birthday gift from Paris

Look twice.  These are spun spheres of 6.5 cm (2.5 inches) bought in a "le cousin paul" shop by my son and daughter-in-law while in Paris earlier this year.  There's only one shop in North America where they can be bought--in Montreal.  You pop them over tiny tree lights to glow.  Great to have this color in my life!

foreign stamp

Not often do I see an actual foreign stamp in our mailbox. Here's one. In the left corner was just "air mail." I missed the "par avion." Wiki says: French is ... traditionally the international mail language. The "avi" is the same verbal unit for aviation.

Inside was an appeal for money to help a student.

Rotten apple new pate de foie gras

Try to keep your lunch down. But on their excursions to the pasture extension, the sheep go straight for the rotten apples.

They don't eat the rot. They eat beside the rot and thus get the ripest part of the apple. The best is right before it goes bad. Don't try to apply that to any metaphysical situations.

If you haven't ordered any pate de foie gras recently, it's goose liver butter in the same way that we use butter in apple butter. The French, who make snails into flights of culinary ecstasy, also make goose liver into a very pricey dip.

I can't remember if I ever had it.