Grande Cascade

I've done it! And it was wonderful! My good friend Marcel, the Maitre D', was there too. I have regular meeting with him at our local, after work, bar, Le Rival on Avenue George V. He's a cool guy, very professional and yet he can put you at ease in his restaurant. Not that I need that myself being accustomed to this kind of place but sometimes people might feel out of place in such a restaurant. It's not every day you go to a gastronomic restaurant for dinner.
I'll copy the menu of what we had yesterday;; Sorry it's in French, just can't be bothered to translate it. For those who understand nothing of that magnificient language, well just look at the pictures!
We had a little testing menu made especially for us and we drank a lot of wine. 2 bottles in total plus the Whiskey and a glass of sweet dessert wine. Thinking of it, that was a lot to drink and I still can't remember which road we took to come back to our place! Since I'm here in front of the computer, I guess I did pretty good (still have to check the car though...)
Here's the menu :
Amuse bouche


Crème d'avocat et chair de tourteau au caviar d'aquitaine, lait d'amandes fraîches


Cabillaud cuit au naturel, girolles et jambon serrano, jus de volaille perlé


Macaroni aux truffes noires, foie gras et celeri, réduction au vieux porto


Suprême de pigeonneau rôti, haricots tarbais au romarin, jus naturel


Chariots de fromages affinés



Déclinaison de gourmandises


Best thing is that we were seated outside on the terrace! It was like a dream.

After al that food I think I'm gonna be on a serious diet all day. I've been eating fruit and drinking green tea since I woke up! I probably go to the swimming pool and try to do as good as the last time. I went with Uta, my girlfriend, and whilst she did 2500 meters, I did 2000 meters non stop. Being a former East German, she knows how to swim! Thankfully she doesn't look like Schwartzenegger! I was quite pleased with myself to do that much.

Food and stuff

After a good week at work, I decided that this post will be about food.

Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of having a meal cooked by my lovely girlfriend. That was a turkey leg with fruits, grappes, figs in a cider sauce. Just delicious!


Just before that she made us an emulsion of cucumber and mint. Sorry I don't have a picture for that. It was so refreshing and good I forgot to take one! One thing is for sure is that woman can cook!

Today I went to Paris to finally get those travellers checks. I asked the lady why I had to come all the way from my place to Paris to get them. She said that my local branch can order them and that it takes between 2 days to 1 week! They will certainly hear about that in the very near furture. As I said on a previous post, service is not a part of our vocabulary in France.
After that I went to a shop called Lavinia on Boulevard de la Madeleine. Kind of a supermarket that sells only wine and accessories related to it. They have an impressive selection of French and foreign wines. I got 6 bottles of Morgon 1996 for my grand parents who I am gonna see next saturday for a big family reunion. We will celebrate my grand mother's 80th birthdy and her 60th wedding anniversary. It's gonna be pretty cool.
As I was not far from a few nice lunch spots, and that it was already 2pm, I decided to go over the Place du Marche Saint Honore for a quick bite. It's a lovely place, execpt for that ugly glass walled building in the middle of it. It carries a lots of different restaurants and everyone of them has a terrace.
I went to Point Bar, a nice modern looking restaurant and sat at an outside table to enjoy this wonderful sunny day. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, might as well get the best of it while it lasts.


The starter was a crab meat mixed with a saffron mayonnaise and dressed on mango and avocado slices, very fresh and tasteful.


Then I had a veal scallop with steamed vegetables and vanilla emulsion. Surprisingly good, the vanilla adding a soft touch the dish.


Dessert was excellent too, a strawberry "mille-feuilles" with vanilla ice-cream. A classic, but good.


The price of all that : 26 Euros! And that came with a glass of wine. Then I had a little present from my traffic warden friend

I got a parking ticket of 35 Euros for parking on a loading bay! It will cost me more than my lunch. But since I haven't had a parking ticket for at least 6 month, I guess that's alright.

And tonight this is where I'm going to.


La Grande Cascade, an excellent 1 star Michelin restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne. I have fond memories of their maccaroni filled with foie gras with black truffle on top! I remember it cost me 900 euros the last time I went there. Not this time though, cos it's all gonna be free! I'm invited. I just love my job!! I'll be giving a full report next time. Probably tomorrow.

And now the stuff :
I wanted to say that I'm grateful for white linen trousers on women! I'm glad it's in the trend at the moment. I have never seen so many knickers in my entire life. (I mean different ones on different women).
I'm grateful too for the Aubade ad that are showing perfect women curves all over Paris at the moment. Sorry I don't have a picture to show, but I will definetely add one on my next post. I just love those ads, and moreover I just love seeing their underwear worn by women! Such a turn on! Is it me or it's bloody hot now!

