Farmhouse & French

What a great week. Mom and I went to Georgia on Tuesday morning with the baby to stay at the

1917 farmhouse with my aunts. We ate yummy food, watched movies, took long walks through the woods and spent an afternoon in Plains looking at all of the Jimmy Carter sites (homes, school, museum), antiquing (I bought a vintage sailboat for H's nursery) and eating homemade peanut butter ice cream. It was so fun! Hampton was a model traveler and aside from his non-fondness of the museum ... all was well :)

Because Monday was such a crazy day (trying to get ready for our trip and Paul working late), we celebrated anniversary #7 last night. We went to a little French restaurant on the Square (La Cuisine) and split the lamb and a chocolate crepe. The restaurant opened several years ago (the owners having just moved over from France to start it) and reminds me a lot of Paulette's in Memphis ... so authentic and delicious. We talked a lot about how life has changed in seven years ... and how the last year has held the most change, yet been the most fun. Life feels full, our marriage has been blessed and we have so much to celebrate ...

C'est La Vie, Indeed

It is not news to anyone that I have quote become the official family historian for my dad’s side of the family as well as my mother’s. At this point, I have sent out so many lengthy emails detailing what new finds have been unearthed, that a few weeks ago my brother responded with, “how do you have time to breathe?”

Oh yes. I am that person in the family. I also drink hot tea and hunt down antiques on Saturday afternoons, so if this makes me old…well, whatever. In my book, old is the new, new.

But none of this is what I really want to say here. What I really want to say is what I have found most interesting in searching and tracing and learning about all of these lines of my ancestral heritage: the reason they came here in the first place. And I find that the answer time and time again … is the same. Freedom.

Freedom of famine and poverty and speech and  religion and the list goes on. When you put together the immigration periods and look at history {and what was going on in the homeland at the time of departure}, you can put two and two together pretty easily.

Pierre Robert, for example. Pierre is way up the family tree on the Scott side. To get to me you have to connect the dots that a Robert married a Scott, and down a few more generations, a Scott married a Hagood. Pierre, with his parents, came to America in 1686 through Charleston. They came from Switzerland, but {the family} had originated in Wales, moving on to France, and ultimately ending up in Switzerland.

The reason for their constant movement was that they were Protestant, and therefore, persecuted.

Pierre Robert was a French Huguenot {and a minister}. And if you remember from history class … the Edict of Nantes, issued in 1598, granted the Protestants of France {also known as Huguenots} substantial rights in a country still largely considered a Catholic nation. In the Edict, the King aimed to promote civil unity and tolerance … while at the same time serving to end the long running religious wars that had gone on and on. The Robert family left France before the Edict was signed, but after the Edict was revoked in 1685, not only did hundreds of thousands {of Protestants} leave France, but many also left the bordering countries {i.e. Switzerland} due to the hostility created by the revocation and regime of the French king.

C’est la vie?!

Later on, a historical account of Pierre stated that, Reverend Pierre Robert was the first Huguenot minister to set foot on the shores of the New World. He was of sturdy stock, whose fearless spirit, neither the cruelty of religious persecution nor the dangers of the ocean and fear of the savage could intimidate or subdue.

Pierre’s descendants went on to include, four protestant ministers {the last of which was my great-grandfather}, his great-great grandson, Abram M. Scott, the 7^th Governor of Mississippi, as well as Henry Martyn Robert, who wrote, “Robert’s Rules of Order,” which became the most widely used manual of parliamentary procedure in the United States.

…which kind of makes me smile. The future generations of his family started churches throughout the Southeast, governed a state, and wrote the book on the rules and ethics on governing meetings of organizations and legislative bodies.

And did so, freely. C'est la vie, indeed.

Today, the only remaining French Huguenot Church in America {pictured} still stands in Charleston, South Carolina. And their website says the following, our purpose is to unite in worship of and obedience to our Lord in all things, to share God's word, and to show our love for God and one another, while standing firm in our faith, unashamed of the gospel of Christ, as the Huguenot founders of our church did, to the glory of God, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. There is a plaque on an inside wall of the almost 200 year old church {the original church was destroyed} that says simply, Pierre Robert.

I love that.

New Orleans Love

The last time I was in New Orleans was the

summer of 1992. I remember 3 things from

that trip: the beignets, the river cruise and the

hot-hot-hot, humid air. Upon pulling up to

the Parkview on Saturday around noon, I knew

with this trip -- I would remember more.

 This was our room for the weekend. So fun!

...after check-in, the three of us set off on a 12-block stroll

through the Garden District, where just about every

house we passed by looks like this one...beautiful.  

