W.I.P. Wednesday : Checking In

Greetings! Welcome to all the new Wipsters – you are all such an inspiration, and I just love to see the list growing. In fact, I’m having trouble keeping up! If you’re still not on the list, have no fear. I’ll be adding you soon.

I cannot believe it’s been so long since I’ve posted. I’d like to sincerely thank everyone who has sent me little love notes and to reassure everyone – all is well. In fact, I’m a little buried by a blessing, so to speak.

I found a new part-time teaching job (in addition to my other teaching position) and have just been scrambling to get things running smoothly. I am very behind, but I have a feeling that I’ll get a handle on organising all this soon. There have been some big schedule changes for Guppy to adapt to, in addition to her new class and teacher, and we are all adjusting, but things are headed in a good direction.

Can you believe it’s nearly Autumn? I have so many projects waiting to be started (and finished), but there just isn’t enough hours in the day right now! I have been beating my W.I.P. jones, however, admiring all the fine creations on the W.I.P. Wednesday Flickr Pool.

There is no way I can properly express my gratitude to all of you for your friendship. In the past few weeks I’ve received an outpouring of love, and I can’t thank you enough. I’m sorry I’m behind on emails (you know who you are!), but please know I’m so thankful for your support and compassion!

Do you have any new W.I.P.s in the works? We would love to see what you’re up to! Snap a shot of your  “in progress” masterpiece and add it to the  W.I.P. Wednesday Flickr Pool. Whatever your works-in-progress, have a crafty week, and don’t forget to see what the other Wipsters are working on.

W.I.P. Wednesday : Meet September’s Featured Wipster, Michelle

Happy September everyone! I love this time of year : crisp, bright mornings, bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils, carefully laid-out clothes for the first day of school…and especially all the crafty projects the autumn and the fast approaching winter holidays promise to inspire.

After a brief summer break, I’m truly happy to ring in the new school year (well, for the Northern Hemisphere anyway!) by presenting our September Featured Wipster, Michelle, who blogs at Living Slowly. Her beautiful contributions to the W.I.P. Wednesday Flickr group caught my eye, and I just had to share her talents with everyone! Here’s a little about Michelle, in her own words:

I think the desire to create runs in my family. My grandfather was a very talented carpenter and my mother spent much of my childhood sewing and crocheting things for my siblings and me.

Recycled Patchwork Beach Blanket

For me, creating art and crafting has been something I have enjoyed my entire life. Even in elementary school, art was my favorite class. I fondly remember walking through the isles of the storage room in my art class looking at all the supplies and being excited by the endless possibilities of what they could become.

One Year Birthday Ensemble

I learned to hand sew as a Girl Scout Brownie and learned to use a sewing machine in middle school Home Economics class. To my amazement, I remembered the skills I learned as a girl when I returned to sewing many years later in college.

I don’t really recall what prompted my urge to learn knitting five years ago, but once I figured it out I was addicted. Knitting is so meditative and very calming for my mind which always seems to be going in too many directions at once. Knitting is my therapy.

Knitted Baby Skirt

As unoriginal as it may sound, my biggest source of inspiration truly has been my children. Crafting has taken on a new meaning since they were born. Being able to give them items that I have made by hand and filled with love brings me so much joy. Now that my son is talking, I can hear first hand his excitement when I give him something I made. That certainly fuels my desire to make crafting a daily part of our lives and to share my love of art with them.

5 Fun Facts About Michelle:

1) My first (and only so far) bungee jumping experience was in Queenstown, New Zealand. I jumped off the The Kawarau Bridge. It was the biggest adrenaline rush ever and I would love to do it again some day.

2) I have two tattoos. I have an ouroboros on my inner right wrist and Lola Bunny (Bugs Bunny’s girlfriend in the movie Space Jam) on my lower back.

3) I am the second oldest of six kids. I have three younger sisters and two brothers. I love being part of a big family.

