After 17 hours traveling from Paris to Atlanta to Jackson Hole, I arrived to find smiling e-husband (and boyfriend) waiting for me at the airport. I was happy to see him him but I wasn’t able to conduct a real conversation, so tired from travel that I fell immediately into bed and slept until 4:30 in the morning when I was wide awake (jet lag). I decided to get up and start the day by checking email.
There I found a note from a client apologizing for the last minute notice but asking if we could pull together a proposal by Monday—it was now Saturday. Welcome back! Since I had a short window of lucidity, I scrambled to send out notes to our staff who thought I had lost my mind—who sends email at 5:30 a.m.? As I worked, Paris seemed very far away.
Julia Child
Later, E-husband (and b.f.) and I went to see the perfect movie for reentry into the U.S.–Julie and Julia. Who can watch that movie without being inspired to go into the kitchen and try your hand at Boeuf Bourgogne? When Julie is watching videos of Julia Child’s cooking program—I became determined to find out if they are available. Sure enough PBS offers the series Lessons with Master Chefs.
The scenes in the movie about Paris made me feel like I hadn’t left—I loved seeing Julia’s rich life in Paris and who can blame her for not wanting to leave? I’m not claiming to be a Julia Child, but I could relate to the scenes where Julia was despondent over the status of her unpublished cookbook. My friend Eliza Cross and I worked two years on a cookbook that was recently published. Who knew that writing a cookbook could be such hell? There were many days it didn’t look like it would make it to the printer, days where we thought our work on weekends (when we could have been hanging out with our families) would be for nothing. But in the end the cookbook was published, and now we are happy to see it selling in bookstores.
The day after I arrived home was the 6th wedding anniversary for e-husband and me. He calls it our “plastic anniversary†and arrived at my house with a dozen red roses wrapped in plastic. He brought all the ingredients to cook spaghetti in clam sauce—one of his signature dishes—and a nice bottle of wine. We sat on the patio looking at the Tetons, talking about the movie, and about the week ahead. He said it was our best anniversary ever and I’d have to agree.
Although my original 60,000-mile trip has come to an end, stay tuned for more French-flavored adventures.
