When you're licking

melted butter from your fingers,
it's hard to shut down the oven.

This book has dress up in a flashy flapper vintage dress from the USA fashion of the 1920's and a pair of red heels to make sure it drew a lot of attention to the special Birthday person of this 2015 Birthday Rabck!

So take it's hand and go out on that dance floor and give a good spin! May it give you several hours of good fun before wearing you out! ;)

Have a lovey day and with any luck, I pulled a smile from this! :D  

Thank you so much for this book that's been on my wishlist for a while! You seem to have a knack for finding the rarer books! :-) Thanks also for the other birthday goodies - and the smiles :-)

This was a delight! I loved Haller’s chatty writing style, and the food descriptions kept my mouth watering throughout. I’m always amazed by people (trained chef or not) who can cook without a recipe. On the rare occasions when I actually cook something, I follow a recipe to the letter.

The descriptions of the area, especially the chateaux, brought back many happy memories of my semester in the Loire Valley (Angers). During that time, the school took us to countless castles on Saturday excursions, including Chenonceau and Azay-le-Rideau which Haller visited. Chenonceau is spectacular, but Azay-le-Rideau is truly magical.

Haller’s friends seem like a nice group of people, and their encounters with the locals made for interesting reading. What a dream – to rent a house with a bunch of friends in another country! Seems even a more remote possibility in these days of being a “grounded” American due to Covid-19. Nice to have memories to sustain us.

Traveling to fulfill a wish.

I hope you enjoy the book!

Thank you, my fairy godmother! A parcel of not one, not two, not three, not four... but FIVE books arrived today. You must have gone soft in the head, but I don't mind 😊. This looks like my kind of book and guess what! I sent a book to Chania today (a Finnish book written by a Finnish-French couple about food and France, I was hungry the whole time when reading it) and was reminiscing the lovely Loire Valley and the day trip I took from Paris to the Valley in my JE... I almost had second thoughts of passing the book on, but I must have done the right thing as this book along with the mysteries was waiting for me in the post office. I hope you were equally rewarded when sending this parcel.
There was another familiar "face" here, hi HI77! Haven't seen you around as much as before, I hope all is well with you. Thank you for putting this book into circulation in the first place.

I haven't read this yet, but I'm lending my old collegue from the Academic Bookstore a bag of books as she is corona- housebound due to her age. I'm putting together a parcel I think she would enjoy. She used to be the life and soul of the English pocket book department and the Bookstore has gone to dogs since she retired.

I could not care less for food or cooking, but the thing that made this book enjoyable for a barbarian like me, who knows nothing about gastronomy, was how the participants of the journey were so amazed and thankful for the kindness and politeness of the French, the low price and plenitude of food and the remarkable beauty of everything around them. For somebody who actually likes cooking this book must a great joy, as Haller told very enthusiasticly about first buying the ingredients - nothing was wrapped in package beforehand, so one could smell and taste things, look at them and discuss about food - then about cooking and of course about enjoying the food. They also went to long walks almost every day, which was certainly called for having been eating so much.
The book returns to Kirjakko once I have read all ten books which she bought over.

The book has returned to me already some time ago, but apparently I have forgotten to make a JE about its return. Finally I have finished all the books I meant to read before Christmas and get around reading this.
When reading about the fall-out of the partners and the death of one of them (of the successful restaurant business) I feel blessed. Our little clinic turned 25 last week, and we have been relatively healthy and the staff of two is still very much in speaking terms. We must be doing something right as we got from our clients this huge gingerbread house with gingerbread dogs and cats in front of it!

In 1992, six weeks after I had gotten my driver's licence (on third attempt!) I left for a driving holiday with a friend on her car. I drove everywhere else but in France, because there they drive like maniacs and a driver with good reflexes was the best choise, not somebody whose engine still died from time to time or who had kangaru petrol in the tank. I was actually better at driving in England - on the wrong side of the road, having been a pedestrian for so long. My driving instructor actually said to me once in the middle of Helsinki: "Miss, in England they drive on the left, shall we move to the right side?"
My friend had never been to England before and I had interrailed all over it several times, so I had suggested some of my favourite places, like York and Hay-On-Wye. I hadn't mentioned that Hay was in fact a book town with 2500 inhabitants and 22 sh-bookshops, but when we got there my friend took one look and said: "Okay, I'll give you two hours and then we are out of here!" I thought I would die - sprinting from bookshop to another, buying books as fast as I could... And most of the shops weren't very organized, I'm sorry to say.
A Finnish friend of ours had a summer cottage in France and we went to visit her when coming back. She suggested we should go to a supermarche on our last day and fill the car with delicious jams, cookies, tea and other durable groucheries which are not only delicious but dirt cheap in France and so we did. I remember the cashier first asking where we were from and then asking in a very emphatic voice: "Is there famine in Finland?"

