Deirdre recently sent me the link to a letter F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his 11 year old daughter in 1924.  It felt so perfectly befitting my worrywart ways that I decided to share it in hopes that perhaps it would make you stop worrying so much too.

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about: 

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about: 

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

It’s kind of unbelievable how everything on his list is still applicable today.

Oh, and PS Deirdre please start your blog.  Peer pressure.

Thank you Refinery29!

I heart you for simplifying the smoky eye. Maybe this will inspire me to do more than just a swipe of mascara, a sweep of blush and a dab of color on my lips (if you’re lucky) in the mornings.

And hopefully this will help banish my gloomy moods and winter “bum-bums” (your words, not mine, but perfectly fitting).

It’s probably because I loathe fruit pies.  I just can’t.  The crust, for sure, delicious. The cooked fruit inside of the pie… ugh.  Makes my skin crawl.
::shudder::

But then just the other day I got a recipe for a fruitless pie, a Sweet Tea pie (haha sweetie pie), in my inbox from the glorious Tasting Table.  That signaled that it was time to dive into pie-making territory.

a prettier pie than mine

The pie is absurdly delicious.  Absurdly absurd.  But jeeezus it wasn’t pretty,
so I used the image from Tasting Table to hide my ugly pie shame.

And just because I can’t make a pretty pie, it doesn’t mean that
yours won’t be absolutely gorgeous.

]]> http://lajuliaficationdumonde.com/2012/01/22/rainy-sunday/feed/ 0 lajuliaficationdumonde http://lajuliaficationdumonde.com/2012/01/20/kouign-amann/ http://lajuliaficationdumonde.com/2012/01/20/kouign-amann/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:26:35 +0000 lajuliaficationdumonde http://lajuliaficationdumonde.com/?p=2238 Continue reading →]]> What is Kouign Amann, you ask?

It’s my new obsession.  That’s what it is.  It’s a buttery, clog-your-arteries delicious kind of pastry topped with a spattering of sugar.

A journalist picked up a few to share on our way up to a media event we were hosting in Healdsburg and the second I took a bite, my mouth dropped,  I gasped, took another bite and broke out into a gigantic shit-eating grin.

These things are incredible.  I want to learn how to make them but I’m scared they won’t be as delicious as the one I tried and then I’ll just be heartbroken.

Here’s a fun video you can watch about them:

I wake up and go to yoga, then on my way home swing by the farmer’s market for some produce and then about 1/2 of the time I’ll also treat myself to a delicious wild Alaskan salmon sandwich from the SF Grill’s booth.  Today was ridiculously cold so the lovely Frenchman who always wears the most awesomest stunna shades in the world let me stand by the grill and warm my hands thankyouthankyou Frenchie.Anyway, as per usual I digress. Usually by about 3 pm on Sunday I get a little shaky and a little tired and realize whoops this little panda hasn’t had any caffeine today so I whip up some sort of delicious coffee treat – the kind you only make when you have a little extra time on your hands.

Sometimes it’s just a regular latte (I really need a frother those things a killer) but today oh man I went a little cray cray and made myself a little mocha and it went a little something like this:

nomnomnom

1. brew a cup of coffee (i use this, an x-mas gift from little teebs last year)
2. warm up 1/3 cup milk
3. combine warm milk with 1 tbsp hot chocolate power
(tcho drinking chocolate is my favorite, it’s just absurd it’s so delicious – i used to like scharffen berger but then hershey’s bought it and now it blows)
4.  pour your piping hot coffee into your chocolate drink mixture
make sure to pet your kitty a little during this process, she has a tendency to get a little jealous when you’re paying attention to anything but her
5. take a little sip of your delicious drink and BAM taste a little piece
of heaven in your mouth

Oh and, you might notice to the right of my coffee concoction a little spray bottle and let me tell you that stuff is my favorite.  It’s the Durance en Provence
Brume d’Oreiller (pillow perfume) in Tisane du Soir (evening herbal tea) that I bought in Paris years ago.  If I’m having some trouble going to sleep, or am just feeling the need for a little something special, I give my pillows a little spritz and off I float into dreamland.

I am very excited for Moonrise Kingdom.

Love,
Julia

The feeling of an ink pen (the kind where you dip the ink into a little glass jar of ink) being dragged across textured paper just makes me swoon.  You can only imagine then that new pen nibs plus new inks plus a new notebook with pristinely white, beautifully textured paper would make me very, very excited.

so much fun playing with my new nibs + inks

I use Windsor & Newton inks.  I love their oil paints (a whole lot) and so decided to keep it in the family.  Plus using Windsor & Newton inks with an old-style ink pen just seems so… romantic.  And their metallic gold ink is ridiculous.

Did you know that when you get new nibs you need to burn them a little to melt the wax off so that the nib doesn’t repel the ink?! The boy at the art store (who wears bowties!!!) told me so.

Pomelo-Lemon Curd and (my favorite) Scones!

little miss muppet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey

It all started when I happened upon the most gorgeous pomelos and grapefruit at the Farmer’s Market this weekend (flowers – remember?!) and just couldn’t resist buying them even though I had no freaking clue what I was going
to do with them, although the thought of a grapefruit/avocado salad totally made my mouth tingle.

Then my lovely friend Krista posted on Instagram pictures of her Grapefruit curd and of course I just had to get the recipe, so she looped in the delightful Sarah who shared that she got the recipe from none other then Smitten Kitchen, which, as you all should know by now is my favorite cooking blog
in the whole entire world.

This is the original recipe – I went ahead and combined the juice (and zest) of one gigantic pomelo and one fairly substantial lemon and used 1/2 cup of that juice mixture (and all of the zest from both!) in the recipe.

Pretty effing delicious.  Should I make this again I’ll probably use a litttttttttttle less sugar since pomelos are so naturally sweet.

breakfast

Then I baked these little suckers, also from Smitten Kitchen minus currants (didn’t think they’d compliment the curd so much) and substituting 2% milk, then piled on my ooey gooey mess for a tangytartysweetkickintheface of flavor.

yum.

yellow spider mums!!!

It is warm and beautiful in San Francisco… in January nonetheless!

the windowsill creatures are in complete enjoyment

And this little monster is taking FULL advantage.  Yoga + farmer’s market (+ a salmon burger nomnomnom) + milky tea + open windows + my new pen nibs + inks = a sunny Sunday dream

look at all of the new nibs + inks i get to play with!