However you like it it’s here.

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Sing along with it:

Hum along with it:

Snap your fingers to it:

Cry yourself a River Seine of it:

Lift a glass and take a long draw of it:

Get in the mood of it:

Take it smooth:

Croon with it:

Stroll with it along the boulevard:

However you like your April in Paris it’s here.
How DO you like your April in Paris?

The post April in Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

By Janet Duignan

I didn’t think I would miss the snow last winter. Usually a sun lover, the mild weather here in the Dordogne was particularly disappointing because I was on the lookout for the return of a very special visitor to our garden from the previous year.

Since arriving in France nine years ago, I have thoroughly enjoyed the variety of species of birds that have visited us. During the unseasonable week of snow the previous February, it was obvious that the wild birds were suffering, especially those that were not adapted to take advantage of the variety of foods we left on the feeders. As the snow melted, a patch of grass appeared in our south-facing garden. And I was astonished to find, when I looked out of my window one cold morning, a large bird with an enormous beak pecking through the thawed but still hard ground for worms. It was a woodcock.

Not only had I never seen one before but the bird itself must have been driven to desperation to come out of the woods that give it its name and forage around in broad daylight as they usually feed in the evenings or at night and are carefully camouflaged to make them very hard to see in leaf matter. I kept quite still in order to spy on this unusual visitor; they have large eyes placed high on the sides of their heads giving them 360° vision. The beak is twice as long as their head, which is why the French name for the bird is bécasse or “big beak.” They are a bit bigger than wood pigeons and sound like a frog when they call, croaking followed by a sneeze.

Unlike some of my French neighbors who like to hunt, I knew that I would rather find out more about this beautiful bird than pick up a gun and shoot it for the pot. I can’t even keep chickens because, just as the Red Queen told Alice when she went through the looking glass, “It isn’t etiquette to cut anyone you’ve been introduced to.” The hunters use dogs specially trained for this type of game, with bells on their collars; they find and point to the birds before flushing them out. The French Woodcock Society (Club National des Bécassiers) specify a bag limit of 3 birds per hunter per day to a total of 50 per year. Its motto is “Hunt as much as possible while killing as few as possible” (Chasser le plus possible en tuant le moins possible).

Woodcocks have been hunted for food for centuries, with recipes appearing in medieval times. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame recreated a Ten Bird Roast for a medieval-themed feast. He starts with turkey and stuffs it with goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and, last but not least, woodcock.

Elizabeth Raffald, when writing The Experienced English Housekeeper in 1769, included a recipe for A Yorkshire Goose Pie which also involved a turkey, two ducks and six woodcocks. No bag limit in those days, then.

At least there is no wastage when eating Woodcock as almost every part of the bird can be eaten, except for the gizzard, eyes, beak and feathers. It seems that they empty their bowels before flying, which means the bird can be roasted with the intestines still inside. When removed and added to the cooking juices with a small glass of Armagnac, a dash of lemon juice and seasoning and then flambéed, the resulting sauce was said to be so delicious that, in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, published posthumously in 1873, Alexandre Dumas Père felt he had to write a warning. He said that, when serving a ragoût of roast woodcock, in a recipe called salmis de becassins des bernardins, it was essential to provide forks to prevent the guests devouring their sauce-covered fingers.

Another delicacy was the head split open in order to eat the brains.

Guy de Maupassant in his 1887 book of short stories Contes de la Bécasse (Woodcock Tales) tells of a dinner party game played with the head of a woodcock pinned to the cork of a good bottle of wine (once drunk). The head is spun around, a bit like Spin the Bottle, until it stops and the woodcock’s bill points to one of the diners, who is announced the winner. The prize is the privilege of eating all of the woodcock heads but at the cost of having to tell a story to the others while they sit by the fire smoking cigars and drinking brandy. The trick, as a good host, was to be careful how many good bottles of wine were served before getting to the game, to ensure the winner’s tongue was loosed enough to make him capable of telling a good story, without being too drunk.

Mordorée is another name for woodcock in French, so perhaps the ideal wine for these occasions would be the Châteauneuf-du-Pape “La Plume du Peintre,” an expensive special reserve with a 16.3% alcohol content from the Domaine de la Mordorée. Wine Advocate (N° 173, Oct. 2007) described it as a limited cuvée which “is meant to age for 40-50 years. From a specific site in one of the appellation’s most hallowed sectors (La Crau), this wine’s level of concentration, richness, extract, and harmony are almost beyond comprehension. With beautifully integrated acidity, tannin, and alcohol, it is a monster wine the likes of which are rarely seen today.”

La Plume du Peintre, the painter’s feather, is in fact the name of the little pin feathers. Only two of these are found on each Woodcock, on the leading edge of each wing. Shaped like the head of a spear, they are so fine that they are used by artists for very delicate work, for example by Renaissance painters to paint angels’ hair and Victorian artists who specialized in miniatures. Perhaps when Claude Monet painted his Partridge and Woodcock in 1872 he used the Plume du Peintre for the fiddly bits.

The impression I am left with, after researching the woodcock through history, literature, cuisine and art, is that I am just looking forward to the next snowy winter and the hope that I might once again see an unexpected visitor rummaging for worms in a small patch of thawed grass.

© 2014, Janet Duignan

Janet Duignan is a British writer and journalist living in Dordogne

The post In Dordogne: A Winter’s Woodcock Tale appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Tourists have been doing it for some time already, other than the self-censoring “Parisians don’t … so I don’t” crowd.

But this year another “don’t” bites the dust.

“Parisians don’t wear sneakers” fell by the wayside in the 90s.

“Parisians don’t eat hamburgers” got gobbled up in the 2000s.

The demise of “In Paris men don’t wear shorts” is now official.

