Not long ago, I received a nice comment from someone I don’t personally know, but who reads, or had read, my blog.  She said (paraphrase), “You write about your international travels without being arrogant.”  That was a nice compliment and a good reminder in one, so I am treading on slightly thin ice with this post.  You see, when we are on our way home from Tunis, we usually have to spend the first night in Paris and then catch the direct flight to Seattle the next day.  It just turns out that the flight from Tunis to Paris doesn’t get us there in time to make the connection on the same day.  Rather than stamp my feet about this perceived inconvenience, I have tried to embrace it.  It is nice to be forced to spend a night in Paris now and then, and since we are in that position at this time in our lives, we have tried to find some favorites to enjoy for just one night.  We don’t yet have “that restaurant” with the roast chicken to die for, like Diane Keaton’s Le Grand Colbert in Something’s Gotta Give, but we did discover a nice way to get around just checking into one of the hotels at Charles de Gaulle Airport to wait out our layover.

A year and a half ago, when we were concluding our grand winter driving trip through Western Europe, Allan and I discovered a B & B in a village only about 10 minutes away from the airport.  The village is Mauregard, and it is a little agricultural community that is the living definition of a bedroom community.  There is not one store or restaurant of any kind in this tiny town.  There are just quaint, shuttered houses, the B & B, and a little family cemetery.  As I said, everyone here is resting in one way or another.  This area grows wheat, sugar beets, and rape seed, from which canola oil is milled.  From within just one kilometer of the Paris Ring Road, the soil is famously fertile.  In fact, Paris is situated where it is because of the soil, the river, and the ease of defense.

We like it here because Jerome, the proprietor, has renovated the former barn of this massive, 1,000-1,500 year old estate, which was a sugar beet mill,  in an industrial/historical way.  I think it is really comfortable and interesting, and we love being here.  In summer, we can take a nice walk around the village and the multi-acre grounds.  In the winter, we can sit by a cozy fire and meet some other interesting travelers.   In the mornings, we are awakened by the church bell next door rather than a wake up call from reception.  We feel like we’ve put our feet down in France, if only for an overnight. We do have to rent a cheap car to get here and to a neighboring village for dinner, but it ends up being equal in cost to staying at the airport hotel.

Here are a few photos.  Jerome is just beginning a huge renovation, joining the original mill to this renovated barn that is now the B & B.  It will ultimately have 31 rooms, a small wine bar, and some sort of shuttle to and from the airport, so keep this place in mind.  He only works through booking.com, but it’s easy.

I have made my kebabs!  If the title of this post makes no sense, just go back one  post and read how I thoroughly mixed a finely ground chunk of plastic spatula into my first attempt at this recipe.  This time, I used my food processor instead of my blender, and I left the lid on.  This is highly advised.

Also, do make the mint sauce.  It makes the combination light, spicy, a tiny bit sweet.  Serve it over rice or over salad.  This can be a great summer recipe to keep in your repertoire.

Mint Sauce

From BBC Food Recipes

Bunch of mint

Pinch of salt

4 tablespoons boiling water

1 tablespoon caster sugar

4 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1. Strip off the mint leaves, sprinkle with salt and chop finely.
2. Place into a jar, add the sugar, and pour over the boiling water, stir and leave to cool.
3. Stir in the vinegar and taste.
4. Add more water or vinegar and adjust seasoning to suit your taste

Last weekend I confronted the cheese drawer of my refrigerator.  This is really my stash of souvenirs from the trips I’ve taken lately.  It is full of the rinds of hard cheeses that have gotten so low that I might grate my fingernails if I try to get any more off of them, but that still might have some use.  There were pecorinos from Umbria, a hard sheep’s cheese from the Isle of Pag in Croatia, and some parmigiano from Venice.  I actually held them in my two hands, my body the fulcrum, weighing if I would work with them or throw them out.  I decided to set to work trimming them up and then grated the entire batch in my food processor.  Can you believe I got 6 cups of grated, aged cheese?  It was a treasure, and the exact amount to make a triple batch of these scones to take to a friend’s going away brunch this morning.

