Organizing Ideas

How do you develop your ideas? Instead of a few extra sheets of paper in my filofax for those fleeting moments when ideas fly by and risk disappearing if they aren't plucked from the air, I made sure a while back to begin choosing sacs, or purses that are large enough to carry a clipboard.

You would be surprised at how stable and well balanced handwriting or even designs, plot diagrams, character sketches, landscapes, dishes, moments, wisps of perfumed steam rising from Italian meringue or flow charts can seem when sturdied by a clipboard on a moving bus, in the metro, while walking, riding, or sitting in a café among the people. These ideas can be systematically captured and squeezed from the smallest of moments if you get into the habit.

When affixed to a clipboard, a piece of paper can become the calm center of a vortex of all manner of observable movement and activity, inside the mind and out. It is then preserved as an object on its own, to be placed within the order chosen in the times when I am in that frame of mind for imposing order. In addition to free form feuilles, I have pads of many colors and special sheets with pre-set blanks for important information that I use for telephone conversations. I save these pages in sleeves in different binders once my inner administrator has deemed them significant.

I simply adore the sound of a good ball point scratching the single slice of paper and clicking on the board as I bring it down again to begin another word. Black flair pens make voluptuous lines. I love pencils just as well. Sharpened to a pinpoint for precise expression, ready to scratch the surface of anything, or rounded soft lead worn from the hum of flowing ideas, broad strokes in patterns and shapes filling a concept's shadow and light.

When ideas for projects are complete, having been successfully researched - when lists of recipes have been amassed, photographs pondered, telephone calls made, visits to pinpointed locations complete and thoughts put down, the varied singular handwritten sheets are already in their sleeves. I can flip over one and past the next as though I am separate from them, and view them with a different eye.

The sheets are insulated from me, from outside observers, my moods, the weather, coffee rings, events, gusts of wind and cleaning frenzies. I have the pleasure of organizing them, a luxury for me. Once they are clipped into the binders, I can let them go completely because I know they are safe there. I am ready to work, free from distraction, with the ability to use them as reference when needed.

The Meaning is the Message

I got a letter yesterday. Sometimes you get a card or a letter through the post and it hits you more than any amount of electronically transmitted information or something that comes through cables or tubes can, even if the message starts with the weather and ends with "well, I have to go". Why is that? Communication by way of manual work, articulated directly into individual script, passed from hand to hand, and delivered physically to your post box always means something more. It is more than the message. It seems like a luxury to have a letter written out like these kinds of letters just naturally are. Why is getting a letter from a friend such a wonderful thing?


I think about my weekly phone calls to my mother and I know I could be doing better. There was a time when long distance calls from wintery New York to Nashville were prohibitively expensive, and instead of being an obstacle to communication, it was the golden age of the letter. On my mother's side of the family they preferred to write. My uncle, who was a fiction writer by vocation and trade and lived in Humboldt, used to warm up daily with letters that he would pound out on a typewriter from edge to edge and top to bottom on a cream colored sheet of cotton rag paper to his sister, my mother, before he got started on his manuscripts. He was a person who was capable of the most evocative and believable exaggerations we ever read. It was rare that a day would go by without my mother receiving a letter crowded full of Jesse or a pen written missive centered in perfect English, like prose, on small personalized stationery from her mother 'Cille.


Making soup is definitely like writing a letter. You begin with the rudimentary necessities for it and like filling a piece of stationery with some local news and bit of your own personality, you let the flavors flow from the season into a hand written note. In the best letter writing style, you always try and tie it up somehow. Your signature spice mix always comes into play, as well as homage to themes that float along in the haze around you as you bustle though your day. Your blank sheet of paper is the mixed stock you've prepared at the beginning of the week, sometimes with game in season but mostly with the very basic of parts, a couple of roots that feel right to you, and whatever herbs seem to be plentiful and right. The story that flows from your sharpened pencil or favorite pen is the personality that the soup takes on with what vegetables and meats, sometimes cheeses or even wines that are available to you at the time. The more thoroughly you live, the better your soup will taste.


