The whole thing! I had tears in my eyes when you got to the part about the low rates for poor people.

You guys are awesome!

And I know you’re doing your best. But…

I signed up for Free Mobile on January 12th. I got my first receipt that day:

From: freemobile@free-mobile.fr
Date: 12 janvier 2012 07:47:30 HNEC
To: pamela.s.poole@xxxxxx.com
Subject: Accusé réception Forfait Mobile Free

I got my client password on the 15th:

From: freemobile@free-mobile.fr
Date: 15 janvier 2012 00:44:36 HNEC
To: pamela.s.poole@xxxxxx.com
Subject: Confirmation de la création de votre espace abonné

Yeah!!! I was officially a Free Mobile client! So I kept checking my espace abonné, and I was stuck at Etape 1, with a Date de portabilité: Inconnu.

Until the other day, when Inconnu was replaced with Echec de la portabilité.

#ECHEC

And not a single indication from you about what I should do next…

#FAIL

Because your customer service options are so lame limited, I tried tweeting you to ask for help. No answer. So I tried again a couple days later. No answer.

But some other guy (Dude_FR), a kindhearted geek who doesn’t work for you (as far as I know), did respond:

So my question for you, Free Mobile, is this:

What am I supposed to do now?

Even fangirls can fall out of love…

Update:

So I called customer service on February 7th with an actual telephone, and they told me there had been an error; that I’d made a typo entering this number called a RIO needed to transfer a phone number from one operator to another. I said I was quite sure I hadn’t made a typo, and that someone (Dude_FR above) had told me that the RIOs issued by my operator had a limited validity period and that that was more likely the problem since it had taken them so long. The agent neither confirmed nor denied, she just sort of grunted.

She said I could wait and that “very soon” I’d be able to enter the correct RIO through the website myself, but she said it would be faster if I cancelled my account and resubscribed. Which needed to be done by mail. Paper, stamps, etc. So I wrote the letter and printed it and it sat on my desk for a couple days and never got mailed.

Then, suddenly, magically, three days later, I had a SIM card from Free in the mailbox. I went to my Espace abonné (client space) to see WTF, and the Echec de la portabilité (failed to port number) was gone. Disappeared! It looks like it hadn’t failed after all… So what about this error? Was there no error after all?

So now, February 12th, I am at Etape 2, “Sim card mailed.” The next étape is “SIM card activated.” Waiting to see how long that will take…

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My lucky day

January 29, 2012 //
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Back when I was in grad school at the Monterey Institute learning to be a translator (95-97), I had a classmate who was one of the feistiest, funnest (I know, not a word, don’t bug me) young women I’ve ever known. She had enough energy and enthusiasm for ten people.

And she spent most of it on others.

A force of nature, so generous. Unforgettable. And she hasn’t changed.

We’ve exchanged e-mails a few times since we left MIIS, but though she’s been living in Europe for years, we’ve never managed to get together. I hadn’t seen her in 15 years. Until yesterday! It was like no time had passed at all except for the adorable nine-year-old daughter she had with her! But the visit — breakfast in a nearby café — was much too short. She was here on a mother/daughter trip to Paris for the big semi-annual sales, and she’d come with two American friends and their daughters. All of them live in Brussels. Two of the three, including my friend, are the wives of military officers.

It was simultaneously bizarre and perfectly natural to be in the company of officers’ wives. My mother was one! I was a Navy brat. Grew up watching my mom do Officers’ Wives Club luncheons (remember luncheons?) at our house (had my first sip of lime daiquiri on one of those occasions, yummy, thanks Mom!). My parents hosted Hail and Farewell parties. Mom was a killer hostess and I learned to love entertaining, thanks to all this.

I had to get all dressed up to go to Change of Command ceremonies on giant gray boats (I know, ships, not boats). I had to get dressed up to see my dad’s ship off early in the morning every time he went to sea for six months at a time. Mom was so sad. Dad was so handsome in his dress whites. He even had a sword. They went to Navy Balls, and I remember my mom making a pink chiffon ball gown when I was six. Those ships had a smell that only they had. I knew what half mast meant. There was protocol. My brother and I were well behaved.

