Paris - Part 1

OK, there is FAR too much to say about Paris. I've been trying to write it all in one whole post for almost 2 weeks and finally had to break it into multiple posts. Even though, in my initial report I complained about the cold I wasn't prepared for, as well as how gray it was, as I look back on my pictures, I have to admit, Paris is pretty photogenic. I should really so about 6-10 dfferent series of photographs to really do it justice: Paris at Night, Black and White Paris, the People of Paris, Le Tour Eiffel, The Cafes of Paris, etc etc etc.

Day 1: Our favorite day. The Eiffel tower in the morning, wandering the 6th arrondismont in the afternoon, the Champs-Elyesee and the Arc de Triomphe in the evening and Geoff's 40th Birthday Dinner at the oldest restaurant in Paris. Kinda hard to beat a day like that.


A repelling class was there that day. Pretty cool place to take lessons.


Standard



Loved this little guy - marvelling at Just How Tall It Is


Lovers initials at the middle level of the tower


Me attempting to look impossibly Parisian at our first meal in Paris and mostly succeeding in just looking like a New Yorker.


Wandering around...










Standard couple making out shot


Stairs up to the top of the Arc De Triomphe


Arc de Triomphe


The view from the top...


More to come. And yes, there are videos from Paris as well. Brace yourselves.

My Double Life

Casting director by day, Bad-ass Event Filmmaker by night. Or by weekends at least.

These photos were taken at a wedding I shot with the AMAZING photography team of RAW Photo Design, Eric and and Amber Langelois, who are completely beyond cool, and I will be forever grateful for them making me look even half as cool as they actually are. This was only the second time I'd led a team solo (without Geoff), so I was using the regular cameras (with technology I can actually understand), while he was on another shoot with the Fancy Pants Amazing Cameras. Eric and Amber had a set up a photo booth for the guests and at one point when I took five from filming to grab a water, they encouraged me to jump into said photo booth and do my worst. Though reluctant at first, I quickly got into the spirit of the thing, zhuzhed my hair (joojed?? - how do you spell that???!?), put my shades on and gave them my best. They even included me in their blog post about the wedding. (Also, if you look in the "About" section of their website, you will see a picture of them with their kids that pretty much sums up them and their infinite cool-ness).

I will be channeling this bad-ass persona as we shoot another wedding this weekend. Man, I swear they photoshopped me skinny and that has earned them my undying love until the end of time.

My New Favorite Salad(s)

I love finding new salad recipes. Salads have forever been Geoff's nemesis, mostly because he spent his life having to eat (his words) "gross" ones. In my imagination that means sad iceberg lettuce, mealy tomatoes and horrible/boring dressing. Blech.

We've made quite a revolution to our diets in the last year. An even more drastic one in the last 6 months, where we are trying to eat as vegetarian/vegan/raw as possible. Not always and not in a militant way. We still have the occasional steak or burger, or some chips and salsa (my one true weakness), but we're doing as much organic, whole foods, whole grains, vegetables, superfoods as we possibly can. (Real Simple did a whole feature on the healthiest foods last month. I was glad to see I was on the right track and that about 2/3 of the things on the list were already in rotation at our house.) The biggest difference I've noticed so far is how it makes me feel. I rarely need coffee in the afternoons anymore or feel tired during the day. And more specifically, I've also noticed how horrible I feel if I don't eat that way now. For example, my stupid boss bought some sort of Crackle Crunch Caramel Corn nonsense from Dean & DeLuca today for a "treat" for the office. Lovely of him. And, yes, I told him to his face he was the devil. I of course tasted it, and that led to several other subsequent "tastings" throughout the afternoon and now I feel sluggish and horrible and like I just ate seven Big Macs.

Diet revolution aside, I also have an ever-growing desire to cook, bake and experiment in the kitchen. Cooking for me, has grown into a kind of therapy. If I have a bad day, all I want to do is get in the kitchen and make something. I'm still a total disaster about it and won't be Martha Stewart anytime soon. Geoff marvels at how many dishes I can create in the process of making just one meal. But I love to do it. It's all I want to do in my (limited) free time. And it's not about eating the final product (though that is fun too) - it's about the actual cooking process.

