I harvested saffron today. It smells utterly, utterly, utterly divine... sweeter than the dried saffron threads that I've bought in the past and just slightly, intoxicatingly spicy. It's not the blunt-instrument musclemen version of spices that I love when I crave strong flavours, but something much more worthy of Wordsworth:

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Last night I met some German professors who are visiting Melbourne Uni's School of Engineering. It turned out that one of them wasn't completely at ease speaking German - he had received all his engineering training in Russia. When I asked him what had brought him to Germany he looked at me and said, "Well, I'm from the GDR. I was educated in ( Read more... )

Guess what game Honeybee and her friends were playing in the sandpit at school today? They made a company! The company produces fine sand, made by sifting clumped-up blobs of sand, and they 'sell' the fine sifted sand in exchange for more pieced of clumped-up sand. They also have a division making wet sand and another mixing sand and gravel. They ( Read more... )

Honeybee jokingly asked me whether there would be heart shaped macarons for Valentine's day. I told her that it would be too difficult to make them in a heart shape. Little did I know! These are from Brunetti's and are remarkably good :D

I chose chocolate, passionfruit and "those heart shaped ones".


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So, we rented an apartment for the two weeks that we are in Paris. In the course of day to day events we met an American woman living here with her family who also works in the Paris real estate industry. We chat about apartments here, tenancy  laws, our work ... and it turns out that we have dealt with her father in America who has just sold his ( Read more... )

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These postcards came with our dinner on Wednesday evening. The number of our duck ("Le numero de votre canard:") was 1,095,270.

More on this remarkable meal tomorrow, tired from walking all day! - but I had to share the card :D


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Remember the wasabi and green tea Kit Kats from Japan? In Paris we found Hazelnut Kit Kats. I love regional marketing!


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Time is racing along so if I don't post some of these pictures they will get swept up in other events.

Lunch on December 31st was a return visit to Le Jules Verne, way up high (125m high!) in the Eiffel Tower. It meant that we could toast all our friends and family in Australia at 2pm when the 'real' New Year started, and then sit at our apartment ( Read more... )

I love this; it's at the Paris Maritime Museum, which is in itself a completely underrated treasure.


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