4) Reading is a hobby I have always enjoyed, but since having kids have had little time for. As a child, The Little House series was my favorite. I wanted to be Laura Ingalls so badly. My most recent read was the Twilight series and loved it. Team Edward for me!

5) I graduated from The Rhode Island School of Design with a B.F.A. in Graphic Design. Attending R.I.S.D. was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The school is so full of creative energy. If could be a permanent college student, I certainly would. Being able to spend my day throwing pots, playing with the letterpress machine, painting, sewing and photographing it all sounds like heaven.

Thrifted Fabric Mega Moo Beach Bag

Thanks so much to Michelle for taking the time to hang out with us at the Fishbowl! Do you have a favourite creative blogger you’d like to see featured next month? Remember, whatever your medium, we would love to see what you’re up to.

Do you have any new W.I.P.s in the works for Autumn, or even, gasp!,  the holidays? We would love to see what you’re up to! Snap a shot of your “in progress” masterpiece and add it to the  W.I.P. Wednesday Flickr Pool. Whatever your works-in-progress, have a crafty week, and don’t forget to see what the other Wipsters are working on.

W.I.P. Wednesday : Sewing Childrens Pants, A Tutoral

At long last…I know I said I’d post this forever ago, but did you know that the most cutting-edge scientific research suggests that time is elastic, not linear, so really, this post is right on time!

This is so easy to do that I feel a little silly writing up a tutorial post on how to sew a basic pair of children’s elastic waist pants…but the thing is, that even though I find it all so obvious now, I sure didn’t the first time I had an inkling to sew the Guppy a pair of pants all by myself! If there’s one thing I have learned from 6 years of studying literature, it’s “deconstructing” – taking it apart, to better see how it’s put together. That’s basically what I did with a pair of Guppy’s too small/too stained pants one day, and it all became clear…not the meaning of life mind you, just how to put together a quickie but nice pair of pants for a little one.

So here we go : pretty please let me know if anything is unclear, or if you’re an experienced stitcher and have any shortcuts or suggestions – I’d love to add them to the post.

Please keep in mind that this technique will work well for children up to about a size 4 to 6ish – because it’s an elastic waist and there isn’t any real curve to the legs it could get clumpy and get wonky in a larger size. That being said Guppy (age 4)  is now wearing size 6 pants but she’s a tall, skinny fish, so it’s still working out just fine for us.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED :

• Fabric for the new pair of pants. Be sure to pre-shrink it (wash, dry & press)
• A pair of pants that currently fit the child in question
• Aprox. 1/2″ wide elastic for the waist & the child’s waist measurement
• pins, thread, a chopstick or bobkin, masking tape, etc.
• Some groovy music in the background.
• “right side” has nothing to do with Republicans, the UMP or The Force. It means the printed side of your fabric. When I say “wrong side”, it just means the inside of your fabric, basically what your knees look at all day.

FIRST :

Fold the pair of pants in half length-wise (so the back pockets are touching) and lie them on your chosen material (which has been folded in half, right sides together.) You can either trace a line around the pants here, or just pin them. Then carefully cut out your fabric. If you’d like the pants to be longer or wider, cut/draw accordingly. Don’t forget to add a little extra fabric for your seam allowance. I’m pretty conservative (nervous about messing up) so I tend to go large on the allowance, about a quarter to a half an inch. I’d rather leave more and trim it off later. You’ll need to leave a good 1.5inch allowance for the waist (you’ll be folding that down to insert your elastic!).

Now do it again. In the end you should end up with 4 pieces that look something like this :

I know, bang-up brilliant photographing stripes on stripes. Please, call the fashion police on me right now!

SECOND :

Now take two of your four pieces and match them up, right sides together so they look like one piece. Here’s what they would look like right before matching them up:

Now flop those babies together and your going to sew from the crotch (I know, you hate that word, but that’s life kids) to what will be your waistband. When you’re done it should look like this :

See how it looks like a half of a pair of pants already? Nifty, huh? Now you go and do the very same thing with the remaining two pieces of your pants-puzzle. When you’re done, match up the two pieces (which once were four…it’s all about unity here people), right sides together, like so:

Now, if you have really good vision or a very big screen, you can see that the insides of the legs have been pinned together. I suggest sewing up one side of one of the legs, bridging the crotch (meaning keeping sewing joining/across the crotch), then sewing down the other leg. Now go plug in your iron.