Loïc has been traveling this week and I have been out eating in the restaurants. The best kind of restaurant is the one where you can get a feel of the handwriting of the cook. On very rare occasions I'll encounter calligraphy or a beautifully worked captivating story, poetry maybe. These are almost never a surprise because people who have found their vocation in this kind of expression rarely go unrecognized. But it is really enough and a great pleasure to get the hand scripted message of a cook in an unexpected place, a message being transmitted, in a dish when I am out on in the neighborhood on a weeknight. Sometimes I want a postcard from a foreign land. Wherever I go, I ask for an honest letter from the cook about what’s the news that day. My only requirement is that it be written by hand. I think getting that letter reminded me and made me happy to have had the chance to explore this week.

Caramelized leeks and scallops are a natural compliment.

Life is a Bowl of Scorpions

Long before I ever imagined that I would come back to Europe and to Lyon to make my life in here, I was going through a strangely shiny and buffed rough spot in my 20-something life. I had the perfect job, complete with 1990s double breasted power suits and ridiculously high heels. My straight blond tresses were cut in a severe bob for which I took special trips to Hong Kong to have shaped by an expensive stylist every few weeks. I worked for a Swiss commodities trading company in Beijing, and worked very hard, traveling to Chinese ports and smelters, hard bargaining with the Chinese. I considered myself very lucky and secretly wondered when the other shoe would drop. Inside, I was a bit cautious and maybe secretly a bit too serious about life.

One day, much to the dismay and perhaps the amusement of my colleagues and tragically bored expat friends, I found myself involved with a Chinese rock star with a tattoo in the middle of his forehead. Nights out, he paraded me about the capital city like a trophy and treated me like a rag doll. He was sugar daddy to an adoring fan/girlfriend in every Asian port, many of which circulated through Beijing to visit him. He just couldn't say no. He had no future and a sordid past. He was clearly insane.

On our weekends, we did unheard of things like float down Beijing's waste canals in a rubber boat together. We hung out at the public pool near Tian Tan park. We rode horses and set off firecrackers like kids. We drank warm sake and play-acted various bizarre fictitious scenarios with a group of dramatic Chinese friends. He lived very dangerously. Sometimes these days I wonder if he is still alive.

Anyway, he was a good companion because he was everything I was afraid to be. He forced me to fully live at that time. He was the one who shocked me into reality and dragged me out of the perfectly buffed shell I was in.

He took me to the insect restaurant and ordered a bowl of scorpions. Without fanfare, he muscled me into doing what I really wanted to do anyway - to eat them. It was very strange, my fear, because I was never a person to turn down any opportunity to try a new kind of food. My psyche secretly swelled with the desire to do something like that when I heard the stories by my male colleagues who drank snake blood with customers and the likes. But there it was, this bowl of fried dark red scorpions, claws flaring, tails and stingers poised, waiting before me with a neatly placed pair of chopsticks. I felt myself vacillating between fear and exhilaration.

The Chinese rock star with the tattoo in the middle of his forehead had the perfect instinct for just how far I would go. He knew I would eat one to meet his challenge, and then another. They tasted delicious. Not unlike fried soybeans. They'd been judiciously salted and I enjoyed every bite for so many reasons.

A whole new world opened to me in constantly being challenged in his way. He was my best friend at the time. When I left Beijing, he cried and I just stared at him with the belief he was play-acting in my honor. He was never the one to do what was expected or correct, but at the same time I was thankful he mustered up some tears for me. I could not for the life of me feel any regret or sadness about what we shared or how we said goodbye.

This vision of that moment at the restaurant came to mind when I opened my e-mail this morning, strangely enough. I had a message from Cate at the Well Fed Network. She says that the judges have finally done their work to choose the Top 5 Food Blogs in 18 different categories from a list of all of the nominations made in December. Guess what? Lucy's Kitchen Notebook is a Top 5 finalist in two categories.

Best Food Blog - City

Best Food Blog - Writing

I feel sincerely honored to have been chosen by the judges to hobnob among the top notch. My Kitchen Notebook, being a low profile personal blog that doesn't get involved in memes or round-ups cannot hope to garner nearly enough popular votes to win. That's normal. I made this bed myself. However I'd like to say I'm really grateful to have been presented with such a challenge and an honor - being chosen as one of the Top 5 definitely opens up a whole new world for me. Just finding out I am a finalist is one of those bowl of scorpion moments! Am I going to take that leap and dare to strive for excellence? You bet. A big THANK YOU to the people who nominated me in December.

