The U.S. Embassy in Paris holds a Fourth of July garden party every year but most of those on the guest list are French. I was relieved to learn that last week while on a private tour of the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence—relieved because I no longer feel snubbed for not being invited; I simply feel American. So when someone asked me this morning if I was going to the embassy event I proudly replied, “No, I’m American!”

There were various other Fourth of July parties in Paris, of course, but I didn’t get invited to any of them either. I could have gone to the Franco-American Fourth of July ceremony at Lafayette’s tomb, but I’d been there last year (if you missed the article I wrote about that last year you can read it by clicking here or watch my audio slide-show of the event by clicking here.)

Still, I was feeling a bit red-white-and-bluish (not to be confused with the colors of the French flag which is blue, white, and red) today, so I accepted an invitation to Cupcake Camp.

Cupcake Camp was organized in Bistrot Vivienne, an otherwise pleasant bistro in the 2nd arrondissement that had been cleared of its pleasantness for the occasion, by Cat Beurnier, a cupcake baker who operates Sugar Daze, and Bryan Pirolli, a master’s student and part-time cook (photo left).

I’d hoped to learn more about Cat and Bryan during Cupcake Camp but they were quite the busy camp leaders since the bistro was a-swarm with people trying to make the best out of the 10-euro entrance fee which allowed for all the cupcakes you can eat plus one drink.

From the looks of things this afternoon it appears that if you give a couple hundred Americans (and assorted French friends) a choice of any beverage with their cupcake the majority will pick Diet Coke—or Coke Light as it’s called in France where no one will ever admit that she’s on a diet but where everyone wants to feel light.

“Proceeds from the event,” to quote Cat and Bryan’s press release, “will support a group spearheaded by friends of Cupcake Camp Paris, Rebuilding Haiti Now.” I’m not sure what the group actually does but I must say that only Americans are capable of using cupcakes to raise funds for earthquake victims, just one more thing we can be proud of.

The press release also states that “Cupcake Camp is a tradition that hails from California, created by Ariel Waldman” and that “the cupcake can be considered the US’ defining culinary contribution to the world.”

I know nothing about Ariel Waldman and won’t bother Googling the name because as far as I could tell Cupcake Camp Paris was simply an occasion to bake and eat cupcakes with proceeds going to charity. It didn’t feel like something that would “hail” from anywhere, let alone California, or need to be “created,” let alone by someone named Ariel Waldman!

Nevertheless, today’s Cupcake Camp was a rousing success to judge by the donations/entrance fees, the crowds, the general good cheer, and the quantity of cupcakes and Coke Light consumed.

Still, I’m a bit concerned about that “defining culinary contribution to the world” line. I only tried three cupcakes of the 30 or so varieties that I saw in the boxes, and there may have been many more that I didn’t see, so I can’t judge overall quality from my small sampling; I nevertheless came away with a vision of a dozen young women baking through the night while getting slaphappy on sugar and going heavy on the icing. Some things just weren’t meant to define us abroad.

Even as out-of-the-loop as I am regarding American baking trends, I have naturally been aware for a number of years now of the cupcake fad back home. When in the U.S. I can’t visit anyone with children under 25 without being offered a cupcake. At one party in New Jersey last year, ostensibly a Thanksgiving gathering, the oohs and ahs came not with the presentation of the turkey but with that of the cupcakes. A half-dozen tweens and teens stood around the dessert table waiting to see whose creations the guests would choose, each one smudging the icing of the competition so that hers would stand out as the prettiest. They were so disappointed when I didn’t pick one that I nearly felt unpatriotic for going for the pumpkin pie.

Oddly enough, going to Cupcake Camp on the Fourth of July didn’t make me feel any more patriotic. In fact, I was surprised to see how little effort was made to make the connection between our “defining culinary contribution” and Independence Day.

Entries to the “Most Patriotic Cupcake” competition (above) were so scant that I wondered if Cupcake Camp founder Ariel Waldman might have disallowed the combination of red, white, and blue icing in the camp rules. Either that or blue icing is hard to come by in Paris and no one realized that blueberry season has just begun.

