Cucina Testa Rossa

Cannes Magnifique: Moulin de Mougins

Today's excursion was to Moulin de Mougins (which means Windmill of Mougins, Mougins being the name of the town), one of the most highly acclaimed restaurants in France. At its helm for decades was the legendary chef, Roger Vergé, who maintained his 3-Michelin star rating the entire time. I believe he still owns it but has turned over his whisk to a French-trained Spaniard, Alain Llorca, who is muy caliente y muy guapo! :-) He is on the right in the picture below. The restaurant lost a star but Chef Alain said they are working on getting the 3rd one back. The restaurant, and the entire property for that matter, is beautiful…old stone buildings centuries old with an antique stone olive press in the entrance.



One of the dining rooms is in the garden with glass walls. They have celebrities sign the window in pen then etch their autographs into the glass. It looks very cool. The only name I recognized was Elizabeth Taylor. Legend has it that the great French artist and a good friend of Roger Vergé, César (like Cher, only one name), after repeated requests, finally signed his name on a panel under the condition that no one else was allowed to sign on his glass panel. Well along came Elizabeth Taylor and she signed on his panel and the nest time César came to the restaurant he had a fit! Chef Vergé simply shrugged and said "It was Elizabeth Taylor…what was I to do?"  Her signature is at the bottom arrow.



There is a charming hotel with 10 rooms and a separate building for the bakery and the office. This is the location for the yearly fundraiser for amfAR (american foundation for Aids Research) that draws the like of Elizabeth Taylor, Elton John, Liza Minelli, Sharon Stone, Natalie Cole, et al… 500 stars and a separate tent for the 275 drivers and security people! 6 people from our group were picked randomly to help work in the kitchen for this event...I wasn't picked and I was sooooooooooo very disappointed. We didn't get to eat there but here is a glimpse of their amuse bouche for the lunch service that day. My apologies as I can't find where I wrote down just exactly what this is... All the pictures from this delicious visit are here.

We then headed up the road to Le Clos St. Basile. This has become an annual stop on the Cannes cooks trip and Chef Claude and Madame Annie treated us to a spectacular lunch. (351, avenue St Basile, 06250 Mougins, France, +33 04 92 92 93 03 ph, [email protected]) A former participant on the Cannes cooks trip, a chef named Trevor, joined us there for lunch. He ended up staying in France after his trip to Cannes. Hmmmmm…not a bad idea! ;-) He worked at both Le Clos St. Basile and Moulin de Mougins and coincidentally studied at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco.

Lunch Menu:
Cocktail Champagne Maison & Feuilletés Salés
- Champagne Cocktail & Savory Puff Pastry Twists
Mise en Bouche Rafraîchie à la Gelée de Crustacés
- Amuse Bouche: Cold Shellfish Soup
Saumon Mariné aux Herbes et Sel Marin
- Salmon marinated in Herbs and Sea Salt

       

Aiguillettes de Canard, Sauce Miroir au Vin de Bandol
- Duck Breast with a Bandol Wine sauce
Macaronade de Fruits Rouges Glacé à la Vanille
- Macaroon with Red Fruits and Vanilla Ice Cream

       

Café et Mignardises
- Coffee and Dessert Bites
Vins: Côtes de Provence
- Wine: from the Coast of Provence

After lunch we returned to the beautiful gardens for coffee and mignardises (assorted small bite size desserts), usually served after the main dessert. Can never get tired of desserts in France! We were all ready for a nap but alas no… By the time we returned to Cannes, after once again going the wrong way a few time, we headed straight to the American Pavilion to unpack and set up both the Pavilion and the student union.

Oh my goodness, it was spectacular! The view that is. The set up was a nightmare. As I mentioned earlier, the tent is situated right on the beach! If you stand on the deck and look out at the Mediterranean, there is a stage being built on the water for the De-Lovely (Kevin Klein, Ashley Judd movie about Cole Parter's life) closing night party, a myriad of yachts arriving for the festivities and the glorious French Riviera, the Côte d'Azur that is truly azure.