The signs were already here in the dead of winter as men of all ages set about jogging in tights. Men’s running tights, like shorts, are nothing new on the market but rarely had Parisian men dared such public snugness off of the beach. I figured that if men can run around in tights then it’s no daring leap to wearing shorts as the weather warms, even though warmth has been a frustratingly relative term thus far this year.

And so it has come to pass, weather permitting, with men being spotted wearing knee-length cargo shorts, straight shorts showing a flash of knee, flappy shorts showing a glimpse of thigh and the occasional Bermuda, and I’ve even seen some 70s style jean cut-offs on the cobblestone catwalks of my quarter.

The arrival of shorts will now, one hopes, lead to the demise of that most unfortunate article of recent men’s fashion, the pedal pusher, the capris, le pantacourt, those sockless little-boy knickers that found their way into the closets of men and that for several years now have provided proof that les parisiens take their fashion clues not from other men but from les parisiennes. Adieu, then, as pedal pushers find their rightful place in the garbage bin of recent fashionography.

And a hearty and long overdue bienvenue to shorts on men in Paris.

As to that old favorite, “Why do they all smoke?” that’s still got wind in its sails.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Parisians Show Knee: Paris Fashion Police No Longer Forbid Men’s Shorts appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

If it were to be sunny in Paris on March 20, which it won’t be, what significant event could you witness around the corner from this wall?

And the correct answer, drum roll, is:

A circle of sunlight through a hole in the wall of the southern transept of Saint Sulpice hits a marker on the floor to indicate that the March (or vernal or spring) Equinox has arrived.

Kudos, congratulations, glory and a kiss on both cheeks to those who knew it.

Click here for some images from inside Saint Sulpice and an explanation of why the Church wished to “mark” the date of the March equinox.

Enjoy the spring!

The post It’s Official: Springtime Comes to Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Fish-spawn addicts already know the drill. Sturgeon season ends in March and the last fish in the net provide deliciously low-salt caviar with a distinctive “woodsy freshness” on the palate. Astara, a company that usually deals exclusively with restaurants, is reaching out to the public, but only through June.

Yes, like the Franklin Mint, this is a limited edition offer. If you lust for a tin of seasonal proto-sturgeon, you need to hit three lucky stores. Only La Grande Epicerie at the Bon Marché, the Galéries Gourmandes at the Palais de Congrès (Porte Maillot) and the Ferme d’Hugo (Place Victor Hugo) will stock Astara’s “Sélection de Printemps” from March 21 to June 30, 2013. Prices vary from 13 € for 10 grams (barely a lick and a promise) to 162 € (125 grams) … a major investment that builds a Really Big Blini.

Of course, it’s best to have seasonal caviar served an iced platter.  When shoppers tire of browsing through the Paule K and Prada racks at Printemps, they can make their way to the sixth floor brasserie where Astara has installed an ephemeral FishBar through April 13.

It’s already serving luscious salmon salads and two plush variations of tarama (pink and white), but remember that the “Sélection de Printemps” caviar (served with a flute of Champagne) won’t light up the menu until March 21.

Printemps, 64, bd Haussmann, 9th arr. Metro Havre Caumartin. Closed Sunday.

The post Little Black Easter Eggs: Spring Caviar Comes to Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

For an hour or two we can fool ourselves into believing that we’ve gained an hour of Saturday night partying or of Sunday morning leisure or of weekend sleep. But before long we realize that turning back the clocks forces us to face up to our own dwindling time.

Evening is already night. Soon, late afternoon will be evening. It’s no wonder that the Catholic tradition in France is to go to the cemetery on November 1 to place chrysanthemums on the tombs of loved ones, as here at Pere Lachaise.

Oh, it’s a straight path to the end alright.

The only beliefs worth holding onto are that the seasons are cyclical and that the earth will continue to rotate round the sun and that before we know it the days will be getting longer and come spring we’ll have the afternoon sky back, followed by daylight in evening. Then night will simply be night again, not day as well.

In the meantime, let’s just have a good cry for the end of daylight saving time, our fair-weather friend.

Let’s contemplate our loss…

and let go of those things we can’t change…

and hold onto to sweet memories…

and accept that for the next few months we’ll still be looking out the window from our desk in the afternoon…

when night falls.

– Photos and text © 2011, Gary Lee Kraut.

The post The Harsh Reality of the End of Daylight Saving Time appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

It was a Monday, the day the palace is closed to the public, so relatively few people visit the gardens that day, even though they remain open. Even fewer visit on a cold misty Monday in February.

The alleys were empty. The fountains were silent. There trees were reflected in the still algal water in the basins.

That and more can be seen in the audio slide-show below.

The post The Gardens of Versailles in Winter appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

The post Joy and reminiscence in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in November appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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“April in Paris” has a particularly American ring to it. So for those Americans unable to get to Paris this month because of airport closings due to the erupting volcano in Iceland, Va-nu-pieds, the barefoot photographer went out on a photo shoot with Paris’s Ladies Liberty in a France Revisited exclusive.

Here’s Lady Liberty just beyond the Eiffel Tower on Ile aux Cygnes.

Here’s Lady Liberty in the Luxembourg Garden.

The post Va-nu-pieds: April in Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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It’s springtime in Paris.
A line in Sofia Coppola’s “Lost In Translation,” which I saw again recently, goes like this:
“I tried taking pictures, but they were so mediocre. I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, horses… taking dumb pictures of your feet.”
Should I take that personally.

C’est le printemps à Paris.
Une réplique de “Lost in translation” de Sofia Coppola, revu récemment :
« I tried taking pictures, but they were so mediocre. I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, horses… taking dumb pictures of your feet. »
Dois-je le prendre personnellement ?

The post Va-nu-pieds: Springtime in Paris (Printemps) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.