If you’re freaking out because nothing seems to be matching up just take a breath – it’s ok. Use your waist as a guide and keep that as even as you can – uneven leg lengths can be fixed easily at the end, and even leg widths can be easily fixed by moving your seam in or out a little. These are elastic-waisted kids pants – little mistakes aren’t going to show, and you’ll be a pro by your second or third pair so don’t sweat it!

Have you sewn up the insides of the legs? Good, now sew the outsides. See how easy that was? Now let’s finish these babies up by working on the waist. Fold it down about 1/2″, iron your fold quickly to keep things neat, then fold down again 1/2″ and iron again. Now pin. You could probably fold down a little less here, but I like to use 1/2″ wide elastic for my waist, so this is what works for me.

Next you’re going to sew around the waistband, with about a 1/8th seam allowance, being sure to remember to leave a few inches (or centimeters, whatever) for you to insert the elastic. This is very important that’s why it’s in bold! It’s easy to forget to do this when you’re phone is ringing and your daughter is singing “Hallo Spaceboy”* at the top of her lungs next to you (and she only knows the refrain). Or whatever. Just don’t forget, or keep a seam ripper handy. Or both.

This is what we’re going for :

NEXT :

Grab your chopstick (unless you have a bodkin, then you’re just lucky I guess) and place the elastic on one end, like, ahem, a helmetish. Then put masking tape over that, giving it a sort of “rocket ship” type of look. It would be so much easier to describe this if I had a broom handle and this was sex-ed, but it’s not, so just look at the picture :

Now just insert this into one side of your waistband and run it through, feeding as you go. Don’t forget to fix the stray end of elastic or it’ll finish in there with everything else. Go nice and slow here because you don’t want your elastic to get all twisty in there. Once you’ve fed it through, sew the ends of the elastic together, overlapping them for strength. I usually sew back and forth a few times. Then close the little gap you left, being careful not to catch the elastic in your stitches.

And here you go, a very snazzy pair of cotton/linen blend pants made from gifted fabric from the SIL. Wish I had enough to make a pair for me! And yes, that is a huge, ugly, black thread hanging from the leg because I haven’t sewn the hems on the legs yet! I made these while Guppy was napping, and tomorrow I’ll have her try them on and adjust the length. For the final leg hem just fold like you did for the waist : fold once, then iron, then fold again. How much? Depends. If you want a more mod cuff you could fold and inch or more, really.

I hope you were able to follow along and do hope you give it a shot. It is so easy, and really doesn’t use much fabric, especially for wee ones under 3. Again, comment or email if you have a question – and send me a link if you give it a try!

A warm welcome to all our new Wipsters! If you’d like to join the Wipster list, just send me an email. The W.I.P. Wednesday Flickr Pool just keeps growing – don’t be shy! Those photos are there to inspire, and we would love to see what you’ve been up to. Think of it as your parents’ fridge : a safe and loving place to highligh what you’ve been working on (without the strawberry jam stains on the door).

*Is it just me or is David Bowie getting even sexier? I really need to work him into W.I.P. Wednesday more often. So glad Guppy has good taste in music!

Delicious Savory Zucchini Bread (Vegan)

I grew up eating sweet zucchini breads and muffins, but never anything savory coming from the zucchini-infused bread basket. When dear Mihl of Seitan Is My Motor blogged her Savory Zucchini Bread recipe, I couldn’t wait for our heat-wave to break – I just had to try it! Mihl’s got the most delicious recipes on her blog, if you’ve never been you really ought to pay her a visit.

Please don’t blame Mihl’s delicious (and super-easy to follow) recipe for the unsightly nature of this fabulous loaf. If it must be someone’s fault, it’s mine. Well, mine and Mother Nature’s who blessed us with extremely warm temperatures very early in the day.