So the diet revolution in combination with cooking therapy, means that I am constantly on the look out for interesting things to make. Salads included.


My first new favorite I found on 101cookbooks.com, my new favorite food website. OK, clearly I like this site because she's on the same page about eating whole foods, all of her recipes are vegetarian, and she's into travel and photography. We're basically the same person except that she lives on the West Coast and is blond and skinny. But the recipes are/look amazing. Technically this salad is the only one I've tried so far, but if I use this to judge the rest, I'll love all of them.


Her Raw Tuscan Kale Salad is so simple and it actually makes raw kale fairly easy to eat. It's just raw kale with a special dressing, topped with pecorino cheese and whole wheat breadcrumbs (you can easily make your own breadcrumbs by toasting some really chunky whole grain bread and then throwing them in the food processor for a minute or so). I think the lemon juice in the dressing (lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, S&P, red pepper flakes and pecorino cheese) helps wilt the kale down a bit to make it more chewable and less like eating a tree. I also used just whatever kale they had at the grocery store and it worked, even if it wasn't Tuscan. And don't accuse me of liking this only because there is so much cheese involved. (Although I don't blame you for thinking it). I was so excited to eat it that I forgot to take a picture of the final product before I dug right in. But, um.... this is what it looked like when I finished...?


New Favorite Salad #2 I created for myself at Dean and DeLuca's salad bar last week for lunch and recreated it for dinner for myself last night.


Mixed greens, sliced radishes, artichokes, tomatoes, blanched haricot vert with slivered almonds tossed with Balsamic Vinegar, EVOO and freshly ground S&P. I've had it for lunch several days in a row. One day they were out of tomatoes and I tried it with diced red pepper instead. Also very good. So far Dean and DeLuca does it slightly better than me (which I am chalking up to needing to upgrade my balsamic and trying a different brand of artichokes next time). Both of these I tried on myself first as a guinea pig. We'll see what Geoff thinks of them. I'm making the Raw Tuscan Kale one for a dinner party tomorrow night and he'll be trying it there.

Hope someone else is as excited about these salads as I am.

And Now, Your Host...LONDON (Part 2)

Don't worry, there's more......

And Now, Your Host...LONDON (Part1)

When we were at the Tower of London, Geoff turned the camera on me and this is what happened. Shouldn't quit my day job, huh?

I Can't Help It

Is it me, or is this one of the best things ever?

Assuming you've all seen the video of the guy that inspired this, you have GOT to agree. I love that guy. And this dog. Clearly.

London

I lived in England as a kid for two years when my dad was stationed there for work. We made a trip to London then, and I vaguely remember watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Or at least, I remember the picture of my brother and I standing outside the gates at Buckingham Palace.

This trip was officially about me seeing theatre that I had cast. Which we certainly did. It was tough to have to see Deathtrap the night we got there (jet lag and all), but that was the closing performance and therefore our only option. I was tired, but it was good. The next day we saw them loading up the lights and the set for the next show to move into the theatre. I was able to snap one of the last possible shots of the Deathtrap marquis.


As always, we just did a lot of walking around, picture taking and soaking it all in. It was gray and rainy, but at least it was in the 50s. We liked wandering around Covent Garden.




Bought some licorice all-sorts here. Yes, I am one of the few people in the world who actually like licorice.


Had actual tea at the Covent Garden Hotel. Like you do.


I know I've already talked far too much about thi cheese shop, but it's awesome and I can't help myself. I love cheese.


We also spent a morning in Notting HIll.







Walked all along Portabello Road. On Saturdays there is a huge market here. Usually with masses of people, I would bet. We were there on a Sunday and had it relatively to ourselves, which was also kind of lovely. In one of my favorite Disney movies from childhood, Bednobs and Broomsticks, Angela Lansbury sings about Portabello Road - "the street where the riches of ages are sold." And boy, are they ever. I could not stop taking pictures. I wish I had had the money and the room in my suitcase to buy all these things and SOOOO many more.