Cheese Scones

Adapted from the restaurant Prefab in Wellington, NZ

Makes 6 large or 12 mini scones

• 3 cups flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• Pinch of freshly ground black pepper
• 75 g. butter
• 2 cups grated, hard cheese, plus a little extra for sprinkling
• 1 1/2-2 cups milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Put the flour, baking powder and pepper in a bowl.  Add the butter and rub it in until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Stir in the cheese.

Slowly add the milk to the cheese mix, stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms a dough.  Press the dough out on a floured bench and cut into 6 large or 12 mini scones.  Put on a baking tray then sprinkle with a little extra cheese and bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden.  Serve with the sweet chili jam (recipe follows).

Sweet Chili Jam

Makes 2 small jars

• 250 g ripe tomatoes, cored
• 3 red chilies, deseeded if desired
• 5 cloves garlic
• Thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled
• 15 ml fish sauce
• 150g dark muscovado sugar
• 50 ml red wine vinegar

Put the tomatoes, chilies, garlic, ginger, and fish sauce in a blender and blend to a course puree.

Put the puree, sugar, and vinegar in a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring every few minutes until the sauce resembles a jam consistency.  Pour into sterilized jars and store in the fridge.

Some people like this sort of thing:  a not too sweet cookie that has enough food in it that it could possibly substitute for your mid-morning handful of almonds.  When I read the process for this cookie, I was intrigued.  There is the mixing of baking soda with hot water, the addition of completely raw quinoa, plus it uses all of the dried fruits I have in my pantry:  raisins, dates, apricots, and unsweetened coconut.  I had to see what it was like.  It is a soft cookie.  You can really use any combination of dried fruit you like.  The quinoa softens a little, but not so much.  It remains crunchy, which is nice next to all that chewy fruit.  Finally, it is held together by the buttery golden syrup batter.  I thought they were nice and they packed a little protein, too.

from Ripe Recipes:  A Fresh Batch

Quinoa Fruit Cookies

Makes 35-40

• 1 cup (100 g) quick cook rolled oats
• 1 cup (150 g) whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup (80 g) soft brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup (100 g) quinoa, uncooked
• 1/2 cup (50 g) desiccated coconut
• 1 cup (140 g) raisins
• 2/3 cup (100 g) dried dates, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup (40 g) dried apricots, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 180 g unsalted butter, melted
• 3 tablespoons golden syrup or molasses
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and line 2 baking trays with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine the rolled oats, flour, sugar, spices, uncooked quinoa, coconut, and dried fruit.

In a medium-sized bowl, dissolve the baking soda with 2 tablespoons hot water.  Whisk in the melted butter, the golden syrup, and vanilla.

Pour the golden syrup mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well to combine.  Place heaped tablespoons of the biscuit mixture on to the prepared baking trays.  Allow plenty of room for the biscuits to spread.  Flatten lightly with the back of a fork.

Place in the oven for approximately 10 minutes, or until the cookies are golden.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool a little before transferring them on to a wire rack.

There are things about living in Tunisia that remind me of growing up in the Southwest.  One of those is chilies on a string.  Just south of Tunis is Cap Bon, well known for producing fiery hot chilies that are ground into Tunisian harissa.  Truck farmers will park around town, in the fall, and sell long strings of leathery dried chilies on a rope.  I bought one for the first time this year and it has been wonderful to have a constant supply of chilies ready at a snip in the kitchen.  Bon Appetit had this recipe for Dried Chile Salsa in February and it was just what I needed to make ready use of my chilies for a hot, cooked salsa or an enchilada sauce.  I am thinking of blending up the rest of my chilies before I go home and putting them in my chest freezer for instant use when we get back in August.

Dried Chile Salsa

I come from a family of terrible leavers.  My parents and later, adult siblings, might come for a visit and then on day 2 or 3, we would wake up to just find them gone, long down the road before we were even up.  When I left Durango at 18 and started moving around as a young adult, I carried along some of these patterns.  I think back to boyfriends, college roommates, and neighbors who were pretty significant in my life at a particular time, but I just moved away from without much of a goodbye.