Anyway, as you can see from the photos above, the entries to the various competitions did look quite good, and I’m sure there were some true winners among them.

The judges also looked quite good, as you can see below.

On the right is travel writer Heather Stimmler-Hall. Click here to read an interview with her on France Revisited following the release of her book “Naughty Paris: A Ladies Guide to a Sexy City.”

In the middle is Synie Georgulas, a professional baker, owner of the bakery-tea room Synie’s Cupcakes, whom I’ll be interviewing later this month in further explorations into cupcakes.

On the left is Lindsey Tramuta, whose cupcake credentials include her musings on the blog Lost In Cheeseland.

I should note that the photo above was taking prior to the start of their judging duties, which may explain why they look so happy to be there.

Just kidding, Cat. It was a great event, just lacked a bit of Fourth of July spirit.

Speaking of cats: the Fourth of July, also known as July 4, is also my cat’s birthday. He’s now 11. Happy birthday, Moumoon!

In 1996 I was awarded FrancePress’s Prix d’Excellence for my guide to France published by Fielding Worldwide. I didn’t know about the award until my brother Jon told me. He’d learned from a patient who’d brought to his office a copy of the magazine in which the prize was announced.

Though few others noticed the award, it has nevertheless allowed me ever since to call myself—and better yet to have others call me—an award-winning travel writer.

But 1996 was a long time ago and that Fielding book had a short shelf life, so for a while there being referred to as an award-winning writer felt like I was trying to get mileage from winning honorary mention in a 9th-grade essay contest.

Imagine then my pride and relief when last year I received a second award for travel writing, making me not only a double award-winning writer but a recent award-winning writer.

I am therefore proud, relieved, and honored to show you my new award for travel writing: the New Jersey Native Garden Award.

My first award referred to my work as “informative and entertaining,” which may seem to have more gravity than the “charming and delightful” of this second award. Nevertheless these new adjectives are a welcome addition to my resume.

This latest award refers to the Arbor Day piece that I posted on this page one year ago. You can read it by clicking here.

In reading it you will discover all the hope and pleasure that went into my planting a sprig of silky dogwood last April. The certificate announcing the award was accompanied by a letter from Ginger Young, president of the West Trenton Garden Club, in which she wrote, “I hope the Silky Dogwood is doing well… Mine is about 4’ high now.”

Well, it turns out my sprig was gone before the award arrived.

I’m pretty sure the guy on the lawnmower seen over my shoulder in the photo below was to blame. He claimed he never saw it, which sounds like evidence to me.

That picture was taken yesterday, Arbor Day 2010. Like last year at this time I was in West Trenton, New Jersey visiting family and it was a beautiful spring day. This year I wanted to honor the day while also doing something to halt erosion of the lake on my brother’s property. So, having planted 10 junipers along water’s edge earlier in the week, I planted 10 more yesterday.

While shoveling holes I may or may not have cut the wire to that lamp post beside me in the picture. I can’t tell because no one seems to know where the switch is anymore.

I don’t expect to receive an award for this year’s Arbor Day piece, however I do expect the junipers, at least some of them, to last longer than the silky dogwood. And what does a juniper need with recognition as long as it has a place to grow.

Links:
Arbor Day
West Trenton Garden Club
The Garden Club of New Jersey
The National Garden Clubs, Inc. Nuture the Earth, Plant Natives, Plant Organically Project

The March equinox, aka the vernal or spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, occurred today. That’s the moment when the sun is directly in line with the equator; day and night are of about equal length.

For Earthlings, the March equinox means that spring has begin in the Northern Hemisphere and that autumn has begun in the Southern Hemisphere. For Christians following Western traditions and the Gregorian calendar, the March equinox is also related to Easter since Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon occurring on or after the March equinox.

That’s why some churches, such as Saint Sulpice in Paris, have central, internal sundials of sorts designed to indicate the day of the equinox.

I was touring Saint Sulpice with a group of journalists today when at precisely 1 p.m. (i.e. noon Greenwich Mean Time), we gathered around the altar railing to watch the a spot of sun, coming from a hole in the window of the southern transept (above left in this photo), reach a marker in front of the altar.

