I came home from our week in California with a full heart…and a full-on cold. I’m finally getting back to normal. I’ve been mostly relaxing, trying to kick this thing, but thankfully there were three Six Nations rugby games and catching up on the week-long Paris Nice cycling race. Could have been much worse.
While in California, I walked almost every morning on The Strand, a beautiful paved path that runs for miles between the beach on one side, often filled with volleyball players, and the houses on the other side, often overwhelming in their opulence.
However, there were also moments of peace and quiet.
The beach is part of life in much of southern California and as our daughter and her family live just a few blocks from it, every trip there includes a daily walk to the beach. On the way, my heart was gladdened by these golden poppies and the contrast with the bright blue fence behind them.
My plant ID says these are Delosperma bosseranum or, as we normal people call them, iceplants, a succulent. No ice in sight but if ice looked like this, what an interesting world it would be!
I haven’t seen dog droppings, so I’m assuming these bags get used. I love the “Business is picking up”, something I would have liked to have written.
Look this direction and you can see the Palos Verdes pennisula and the city of Palos Verdes, or PV as the locals call it, where the houses are large and expensive and the views are amazing. The flowering succulents on the hill above the beach are in full bloom.
Look the other direction and you can see flowers again as well as quite a distance along the coast. At the bottom of this hill is The Strand. The official name of The Strand bike path in Los Angeles is the Marvin Braude Bike Trail, a fully-paved, 22-mile (35-km) bike path that runs from Will Rogers State Beach in the north to Torrance County Beach in the south. It gets a lot of use. When both my husband and I visit, we stay in an Airbnb in Hermosa Beach and my husband bikes to where our daughter and family live and then back at night.
There’s so much to do at the beach but father-son time is one of the best things!!
It wouldn’t be a Monday walk with Jo or a trip to Redondo Beach without a stop at Sweet Wheat, my favorite French bakery. Today I’ve taken a break from panna cotta to enjoy Paris-Brest, so light and tasty and, important to me, just barely sweet…but SO very delicious. I’m sure I walked off any calories going to, along, and from the beach, right? 🙂
The Paris–Brest is a classic French pastry, featuring a crisp, almond-studded baked ring of pâte à choux that’s split in half horizontally, liberally filled with praline crème mousseline—a heady mixture of vanilla pastry cream, nutty praline paste, and whipped butter—and finished with a dusting of powdered sugar.
This bakery staple was created in 1910 by pastry chef Louis Durand, as an homage to the long-distance Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle race (the pastry’s circular shape is meant to evoke that of a bicycle wheel). Pâtisserie Durand, which is still owned and operated by the Durand family, claims to have the original recipe, but fortunately this hasn’t prevented pastry chefs around the world from putting forth their own spins on the dessert. ~ Serious Eats (You can find a recipe there as well.L
Happy May Day! Did any of you make May baskets when you were children? If you live outside the US, is May 1 a special day for you?
This, that and the other thing 