I am pondering why just slipping away felt like what I wanted to do.  I have chided myself before for being self-centered, insular, but I’m not sure that is the heart of it.  I am actually a slightly shy person, so the confrontation and intimacy of goodbyes raises my anxiety a little.  I think, too, that I didn’t believe that I was that significant to these people to warrant a formal parting.  I possibly assumed they would wonder what I was going on about if I made a little farewell speech to them about their importance to me.

While we were working at Singapore  American School, Anton, then only 10,  and I had the opportunity to take a workshop on how to leave well that changed my life.  The presenter, who is famous in international circles, was David Pollock, author of the book Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds.    If you are unfamiliar with the term “third culture kids”, Dr. Pollock developed this description:

A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.

The workshop that day was designed to help children, who are living in a different culture and possibly move frequently, have a strategy for parting.  He called it building a RAFT, which is an acronym for the steps one should go through.  Here is how you build your RAFT for saying goodbye:

Reconciliation- Don’t leave relationships loose-ended.  Say what you need to say to people so you can both go peacefully and not try to avoid one another the rest of your lives.  People who move frequently can delude themselves into thinking they can just leave awkward relationships behind, but they end up taking that emotional baggage with them, which could even affect their abilities to form significant relationships in their next locations.

Affirmation- Tell people that they have been important to you, that you have appreciated the time you have had together, and that you will miss them.  There are two sides to a parting.  There is the one leaving and the one being left behind.  Both sides of the relationship need to know that they have been of significance to the other.

Farewells-  Touch base with all of your favorite places and people, knowing it is your last time.  The final weeks or days before a move can get so hectic with goodbye parties, but you must also fit in time to go to your favorite beach, take that walk you have loved, or eat at a favorite restaurant one final time.

Think about your next move- You have to get excited about where you’re heading toward or you won’t have the momentum to take you there.  Think about ways you can change your life for the better with this move.  Cast off commitments and possessions that aren’t making your life better and only take along what you love and need.  Get excited about all of the new possibilities this move will present.

Getting this strategy has helped me become much better at goodbyes.  I have made this a ritual and I don’t wait until I am entirely leaving a place to practice it.  If someone I work with is moving to another grade level and we won’t be working as a team anymore, I tell him how much I have appreciated our working relationship and friendship and how I hope it will continue.  When I leave the US in the summer, I try to leave behind a string of affirmed relationships, making sure people know that I do miss them and think of them when I’m gone.  I also make a point of noting or experiencing favorite places, restaurants, and events.  One of the most poignant observances for us is the bi-weekly transit of the Alaska-bound ferry, passing right in front of our house as it motors toward the Strait of Georgia.  We count down the ferry passings until it is finally the last one of the summer….

I am trying to help my sons be better at leaving than I was at their ages.  Gabe left Bellingham is a big hurry in December.  He needed time and space to do some thinking about what he wanted to do next, but he left a few unresolved conversations with people.  Some people were really hurt that he didn’t say goodbye or let them know he had changed plans they had together.  He got a couple of scoldings on Facebook and his brother had to make some explanations for him.  He will need to reaffirm those relationships and rebuild a couple of bridges when he gets back and I know he will do that.  He is leaving Tunis on Tuesday and even though he has just been here for 5 months, he has circles of people who love him and need to know he will miss them and that they have been important to him.  One of those groups is his assorted school chums from Habib Bourguiba Arabic school.  If you have ever wondered who goes to study Arabic in a place like Tunis and why, well here they are.  They are just other parents’ children from many different countries who are continuing with some Arabic they began in high school, perhaps have a parent from the Middle East, or see speaking Arabic as a valuable skill to their futures.  The common language amongst them is second quarter Arabic, a limited vocabulary base, for sure.  What is lovely about this group of unlikely friends is that they have stretched themselves to employ any and all language commonalities in order to communicate.  Listening to Gabe on a phone call with one of them is a melange of simple Arabic, a little Italian or Korean, a smattering of French, and some English slang.  They are buds and they will miss Gabe terribly.  He will miss them, too.