Dad knew how to navigate using only a sextant. He showed me all the constellations one starry night on Guam. It was Viet Nam for a while and they made my mom take the Flower Power daisy stickers off our white VW bug because it “wasn’t appropriate for an officer” (might imply support for the peace-loving hippies). One night Dad had duty and we went to dinner (in the Officers’ Wardroom, where a steward in white gloves and a white jacket served us) and a movie (The Poseidon Adventure!) on his ship.

He always brought the coolest stuff back from his cruises. My favorites were the black lacquered jewelry box with a twirling ballerina from Japan, and the muu muu from Hawaii.

He was my hero. We were the good guys. I never questioned. I was a kid.

It’s its own little world, the military, with its own reality…

Which brings me to the commissary, and back to my friend from grad school.

So my friend, having read my last post, showed up with a bag (Trader Joe’s no less!) bursting with some atrocious (as a joke) and some fabulous (GIRL SCOUT COOKIES, WOOHOO!!!) American food that she and her friend had picked up for me at the commissary. (For you civilians, the commissary is the (usually enormous) grocery store on a military base that lets you pretend you never left Kansas, Dorothy. Your tax dollars are paying to ship Oreo pie crusts all over the world. It’s a morale thing, I guess.)

She’d lugged this giant bag all the way from Brussels on the train, with a kid in tow, and their own luggage. What a doll. It was just like her to do something like this. Such a lovely treat. I hope I get to see her again before another 15 years go by.

Vincent immortalized the treasures on Instagram. This isn’t even close to all of it. But you get the idea. Strangely satisfies and intensifies my nostalgia at the same time.

Thanks honey.

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Flowers for my feet

January 14, 2012 //
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So I was on the rue Saint Paul in the Marais yesterday, a trip to Thanksgiving to get French’s mustard and PopTarts (les PopTarts de Proust, OK??). Also came home with Vlasic Kosher Dills (cornichons don’t cut it; no dill) and a can of vegetarian refried beans…

Dragged Claire along with me, and she was urging me to get something “truly atrocious.” There’s atrocious aplenty at the American grocery stores here; that semi-liquid marshmallow stuff in a jar, for example, and StoveTop stuffing (which I’ve bought twice in 5+ years, that’s right, deal with it). I assured her PopTarts were quite atrocious enough and sent her home with two of them. I await her assessment.

(Aside: They have Celestial Seasonings tea there, including Red Zinger in boxes of 10 teabags for 3.75€. You can get the same thing online for 1.99€/box direct from T-France.com, run by Harold, who is a great guy. Please support him so I can keep getting mass quantities of Red Zinger, without which I cannot survive winter in Paris.)

So we leave Thanksgiving in search of a café with a heated terrace, but just a couple doors down we stop short, drawn like magpies to a shop window bursting with bright cheery girliness in the form of funky, colorful leather clogs, bags and other goodies. I’m so starved for color in Paris, displays like this one make my dopamine or endorphins or serotonin or all of the above spike big time.

So of course we go in. Parisians tend to turn up their noses at clogs, BTW. Their loss. But Claire is not one of those Parisians. I’ve never stopped wearing clogs since the 70s, and Claire and I are from the same generation, so we enjoyed sharing the blast-from-the-past moment. She likes dainty florals à la Liberty of London, while I like loud 70s kitsch and the retro-collagey thing, all of which, as you see, they do:

The objects themselves were delightful, but the story gets even better. You see, they’re handmade by real, live French craftsmen! The shop, which only opened in Paris three months ago, is run by the soft-spoken young Benjamin Renoux (picture below), who is learning the leather/cobbler trade from his father. They have two other shops, in Honfleur and Saint-Malo (both big tourist destinations). Lucky for you, Cuir du Voyageur also sells its delicious products through its website.