Ford Fiesta beware!!

Is it the remain of a car bombing?


You can save the wheels on that one!

It's amazing what you find just down to your place. It seems that there's some people who really doesn't like Ford Fiestas. There was a third one but the lighting was not good and I didn't get a good picture out of it. I mean, this is quite serious. Setting fire to a car shows a huge state of boredom. And there's me who think I'm bored!! I'm gonna start taking on Lada and Renault soon (I hate those French cars).
When you see those pictures you might think you're witnessing the rest of a car bombing somewhere in Irak or Israel. Not at all, it's just 20 km east from Paris, you know where there supposed to be democracy and this sort of shit. Those cars have been seating there for a long time. The most damaged one has been here for a good month. Why am I paying the city taxes? This is not what they call urban embellishment for sure!

To get an idea of good looking car, take a look at this beauty! That's mine and please pretty please Renault and Lada owners don't set fire to it. Where's your sense of humor?


Anyway, I did a few exercice again to keep in shape and tried not to feel my aching muscles! That's the price you pay when you've not done any sport for a bit of time! I was so happy yesterday, I'm a bit less today but I can still lift my hands to reach the keyboard so that's not so bad!

I also went to the bank to try to purchase some travellers checks for our forthcoming trip to the States. I said try because at that moment I'm still without them. I went to my local branch to ask if I could buy some checks. Answer is I can't because I'm registred at another place and apparently there's only one place you can buy travellers checks and that is at your bank. So why do they have branch? I'm glad that my bank is not in some remote countryside place thousand of kilometers from where I live. Then after this little warm up, I decided that I would go to my bank in Paris. Have I known that yesterday I could have done it whilst going to that computer shop cos they're next to each other! I had a little time to kill so I went there and guess what? I had to take an appointment to purchase those bloody things. Hopefully, next tuesday I'm gonna be the proud owner of some travellers checks!
The morality of this story is that no matter what service you want, you have to remember it's gonna take a long time to get it (if you get it at all!) because you live in FRANCE, ze country of ze paperwork! We, French people, have no idea of service nor guest relation. Try to get some freebies from any French company!

Well that was my little "coup de gueule" as we say in France.

Sport, noodles and Petrol

My suffering partners!


Learn to cook noodles with Tof!





I'm not that out of shape! That's a good news. After suffering an hour with the weights, I decided I had burnt enought calories to have a quick lunch. And when I say quick lunch, it took me 5 minutes to cook the best quick meal ever : NOODLE SOUP! It's so easy even the most useless man on earth could do it! For those who are close to that state, I will give you the steps, you even have the pictures to help you out!
1 Take a brand new pack of noodle. It comes in different flavor and surprisingly enough the colour of the package change as well so you don't confuse chicken with vegetables. The one which will illustrate our little cooking lesson is chicken flavor.
2 Open the pack and you'll find the noodle on one side and a little pack containing the Soup Base and the Flavoring Oil.
3 Boil exactly 40cl of water and pour the base and the oil. When the water is boiling you can add the noodle.
4 Wait 3 minutes... Et Voila!
It takes less time to cook this than to go over KFC and order Hot Wings! That's because a lot of people are so lazy, they think it's easier that way. Well, I've just prooved you wrong.
If you're a bit health conscious then you should know that it take almost as much time to prepare a salad!

After indulging myself with that wonderful dish, I decided to go to Paris to find a Bluetooth USB key for my computer, so I can download the pictures and films I've got on my phone. I went to a big computer shop called Surcouf near Gare de Lyon for those who live in Paris, you know where this is. For the others, well then, just skip that part. Anyway, I've never seen a shop so badly layout. The entrance is in the middle of the front which is a good 80 meters long. I had spotted the Apple section on the basement and the stair to go down there is actually at the far left of the shop. After finding the Apple counter, the guy said to me that what I was looking for is on the first floor. OK, let's go to the first floor, and where are the stairs. On the other bloody side of the shop! After what looked like a semi marathon I finally found the section with the Bluetooth thingy to find out they were running out of the one I needed for my computer! Who said that computer nerds are not into sport. They should be fucking looking like Schwartzy if they come everyday to that place!
As I didn't want to go back empty handed, I bought a 1 GB memory card for my camera. More pictures and more video!!

I finally went to the swimming pool to find out that I could still swim, which is quite a good news and moreover I could do 1500 meters without stopping every 2 laps! Let's say that I'm quite pleased with myself today.

And in that wonderful world, I didn't even smoke one cigarette today!! I might have one now just to celebrate the fact.

