noel a la france

Christmas at the Le Sagers was really wonderful it had all the elements of being a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas. Lets see here. MamaLesager had fresh bread & butter for breakfast with home made apricot jelly & coffee or tea -whatever you like- every morning, when we lazily rolled out of our nice and firm guest bed with the down comforter. Don’t have any slippers your size in the hall closet? Here borrow these for now, and magically new fluffy ones in your size appear the next morning.. and so everyday goes.. Lunch at noon-or-one, café and tiny treats at 4, dinner at 8-ish, tisane by the fireplace around 10.

This is the stuff dreams are made of. … and Then we had the holidays!

It really was great, I helped mama-L make a LOT of desserts, mostly Alsacian-type treats. One very memorable one was something comparable to a gingerbread roll with raspberries-fresh-off-the-bush-and-frozen-since-last-summer sauce and homemade crème chantilly (which is essentially handmade whipped cream, from the french region of chantilly, no doubt). Another one that fabienne was effortlessly gliding through like they must do every year, was similar to banana pudding except there weren’t any bananas, was not only beautiful to look at but delicious too. I tried to take notes at first, but realized quickly it was taking away from the moment of feminine togetherness.. I wished my mom could have been there with us too, she would’ve been stirrin’ and rollin’ and mixin & icin’ and asking the boys to reach the stuff that was too high up like we did.

There was one really funny moment (span of 10 minutes?) I would’ve loved to have had a camcorder in the kitchen: homemade crème chantilly as you may know takes a lot of real “elbow grease”. Mama-L started the project, and as soon as xavier came in the kitchen it was passed to him until he thought his arm would fall off, then I took over, and beat the sweets for a while, until philippe saw I needed a little help, but NoNo came and practically grabbed it out of his hands to “show him how you do it” but he quickly became unamused with the required effort, and passed it back to philippe, who proceded to work his elbow off, around this time mama-L declared it needed “just a little bit more”. xavier had rested up sufficiently, and came in for the final lap.. Ahhh, teamwork.. I know mama-L has an electric beater, but we all know it tastes better when you put your heart and soul into it instead .

Rather than put everything in some logical order, I remember it all as a beautiful smear of experiences, familiar and not. I was relieved to find that families everywhere –even Norman Rockwell families—get under each others’ skin sometimes, particularly at the holidays. All of it was pretty normal stuff actually, but there was apparently one evening I was told I was lucky to have not understood what had transpired. Everyone kept their hats on in a civilized way, although I heard later how someone was being a huge pain-in-the-ass.

The baby made out like a bandit. The best of the best are the stuffed animals we got. I cant decide if the homemade patchwork rooster or the baby-black-sheep is better.. but I have to remember these are NOT FOR ME.. they are for my kinder, who I am patiently waiting for so we can play with the toys!!!