We unpacked the Pavilion, and then walked up to the student union, where I will be working with Elizabeth the first 5 days. It was very fun to set up and work together as a group. Most of the cooks went to dinner at Marine Café with the lovely Olivier, all in all about 20 of us. Armand, one of the managers with our group, swears Nicole Kidman was sitting at a table in the far corner. No one else thought it was her but I did look like her! I'll just believe it was her.  Back to my hotel room with piggie roommates. Piggies, piggies, piggies! Humble pie! HUGE slice! Hate that!

Cannes Uncorked: Château de Bellet

After this gastronomic delight, our next stop was to Bellet Vineyards, Château de Bellet, which has been in the Bellet family for generations. The tour guide, Clementine, is the great-great-great- (can’t remember how many “great”s) grand daughter of the founder. It is her parents that currently live here. A charming story of the trompe de l'oeil on house….a few centuries ago, the people were taxed based on number of windows in their home and her great-great-...grandmother loved to look of windows on the outside so the 3rd column of windows (the column to the right of the tree) on the house is fake! It looks grand but if you open the shutters, there is just a wall. That's one way to avoid the taxman!

The soil or terroir is composed of sand and rocks called pudding. The rocks are polished from being under water thousands of years ago which also enables the rocks to retain heat. This area is blessed with 300 days of sunshine a year and a steady climate. The grapes have to work hard on the vines and in the "pudding" soil so they have a deep rich flavor, and one that reflects the terroir.

The white wine is aged in oak barrels, the rosé in tanks, and the red wine in tanks as well. The white is lovely, not sweet, not to tannin, surprising for me as I don't usually like white wine. The rosé is sweet, too sweet for me though. The red is nice. I got an aroma of sneakers (no one else got that), musty, and deep red fruits.

The vineyards lie about an equal distance between the ocean and the Alps both of which you can see in the distance, and a lovely breeze continually blows.

Hernan, one of the cooks on the trip, is from Argentina. He lives in Scottsdale but drives like he is still in Argentina flying around the curvy roads. We of course got lost and Armand (from Canada, lives in Newport RI, one of the managers who's been on this trip 4 times!) was wigging out because he couldn't read the map. As it turns out he had it upside down, and we kept finding ourselves back in the same place. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or if we were really innocent victims in a new reality show. We found the A4 eventually after backtracking a few times and arrived just in time for dinner. This was supposed to be our early day. Oh well… as all the managers say, "C'est la vie, c'est la France." Translation: That's life. That's France. Three little words that can completely excuse someone's utter incompetence… I'll have to remember that! ;-) It's that corporate-ness in me again! I really must let go of that if I am going to survive in this country or this industry for that matter... All the pictures from this visit are located here.

I went to dinner with 2 other cooks to the restaurant on the road that runs along the beach. Marine Café, owned by a tall, charming, handsome, blond hair, blue-eyed Frenchman Olivier, is a wonderful local restaurant with good local food. He was so excited to tell us about his trip to the US and especially California. I had my favorite, moules and frites (mussels in white wine garlic both). Life is good :-)

The Côte d'Azur is Really Azur!

There are about 20 cooks and 5 managers in our group from all over the US and one from Argentina. We arrived a few days before the festival began and were treated to 3 days of whirlwind trips through the south of France. Yesterday, our first offsite, if you will, was to Nice on the Côte d'Azur and their local farmers market. It was spectacular!

These are my favorite pictures…Just looking at these strawberries makes my mouth water. They were like nothing I'd ever tasted!  Sweet and earthy and tangy and bursting with juice! We are so used to those dreadful tasteless dry supermarket berries that one bite of this brings tears to your eyes when you realize what you've been missing.

After meandering past all the wonderful stands, we circled back and bought some delicious olives, still-warm baguettes, an assortment of fromages, and a bottle of wine and walked across the street to the beach. We sat on the promenade looking out at the Cote d'Azur, which was truly azure as you can see in the picture above, and feasted on our purchases. La bonne vie! Click here to see the photo album.

Tzu-cchini, not Zu-cchini!

