If you’re searching for my former blog, Le Chou Fou, you may be finding yourself here.
Le Chou Fou was my 2nd serious attempt at blogging. (Nanette’s Feast was the first. Testing the whole third time’s the charm thing.)
Le Chou Fou began life as a travel/food-focused blog. I worked on and off at it, not quite figuring out what I was writing about. It is, however, the source of the Spiced Lemon Rosemary Cake with Walnuts recipe, as well as a bunch of other really nice recipes that will be coming this way over the next few months.
Then, in March 2020, while Steve and I were traveling in Peru…
…and about to head to Machu PIcchu, the then-president Vizcarra announced that the borders of the country would be closed in 28 hours.
Thankfully, we managed to get out of Cusco—many, many folks were stuck there and it sounded pretty rough, primarily because Cusco isn’t built to handle a sudden influx of upset, worried people who often hadn’t brought enough money to last through the uncertainties of a sudden pandemic.
But once we got to Lima, we couldn’t get any further.
Very fortunately for us, we had enough money to wait out the time in a rented flat until the US Embassy was able to put us on a flight home.
It was a stressful, but genuinely amazing experience, and I wrote about what happened every single day, including endless walks circling our rooftop, looking down on empty streets in what, just a week before, had been the third most congested city in the world.
Meanwhile, we also endured an “interesting” (“daft” or “batshit crazy” may be more apt) experiment in which women and men were quarantined on alternate days.
24 days after the adventure began, we returned to a U.S.—united in name only, alas—of unrecognizably empty airports, toilet-paper depleted grocery stores, and people even more confused than the Peruvians we’d been living with.
Today is, not so coincidentally the day we have returned to Lima to do our trip over. We couldn’t get a refund, so a do-over is the only way to make good on our investment in the trip.
I am now ready, to close the doors on Le Chou Fou for good.
Of course, all of the content, most importantly my Peru diary, are safely backed up. The plan is to get that 24-day journal into book form, and add, in my own small way, a little bit to the literature documenting those first strange days of the 2020 pandemic. Yeah, I know it technically started in 2019, but it hit home with most of us in 20. So let’s not be too pedantic.
The working title is “Up on the Roof.” That’s where I spent hours, getting my 10,000 steps in, listening to podcasts, desperate for some sanity, some sort of assurance that everything would be ok.
But if you got an alternate title, float it by me.
If you’re interested in the book when it’s done, please sign up for our newsletter. We’ll keep you posted, and also send you other cool stuff as well.
And thank you for your interest in Le Chou Fou. It’s still here. Just a little less accessible at the moment.
As Martin Mull once sang, let’s not say goodbye.
Let’s just say hors d’ouevre.