Getting Spices

Climbing up the hill to the Croix Rousse plateau today, I counted the steps. Images came to mind and I counted, days and weeks the years here in France in which I endured some disappointments but also had some of the happiest days of my life. I took a moment as I mounted the steps one by one to review the main archives of the last seven years.

There was that carefully crafted poem typed with an Underwood on a post card that symbolizes something very big that I will one day open out. There's the dissertation on onion skin, the ideas I dwelled on for perhaps too long but like many of these things can leave a feeling of the good that has come from conscientiously maintaining a commitment to a principle. There were the administrative files, the carte, the country, the file to request and the file to explain and the file that was lost at the prefecture and had to be filed again. These files give us an official history, and here in France this history is meticulously kept for the benefit of future generations.

The unofficial history is altogether another story. The kitchen notebooks and stories of families and friendships are very important to preserve. It is being able to choose and encapsulate, to focus and prioritize that allows us grow stronger in our abilities to do these stories justice. I thought about these things as I reached the top of the first one and then found a different stairwell to climb. But then again it is also learning to take a moment and live it.

Soon my thoughts began to become more fluid and far between as they often do when I undertake repetitive activity like climbing stairs, and I probed the hopeful places in my heart. I rested lightly on these thoughts, just very briefly and respectfully, and did my best to heed Clare’s advice and breathe to allow myself to be open to their implanting and coming true the way they should.


Here at the present at the top of the hill I went about my plan to stock my larder with a trip to Cap Epices, a store that sells spices in bulk, dried imports, and olives. We see them on the Quai St. Antoine, and I often wait in line there to get a ladle of this one, a scoop and a pinch of that from them during the bustle and hustle of the market. People jostle and poke and lean against one another as they call "next!" until it is your turn. For this reason I also go up to the shop where I can inhale the singular aromas and stand in the wooden cave that is their boutique and mull over them. It is the only time I can really envision how I can use them, and think about their provenance.


There are 23 jars in my sliding racks for spices, many of which are empty at the moment, mainly due to my own impatience and lassitude, and a habit I have of only buying what I need. Aside from the three large jars continuously in a state of use containing sea salt, herbes de provence, and my spice mix maison, I only sometimes have a nice full selection of the spices that might come in handy. Today I purchased enough for another batch of my mix, the best curry I have found, and a few other things, including an interesting mix of spices to make pain d’epices, kind of like a gingerbread honey cake that is very popular around the holidays.

Viennoiserie Intuition

Sometimes you just have to let go of all of your emotions, and just let yourself free float, receptive to a different kind of decision making force. When faced with a complex choice, sometimes the better thing to do is to first listen carefully to all of the voices, then ask yourself, simply, what is the best thing to do? Trust the true response within you, it has a lot more pull than the moment, or the circumstance, your own influence on the world, or what you think others might want. It is based on a full understanding of events that have been boiled down to their essence, an infusion of every part of you that remembers, and is spread thin across a vast conglomeration of possibility. It is spread out so thin that if you don't learn to see it, you might not even notice it. This is your intuition. Today I chose the croissant over the pain au chocolat. I believe that it was the right choice.

Les Trois Cornes

Les Trois Cornes is said to be inspired by a story told by the legendary M. Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) who was mentor to many of the great names of French literature of his time. He was one of the first artists of his day to embrace the work of and defend the Impressionists, a true writer of the modern era. The story is told within the framework of a supposed letter to an young poet who has refused a job at a top Paris circular. I translate the story that gave the fromage Les Trois Cornes a name for your pleasure here.

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What? Grignoire! You, young poet, have been offered a post to write a column in a good Paris paper and you have the gall to refuse? See here sad boy! Take a look at your sorry state of existence, the holes in your shoes. You look like you're about to starve! Look at where your determination to write your pretty rhymes is going to take you. Look at what little you have to show for yourself after 10 long years of service to Apollo! Aren't you ashamed? Write your column, silly boy! Write the column! Your life will improve!

No, you don't want to do it? You prefer to stay free to the very end. Alright then, listen here, to the story of the goat of M. Seguin.

M. Seguin never had much luck with goats. He always lost them the same way - they chewed their cord, ran up into the mountains, and were eaten there by the big bad wolf. Neither the loving care of the master nor fear of the wolf ever stopped them. It seemed to him that the goats would pay any price to prance in the fresh air, free. M. Seguin, who couldn't understand this nature in his goats, was completely stumped. "I've had it!" - he cried, "Goats get restless on my farm, I'll never be able to keep them!"