In one of my first notes, I talked about emotionally where it began (Advice to the Sealorn) but there were two actual events that occurred a few years apart that really jolted me into action. I’ll start with the second. I don't remember the exact context of the conversation but a few years ago I was with a friend and someone asked her what she did. Her unassuming reply was, "I save lives." Well this stopped me dead. She does indeed save lives as she is a social worker who also does drug and alcohol counseling for people who have just been released from prison and are trying to assimilate back into mainstream life. She finds them jobs, homes, food, clothes, and is for the most part, their only source of stability and sanity in their lives and she takes their calls at all hours night and day.

It was at that moment that I realized all I did was build web sites that no one really cared about, that was by no means making a difference in the world, and it certainly could never be misconstrued for making this world a better place so it was right then that I decided to do *something*, *anything* with my life to make it worth while, to use it to make this world a better place. I didn’t know at the time what it was and I don't know now how slicing carrots or filleting fish will help the world but as it was such a tremendous force inside of me, I know it is what I am meant to be doing right now… I am excited to see how it unfolds… I just hope it happens soon as patience it not my strong suit! :-)

The first time was a bit more subtle but just as empowering. In early 1998, my humble culinary career began when I enrolled in my first cooking class at Home Chef in San Francisco, a ten-week basic cooking class where I learned techniques from stock to soufflés. From then on, I attended and assisted in every culinary class I could find...and I LOVED IT! Surprising, since prior to this I burned water! Really! After cooking class one day I was walking to my car and passed a bookstore. There was a book called Under the Tuscan Sun (maybe some of you have heard of it!) in the window, long before it became a bestseller. I went in and bought it and fell in love with Tuscany. I wanted to renovate a farmhouse, I wanted to grow basil on my back porch, I wanted to shop at the local market, I wanted to sleep on sheets that were dried in the sun!

A few days later, I purchased another book, Tuscany:The Beautiful Cookbook, and in the first few paragraphs it talks about the Etruscans (a civilization pre-dating the Romans in Italy and located in Tuscany) and how they were content to dine on bread, olive oil and wine. It hit me! Oh my goodness, that's me! This is where I came from! This is my history! This is who I am... as few things make me happier than a meal of wine, bread and olive oil and I can certainly turn them into a tremendous feast!

My paternal grandfather is actually from Tuscany so it’s not surprising but he was so obnoxious that no one could stand to listen to his stories so I really knew nothing about my ancestry. He actually spent the better part of one forgettable holiday dinner trying to teach my brother and I, aged 6 and 12 at the time and not caring a rat’s you-know-what, how to properly pronounce zucchini which according to him was with a “tz” sound as in “tzu-cchini”, not just a “z” sound the way the other 10 billion people in the world pronounce it, but I digress... I know it sounds corny but it was the first time I ever felt connected to the past and felt like I knew who I was or where I came from. So there began my journey of self-discovery and my love affair with cooking…

My favorite tzu-cchini recipe...

My theory on cooking is the less ingredients the better and my favorite way to cook zucchini comes courtesy of the coolest cat in Manhattan, Chef Jimmy Bradley, owner and executive chef of The Red Cat (as well as The Mermaid Inn, The Harrison, and Pace). A quick sauté of zucchini (courgettes en français) with toasted almonds and pecorino, a dish he has cooked for Bill Clinton many times, allows the zucchini flavor to shine through while the mellow almonds and zing from the cheese add exciting but not overpowering accents.

- 1¼ lbs zucchini
- 1 oz sliced almonds
- pecorino or parmigiano
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- salt* & pepper

1. toast sliced almonds in olive oil until golden.
2. cut zucchini into matchsticks and add to the hot pan, tossing quickly to warm the zucchini through.
3. season well with salt* and pepper.
4. portion on to six plates
5. top with thin shavings of pecorino or parmigiano.

* A quick note on salt. Please, I implore you, please don't use that nasty salt in the blue box, you know the one I mean. A small investment in a container of sea salt or gray salt will change the way you cook. It did for me! The only sea salt in my kitchen in San Francisco is from NapaStyle which imports their sea salt from France's Brittany coast. You only need to use a small amount and, as my friend Arleen said, "Laura taught me that it’s easy to make great food from simple everyday ingredients, and that Gray Salt from Brittany, France is truly a little taste of heaven". So there you have it... mangia bene!