True artisans are getting harder and harder to find in France because, of course, they have a tough time competing with the cheap, mass-produced crap imported from other countries (no need to name names).

So this shop is a true gem. Support them if you can!

I’m going to get some clogs (only 79€ for handmade leather shoes, folks, I mean come on…). Probably the ones at the top of the page. Or maybe a pair with the pattern on the bag (red, white, black, pinup, etc.). Or maybe I’ll just get the bag… Or the darker floral clogs in the bottom right corner of the picture just above. Or the red, red rose clogs I saw in the window… (You can see why I did not leave the shop with an actual pair of clogs.) And I’m also going to offer to translate their site into English pro bono.

By all means stop by and see all the other things they have, like the barrettes (you know, the kind with the stick through two holes, straight outta the 70s,) and the irresistible little leather pouches…

Cuir du Voyageur
32, rue Saint Paul
75004 Paris
www.sabots-cuirduvoyageur.com

Cuir du Voyageur Facebook page

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Another vintage Christmas

December 25, 2011 //
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Last year I published a Christmas post featuring a favorite family pic from my childhood and talked about how Christmas is pointless without kids. This year, like every year, I’m really missing mine! He’s 26 now and on the other side of the world, having one of what I hope will be many adventures… (Preferably without any more skydiving. And get one of those shocky things for sharks before you go dive the Barrier Reef next summer. Just in case. Sorry David. At least I didn’t say spear gun.)

I called him today, around 7 pm his time. He’d worked till 4:30, then packed up a cooler of beer, a beach chair, and the copy of Notes from Underground I had Amazon send him for Christmas, and headed for the beach to watch the sun set in paradise.

Here he is at three, not so sure about the big red dude…

And at 26, about to jump out of an airplane over an island in the South Pacific. One day they are men and they are magnificent, these men we made.

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A Christmas gift for you

December 19, 2011 //
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Out of the goodness of his heart, a French tech blogger named Cédric Serret (author of Autour du Web) decided to launch a fundraising campaign last year to encourage bloggers to contribute to the iconic French charity Les Restaurants du Coeur founded by comedian/activist Coluche in 1985. Cédric is running his Les Enfoirés de Blogueurs campaign again this year.

(Les Enfoirés refers to artists and musicians who give benefit concerts for Les Restos du Coeur. Read all about them in English.)

Les Restos du Coeur feeds those who have trouble feeding themselves. The organization has no religious or other agenda. There are more and more people needing this kind of help (+25% in the last three years), and they’re getting younger and younger…

I’ve translated Cédric’s blog post describing his campaign below. The rest is up to you!

The first Enfoirés de Blogueurs campaign took place in 2010. The goal? To support Les Restos du Coeur, a charitable organization that has been helping the less fortunate since 1985.
 Would you like to become an Enfoiré de Blogueur? Read on to find out how…

In 2010, we had 55 donors who raised 1,555€ — enough to pay for 55 daily meals for a month.

We’d like to do even better this year!

Whether you donate 10, 20 or 100€, the important thing is to make a donation.

How to become an Enfoiré de Blogueur

I haven’t changed the rules since last year:

  1. Make a donation through the Restos du Cœoeur site.
  2. When you get your confirmation e-mail, forward it to me at autourduweb@gmail.com or cedric.serret@gmail.com.

Why send me the e-mail? So I can add your donation to the counter and offer you two links.

Two free links

Since the only way I can thank you for your donation is through my blog, you’ll get two links:

Bloggers who participated last year will get another two links this year.

Spread the word

Encourage your readers to participate too. Write a post on your blog, share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+. Display one of the banners in our banner pack. Be creative and spread the word among your network.

And don’t forget that without Coluche, none of this would exist… And only our help can keep it going!

P.S.: I am getting no personal gain from this. I’m just trying to make things happen the only way a blogger can! Your donations are made exclusively through the Restos du Coeœur site and I get NOTHING AT ALL!

Thank you for participating.

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