Found someone selling Geoff's initials.



We (meaning I) had a minor "I'm too hungry" meltdown on the way to lunch at Harrods (overrated, though their gelato in the candy shop was good), rode a double decker bus where I lost the adorable grey beret that Alison made me (sadness), but at least some lucky Londoner now has an Alison original.

Evensong at Westminster Abbey was cool only because of the men's choir. Well, ok, and the Abbey itself. We could only stay 20 minutes without being late for the theatre and the priests didn't seem too pleased with that when we told them in advance. But the building was pretty amazing. And the choir sang an amazing song as we were walking out, which was super cool. Next time, I'd spend a little more time walking through and reading/learning everything about the history of the Abbey itself.


Our last day we did the Tower of London. I'm such a sucker for how much history there is in London period, and the Tower was chock full of it, obviously. Our visit there also happened to coincide with the 1 hour of sunshine we had in London. You can see our shadows in this picture.




I just like that there is a full trunk of grit on hand.



I called this a Catapult. Geoff was all fancy and knowledgable and called it a Trebuchet. Show off.




Tower Bridge. Also pretty cool.


As was London. I thought it was pretty charming. We didn't do curry, or fish and chips or see Buckingham Palace, but we feel we had a fairly full fledged London experience nonetheless. And despite facing a few of the challenges I've mentioned before, we really enjoyed it. I would certainly go back

Snowy Wednesday

It's a snowy day in NYC and I for one love it. Everyone on Facebook seems to be over the snow, but I am not. We're back from London/Paris and settling back into real life. Pictures and stories and details to come. There may even be some videos of me playing faux travel guide at the Tower of London, which we made while goofing around. Those were fun. The trip itself was good, though not what we had anticipated, as is always the way of things. I sadly felt like my photography mojo was off for nearly the whole trip. It may have been because it was gray and or rainy the entire time we were there, in both cities. We had about 3 scattered hours of sunlight on Geoff's birthday, and that was about it, so everything looks a bit gray and cold and sad in the photos. I will say that was a bit of a bummer, since my favorite thing to do in pretty places I've never been to is photograph them. But we'll see what we come up with after a little photo editing. Speaking of photos - my apologies for the horrible quality of the iPhone photos that appeared on this blog while I was gone. They looked a lot better on the tiny screen of my iPhone than on an actual computer. I had no idea.

Geoff has finally caught the cold I had on the trip, so he is feeling pretty lousy. I'm back at work and sensing things starting to really heat up in the next 2 months. I'm anticipating being quite busy. Trying to brace myself. Gosh there are so many things I'm thinking about, but I'm skirting the line of what to share when, what to share here at all and when I'll actually have time to write about it all in a way I feel good about. In the meantime, tonight I'm trekking to Brooklyn for dinner with my best friend and that alone will answer at least half of my questions.

Winding Down

Took the train back to London yesterday. Had a lovely French cheese and wine picnic as we watched the foggy French countryside roll by. Truth be told it was mostly highways and gas stations, but we did notice a few quaint country towns in the distance.

Got back in time to make it to the first preview of The Children's Hour in the West End, which our office cast.



Kiera Knightley, Elisabeth Moss, Ellen Burstyn, Carol Kane and others. I really enjoyed it! Some terrific performances.

A few last hours in London before we head to the airport and fly home. Not looking forward to 18 degrees but it will be nice to be back in my own little bed.

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:London,United Kingdom

Paris is COLD

It is frigid here today. And I do not have my warmest down winter coat, since the rest of the trip was mid 40s-mid 50s. It hampered our adventuring today for sure. Hence, French Onion Soup for lunch. It was pretty amazing. And necessary.

We leave tomorrow for London. Things we have not done yet: have a crepe(s), try a macaroon or any other French pastries besides croissant and pan de chocolat, make it to 80% of the restaurants that were recommended to us. I guess we have a lot of eating to do in less than 24 hours.

- Posted from my iPhone