(Saint Sulpice, you may recall, is the church that was fictionalized by Dan Brown in the “Da Vinci Code.”)

Saint Sulpice has transparent windows since narrative stained glass was passé when the church was built in the 17th century. The angle of that photo makes it appear that it was a bright out today, but it was in fact mostly cloudy in the early afternoon, though with occasional bursts of sunlight. We could nevertheless make out the oval spot of sun moving across the marker.

The photo below was taken about two minutes after the magic moment. You can make out the spot of sun now just above the marker. The line to either side of the marker is a meridian line.

If our group hadn’t been there (and we didn’t know about the event until we arrived for the tour) I don’t know if anyone would have witnessed the passage of the equinox at this spot this year. An odd thought, but upon leaving the church I could see that there are far more popular things to do in the Saint Sulpice quarter early on a Saturday afternoon. One of them is to queue to go into the Pierre Hermé chocolate and pastry shop across the intersection.

Today is Crepe Day in France as well as in other countries with crepe traditions, such as Belgium and Switzerland. Americans think of it as Groundhog Day. Crepes and groundhogs both mark the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The day’s Catholic name is la Chandeleur in France, in recognition of the candles (chandelles) that are/were brought to the church in remembrance of the day when baby Jesus was first brought to the Temple. Whatever you call it, Feb. 2 is the way the northern hemisphere acknowledges that winter is still here but that we’re all now ready for the countdown to spring.

No, those aren’t crepes in the picture—they’re tourtisseaux, which are traditional Mardi Gras beignets or fritters and so also in the spirit of the season. Tourtisseaux come in different shapes: square, rectangular, diamond-shaped. They’re basically cheap, greasy donuts. They go by other names in other regions, but Vendée and Poitou, the area just south of the westernmost portion of the Loire Valley, call them tourtisseaux.

I took that picture yesterday while in a village in Vendée, a few miles from the coast. Tourtisseaux may have been replaced by crepes in the bakery today, but more likely the bakery has both crepes and tourtisseaux. I’m not sure that the crepes are big sellers though since everyone in Vendée knows how to make a crepe at home but not everyone knows how to make a tourtisseau. Actually, they probably do know (it’s basically the same recipe just fried) but would rather flip a crepe at home than fritter a tourtisseau.

I don’t know what’s in that bakery today because I’m now back in Paris, a town that isn’t big on tourtisseaux and their brother beignets. Parisians prefer more sophisticated sweets. Anyway, there’s better mark-up for the more convivial galette des Rois, the falky pastry tart with a frangipane filling (and a little token or effigy inside), that’s traditionally associated with Epiphany (Jan. 6).

The “growing” season for the galette des Rois traditionally ends by mid-January, but with global warming and the Church’s absence of influence in the pastry industry of late, the season now extends throughout the month of January.

When I returned from Vendée last night I found an envelope in front of my door, which could only mean that my neighbor was planning a party. He’s very nice about warning us neighbors about his parties so that in case we feel like going to sleep before 3am we have time to reserve a room at a hotel for the night. He even includes his phone number just in case we feel like giving it to the police so that they don’t have to drive over.

This time his letter announced “une petite soirée pour fêter la chandeleur,” a little party to celebrate crepe day. I figured that had to be a euphemism for something because I couldn’t understand why someone would have a petite soirée to fete Groundhog Day on a Tuesday and if so why we would need to be warned about it. But I’ve been home all evening and I’ve barely heard a sound, so I imagine that they actually did spend the evening next door flipping crepes.

My friend Didier, whom I was visiting in Vendée, made crepes for his family today. Years ago I asked him for his recipe because before then I was the only person in France who’d never made them. Here it is in French and in English.

Didier’s crêpe recipe

Mélanger :
½ kilo de farine
4 oeufs
1 petite boite de lait concentré non sucré
1 litre de lait frais
Extrait de concentré de vanille
Un peu de huile (2 cuillères à soupe)
1 verre de bière

Laisser reposer 2-3 heures en dehors du frigo. Il est ensuite possible de mettre le mélange au frigo.

Faire les crêpes.

