I've moved!

Hello readers!

I've launched a new version of the blog, which you can find at www.camillemaurice.com.  Head on over there and join me for conversation, foodie musings, and beautiful things!

Much love,

Shani

Parties and joy

The Columbia Museum of Art

After plenty of confusion about whether or not Mr. M was going to be able to join me yesterday evening (new business + new client= mind boggling hours), he was able to break away and accompany me to a cocktail party.  I was so happy that he was able to carve a couple of hours out, even if we did have to take two cars.  Work on the new version of the blog, activities with Jr. (who, just after I purchased a 126 pack of diapers announced that he was ready to use the potty), and other surprises had pushed a lot of things out of my day.  As a result, I didn't post anything here and I never made it to VanJean to pick up the dress I meant to wear last night.

Going to the party on Mr. M's arm certainly made up for the day's muck-ups.  It was a cocktail party for supporters of the Columbia Museum of Art that was at the home of a local writer and professor.  I believe that her backyard may be one of the most serene places in Columbia.  The green of the gardens surrounding the pool immediately relaxed our shoulders, and the view of the lake had people staring out instead of at each other during many conversations.  It was absolutely beautiful!  All pools should overlook a body of water, I think.

Once Mr. M and I parted ways so that he could get back to work, I came home to do a little light reading with the tv on in the background.  At one point a looked up to find Michael J. Fox touring Bhoutan and learning about their government department dedicated to Gross National Happiness.  The head of the department stated that joy is a part of citizenship.  Don't you agree?  We don't put forth our best without joy in our lives, do we?  People these days aren't engaging in enough physical activity, the arts, or just plain undirected joy.  Maybe we need to take a page from Bhoutan's book!

Happy weekend, everyone!  Find your joy this weekend!

Luncheon al fresco in tribute to Julia

Image from aceshowbiz.com

I don't know about y'all, but the last couple of weeks have been a bit  whirly around here.  The cultural and social season is nearing it's end in our town before the many spurts of exodus to the beach until August.  As a result everyone has been packing events and meetings into a pretty short time span, and I haven't been cooking much!

However, I saw an actual preview (versus that teeny tiny montage at the end of most recent Academy Awards) for "Julie & Julia" the other day.  I'm sure I am  one of the last people in the blogosphere to hear about Julie Powell's blog, What Could Happen?, but I headed over and it's quite delicious!

The movie is based on Julia Child's autobiography My Life in France, Powell's blog, and also her memoir, Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.  It's directed by Nora Ephron and  brings together two of my favorite actors, Meryl Steep and Stanley Tucci. "Was The Devil Wears Prada" the last time they were together? I'm officially adding the two of them to my dinner party wish list!  Can you imagine?  Okay, maybe that one would have to be a late lunch, with lots of wine and St. Germain cocktails... I can imagine it going for hours of laughter and sharp conversation!

My menu for this imaginary occasion?  I'm thinking crepes à la Julie et Julia (batter recipe borrowed from www.savvymiss.com) stuffed with spinach, portabello mushrooms, and goat cheese with a bechamel sauce and a side of salad greens.

Crepes à la Julia Child

By Julie Powell

“There’s a rule of thumb that the first time you make crepes it’s going to be an unmitigated disaster,” says Julie Powell, author of Julia & Julie

: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. “But if you keep on keeping on, you’ll eventually get the hang of it.” Don’t get discouraged. Just consider the first (or 12th) crepe as a test-run. 

Crepes

Adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Ingredients

1 cup cold water

1 cup cold milk

4 eggs

½ tsp salt

1 ½ cups flour (scooped and leveled) 

4 tablespoons melted butter

Cooking oil (for greasing pan) 

Tools

Blender

Rubber spatula

Iron skillet or crepe pan

Ladle or ¼ cup measure

Pastry brush

Pate a crepes (crepe batter) 

Put the liquids, eggs and salt into the blender jar. Add the flour, then the butter. Cover and blend at top speed for 1 minute. If bits of flour adhere to sides of jar, dislodge with a rubber scraper and blend for 2 to 3 seconds more. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Note: The batter should be a very light cream, just thick enough to coat a wooden spoon. If, after making your first crepe, it seems too heavy, beat in a bit of water, a spoonful at a time. Your crepe should be about 1/16 inch thick.

To make crepes

Brush the skillet lightly with oil. Set over moderately high heat until the pan is just beginning to smoke. 

Immediately remove from heat and pour a scant ¼ cup of batter into the middle of the pan. Quickly tilt the pan in all directions to run the batter all over the bottom of the pan in a thin film. (Pour any batter that does not adhere to the pan back into your bowl.) 