We stopped for lunch a few streets over from Magazine

where we spent the afternoon shopping. We had delicious

gruyere and carmelized onion sandwiches at St. James

Cheese Company...

 ...and then dessert at Sucre. Macarons and coffee and a little

gelato! The King Cake mac was my fave :)

Macarons. If you have never had one before, you must

try them. They kind of just melt in your mouth ... 

On Saturday night we went out on the town. First stop was

Arnaud's where my boss told me that we must try the

classic "French 75" ~ 

So we did :) 

 The bar was actually named the French 75, which the

original owner named after the steelest of the magnolias,

Scarlett O'Hara.

Next on the foodie list was Bayona. 

 Complete with delicious cream of garlic soup

and a band outside our window playing

Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal.

 There is an amazing energy and

vibe in New Orleans. It really is one of the

most interesting and unique cities that I have

been to ~

Happy Birthday to us :) 

On Sunday morning we headed out bright and early for a

full day ... 

First stop was the legendary Commander's Palace for the

jazz brunch. 

The balloons reprensent birthdays and were tied to the back of

our chairs. 

I ordered this creole turtle soup to start and we finished up

with the creole bread pudding with bourbon whiskey sauce,

a dessert that Southern Living has right near the top of the list. 

We concur.

The trio played us the birthday song as well as Tuxedo Junction

for the Birmingham resident in the mix :) 

 This 1833 cemetery was right across the street.

When given a choice between old and new,

I will {about 95% of the time} choose the 

old. With the old, there is always a story

worth telling.

After brunch and more Garden District, we went down the

Great River Road toward Oak Alley Plantation.  

The trees that looked out toward the Mississippi River were

said to be about 100 years older than the mansion...making

them around 300 years old, to date.  

We toured the mansion... 

 ...and stopped for a lemonade mint julep or

Virginia juleps as we like to call them.

Loving Louisiana. 

 The famed Oak Alley.

We ate dinner right on Jackson Square and 

watched the sun set over the St. Louis

Cathedral. Softshell crab po boy for me and

muffalettas with olive salad for the sisters :) 

...after our celeb sighting {Darrell Hammond, SNL} we

went to hear jazz and have a few beignets :) 

Pre-departure on Monday morning, I had beignets {again} 

from Cafe du Monde with Mary Caroline and Jackie O on

the steps overlooking Jackson Square. The weather was

perfect and pigeons weren't too rowdy.

We walked along Royal Street and visited a few more

shops before it was time to say good-bye. Sniff.

New Orleans, it's official.

You are one of my favorites.

~

Violette's & Sweet Home Carolina

I flew to Atlanta today just in time for a lunch date with Julie. We lunched at Violette's, a way chic French cafe right off the interstate {and my subsequent route to South Carolina}. And I just have to say how much I adore, flat l-o-v-e Atlanta restaurants. It seems there is no shortage of swanky, tasty eats and treats in that city. We both had the chicken grapefruit salad with a sort of mustardy-citrusy vinaigrette. DE-lish.

After lunch it was back to the grind and I put the pedal to metal to get to Clemson. I went straight to the university and did some work and it wasn't until later that I realized what county this city sits in ... Pickens County ... which happens to be where the Hagood family landed {and lived for years} post crossing the Atlantic. It's probably a good thing I didn't realize this small fact pre-trip or I might have been tempted to track down tombstones in random older-than-dirt cemeteries while here .... which I have been know to do ... on occasion.

Before & After: Vintage Watercolor

Before notations: Okay, so the above is a close-up of the

$3 watercolor I bought at Olga’s this weekend. The matte was

molded and frame was yuck, so I did a little dismantling

work to get the painting out. The back of the watercolor

read in handwritten cursive,

“Paris, France ~ 1965.”

After notations: I wanted a vintage French scene …

but not necessarily one with the Eiffel in the background,

so I re-worked the watercolor within the new matte

and frame (that I already had), and voila, perfect.

Ete, Meaning Summer In French

For lunch I had an apple and a slice of chocolate cake and then I ventured over to Davis Kidd so that I could read the backs of newly released memoirs and food essays. I think you can tell a lot about a person by where they choose to venture while in an independent bookstore.

Ashli emailed me today to ask about a neighborhood in Paris. Because she’s living in Paris this summer. How many ways can you spell green with envy? I think envious even more so because just this morning my friend of a friend, Colleen :), emailed me a new blog to read, and one of the featured posts was on Laduree – read: colorful and oh-so plentiful macaroons. Some might think of the Eiffel Tower when they think of Paris, I think of food. Chocolate, pastries, snails and such. French food = one of my favorite pastimes.

