• Living the Pandemic in France, Part 2

    This is the second in a series of posts describing our experience of moving to France just as the COVID-19 pandemic blossomed. Part 1 is here. Part 2: Lock-down Life in Beaulieu-sur-mer My wife and I moved into a little one-bedroom holiday rental in Beaulieu-sur-mer on February 13, 2020. ...
  • Living the Pandemic in France

    This is the first in a series of posts describing and reflecting on our experience of moving to France just as the COVID-19 pandemic blossomed. Part 1: Moving to France My wife and I began planning to move to France almost as soon as we returned home from nine weeks of exploring Provence and ...
  • Lourmarin and Cucuron

    In the Fall of 2018, we spent nine weeks in the south of France, mostly in Provence and the Cote d'Azur. I naively thought that I would post an article about our experiences every few days. I managed to put out five posts, all during the first month of the trip. The following is a post I ...
  • Back to the Côte-d’Azur

    Hello again. A lot has happened in the world, obviously, and in our lives, since our last post in July of 2019. We had big ambitions to write something every couple of days during our nine weeks in Provence in the Fall of 2018: didn’t happen. When we got back to the States, I thought I would ...
  • Works with Nest…Final Word

    In the category of “Why didn’t I think of this?”: including Google Nest devices in an Apple HomeKit setup has been made easier by the bright folks at Starling. The product is the Starling Home Hub, which is a compact device running the Homebridge application wrapped in a user-friendly ...
  • Homekit and Google Nest Update

    Last year I wrote about installing a bridge program to enable Siri to control my Nest thermostat. Recently Google, which owns Nest, announced that the "Works with Nest" program and APIs will be discontinued as of the end of August this year. Although the original announcement seemed to indicate ...
  • Beef Stew with Carrots and Polenta

    My mother made traditional beef stew, in a pressure cooker (now called an "instant pot"), with onions, potatoes, and carrots, lots of gravy, and topped with puffy dumplings. I loved it, even though the vegetables were way overcooked and mushy. I've also learned to love the Italian combination ...
  • Pan-fried Salmon with Onions, Garlic, Capers, Rosemary and Lemon

    This is a dish that I threw together while we were staying in Bonnieux during our long vacation in Provence and the Côte d'Azur in France. I bought the salmon and most of the other ingredients at the weekly market in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. The rosemary was growing in a pot on the terrace of our ...
  • Bonnieux Day 1

    We arrived in Bonnieux yesterday afternoon for a nine-day stay in another Airbnb apartment. After walking around this steep hill-side village last evening, looking for a store or bar open on a Sunday evening so I could buy a couple of bottles of wine, I am sure that by the time our stay is over we ...
  • Four Nights in Arles

    We stayed four nights in Arles, Thursday to Monday. The annual Feria du Riz, a celebration of the rice harvest with music, art, and Spanish-style bullfighting, was held on Friday and Saturday. The Apartment We stayed in a VRBO apartment just outside the walls of the vieille ville (old town) on ...