Of course I’ll work for free!

 

Of course I’ll work for free! I'll even pay you! This is the culinary industry after all…

A quick explanation about how and with whom I initially came to France. Last June [2003], an FCI alum who had just returned from Cannes stopped by cooking school to report back to the chefs. Chef Pascal, knowing I wanted to go to France, introduced me to him. I tucked this in the back of my mind and when it appeared on the job posting web site this past February [2004], I immediately applied. The program in which I participated is sponsored by Kodak Film and a separate company called the American Pavilion in Los Angeles.

The "American Pavilion" is the largest tent at the Cannes Film Festival and the closest one to the red carpet. It is the first in a row of tents sponsored by many different countries. The American Pavilion tent has a kitchen, a dining area, a deck on the beach, an internet cafe, a business office, and separate press room where many of the producers and stars of the American films being shown would meet with the press. We were treated to the likes of Kevin Bacon & Kyra Sedgwick, Benjamin Bratt, Kevin Klein, Jim Cavazeil (The Passion), Billy Bob Thornton, and Roger Ebert who did many of his interviews there. The above photo is of Jim Cavaziel opening the American Pavilion.

Kodak brings about 160 film students (who pay $2,000 each to be there!) from across the U.S. to work at various locations throughout the festival. Some worked as waiters at the Pavilion; some worked the market, La Marché, where film makers and producers were trying to sell to film distributors, which was what Michael Moore was trying to do with Fahrenheit 9/11. Some of the students have films that are being screened here but most are just trying to network and market the heck out of themselves. The AmPav started bringing in cooks about 8 years ago so that they could sell food in the tent.

There is also a "student union" of sorts—a flat they rented a few blocks away—used as a central gathering place for everyone with the Kodak program. It was there that we cooked lunch for everyone, every day. We also provided breakfast every morning at the hotel. Luckily I never got breakfast duty as that meant showing up at 5:00am! Many of you asked how much I was paid to do this. Pardon me while I pick myself off the floor and stop laughing. Not only did we not get paid, the cooks actually had to pay $800 for the privilege of working there, another amazing aspect of this industry. What’s more amazing is I bought into it hook, line, and sinker. Was it worth it? Absolutely! Would I do it again? I’ve learned to never say never…but I would have to find a different hotel...at least one with a jacuzzi slide that didn't run into the wall ;-)

"Bonjour, Cannes!"

Woke much too early but had to get to Gare de Lyon train station in Paris for the TGV (France's express train) to Cannes. It was raining and luckily we left early as the police were about to close the Champs Elysées for the French Armistice Parade (end of the war). I am now heading backwards to Cannes! A lovely train ride down, about 5½ hours, and we (me and the train) made our way south, cutting through the country side passing farm after farm after farm, whizzing by quaint little villages delivering their morning wake up call. I can't tell what they are growing and I don't know how to ask that in French but there are acres and acres of vibrant green occasionally offset by a patch or strip of vibrant yellow. Mustard perhaps as it reminds me of the Napa Valley. Maybe we are near Dijon? It is a rainy, gloomy, gray day but the prospect of sun in the south of France keeps my spirits high. The conductor came by collecting tickets and he smelled to high heaven. Between that and riding backwards, I am getting a bit nauseous...

I arrived in Cannes with breakfast intact and checked in to our hotel, the Pierre et Vacances, in Cannes La Bocca (3 miles down the beach from Cannes proper). The only good thing about it is the view of the Mediterranean. This view (picture above) kept me sane. If you look very closely at the picture you will see a blue pool slide on the bottom right that runs directly into...the wall of the Jacuzzi! Many times we saw hotel maintenance standing over it looking very confused. This is a frequent occurance in France. C'est la vie...