Return the pan to heat for 60 to 80 seconds. Then jerk and toss pan sharply back and forth and up and down to loosen the crepe. Lift its edges with a spatula. If the underside is a nice light brown, the crepe is ready for turning. 

Turn the crepe by using 2 spatulas; or grasp the edges nearest you in your fingers and sweep it up toward you and over again into the pan in a reverse circle; or toss it over by a flip of the pan.

Brown lightly for about 30 seconds on the other side. As they are done, slide the crepes onto a rack and let cool several minutes before stacking on a plate. Crepes may be kept warm by covering them with a dish and setting them over simmering water or in an oven set to low heat. (Crepes can also be made in advance, frozen and reheated!) 

Grease the skillet again, heat to just smoking, and proceed with the rest of the crepes. 

For the filling, I would cook down an ounce of sliced portabello mushrooms, and also steam a bag of spinach, then do a bechamel sauce:

6 tbsp. unsalted butter

3 tbsp. unbleached all purpose flower, plus one more tbsp. for later

2 2/3 cup whole milk

A dash of nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in large saucepan over medium heat, add flour, and stir for about 3 minutes. Make sure it doesn't brown.  Slowly whisk in milk and simmer while stirring occasionally for about 4 to 5 minutes, thickening the sauce.  Stir in salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Proportionally spoon 1 tablespoon each of spinach, mushrooms, goat cheese, and sauce into the center of each crepe.

Toss salad greens with a whisked together mixture of olive oil, juice of one lemon, and a dash each of kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.

I'm also thinking that the meal would have to be served al fresco with some Ahmad Jamal piping through the outdoor speakers.  Magnifique!

Curling up with Jr. and Raoul

I'm really not in a Cinco de Mayo mood today.  Early this morning I sat at my desk decked out in yoga pants and my favorite plum-colored wrap sweater, listening to the rain outside and Esperanza Spalding on Pandora.  I tried to write about something Cino de Mayo related, I really did.  A great recipe or drink or something.  All I could think about was a cup of tea. You see, for me was a perfect morning for reading and writing and listening and quiet.  I just couldn't throw myself into it, so I whisked Jr. off to look at books and play with trains at Books-A-Million instead.  I think Cinco de Mayo may be a bigger deal in the US than it actually is in Mexico, anyway.  Mr. M enlightened me today with the fact that it is only a regional holiday celebrating what turned out to be a fairly insignificant win against the undefeated-for-50-years French army in the Battle of Puebla.  The day to get really excited about is September 16th, which is Mexico's Independence Day.

I don't know why, but I've always soared on days like this.  It's overcast, with occasional patches of rain here and there.  It makes my struggling garden look like I'm taking better care of it and puts me in a bookish (more so than usual) frame of mind.  When I arrived at the bookstore with my excitedly wiggly toddler, I picked up a few books and magazines and settled in.  One of the last things I thumbed through while Jr. was making sure that Thomas the Tank Engine and all of his Friends had enough water was this month's issue of Veranda magazine.  I came across an advertisement for an auction of pieces by Raoul Dufy*.  I had not heard of the artist, but the equestrian watercolor that caught my eye let me to look him up as soon as I got home.  Apparently he started out working in an Impressionist style before moving on to the Fauvist and Cubist-style paintings that were featured in the advertisement.  It was difficult to find a whole lot of information about him on the internet, but I found some beautiful pieces.  Being a horsey girl at heart I of course fell in love with his race pieces.

Image from www.weinstein.com

Here's one for Cinco de Mayo! See, I'm not totally out of the spirit! It's called "Le concert Mexican".

Image from www.artnet.com

So, that's my day so far.  Please continue to be on the lookout for the blog makeover.  As soon as some key components which are a little late coming together are in place, it will be going live and you will be able to find lots of fun things at the new domain name.  You can continue to see my posts on The Columbia Cool, and I'll also be posting on Bloomacious Café, Bloomacious.com's new social networking site focusing on design, beauty, fashion and more.  I may wait until the new site is live, though.  We'll see.  I can't wait to show you the new look and to share great conversations, foodie musings, and beautiful things with you all!

*This is a French language link, so if your browser has a translator, get ready to use it if your French is as slack as mine.  Just another reminder that I need to get back in the practice of speaking and reading!

Conversation on a room

Last night I was up (way too late) catching up on some reading when I cam across this article about Carlo Molino's garçonniere, or "playboy's lair" in Turin.  The interesting thing about this abode is that he had a room set aside that was to be the room in which he would die.  The idea behind the room was to have his death be like that of the Egyptian pharohs (though his plan didn't quite pan out), which is a suitably odd idea for an odd and perverted man.  But it got me thinking about rooms which serve specific purposes.  There was a post recently over at pve design about fainting rooms... little side rooms with daybeds where ladies in tight corsets could take a breather.  I remember looking at a house with my parents once that had a delightful little fainting room.  It had baby pink silk wallpaper and a marshmallow-like settee that was also covered in silk.  It seemed like a great place to get lost in a book.  I've had friends who had music rooms and conversation rooms, and these also seem like fascinating concepts if you have the space.