…or maybe just food in general = a favorite pastime. That’s probably more apropos.

Golden Friends

You know the ones I’m talking about here. Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.

One of mine wrote today, the old-fashioned way, pen and ink. The reason was three-fold … happy spring, she said, and enclosed two articles – one on a business concept (over the years we’ve come up with our fair share of business ventures … Green House Design, Tres Chic, Mockingbird something or other … to name a chosen few), and one entitled, ‘the best of friendships.’

This same friend told me in elementary school (while in ballet class) that she was going to France over the summer, and many moons later (while in college), we (and Holly! And all of the other Mississippi belles) went back together … this friend sends fresh peaches to my doorstep because it’s summer, sang ridiculous songs with me the scary night after I graduated from college (instead of the diploma, they should have given me a prescription for valium) when my lone move to Memphis was just hours away, held my bouquet the day I was married (after writing in my senior yearbook years earlier that she hoped I would meet a Tennessee boy) … and is one of the only girls (the rest of you know who you are) who appreciates a good peony or family heirloom or decent raw silk dress (or gingerbread man) or the entire month of January … just as much as I.

The memories are so endless.

She is a friend’s friend, a sister’s sister, a true there-for-you kind of girl ... And even though we’ve lived a good 12 hours away from each other for practically an entire decade – it hasn’t mattered. Like the article she sent was entitled, ‘the best of friendships.’

Indeed. The very best.

Love, Loves

This photo reminded me of my grandmother ~ she signs off from all of the emails she writes me with a bit of French flair

[and love]!

Countdown to our tour de south (read: homeward bound) for the holidays ... FOUR days :)

C'est La Vie

All of this French reading has gotten me thinking about my own first experience with the country. I was sixteen years old. We had an overnight flight from JFK and as we were flying into Paris early the next morning the fog was just beginning to lift. It was love at first sight. I pressed my face to the glass of the plane window and kept it there until we had landed at Charles de Gaulle minutes later.

I found everything about Paris to be so inviting. Everything. As first encounters go with things we love so well, I couldn’t get enough. I loved the language, the way the “r” rolls off of the tongue and learning to distinguish between a croque monsieur or madame for lunch while seated in an open air cafe, the quiet way of life … the pastries (with cream so rich it fills your mouth … and raspberries…), the architecture, and the tiny iron balconies with climbing ivies, the chocolate, the countryside with wild peonies and fields of lavender. I loved walking down the avenues that turned into alleyways. It was so much for my senses to take in, and I relished every moment.

My favorite photograph from that trip is one in which I am sitting alone at a tiny bistro table at a café. My legs are crossed, and I believe we must have been going to the ballet that night because I’m wearing these strappy heels. My hair is pulled back off my face and I have a black scarf tied around my neck. I’m smiling, but not at the camera. The look on my face captures the way I was feeling at that time, that week.

It was, without a doubt, one of the best things my parents did for me so early on in life. Allowing me to travel and experience culture in that way. It shaped me in ways that I can’t begin to express. Even now the words fall short.

One of my favorite parts of that trip was experiencing it with my grandmother. We ooohed and aaahhed and ooh-la-laed our way through those ten days together. My grandmother has been back to Europe practically every year since that trip, but that first time when it was just the two of us, and we spent hours laughing hysterically and practicing the perfect bonjour with the large casement windows opened to the street down below at midnight … that is the time that will forever be engrained in my memory.

After all – what is travel and good food and memory … and life – if it isn’t shared?

Weekend Read

Paul and I spent the majority of the last week sick. We both went to the doctor…both overdosed on drugs trying to get better…both slept a lot. We were like too bad roommates there for a couple of days. I can’t even tell you how happy I was to actually sleep all the way through the night last night without hacking my left lung up.

All time spent lying on the couch was not in vain, however. I started reading a new book (memoir, yes) entitled: Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home ……… absolutely fabulous. The author, Kim Sunee, is also the founding food editor of one of my other favorite reads – Cottage Living. She has a blog too … and I’m linking it.

I found the following regarding both the author and book online ….

When Kim Sunée was three years old, her mother took her to a marketplace, deposited her on a bench with a fistful of food, and promised she'd be right back. Three days later a policeman took the little girl, clutching what was now only a fistful of crumbs, to a police station and told her that she'd been abandoned by her mother. Fast-forward almost 20 years and Kim's life is unrecognizable.

Adopted by a young New Orleans couple, she spends her youth as one of only two Asian children in her entire community. At the age of 21, she becomes involved with a famous French businessman and suddenly finds herself living in France, mistress over his houses in Provence and Paris, and stepmother to his eight year-old daughter. Kim takes readers on a lyrical journey from Korea to New Orleans to Paris and Provence, along the way serving forth her favorite recipes. A love story at heart, this memoir is about the search for identity and a book that will appeal to anyone who is passionate about love, food, travel, and the ultimate search for self.

