Following a Mahjong Trail across Virginia—or Was It Paris?

I had such a delightfully busy week in Virginia that I’m not sure exactly what I did there. Each day was packed with dining dates with different folks I was so happy to see, and my head and heart are still spinning,

A few themes came through strong, though.

(My AirBnB was outside the themes, but it was so peacefully decked out that I have to start with an image from my private bedroom/bath. I chose it because I could walk to my aunt’s house from there, but it turned out to be like a spa/retreat/oasis.)

First stop had the mahjong and Paris and pink theme coming on strong. My cousin Lisa picked me up from the airport and invited me to hang out at her house with Tucker and Larry while she had an appointment.

She plays mahjong obsessively (I believe I’m quoting her, here) and has two sets, this pink one being Paris-themed. Herein starts my trip flavor.

At my aunt’s house, we chatted about the past and the future, snacked and told stories, and worked on the pink and purple sections of this puzzle:

Which, you guessed it, features Paris. I am now hooked on puzzles.

My aunt has played mahjong all her life and learned at her mother’s side, and she slipped away twice while I went out to lunch so she could play her weekly games. I got her and Finn on FaceTime so they could talk mahjong; he’s head of the Michigan State University mahjong club!

I dined out with a bunch of old friends who were a joy to see (no need for a Paris connection), including my old friend John and his wife Sue and my my riding instructor, Pam, from when I was a little kid.

Plus, I Ubered downtown to my young nephew’s college, VCU, had a brief foray up to his dorm, and took him out to Mexican. It was so totally satisfying seeing him in his element, winning at his first year at college and confident and successful.

My theme came through not directly (he has as little to do with pink and Paris as he can; that hair color is brilliant red), but, while I waited for my Uber back, I noticed that the theater on his block is where I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show after my prom, wearing pink. My date that night had been one of the friends I just met out for lunch that week, John.

I was not a lace-wearing, Pretty in Pink girl at all back then (and am not now), but I felt rather retro in that second-hand dress and had a blast at Rocky Horror. How weird that my nephew is living on the same block as that theater! He acted in the VCU Rocky Horror himself this year. Small world.

Next on the Pink Paris trail was my good friend, Mary Margaret, who whisked me away (after a great lunch with her old friends, oddly at the restaurant where Finn and I used to meet my Mom, twenty years ago).

She took me to her family house on the Chesapeake Bay, the very house where Tracy and I spent a week with the trailer two Julys ago when we were stuck in hot and humid Virginia and needed a house with AC.

This time the weather was anything but hot and humid, but it was so very, very relaxing.

Fripouille oversaw the crochet and knitting. When it came to food, he was more interested in the shrimp cocktail than the galette, but I was all over both.

Mary Margaret has a rich personal and professional history with food, and right now she teaches cooking classes out of her home in Brittany. This means a) she knows what she’s doing in the kitchen, and b) she has a commercial-grade galette machine in her house here by the bay (as well as in France).

The steps, which I flubbed on my turn, but not badly according to my kind teacher, are:

1. Carefully spread the buckwheat batter on the hot griddle. (This takes many, many practices to get right, as even MM learned a while back.)

2. Add ingredients for the filler, which for us was a soft egg, sautéed leeks, and Virginia ham MM had sliced off the hock a minute ago.

3. Make sure to add them in a pretty formation so that, when you fold the edges of the crepe into one another, you can still see the ingredients.

And voila, something so yummy that I forgot to take a photo until I’d eaten about half of it.

Crispy, buttery buckwheat, savory egg, salty ham, subtle leeks, perfectly yum with a simple salad on the side.

This is MM in a nutshell (or should I say a galette shell): hosting, cooking, providing calm in a storm, in such a carefree and simultaneously sophisticated manner that you don’t realize you’re being cared for.

We knitted and crocheted and talked and watched Jane Austen on TV and shared ideas about travel bags and had a grand old time. Mostly, I was interested in MM’s current major interest, which is a class she’s taking at Versailles (yes, that’s the Paris tie-in) on cultivating a kitchen garden. I will let you know when her book is published! (You can find her @mycancalekitchen.)

A very stuffed and satisfied me made it back to Madison (via Chicago). Where had I been? Was it Virginia or Paris? It doesn’t matter, because I was with wonderful people—and their animals, and their mahjong love.