Mix together:
1 lb of flour
4 eggs
1 small can of (unsweetened) evaporated milk
1 quart of whole milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 cup of beer

Allow to rest for 2-3 hours out of the refrigerator. Mixture may then be placed in the refrigerator or used immediately.

Make crepes. (Circumflex optional if you don’t have one handy)

The Rance River separates the old port town of Saint Malo with the 19th century seaside resort of Dinard. Dinard remains a luxury-minded town, the kind of place where one is invited, as Henri and I were, to a party whose bilingual invitation reads: “Dress code: smart casual – blue and white of course!” on the English side and “Tenue marine de rigueur: en bleu et blanc naturellement!” on the French side.

My brother Jon would have loved Dinard. He liked anything with the word resort in it: beach resort, ski resort, island resort, tennis resort. Wearing “smart casual” or “resort casual” came natural to him. After he died in a plane accident in 2006 my three other brothers and I inherited his clothes. They either didn’t fit the others or they weren’t interested, so I brought some back to Paris.

I rarely wear any of them but when I received the invitation to the party in Dinard I immediately remembered they were in my closet.

In this photo I am dressed in Jon’s clothes in Dinard, the sweater studiously thrown over my shoulder as it should be in such places. The photo doesn’t show my (brother’s) blue loafers.

The invitation called for blue and white not only because those are the colors of seafarers but because those are also the colors of the Virgin in the grotto along the Promenade du Clair de Lune at Dinard, which is where I am posing. This Virgin echoes the highly celebrated one in Lourdes, which is where one of the hosts of the party is from.

To me, the strangest thing about this photo is that I find that I’m not only wearing Jon’s clothes but also his smile. He would have loved having his picture taken on his way to a party in Dinard.

The couple hosting the party held a brunch beginning at noon the following day, which required another set of smart blue and white clothes. The invitation was actually unclear as to whether blue and white was de rigueur for the entire weekend or just for Saturday evening, so while some guests treated the Sunday brunch as an afterthought others kept up appearances.

I don’t often shop with “smart casual – blue and white of course!” in mind, and to be honest I don’t often shop at all, so for Sunday brunch I looked for my mother for inspiration.

At my age you might think it would be embarrassing to admit that my mother sometimes dresses me, but in my family we’re never too old to be given clothes by our mother. For nearly 55 years—for 9 children, then 28 grandchildren, and now 2 great-grandchildren—she has had an uncanny ability to spot a shirt or hat or a pair of pants from yards away and know exactly who it will fit and who might wear it. And if she gets it wrong she simply gives it to someone else.

Before going to the Sunday brunch, I had Henri take this photo so as show my mother that I finally found the occasion to wear that shirt and that hat she gave me last time I visited. You need to imagine the white short and the sandals—I’m sure my mother can.

Travel, as I like to say, isn’t just about where you’re going, it’s also about where you come from. I now add that it’s also about where your clothes come from.

I went to Philadelphia last week to attend, along with about 55 other guests, the friendly Francophile ceremony by which Joanne Silver received the decoration of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques, the most prestigious honor a scholar or academician can receive from the French Government. Adding further weight to the decoration is the fact that the French ambassador to the United States, Pierre Vimont, in person came to Philadelphia to pin the palms on Joanne.

The Palmes académiques, established in 1808 by Napoléon Bonaparte, recognizes those who have advanced the cause of French culture, education, and the arts and made active contribution to the expansion of French culture throughout the world.

Joanne fit the bill for her years of teaching French, her involvement with the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) and other Franco-American organizations, and her work as publisher of Francophile books, in French and in English, at Beach Lloyd Publishers, whose mission is “to recognize the strong historical and ideological ties that bind France and the United States, and to view those ideals globally.”

Before the ceremony began, former Honorary Consul of France to Philadelphia Daniele Thomas Easton introduced me and France Revisited to Ambassador Vimont. I didn’t dare ask the ambassador to sign up for the France Revisited Newsletter seeing as half my friends have yet to do so, but the three of us had a nice chat about this site nonetheless.