My Second Home, The ER

One trip wasn't enough this summer. It seems I must be making up for lost time. You see - I was in the emergency room my freshman year when I tried to defend the Chi O quarterback during an intramural football game and landed on the ground with a broken wrist. The summer aftefreshman year I was having surgery on that same wrist. My sophomore year I received a poisonous spider bite and landed myself back in the ER. And then junior year - malaria - need I say more??

My senior year was injury free. No major breaks, foreign diseases or insect bites of any kind. And then graduation came rolling around...and I think that meant only one thing: 'life would not get boring for Heather Hagood > bring on all subsequent hospital visits.' Thus, that's where I find myself ending up. Again and again and again.

It was 5 p.m. and I was gearing up to go home. I was leaning up against my co-worker - Dee's desk - and talking to Charles. Next thing I know I'm beginning to feel a little on the fainty side. Again - like I said in an earlier blog when I broke my finger in June - this is nothing new. I have managed to pass out in my bathroom, in the Sahara Desert, in the middle of the busiest avenue (literally in the middle) of Paris, in the car (and no, I was not driving), on my kitchen floor...and the list drags on...embarassingly enough.

Well, seems as fast as the feeling of 'fainthood' came on - it decided to take action - next thing I know I'm lying on the floor with Charles and Dee in my face screaming, "Heeeeeather..." A little splash of water, and I thought I would be fine. Oh, no. They proceed to tell me that the ambulance was on its way because unbeknownst to moi - I decided to take out the metal bar on Dee's desk on my way down (with my head).

It was about this time when I began to feel a little panicky. They weren't letting me move for fear I might be paralyzed. (Yes, Jodie and Becky...from the neck down) I began to have this sensation that I might be bleeding to death and no one would know it because they weren't letting me turn the side of my head where I was beginning to feel the consequence of that metal bar. I told them they could choose - I could either roll over and chance lifetime paralysis or bleed to death right in front of the entire office. I'm guessing they made the call of bleeding to death. I didn't budge.

The ambulance then comes - and by this time - I was feeling on the edge of loopyness (is that a word?). They strapped me into - and I quote - "head trauma gear" > translation: a squeezing neck brace that makes you think you've stopped breathing with straps all across your face - and put me on the spine board. And here we are once again in rush hour traffic trying to make it to the hospital...the paramedic informed me lights, etc. would not be happening because they didn't want my head to move. "Head to move," I thought..."My head will not be going anywhere in this contraption..."

Enter the ER. And enter Happy Land. Whew - was I feeling on the crazy side. This is before the drugs. That's important to note. After the IV and drugs...Happy Land was at an all-time high, and then began to fade... I slept for the rest of my ER stay. The cat scan and blood work all came back fine - my blood pressure was low and I was dehydrated. A bottle of Gatorade later and some more drugs, and off I was to the Bruce household to be carefully 'monitored.'

Today has been better. Besides a splitting headache - all body parts are still intact and working. It's just another day in the life of me...

Style

The peony is my flower of choice. I love the colors, the shapes, the size. My wonderfully talented Aunt P. did a watercolor of pink peonies and it currently hangs right above my desk where I can see it morning, noon and night. These are the little things in life that make it so bright, so beautiful. When Mary, Holly and I were touring Europe a couple of summers ago I was the one stopping to take pictures (many a picture!) of the peonies blooming along fence rows, at the base of stone chateaus and in vases everywhere. I was in heaven.

I have always thought it important in whatever stage - to stop and smell the roses - both literally and figuratively. Days and weeks and years pass by so quickly, are fleeting - it's important to remember the little things. I want to always take notice, and not forget. I think I was reminded of this, too, watching Alzheimer's take my grandfather. There may come a time when our memories of yesterdays, our memories of today - this very hour - may be snatched away.

Today I was reading Kate Spade's 'Style.' I absolutely love that little green book. It speaks of dress, architecture, music, sunglasses. Fabulous. I recommend it to any and all - it's not literature - you don't have to think...just imagine. I don't think my style has changed in the last eight years. I have never been a 'trendy' kind of girl - rather - priding myself on the classics. Friends and family might coin it as the 'funeral regalia.' When I showed up at Lindsey Grace's rehearsal a few weekends ago the girls all proclaimed in mock surprise, "ohhh, color?!" I love that pink dress, but I must say...I love those little black dresses hanging neatly in my closet so much more.