The hotel is cold, damp, musty, and cramped! We have an apartment set up that sleeps 5 people with 1 bathroom. Let me rephrase that... 5 women, 1 bathroom! 4 young film students still in college and me. I am officially in hell. I have my own room, thank goodness, but it too is cold and damp and musty and so small that I had to put my suitcase on my bed as there was no room on the floor! Another student from my cooking school is also on the trip and we walked 3 miles up the beach to Cannes. We ate lunch at a restaurant right on the beach, Riviera Beach Restaurant (Blvd du Midi, Cannes). The beach was covered with swarms of topless Magdas (Cameron Diaz's neighbor that smoked and tanned in the movie "Something About Mary")! We just cracked up. The waiter was a bronzed, toned French man wearing shorts, a tank top and sporting a pony tail and who was just digging life. We then walked to the Palais de Congress about a half mile up the road just past the old port starting to fill up with yachts of all shapes and sizes. Well the size range was actually from large to larger. The Palais de Congress is the main building or convention center where the Red Carpet is and where the premiere screenings are held. It is conveniently next to our tent, the American Pavilion as it is called. This picture is last year's [2003] opening night premiere. Photo by Larry Laszlo/CoMedia. The red arrow points to our tent. Pas mal ;-)



We walked back to the hotel for our meeting with the culinary team of about 20 cooks consisting of lots of young people in their early to mid 20s, and about 6 or 7 from the same cooking school in Arizona, the Scottsdale Culinary Institute. Once again I feel like the oldest, like I don't fit in at all… We had our meeting and I must admit, I was scared to death. Those doubts of "What was I thinking?!" and "What if I can't do this??" were swirling around in my head (completely unfounded as I soon discovered!). After the meeting, I went in search of an internet café. I stopped at one restaurant/cafe and of course there was no internet connection that night for some reason that they were unable or unwilling to explain to me. I saw a large table of cooks from my group there having dinner. I walked by the table to say hi and not one person asked me to join them. I felt awful, left out, high school all over again :-( I guess I could have asked if I could join them but at that point I just wasn't up for it.

The weather is freezing! It is overcast and cold and windy and I have no warm clothes! All the clothes that I pulled out of my suitcase at the very last minute to make the airline weight limit are exactly what I need right now. There is a woman from San Francisco State, Yael (pronounced ya-el) Braha, on the Kodak film student program as well (more on that later) with a movie here who I would like to meet. There was a snipet on her on NPR before I left. I am also anxious to see Michael Moore's movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, which Disney won't distribute. It must be a doosie! The next 3 days we, the culinary team, are visiting local wineries and markets and restaurants and then it's work! Tomorrow is a visit to the open air farmers market in Nice! Ooh la la!

Bordeaux, Baguettes & Brebis

Today I felt very French! :-) I shopped at a different store for every item I needed. First I went to Nicolas, a very charming wine store that is as prolific in France as Starbucks is in the US. A very polite Frenchman selected a red Margaux from Bordeaux for dinner (scroll down for a description of Bordeaux wines). It's hard to buy a bad bottle of wine in France so I wasn't worried. I then crossed the street to the flower shop where I bought a bouquet of brilliant Gerbera daisies which never fail to bring a smile to my face.

Then on to the aptly names bakery, Le Boulangerie, where the swiftly moving line was out the door and ½ way down the block. It appeared that half the town was there buying their baguette for dinner that evening so I knew I was at a good place. Four very stylish older women were at the counter greeting me with a "Bonsoir!" and a smile. I then popped next door to the cheese shop, Fromagerie La Lochoise, run by the gracious Monsieur Minart. Six people and a baby were waiting for Mr. Minart's expertise and a wedge of French heaven. He took his time with each person including the baby, not rushing, ensuring that every purchase was the perfect cheese for the occasion at hand. When I arrived at the counter, still very hesitant to speak French, I held up my bottle of wine and baguette and requested his guidance with a simple “s’il vous plait?” Mr. Minart suggested an aromatic brebis (sheeps milk cheese), a creamy Camembert, or an herbed chevre (goat cheese). I gladly obliged with all three.