This didn't stop him from trying, however. One after the next they dissapeared the same way, and after losing six goats he got a seventh - only this time, he took the care to buy a really young one, in hopes that it would get used to him and his farm before it wanted to get away.

And oh what a beauty this kid was! With her beard like a petty officer, her eyes big and green, shiny black boot-like hooves, her striped horns and pretty white fur that curled up around the edges! Such a lovely little kid!

M. Seguin had a little patch surrounded by delicious hawthorn which is where he put his new goat. He attached her by a chord to a post, making sure to leave lots of rope to let her wander just so far, and from time to time, he checked on her to make sure she was alright. The little goat seemed so content to graze on the herbs in her little patch that M. Seguin was simply delighted. "At last!" he exclaimed, "I've got one that isn't bored here!" Unfortunately he was wrong, the goat was getting restless.

One day, the little goat, while gazing up to the mountain, said "Oh it must be so very nice up there in the mountains! How I long to have the chance to prance around freely in the fog without this scratchy rope so tight around my neck! It's fine for a cow or a donkey to be all closed up in a pen, but goats, they need to be free."

From that moment on, the goat was clutched with ennui. She lost interest in the herbs, she lost weight, she didn't give any milk. It was pitiful to see her all the day long laying as far as she could from the post, the rope stretched taut, her muzzle stretched out toward the mountain, sadly bleating.

M. Seguin knew that something was wrong, but he couldn't say what. One day as he came to take care of the goat, she bleated to him in his language: "Look at me, Mr. Seguin. I am languishing here at the end of this rope. Won't you let me go up into the mountain?"

"My God!" cried M. Seguin. "Not again!" This time he tried to talk some sense into the goat, and sat down next to her. "What? You want to leave me, Blanquette?"
"Yes, M. Seguin" she replied.
"Are you missing certain greens, my dear?"
"Oh no, M. Seguin!"
"Can I lengthen your rope?"
"No, it's not that."
"Then what can I do? What do you want?"
"I want to go into the mountain, M. Seguin."
"But my sad one, you don't know that there is a ferocious wolf up there. What will you do when he comes?"
"I'll pierce him with my horns, Mr. Seguin."
"The wolf doesn't care about your horns, my Blanquette. He's devoured creatures with much bigger horns than yours, my dear. Do you remember poor old Renaude, the massive mother of all goats that was here last year? She battled with the wolf all night long, and in the morning, he ate her."
"Oh poor Renaude!" Blanquette paused. "That doesn't mean anything, M. Seguin. Please let me go up to the mountain!"

M. Seguin was at a loss for words. Yet another one of his cherished goats was going to be devoured by the wolf. He put some thought into the love he felt for his dear Blanquette and said - "Good, now I know and I am determined to save you, despite that terrible force that's pulling you to the mountain. I know you'll try and chew your chord, so I'm closing you up into a pen, so you will stay with me forever!"

With that, M. Seguin put the litle goat into a pen in the dark stable, and closed the door with two turns of the key. Unfortunately, he forgot the little window, through which the little goat squirmed through and escaped.

What? You're laughing, Grignoire? You think this is funny? You know very well that you too are a goat, against good M. Seguin. We'll see if you're laughing in a little while!

The little goat felt like she was walking into paradise once she got to the mountain. Never had the old pines looked so beautiful. The forest gave her a royal welcome as well, with ancient chestnut trees stopping to caress her gently all along her procession into the woods. The yellow flowers joyously swayed in the wind to make a welcoming path as she marched into the sunny fields, in fact the whole mountain celebrated her arrival.

Think about her joy, Grignoire! No more prickly rope, nothing more to prevent her from running free! It's there that the herbs were growing right up to her horns. And what glorious herb it was! Delicious, fine, lacy and made from a thousand plants. This was a far cry from the stumpy Hawthorn at the end of her rope at the farm. The flowers! Bulbous blossoms with violet stems, all kinds, brimming with sweet nectar.

She was giddy with happiness and leapt high in the air, among the scrub and the brush, one moment looking out from a glorious peak, the next lolling in a rocky canyon, here, there, everywhere! You might have said that M. Seguin had ten goats running through the mountains instead of one.

