francofile in the new year

I’ve been staying up until 2 a.m. Waking up at 10 a.m. Watching Joe play X-box. Playing X-box. Researching jobs. Getting ready for my job. Eating lunch in my pajamas. Cuddling with Baby.

It all ends today. I’ve carved up my first raw chicken. I’ve made meals to get us through the busier days of the week & dusted & caught us up on laundry. I’ve given myself a facial; fixed up my sad, dish water-logged nails & tweezed my eyebrows for the first time in about a month (a project as time intensive as carving that chicken with a paring knife turned out to be).

We’re ready. Tomorrow, our new semesters & work schedule start. This week, a new schedule starts on this blog. Mondays: sustainability-focused posts with “being conscious” topics. Wednesdays: the domestic mis-adventures & miscellany of “being married”. Saturday: recipes & tips to help with “being French”.

To keep this going, more photography will be featured, as I’m trying to increase my skills this year… & we’re going to try a switch to lafrancofile.com, fingers crossed! I’m excited to take this journey with all of you & try to keep this blog growing.

I’m also welcoming the distraction, as tomorrow takes me back to a world of statistics & finance & benefit-cost analysis that I am still finding rather intimidating. By the end of this semester, I should be a master at understanding the ins & outs of government funding systems. Or a total failure at graduate school. Coin flip.

See to tomorrow for a post on how to compost without smelling up your kitchen. Hopefully by that time, I’ll figure out if it’s really necessary for me to lay out egg shells & coffee grounds to let them dry before plopping them in to turn into top soil.

I’ll leave you with these tips on how to be French, so that you can get some practice in before I share a recipe for great French pastry crust & a basic quiche–a recipe that will withstand the test of time, budget & occasion.