Isabelle and I dined on fresh warm baguettes, glorious cheese, and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne (she decided to save the wine and celebrate with some bubbly) and solved the world's problems until 11:30pm when we tabled our discussion, promising to come back to it in the near future.

Bordeaux Wines

I won’t pretend to know a lot about wine cuz I don’t. I know what I like and don’t like and I know a bit more than the difference between red, white and rosé but beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. One thing I did learn in my wine class at cooking school taught by master sommelier Andrea Immer is that some of the best wines in the world come from the Bordeaux region in France, “the largest fine-wine region in the world” and the “model for all wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot”(1). Bordeaux is in southwest France, along the Atlantic coast, straddling the Gironde River and the smaller offshoots, the Dordogne and Garonne Rivers. Like Paris, there is a Left Bank and a Right Bank, but there is also the Graves (pronounced 'grov') zone which lies to the south of the Left Bank along the Garonne River.

Some statistics on the Bordeaux region (2):
• 300,000 acres of vineyards
• 850 million bottles of wine produced each year
• 25% of all AOC (appellation d’origine controlée) wine produced in France
• Grapes grown: Merlot (50%), Cabernet-Sauvignon (26%), Cabernet-Franc (10%), Sémillon (8%), Sauvignon (4%)

On the Left Bank, the main district is Médoc and the most famous towns in Médoc are Margaux, St. Julien, Pauillac, and Sainte Estephe. The dominant grape grown in this district is Cabernet Sauvignon. Bordeaux wines are usually blended and the wines from the left bank are predominantly Cabernet grapes so the wine will be full-bodied and high in tannin. According to Andrea Immer’s wine tasting notes in Great Wine Made Simple, the Cabernet-based Bordeaux wines “show blackcurrent and cassis character, often with vanilla and scents of cedar from the oak, and sometimes the earthy scent of wet gravel”. The fruit flavor is understated and “weaves harmoniously with the other components of earth, oak, tannin, and alcohol”.  Translation: it's damn good!

The town of Margaux is home to 80 chateaux and domains that produce 9.5 million bottles per year and is situated on a plateau overlooking the Gironde river. The most famous premier cru wines of Bordeaux hail from Margaux. Château Margaux “consistently produces the finest wines in the Médoc. Château Margaux produces over 30,000 cases per year and is located in the centre of the Margaux appellation. The vineyards (Cabernet Sauvignon 75%, Merlot 20%, Cabernet Franc 2%, Petit Verdot 3%) lie on a sandy-stone topsoil, beneath which is gravel and then clay. The wine is fermented in a mixture of stainless steel vats and oak casks and is matured for 18 months in 100% new oak barriques” or barrels (2). It is consistently rated one of the top wines in the world.

Château Margaux is a full-bodied red with aromas of dark red fruits and earthy scents such as truffles, coffee or toast. It is delicious with roasted duck, wild game, or a hearty steak...or simply with a fresh baguette and cheese! :-) Mangia bene! Bon appetit!

(1) Andrea Immer, Great Wine Made Simple
(2) Berry Bros. & Rudd (www.bbr.com)

"Bonjour, Pa-ree!"

OK, it finally sunk in. I stepped out of the metro at the Charles de Gaulle / Etoile stop into the sunlight and was welcomed to Paris by the grand Arc de Triomphe. I choked up as it hit me: I AM IN PARIS! I'M REALLY HERE! I MADE IT! I felt like I could finally exhale... suddenly aware that I'd been holding my breath for the past few months. Perhaps that would explain all the anxiety attacks in the middle of the night.

My flight from SFO to Paris was uneventful if you consider being surrounded by fifty (yes, 50!) 5th graders from a French school in Berkeley as uneventful. They talked for 11 hours straight. I was waiting at the boarding gate when a huge commotion broke out at the top of the stairs. Looks of horror come across the sea of faces as all eyes were fixed on the swarm of students descending the escalator to the gate. If it were a cartoon, the bubble over each head would have read, "Please, not next to me!!!" My prayers went unanswered and a very precocious 5th grader sat next to me and proceeded to tell me about her many previous trips to Europe and how she loved horses, had a horse, and collected all the plastic horses. She quickly grew weary of talking to me and joined her friends in the previous row and talked for the next 10½ hours.