Below is a photo, left to right, of me, the ambassador and the former honorary consul. Michael E. Scullin, current Honorary Consul of France to Philadelphia, was caught in the photo to the right. (Click on all photos to enlarge).

Below is a photo of Ambassador Vimont pinning the palms on Joanne’s lapel, after which he gave her the traditional kiss on each check that seals the deal.

Joanne then posed for the official photograph with Ambassador Vilmont, left, and Honorary Consul Michael E. Scullin, right.

Below Joanne proudly displays her palms, freshly pinned.

Also in attendance among the Francophile luminaries of Philadelphia and illustrious guests from the U.S. Canada, and France were some of the members of the Board of the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie. Among them, left to right in the photo below, were Alliance Board Members Delphine Lawrence (Secretary), Martine Chauvet (Executive Director), Joanne Silver, Lynn H. Miller (who has contributed an article about Frenchtown, N.J. to France Revisited), and Diana Regan (President).

Bravo et félicitations, Joanne!

I don’t get much of a chance to dig into the soil in Paris. In fact, there are few places in the City of Light where one can even walk on the grass. Not that I was much of a gardener before moving to Paris, but I do recognize the pleasure, at least in theory, of crouching in the soil, digging, weeding, and watching things flower, grow, take form. My planting thumb, though rarely exercised, turns out to be inadvertently green to judge from the plants on the small balcony of my apartment in Paris; they survive no matter how long I’ve been gone, even though the balcony above mine prevents them from receiving much rainfall.

I’ve been in the U.S. for three weeks now taking an East-Coast road-trip, doing some consulting, having meetings, and seeing friends and family. When I get back to Paris next week I’m sure to find my plants looking dry and forlorn but alive and willing to be nursed back to health through the spring. The secret to raising plants, I’ve found, is to not get too attached to them.

So I’m trying not to get too emotionally involved with the silky dogwood that I planted in my brother’s yard in New Jersey on Arbor Day, April 24, but I confess that I’ve been checking on it several times a day and will probably inquire about it often when I return to Paris. I hope that one day it will take its place among the other hearty blooming trees in the yard such as the pear tree below.

That’s my mother in the photo above. Proud as she was to pose with it on Arbor Day, she’s actually quite the fatalist when it comes to new plantings. No sooner had she taken the picture of me (below) with the newly planted dogwood then she told me that between the deer and the lawnmower I shouldn’t get too attached.

What I especially like about this sprig of a dogwood (it’s the foot-high twig the shovel in case you don’t see it) is that I planted it on Arbor Day. You see, one of the great pleasures of travel is to hit upon a local holiday, even—or perhaps especially—when you’ve simply traveled back to your old backyard. And so it was with me and Arbor Day in West Trenton, New Jersey.

Truth be told, I wasn’t aware that it was Arbor Day until I went to the Ewing Public Library and was happy-arbor-dayed at the entrance by two kindly women from the West Trenton Garden Club who were handing out the sprigs of silky dogwood (cornus amomum). They seemed to be the only people in the area who knew it was Arbor Day. For the rest of the day I went around trying to spread the word, but few people believed me. Most assumed that I meant Earth Day, which was two days before, while one person suggested that I was confusing Earth Day with some French holiday. Another insisted that Earth Day had actually replaced Arbor Day since he couldn’t recall anyone mentioning Arbor Day after he left elementary school.

Arbor Day is actually a great unsung and original American holiday. It is a rarity in that it promotes neither politics, nor religion, nor nationalism, nor veterans, nor an ethnic group, nor much in the way of commerce, the combination of which explains why it passes so unnoticed. No one outside of garden clubs makes an effort to claim it—or recuperate it, as the French would say—as their own because there would be little immediate advantage in doing so.

Arbor Day is also a rarity on the American calendar in that it originated on neither the East Coast nor the West Coast but smack in the middle, in Nebraska, where civic-minded tree-lover J. Sterling Morton organized the first Arbor Day in April 1872. Within a decade it had spread to other states, with school districts often being the local purveyors of the greening of America. National Arbor Day is now celebrated the last Friday in April, though some states prefer the last Monday, others, particularly in the southeast, celebrate it earlier in the year in keeping with the arrival of prime tree-planting season to the region, and a few northern border states opt for May.