Thinking I could “beat the heat” I mixed my dough early and let it rise while we prepared for the day. The second rise isn’t very long, and since I only had a few errands to run I thought we’d be safe…well… (if you’ve ever watched the television show I Love Lucy just imagine her saying “well…”) the errands ended up taking longer than planned (bien sûr) and the heat shot up faster than I’d planned, and we returned home to two very over-risen loaves.

Sigh.

But really, who cares? So it’s not as beautiful as I’d hoped (Guppy asked me if I could make it look like an escargot and I said pourquoi pas?). It does look like an escargot, one that had been crushed, perhaps? The important thing is the taste, and it was voted delicious by 3 out of 3 Fish (myself, Guppy and Monsieur). I was going to freeze one of the loaves, but I didn’t even have a chance, Monsieur F. digging into it, topping thick slices with the Raw Ranch Dressing I’d made. That’s ok. Just an excuse to go make more!

I’ll be submitting this lovely loaf to Yeast Spotting, your weekly dose of home-baked goodness over at Wild Yeast (thanks as usual, Susan!).

Raw Ranch Dressing, a recipe.

Would you like a little salad with that dressing?

Huge green salad with shredded raw beets, sliced cucumbers, raw broccoli florets, a sprinkling of ground sesame seeds & nooch, topped with delicious globs of Raw Ranch Dressing.

Ranch dressing isn’t something I really ate much of pregan, but once I’d been living overseas for a few years it was one of the things I found myself craving, oddly enough. The collective unconscious has so strongly identified certain “comfort foods” as a cultural evidence, it just seemed natural to my feeling-homesick-psyche to crave Ranch Dressing.

Or was it?

After years of falling victim to the unrelenting advertising industry in the United States, my subconscious had somehow been trained in an eerily Pavlovian way to associate certain food products (the key word being “products”) with certain feelings or moments in my life. From, “You deserve a break today.” to “How do you spell relief.”, my early childhood was punctuated by the advertising leviathan guiding my emotionally-driven consumption habits like a malevolent GPS, and I’d been trained to equate specific feelings such as homesickness with greeting cards, or homecomings with fresh-brewed coffee, happy, smiling family dinners with ranch dressing, etc.

Battavia lettuce, cucumbers, dulse and ranch!

Like most everyone I’ve been enjoying loads of fresh, raw produce this summer, and I found myself thinking about traditional dips for crudités and such. I knew I had some almonds soaking in my fridge, and so decided to try my hand at creating a little raw ranch goodness, because agribusiness doesn’t have a monopoly on my creativity, baby.

Ladies and Gents, it was a delicious success.

Raw Ranch Dressing

• 125g almonds (about two handfuls), soaked 24-48 hours
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 3 T dried parsley (I way  used more, but I’m Punk Rock like that)
• 1/2 T dried thyme
• 1/2 T dried sage
• 1/2 T oregano
• squirt agave (optional)
• 1/4 olive oil
• 1/2 cup water
• splash apple cider vinegar
• salt & pepper to taste

Be sure to rinse your almonds very, very well. Soaking them for 24 hours is probably enough, but I don’t have a Vita Mix, and find my poky blender does better if they’ve been soaking longer. Add the almonds, water, lemon juice and vinegar and blend really well, next add everything else, stopping to scrape down the sides if your herbs get all crazy. You may also want to start with a little less herbage – I’m crazy about the stuff. Ta-da!

You may find this to be a little thick to use as a salad dressing (though perfect for dipping cruditiés). Just add a little water to thin it out.

Live-shot from the Shellyfish fridge : on the left, equal parts nooch and sesame seeds, sprinkled on all my salads. On the right, raw ranch goodness.