If I were to ask one of my fabulous interior designer friends to create a room for a specific purpose, I think it would be a conversation room, based on the concept of one a the house of a childhood friend.  No music, no television, no musical instruments.  Just beautiful furniture arranged so that everyone can see each other.  Fascinating pieces of modern art on the walls:

A large Jonathan Green

Photo from www.aviscafineart.com

A Willie Leftwitch Ceramic

Photo from www.williespots.com

And I would add in some pieces by my friend Anna Redwine, whose pieces show so much thought and depth that they are irresistable.  Stop by her website to see what I mean, she's fantastic!

Photo from www.annaredwine.com

Hmm... the walls would have to be the color of fresh cream and there would have to be interesting objects strewn about from traveling and just finding things while out experiencing life.  

What would you add?  If you could come up with a room created for a specific purpose, what would it be?

A perfect day, with a little decorum

My view from the makeup chair yesterday

Women are extremely complicated.  Our everyday lives are a complete enigma to our male counterparts, even if we wake up next to them everyday.  Yesterday, during the filming of the Pout and VanJean commercial for The Columbia Cool, someone called in to see if she could be squeezed in for a wax.  This prompted a brief discussion amongst us girls about how long it takes for one to have something waxed, a conversation that drove the cameraman to distraction... especially since the language suddenly became vague and codified.

"We can fit her in at 5:30."

"Doesn't the time kind of depend on... you know... what's getting waxed?"

"No, waxing doesn't really take that long."

"Really?  Even if it's..." Adding a long sweeping gesture over the front and center section of the body.

Cameraman starts to blush a little.

"Even... you know."

"Really?"

Of course had the cameraman not been there everyone would have used the normal terms, but with all of us being Southern ladies and most of us not having known the cameraman for more than 20 minutes... not to mention the fact that he was filming, it just didn't seem very couth.  

I don't think that I've experienced men speaking in code about grooming.  Or anything else for that matter.  So when they hear women speaking in such terms it is brow furrowing on two levels: a) because they have no idea how much maintenance actually goes into keeping ourselves from looking more like them; and  b) the fact that we have the need to speak in any kind of code at all.

So anyway, despite slightly embarrassing the sweet cameraman, the shoot was so much fun.  I mean, how grueling can it be to have your makeup done by the Pout experts, then go to VanJean and try on gorgeous clothes while drinking champagne and eating some of the most delicious Brazilian chocolates ever?  Drinking bubbly with The Shop Tart while parading around in the Tracy Reese dress that our First Lady wore on the cover of People magazine is definitely my idea of a great day, don't you think?  But wait, it gets better.  I came home, and Mr. M. had hors d'oeuvres waiting on the patio and he made my favorite cocktail for me:

St. Germain cocktail*

2 shots dry white or sparkling wine

1 1/2 shots St. Germain

2 shots sparkling water or club soda

If the rest of the spring and summer are like this I am so in!

*This recipe is according to the website.  We actually use tonic and don't measure it out... and I always drink it out of my Waterford Powerscourt water goblet instead of a highball, but that's just me!

My small screen debut (send all questions to my little assistant)

Last night at 11 I made my television debut on our local ABC station.  If you recall, last week I went in to Pout Columbia for a Sensual Hands treatment.  I have to say, my hands still look like a babe's.  And I've been really good about putting my Lippman Collection Rich Girl Hand Cream on when I get in the car (it has 25 SPF) so that the sun doesn't peel the skin off of my purty hands.  You can click this link to experience my debut.  They cut my speaking part.  Probably because I have such a strange voice and over expressive face.  Seriously, if I were explaining a trip to the grocery store and you put me on mute, you would think I was trying to warn someone that a cinematic catastrophe was about to turn our town grey and ashy.  I guess that's why I write instead of act.  

Today I'm headed back up to Pout to be a model for a commercial they are shooting with our friends The Columbia Cool.  I'm happily surprised to be headed back for another fun project, especially after last night's debut that highlighted my double chin and wild hair (at least today I'm getting my hair did).  We'll be going back and forth between Pout and Van Jean, so make sure to stop in to Van Jean for The Shop Tart's Champagne Thursday between 4 and 7 today if you are in town, and you might catch me on my pretend road to celebrity status.  Now, I'm off to purchase some big sunglasses and seek a publicist.  Maybe Eloise the Pug is available.