Arbor Day is indeed now overwhelmed by Earth Day. Despite the latter’s laudable goal of placing concern and care for the environment on our national agenda, there was something suspicious about Earth Day from the start since it was intended to teach and demonstrate rather than truly celebrate and honor.

I was in 6th grade when the first Earth Day was declared in 1970. As the school bus was approaching the school that April 22 morning there was a tremendous traffic jam since some progressive-minded older students had apparently decided that we should all get out of the bus and walk the remaining half-mile to school. What I remember of the first Earth Day is therefore cars and buses idling for an hour or two and a long walk past a hundred exhaust pipes. What I remember of last week’s Earth Day is radio and television commercials appealing for Earth-loving consumers to drive out to the mall to buy stuff that will biodegrade sometime before North Korean uranium rods.

Earth Day is a fine idea both nationally and internationally, and some day a traveler from Mars will get the kind of thrill of traveling to our planet for Earth Day that travelers now get by going to Holland for the Queen’s Birthday (April 30). For the time being, though, Earth Day isn’t pagan enough to have much cultural interest and it’s too vague to offer anything but an occasion for national and international corporations trying to outgreen each other. Arbor Day, on the other hand, means the planting of and caring for trees, and so has little place in the economy but lots of place in the backyard or the local park.

Faithful readers may want to check back in 5 or 10 years to see how my silky dogwood is doing, that is if it manages to escape the dual threat of the deer and the lawnmower.

In the meantime, put Arbor Day 2010 on your calendar and don’t believe the Earth Day commercials.

For more about Arbor Day and state by state dates see www.arborday.org.

The other day I invited my mother to come with me to visit the Philadelphia Art Museum and the city’s Rodin Museum. She was ironing at the time, preparing her bags for winter in Florida.

“How much do those museums cost these days?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m the press.”
“Why are you depressed?” she asked.

I said, “I’m THE press.”
She said, “That’s not good, you shouldn’t be depressed.”
“THE… PRESS.”

My mother set aside her iron.
“Is it because of your website?” she said. “You just have get word out that it’s there. When people see it they’re sure to love it.”

“You don’t understand. I’m the press. I’m a travel writer.”
“I know, and you’re very good at it. So it shouldn’t get you down.”
“I’m THE… PRESS.”
“By why? Is it because no one’s traveling to France due to the bad economy. You just have to ride it out and keep doing what you enjoy. So many people would love to have your freedom.”

“I’m still THE… PRESS.”
“Well you shouldn’t be! You have so much going for you. Tell me what’s wrong.”

This continued for several minutes until I showed my mother my press pass.

“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “You would tell me if you were really depressed though, wouldn’t you?”

I’m not so sure now. Still, another year has come to an end and I don’t have any plans for New Year’s Eve. So I think I’ll just stay at home and be the press.

For the January issue of France Revisited I’m preparing a series of articles about French and Francophile Philadelpia and surroundings that I’m working on while in the area this month. Reading and hearing about my work may make it appear as though I’m entirely consumed by thoughts of France and Francophilia, yet I actually have what is commonly called a life. A part of that life is family and New Jersey, where I grew up. So when not blowing my budget on testing French and French-leaning restaurants in the area, revisiting art museums, and making appointments with Francophile Philadelphians, I’ve been enjoying those other and sometimes finer things in life, beginning with three, full-blown, non-leftover Thanksgiving meals.

First there was the one with family. Here’s me with the turkey:

And here are my mother (left), my sister who hosted the party (right), and some nieces and a nephew in between.

The following day good friends of the family had their annual post-Thanksgiving feast for, well, good friends. Here’s a picture of the spread:

The third Thanksgiving came two days later with a now-annual feast at the home of a friend from high school. I have no pictures of it because I arrived after everyone had dug into the food, so you’ll have to imagine the remains of a wonderfully varied Thanksgiving buffet for about 20 people, decorated cupcakes, a football game on TV, and someone challenging me to a game of ping-pong.

No, we aren’t in Paris anymore.