I walked to my friend Isabelle's building on Avenue Hoche and we went around the corner to the aptly named 'Brasserie le Hoche' for lunch. I had perfectly grilled salmon with a lovely béarnaise sauce and some mushy vegetables. According to Chef Henri at the French Culinary Institute, that is the proper way to cook vegetables: "Laura! They are not 'mooshy', that is the way they are supposed to be, not raw like you Californians eat them!" I'll take raw over 'mooshy' any day... so I helped myself so some of Isabelle's perfectly fried pommes frites (no easy task as I can attest to having burned thousands of them in my few months in a professional kitchen) and slathered them with béarnaise. A quick espresso (café, as they call it) and I was back on the street. I felt re-energized, like I was back in New York. I walked back toward the Champs Elysées, turned left, and walked down the Champs Elysées toward the Louvre. The flower beds along the Champs Elysées are such a treat. The French really "get" flowers!

My first stop was Ladurée, the famous Salon de Thé (tea salon), with the most delectable macaroons on the planet. I purchased one of my favorite, hazelnut, for 4€ (ouch!!!) and continued all the way down the Champs Elysées savoring every little nibble, trying to amortize each bite.

After a few hours of walking, I found myself back at Avenue Hoche sitting at a tiny table in the window of the café looking out at the beautiful old buildings designed by the famous architect, Hausmann, who Napolean III commissioned to rebuild Paris. I day dream that I am living on the top floor of one of the buildings with an overflowing flower box of bright red geraniums on the balcony overlooking the street. I sip my café and fling open the windows with a rousing "Bonjour, Pa-ree!" I know it sounds cheesy and more like an Audrey Hepburn movie than anything but I don't care...I love this city!! :-)

That damn hamster!

Bonjour mes amis. It seems that my last post had an unexpected side effect. Many of you wrote that you now felt depressed with your middle-class lives. My deepest apology as that was never my intention. I was simply trying to explain the angst and frustration that tormented me. I found Herb Payson's words much more profound than the trite and tired analogy of the hamster furiously scrambling on the wheel and getting no where that came to my mind.

If nothing else, I would hope that it would give you some insight as to why I was the way I was and what in God's name stirred me to me make such a dramatic and seemingly irrational change with my life. Well now you know. It comes out of an inner turmoil that I was for years unable to describe or define or understand, nor resolve expeditiously... that and the need to, for once, do something meaningful with my life besides build websites that no one really cared about.

Another thing that came to mind... Once I was able to extricate myself and then look in, I realized that in living in the Bay Area we are bombarded daily by visions of success as we are led to believe success should be (10,000 sq ft homes, hummers, country clubs, Lear jets, IPOs, etc.). Everyone has a name followed by a title or descriptor, ie: John who took two companies public; Mary, employee #5 at Google; Tim, who's worth $x-hundred million, etc.

We are also surrounded by some of the best and brightest and wealthiest and when we compare ourselves or our lives or our possessions to this, most can't help but slot themselves in the middle (or near the bottom as I did). Anywhere else in the world our lives would dare be labeled middle-class, nor would our temperament be considered malaise. With the exception of a few cities in the world, where would near million dollar homes or a salary well into the 6-figures be considered middle class? No where, as luck would have it, except for my own backyard. Which is why I had to make a change... I was tired of doing the best I possibly could and still feeling mediocre, like that damn hamster...

That being said... On to Paris! :-)

Advice to the Sealorn

I am keeping a journal and taking hundreds of pictures and will try to get them up on my site in a timely manner but I thought I would start with this as it explains the beginning...how it all unfolded. Perhaps after reading this, my future rantings will make more sense. People frequently ask me why, after a decade in Silicon Valley, did I leave hi-tech or if I have any regrets about completely turning my life upside down, pulling the carpet out from under me... In a word, NO! I don’t mean to be flip or casual about it, because it was anything but that, but the way I know I’m on the right path is that even at the worst, most down of days, did I regret my decision. I might prefer to not be standing over the deep fryer or gutting a fish or eating “merde” from some chef at that particular moment but, at the time, never did I wish I were back in my Dilbert cube.