Oh I almost forgot, there one thing which pissed me off today. That's the price of petrol. I went to fill the car up and couldn't believe it cost 1,279 Euros a liter! It's the price I was used to see on the motorway and now it's at your local dealer. I'm considering now the public transport as a serious option for travelling. No I'm joking, I can't live without a car! I might get a scooter though cos the trafic in Paris is becoming a huge problem if you're driving a car nowadays.

Well, I think that enough for today. Overall I'm pleased with myself : went to the swimming pool, did exercice, had fun at the computer shop and even had a mail from my close English friend (thank you Cate, you made my day!).

Dumb !

Just great, I've noticed I published twice the same post. One thing is for sure is that I'm not a nerd! I struggled quite a long time just to have a picture on my post and it's not even the one I wanted to show! How dumb is that?
Well then, I think I'm gonna stick with basic computer interaction.
Today, it's my first day off since last week. I'm just glad I could sleep longer last night. I really needed that beauty sleep! Weather is crap as usual, rainy and cold. We are not even in September! Where's the global warming the medias are talking about everyday?
I guess I'm gonna have to make the most of it and get dressed and go to the swimming pool. It's been ages since I went there. I probably do 2 laps and drown because I'm out of shape. Went again drinking after work yesterday with some colleagues. I had a few pints and was feeling pretty fucked up because of my state of extreme fatigue! Still managed to have sex though!
I checked my e-mails and had one from a good friend of mine who's in England at the moment. She's really nice and I can't wait to have a coffee with her soon. I had a lot of mail from my friend Adrian who's a computer freak. He will find the most unthinkable website like this Thai website about people who built the replicas of the Kit car, the car in Knight's rider I think it's called in the States. (You know with David "Bay Watch" Hasselhof).
I might post a little something this afternoon, that is if I'm not laying at the bottom of the pool!

Another week at work

Well then, after my failed attempt at finding something to do last wednesday, I got back to work for 5 days of morning shift. I hate morning shift cos you got to get up at 5 to be at work at 7. Going for a drink after work doesn't help either to get some sleep. Thursday I had a little drinking session from 4pm to 1am. Work on friday was terrible, I was feeling so tired. The only good thing is that on thursday I arrived late for work cos my bloody alarm clock did not go on so I woke up at 7 instead of 5! That's life, so I arrived at 8:30 at work and my boss told me that I 11 I had an appointment at our Spa for a Facial! Fucking great! I almost didn't do anything on thursday. Facial was very relaxing and made by a beautiful new girl. She was very professional and I almost dozed off! Try to work after that!!
Yesterday, we went to a restaurant in Paris called Fellini. Obviously, it's an italian restaurant. I've never been there and wanted to try it for a long time since we sent quite a few guests there. It was fabulous, very nice and romantic place. Food was excellent too, I had some toasted bread with fresh girolle mushroom fried pan with garlic and parsley. Then I had some tagliatelle with Saint-Jacques and zucchinis in a spicy sauce, just good. The old tiramisu was of course of the party. We polished it off with some nice Barollo and Grappa! I was a bit drunk after that driving back home!
Work today was so slow, I thought I was going to fall asleep standing up at the desk! We did nothing from 7 to 11!! Amazing!
Another day to go and i'm off. I'll try to go to the swimming pool tuesday. I need the exercice cos I'm smoking to much at the moment. I think I'm gonna give up soon cos it's costing me a lot physically and financialy too! 5 euros a packet that last between 1 to 3 days!
I gonna go to bed pretty soon cos I'm falling asleep just writing this and I don't want to dribble on my keyboard!

Home alone

Sun is out and there is me doing nothing better than checking my mails and other links on internet. I should go outside and enjoy the rest of my day off. I can't even take pictures of that magnificient day because my girlfriend took the digital camera as well as my car to go to the beach with her sister for a few days. That means I gonna have to take the public transportation until saturday. I hate taking the tube. You are so dependent on wether the bloody thing is on time or if there is a strike (French national sport). I might do a little exercice later so I will not look like a fat cunt when I'm older!
Apart from that, I getting ready for my holidays and pretty much look forward to it. Going for the first time to the States. Landing in Los Angeles and then we'll rent a car. If all goes well, meaning not being stop by the cops for speeding or drink-driving!, we'll go to Las vegas then Death Valley and a whole lot of National Parks to finish in San Francisco. It's gonna be fun I hope.
Well I guess hat's it for today. I might do a post later on to say that I'm bored to death. Can't even go and see my friend Austen cos he's working night shift at the moment and is probably asleep now. I guess he is another one not enjoying that day as it should be.