This made a huge amount, but I can’t tell you how much – that little jar is about a quarter of what I had. I am also unable to tell you how long it will keep – I was still eating it a week later, then Monsieur Fish (vegan by default, not by conviction) devoured all that was left dipping Seitan Is My Motor’s fantastical Zucchini Bread in it (I’ll be blogging about it soon). As I’ve mentioned before, he is not a big fan of raw cuisine, but he just went crazy over this stuff. When I told him it was made with almonds, not tofu, he was shocked.

So go make yourself some healthy and delicious ranch dressing kids. It’s the thing to do.

Dinos, Hedgehogs & Monsters! (It’s ok. They’re herbivores.)

Stegosaurus, Triceratops and Hedgehogs galore!

By now you know that we are crazy about dinosaurs here at the Fish household. We just love reading about them, playing with them, drawing them and now, well, eating them!

These are some fun little cinnamon & spelt rolls that were as fun to make as they were to eat. The possibilities for shaping them are only limited by your imagination (and by the heat in your kitchen…these were rising so fast I was having a tough time shaping/decorating them fast enough. It occurred to me afterwards I could have retarded them in the fridge while shaping…but hey, I’m still learning here!).

These creations were 100% inspired by a talented foodblogger named Moira, who blogs at Tertulia de Sabores and makes me so regret I don’t speak Portuguese. However, thanks to her delicious photos, nothing is lost in translation! This amazing woman’s blog and her phenomenal Flickr photostream are more than eye-candy, they are a full-course meal! I can’t urge you enough to visit her photostream, if you’re a bread-baker (or eater), you’ll just love it!

Cinnamon & Sugar Dino-Rolls

(Sorry my metric friends, this one is in Imperial)

2 cups non-dairy milk (I used soy)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup & 1 tsp. sugar, divided (you can use 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, depending on how sweet you’d like your bread to be.

2 Tablespoons yeast

1/4 cup warm water

6 cups spelt flour

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

Pumpkin seeds, raisins, sunflower seeds, etc. for decorating

Heat the non-dairy milk to scalding and pour it into a bowl with the oil and 1/4 cup sugar. Set aside to cool. Next proof your yeast by adding it, along with the teaspoon of sugar and 1/4 cup of warm water to a large bowl. I know you don’t have to do this, but I’ve wasted time and ingredients when my yeast turned out to be anything but active, so I do. Let it set about 10 minutes or until it’s all bubbly.

When the milk has cooled (as in you can dip your finger into it without screaming), add it to the yeast mixture (because if it’s too hot you’ll kill the yeast, and that’s not cool), and add 2 cups of the flour. Stir this briskly for a few minutes, then let it sponge for about 10 minutes. It should have puffed up a bit. Now add the remaining 4 cups of flour, the salt and the cinnamon, and stir until it begins to form a ball/becomes really difficult to stir. You may need to adjust flour/water here, and that’s ok!

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead about 10 minutes, until it’s tacky but not sticky. Divide your dough into 4 pieces, and then you can either simply shape them into rolls or have way more fun and make some animal shapes!

Now preheat your oven to 375°F and let your animals/rolls rise for about half an hour, then bake them for about 20 minutes. I found that some of the pumpkin seeds were pushed out as the dinos baked in the oven, so be sure and really get them in there – or be prepared to doctor them up a little when the come out of the oven!

Do be sure and drool over all the deliciousness found over at YeastSpotting, hosted this week by Macheesmo – thank you so much for hosting, Nick!

Raw Coconut Cream Pie!

Keeping things short and sweet my friends : this Raw Coconut Cream Pie rules.

It’s obviously something special because I never post twice in the same day! But since today is #rawwednesday on twitter, I thought I share this for any of my tweet-pals who wanted to give it a go. There’s no soaking required, and it takes all of 5 or maybe 7 minutes!

I feel like some kind of raw foodist super-hero chica extraordinaire (which I am *so* not!) because it’s really that good. I obviously can’t take credit for fruits and nuts being so delicious, but I can be thankful I took a risk and tried to create something I was craving! So easy, so quick, you’ve no excuses not to make one yourself!