Pic: A fake picture, the road atlas is from 1999 and at that time we still had our blue passports and every European country had its own currency.

I know what the writer means by saying that custard was sold in pretty, vase like jars. My brother and his family lived in the outskirts of Paris for a few years in the 1980'ies and my sister-in-law used to spare and drag to Finland loads of pretty little glas jars where they sold yogurt in France. They didn't recycle glas in France at that time, not even wine bottles, so the amount of glas trash was phenomenal.

He must have kept a diary of what they ate and what ingrediants went in the meals and as Elisabeth said, this will make better reading for somebody who actually likes to cook. I admit that I have begun to jump over the cooking parts.
The first time I went to France in 1986, I hated it. My eldest brother Jussi was living there and my other brother Jaakko was also interrailing with a friend and they were ending their trip to Paris and lodging the last week at Jussi's. I was and still am an anglophile, so I wanted to travel straight to Britain, but Jaakko's girlfriend talked me into travelling with her to Paris, where she would stay a week with Jaakko and his friend and then the three of them would return to Finland and I would stay a few days and carry on to Britain. We arrived at Gare de Nord, the main railway station of Paris, and nobody spoke anything but French in their tourist information. Not only that, they were also unhelpful and arrogant. My hackles were rising as I was used to charming Brits on the other side of the channel. It was boiling hot and we found out that buses and the metro weren't running as the workers were on strike! I was not a happy camper, carrying my rucksack in that heat to visit Notre Dame and the famous Shakespeare & Co bookshop. Jussi came to fetch us with his car after work, by which time I was ready to head for Britain there and then. They talked me into staying one more day, as Jussi could drop us to Versailles on his way to work. Ok, but the following day I left and vowed never to return. It was first in 2002 when I returned and only because a client of us had won a long weekend for two in any European capital and had just split up with his boyfriend. They were having the European Winner Dog Show in Paris that year and she asked if I would like to come with her! Gosh, I must have done something right customer service -wise.
In those 16 years Parisians had learned some English and their attitude had slightly improved, so we actually had a good time there. So much so that I returned on my own for a week the next year and explored Paris and the countryside. I went to a guided bus trip to the Loire Valley and saw Chenonceau and two other castles in such a speed that I have always wanted to go back and explore the area and castles with enough time, but that has not happened yet. It is a truly beautiful place.
A couple of months ago I read my Granpa's memoir for the first time and he had been in Paris a hundred years before me and stayed in a hotel on the same street, Boulevard St Michel! He mentioned many of the same places I had seen, so it made me realize we are here only for a brief time, but those beautiful buildings and parks remain. Only Les Halles had been torn down since his visit.

My theory of the goat-smelling honey is that some goat product had been previously in that container. Bookcrosser oofiri has bees and I took some glas jars for her to use as honey jars. She said glas was fine, because with washing one could get it clean and odour-free, but she always buys new locks for the jars because metal and plastic often hold smells in them of the previous product and honey is very sensitive to catch those smells.

Finished. I know how horrible it is to leave behind a place you have fallen in love in just a few weeks - after my four weeks at a vet's family in Dartmoor, Devon, I cried my eyes out during the seven-hour bus trip to London town while listening to Diana and Charles getting married on the radio back in 1981 and having spent ten magical days away from it all on a wee ship in the enchanted Hebrides in 1998 tears just poured out of my puffy eyes while sitting in a train which would take me back to civilization.
I've also been to Saumur and visited the castle and the National School of Horsemanship - I was surprised that horses weren't mentioned in the book, because Saumur is the home of Cadre Noir and a place where horses are of great importance.
Also the boys in the book went to Shakespeare & Co. on their visit to Paris. I saw George Whitman, the famous owner, on my first visit, but I didn't know anything about him back then. It was only many years later, having read Jeremy Mercer's excellent "Books, baguettes and bedbugs" that I came to realize what kind of place I had visited and have been there several times after that.
I think I have tagged Chania with this book ages ago, although I usually write a JE immediately after such promises as I don't trust my memory, and there was no mention of a tag here, but this book and Chania belong together like salmonella in French poultry.
Will be putting together a parcel for her, so this might take a while.

Finally you get this book! Happy Birthday!

Oh kirjakko, you find the most perfect books for me! Thank you!

Ooh, really enjoyable book! I loved the atmosphere, scenery, food... almost like I was there myself!