Pretty Blanquette was afraid of nothing! She leapt over torrential currents spraying clouds of watery mist. Completely soaked, she spread out on a sunny rock to dry. At a certain moment she saw through a break in the rocks, the farm of M. Seguin far down below, with a faint image of the dark circle of trampled sorry ground surrounding the post that once imprisoned her. Tears streamed down her delicate muzzle as she laughed with joy. "but it's so small." she wondered. "How could that place have held me?"

The poor thing. High up on her perch, she thought she was bigger than the world. In all, it was a grand day for our little Blanquette. In hopping from left to right, she ran across a herd of chamois deer chewing in a patch of wild vine, and made quite a sensation. She was given a place of honor among the vines to chew, and all of the males were gallant with her. In fact, this will rest between us, Grignoire, but one of the chamois had the luck for a turn in the vine with our lovely Blanquette. The two amoureux spent a heavenly hour or two in the forest, and if you really want to know what happened, you'll have to check with those sources unseen that dwell in the moss there.

Suddenly, a cold wind blew over the mountains. The vista turned a rosy purple - and then, it was night. "Already!" said the little goat, a little bit suprised. Down below, the fields were drowned in heavy fog, and all she could see of M. Seguin's farm was the roof of his farmhouse with a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney. She heard the bells of a troop returning to bed down for the night and felt a little sad in her heart. A swallow returning home made a flapping with his wings. She began to shiver.

Then there was a terrible howl echoing in the mountain! She thought of the wolf. All day long she didn't think of him but now... At the same time a horn sounded from way down in the valley. It was M. Seguin making one last effort to save her!

The wolf howled, owiooo!
The trumpet called: Come back my little Blanquette!

Blanquette wanted to return but she remembered that lonely post, the rope, the horrible darkness of the pen. Even though she was afraid she felt that it would be better to stay where she was. The horn finally ceased.

Suddenly she froze in fear as she heard footsteps behind her in the leaves. She made out in the darkness two straight ears, and two glittering eyes. Huge, still, crouching on his haunches, he watched the delicate little goat. He could already taste his dinner. Knowing that he was going to eat her, he took his time, and just watched her. When she turned to see him he let out a horrible laugh. "Ah, M. Seguin has sent me another little goat", he growled, licking his chops.

Little Blanquette didn't know what to do. She remembered the story of the poor old goat Renaude, who battled all night long just to be eaten in the morning, and she thought that perhaps it would be better after all to be eaten right away. Then she lowered her horns to protect herself, like the brave little kid she was. She could never hope to kill the wolf. Goats don't kill wolves. But only to see if she could hold him off until dawn as her dear friend Renaude had done.

The beast advanced, and engaged in a dance with the little goat's horns. Oh the poor little Blanquette, she fought with a clean and brave heart. More than ten times, and I'm telling the truth, the wolf was forced to retreat and take his breath. Each time she fell back into the herb and the little gourmande recharged with some fresh greens and then went right back into battle. This went on all night, and from time to time the little kid glanced up at the twinkling stars and said "Oh if only I can last 'till daylight!" One by one the stars extinguished in the sky and she kept returning with her horns, and the wolf with his teeth.

A gleam appeared in the horizon, and the rooster's call rose from the farmland below. "Finally!" called Blanquette, having lasted all the night. She streched out on a patch of grass, her pretty white fur stained with blood. With that, the wolf pounced and ate her.

Adieu, Gringoire! The story you have heard is true. If you come to Provence, everyone will tell you the tale of M. Seguin's goat who battled all night with the evil wolf, who ate her at daybreak.

You understand me, Grignoire.

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Moral of the story, my friends? Gee I'm not sure but if I ever get offered a post at a big city Magazine, I'll be sure to take it. Danger from the big bad wolf does lurk in the shadows when we embark on creative projects. Reflecting on this story, I suppose if Mr. Seguin had bought his seven goats at once and hired a young boy with some dogs to take them for a stroll in the mountain (and encourage them, play their muse, and maybe help edit) each day, he wouldn't have lost them all and they would have grown in number and today his progeny would have a huge chevre milk cooperative from which he could produce tons of AOC cheese each year. One day at a time, one day at a time, ma Blanquette. 2,000 polished words a day is all I am asking from this majestic wonderland. One thing is for sure, I have fought long and hard to get out that little stable window. I must march proudly into the flowered field and leap the torrential currents as much as my livelihood will allow. Every single day.