Raw Coconut Cream Pie

• 3 small or 2 large Very Ripe Bananas
• 1.5 cups coconut, shredded
• pinch Celtic Sea Salt (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoons each of nutmeg and cinnamon
• 1 vanilla bean, scraped.

Toss everything into your food processor and blend to desired consistency, stopping to scrape down the sides. Place in a bowl and let chill in freezer while you make the crust…

Raw Coconut Cream Pie Crust

• 1/2 cup almonds (unsoaked)
• 1/2 cup to 1 cup walnuts (unsoaked)
• 3 or 4 of your favourite dates (soaked in water for about 30 mins if they aren’t moisty-sticky
• pinch Celtic Sea Salt
• 1/4 (or more) cinnamon
• perhaps a bit of water

Toss everything into the food processor (no, you don’t need to wash or rinse it, save the water, kids!), adding a little water if you need to. If you feel it needs a little more walnut goodness than add in another 1/2 cup. Pat pie crust into a 17cm/7in custard dish (or even on a plate, whatever’s clever!) and top with chilled Coconut Cream Filling. It’ll taste better if you let the whole thing chill for a little while, but it’s ok if you can’t wait – I couldn’t.

Makes aprox. 4 servings

W.I.P. Wednesday : Fun with painting (please don’t laugh).

My two months of summer holiday are nearly over, and my list of projects/ideas has been about as neglected as my tan line this year. My big list for 2009 needs tending to, especially because there are only a few months left this year!

One of my desires for 2009 was to begin painting, meaning to start learning how to paint. I was able to purchase a few supplies, and soon-to-be-mamma Maria Rose (who blogs at Little Things Are Big) created two painting lessons for me (Lesson Number 1 is HERE and Lesson Number 2 is HERE.) I was so excited, motivated to begin…but stuff kept getting in the way.

The other day Guppy asked to paint after her nap, which she often does, so I broke out her ganache and watercolour paints for her, as I often do. She started painting, and I began the dishes.

And it hit me that something was really wrong with this picture.

The dishes aren’t going anywhere, and I don’t care if they stack up, really. I mean, who freaking cares!?!

So I sat down next to Guppy, and decided to paint. But paint what?

How about this :

Three Sunflowers in a Vase, Vincent Van Gogh

We have many Van Gogh prints hanging about the apartment, and this one is right over the kitchen table (where we were set up), so I decided to use it as my model. Being a good student, I recalled Maria Rose’s lessons and knew I needed to first sketch the painting, which I did rather quickly onto a piece of paper.

I set to work, and here is what I have to show for an hour of drawing & painting :

Please don’t judge me too harshly – I’ve never, ever painted anything before. Except fences, houses and a few bedrooms.

My painting is obviously pretty different, but I knew it would have to be from the get-go. Since my decision was so spontaneous I didn’t fetch my materials, and decided to just share with Guppy (or she shared with me, whatever) who had a very limited supply of ganache in primary colours : nearly no yellow at all, almost no white…you get the point. I just decided to be inspired by the original, did my best to sketch it, and decided to make the background blue and the flowers more orangy because necessity is the mother of invention.

So there you go. My first painting.

Ta da!

Now I’m going to try and re-watch my painting lessons and hopefully not wait so long until I give this another go! It was really relaxing, and it really helped me be in the present moment – I couldn’t do anything but be in the now, to concentrate on where I was and what I was doing, which is as it should be.

Don’t forget to stop by WIPster central to see what everyone is up to, and be inspired by all the creativity found on the W.I.P. Wednesday Flickr Pool. There are new members joining every week – welcome!

Feeling a little “spicy”?

In the mood to spice-up your culinary talents?

Stop by The Daring Kitchen to check out my cookbook reveiw of Monica Bhide’s  Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen. Though it isn’t a vegan cookbook per se, it has lots of vegan recipes…well, go see for yourself!