It’s hard for me to express my feelings around this so I have included an excerpt from Herb Payson’s book, Advice to the Sealorn, about his and his wife’s decision to sail around the world. He describes it brilliantly, perfectly and expresses precisely how I felt! I was so excited to read this and know that I could finally convey, through his powerful prose, the turmoil that was churning inside of me. This is courtesy a former co-worker who, like Mr. Payson, did indeed leave his job to sail around the world on his boat. I bolded a few sentences below that really hit home for me. Here is a snippet that I hope touches your heart the way it did mine...

"...Looking back, I've come to believe that it takes more courage of a certain kind to stay in suburbia and do the expected thing than it does to sell out and sail off. I came to a point where I realized that my talent was modest, that I would never become a star in the galaxy of fame, that if I didn't change I would, for the rest of my life, do my best, pay my debts, and finally die the mediocre middle-class man that I really was. And if that sounds a little strong, I intend it to, because those are some of the feelings that allowed me to quit quixotically. And for those feelings I shall be eternally grateful.

Money is not the only thing one has to spend; the other thing is a life. The difference is that, with life, you never know how much is in the bank, or what your balance is. Your life is your inheritance. As soon as you realize this, you start trying to spend your life wisely.

Nice, round, imposing thoughts. But what do they mean? They meant, to me, make changes. Radical changes. And Nancy and I made the changes blindly, having no idea what we'd discover about ourselves in the process. I've said this before, but I'm going to repeat it in case you, too, suffer from the same thing I did. Middle-class malaise is more than discontent. It's being worried and unhappy without being able to pinpoint the cause. It's anxiety. I suddenly realized that I haven't used the word anxiety more than a dozen times since we went cruising. Because anxiety to me has a special meaning: It's a general angst. Some of it stems from my upbringing, which said that if you make regular trips to the doctor for a checkup and keep up with your insurance premiums and make yourself enough money to keep you in beef and gin and attend church, at least on holy days, you'll be safe. So you do those things, but the Truth, which lives within all of us no matter how badly we treat it, says it's a lie. You aren't safe, you've just managed to bury any and all recognition of what the threats are.

So I worried about cancer, and monetary debt, and why my palms would run with sweat whenever I drove in rush-hour traffic, and the sins I was piling up, and all the other stand-ins we invent for Death. "You'll never get out of this life alive" is the barstool wisdom. And as soon as you admit that there's going to be an end to your life, you begin to be concerned with what, to my mind, is the only existential concern: What do I do with what I have left?

And, of course, the answer to that is different for everyone, and this is a good thing, as there's too many of us out here already. The waters are crowded, and all the neat, secret places are being filled up. But that's okay. Doing something is one thing. What's important is how you do it, and knowing why you're doing it. When a man sails his Columbia 45 to waypoint #352, drops his anchor in a lonely lagoon of glass-clear water, and looks around at whispering palm trees and beaches of golden sand and asks, "What's all the fuss about?" you know that, GPS or not, that man is lost. For Nancy and me the decision to cut loose and go cruising was radical and wrenching, and I'm grateful for that, too. It was a time of changes, many of which were painful. And after all the pain and problems I was damn well going to discover something important, whether it was out there or not.

And it wasn't out there, ever; it was inside me. Out there was merely the environment that allowed me to see it. Because in the cruising life, cause and effect are tangible and intangible. For someone who is always going to worry no matter what, cruising is the greatest possible medium. There are so many real things to worry about on a voyage, and real things to do about them, who in his right mind would need to create more?

None of this came to me in a Eurekaflash. It came in bits and pieces. One piece: We were delivering a leaky boat from Tahiti to California that would surely take on water beyond our ability to pump it out if we ran into an enduring storm. I was worrying, as usual, about every little thing. Tired of my fretting, Nancy finally brought me out of it.

"Come on, Herb, what's the worst thing that could happen?"

"We could die," I said.

"Exactly," she said, and went back to her book..." "