A picturesque bicycle tour of Seine-et-Marne Part 1 : Melun & Vaux Le Vicomte

I love riding my bike – I always have, and I hope I always will. As a teen in rural Northern Michigan, my driver’s license was a ticket to freedom in an area with only a few “cyclable” months out of the year. When I moved to the desert Southwest, however, and then to France, I was able to hang up my car keys. Rain or shine (mostly “rain”, the “shine” is mostly in the summer, hélas) I can be seen riding through town, quite often with Guppy in the child seat with me.

When I found out about a local cycling association, La Vie à Vélo, I knew I wanted to go on one of their ballades en vélo, organised bicycle rides through the scenic villages and countryside here in Seine-et-Marne. Last Sunday, under a beautiful August sun, I went on what I hope to be the first of many rides with La Vie à Vélo.

View of the Seine River from one of the charming bridges in Melun.

We took the train to Melun which was my first time riding the train with my bike, and I thought it was pretty darn cool. The SNCF (the French Rail Company) does allow bicycles on trains and some TERs, except during peak hours en Ile-de-France, and the Paris Métro Line 1 also will allow bicycles prior to 4:30 p.m. on Sundays. Be warned, however, that many of the RER lines are not at all bike-friendly (the trains aren’t the problem, however the gates within the stations are nearly impossible to pass with your bike in tow).  For more information about bicycles and public transportation in France and the Ile-de-France region, you can visit here (en français), here (des associations de vélo parisiennes, en français), Vélo & SNCF (en français), Train & Bicycle (in English).

Melun is an ancient city, dating back  52 A.C., and is known for a particularly brutal battle between the British and the Bourguignons, and the city’s motto, “Fida muris usque ad mures” or  ”We’ll remain loyal to the city walls, even if it means having to eat the rats.” was born from the battle. This because the siege had the city’s inhabitants starving within its walls, but rather than surrender to the British, they opted for the rats…poor things! (The rats, I mean!).

There were neither rats nor battles in Melun this beautiful Sunday morn, just lovely views of the Seine river from the city’s many bridges, the majority of which decorated with potted flowers.

We cycled through Melun, rather quiet on this particularly sleepy Sunday, because it’s August and the vast majority of people are on holiday at least for a few weeks this month.

I just love du lierre (ivy)

A lovely little stream…

Our nearly daily rain during the Autumn, Winter and Spring does make me a little crazy, but this lush greenery is so refreshing during the summer’s heat.

The historical La Laiterie des Trois Moulins, (no longer in operation). As a vegan I choose not to contribute to the suffering of animals by abstaining from their flesh and secretions, however, I would be remiss if I did not mention that my region is particularly known, both culturally and in culinary circles, for its Brie cheese, the Brie of neighbouring cities Melun and Meaux being especially well-known.

If you’ve ever had the chance to visit the famed château Vaux le Vicomte (you can read more about the castle en français or in English), than this tree-lined path is probably familiar to you. We rode from Melun through forest and fields to Vaux le Vicomte, which inspired both the creativity and the jealousy of Louis XIV who upon visiting, ordered the construction/elaboration of le château de Versailles (and the incarceration of his former Minister of Finances, Fouquet, for “showing up” the King with his provençial castle).

This shot was taken through the castle gates – we didn’t stop to visit, though if you ever have the opportunity I highly recommend it, Vaux le Vicomte is one of my personal favourites. I like that it’s not overwhelmingly big, giving visitors the opportunity to take their time and enjoy the castle, the Carriage Museum and the grounds.

If the castle looks familiar, it’s because you’ve perhaps seen it before in films (recent movies filmed there include “Ridicule”, “The Man in the Iron Mask“, “The Brotherhood of The Wolf”, “Vidocq”, “Marie Antoinette” and “Molière“. American television actress Eva Langoria and Franco-American basketball player Tony Parker celebrated their wedding reception at the castle in 2007.

Vaux le Vicomte is also unique because it’s still a private castle, meaning that it still belongs to a family, not the state. The current owner received the château as a wedding gift in 1945, and lived there with his family, and opened the castle to the public in 1968. (Visit Wiki for more information and some lovely photos – click to the left for an English translation).

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my little (well, more than 60 kilometers) bike ride through the region…