One of my coworkers, a wonderful person that I really care for and consider a friend in the true sense, got me a little present for my birthday; a book on smoothies. A smoothie is a blended and sweet beverage made from fresh fruit. An urban legend pretends that there is no smoothie without milk or yogurt. Ain't true Ma'm!

I decided to give it a shot this week-end during the visit of nobz, a DocIsland fellow, and his family.

I started with a smoothie called Breakfast Bracer (mango, banana and grapefruit, two each) which was really good. I followed the recipe almost faithfully. I just added a bit of cinnamon to the mix. And then my embryonic cuisine creativity gears kicked in and I decided to experiment. After two interations, I "created" Lava 1.0. The recipe is pretty simple and you can do it even if your cuisine skills are near or below zero.

For 1 liter of Lava smoothie juice, you need the following ingredients:

• 500gr of strawberry
• 125gr of raspberry
• 3 bananas
• 7 juicy oranges (with 2 blood oranges if possible)

Wash everything (save for the bananas of course), cut the strawberries and the bananas in small pieces, cut the oranges in 8 parts. For each part, remove the pips if any and the attached skin on the inside. Take a sharp, small knife and separate the part from the external skin. Make sure there is no skin attached to the external surface of the orange part. Throw everything in a blender. You don't need to add sugar or whatever, Just make sure you select premium fruits. Put in the fridge for half an hour, or if you want to save as much vitamins as possible, add ice and you are done!

I called this smoothie Lava as a tribute to the coworker who got me the book that sparked the creativity gears. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did and if you have any suggestions for enhancements (that's why there is a version number attached to the smoothie recipe's name) please let me know.

One of my favorite activities consists of walking in Paris streets. I've been living in the area for almost ten years and Paris still amazes me. It's kind of a love'n'hate story between us. Far more love than hate though. And after all these years, Paris still have some Love cards up her sleeves that just make me happy.

I often wander in streets I've never been to before or just walked their pavement in a hurry, not really taking the time to see what beauty (or ugliness) they may have in store for me. Yesterday, I went to L'escale Pakito, a wonderful little pub to have a few drinks with close friends. I arrived quite early so I took the opportunity to wander around a bit. And there I found that kind of beauty I particularly enjoy. I took a picture to share it with you.



I was simply amazed by this street intersection, with that majestuous building in the background (the sunlit one) and more importantly by L'escalier (the staircase), an old looking bookstore that seems to support the whole building of which it occupies an angle; worn out by the cheer weight of the whole structure. It also made me wonder what's the story behind that shop? Who was its first owner? How did it evolve during all these years? How does it manage to survive in this time and age of cybergiants such as Amazon? What kind of books are sold there? Who chose the paint? Did a relative of mine ever visited or bought something from this shop in the seventies or eighties (one uncle, one brother-in-law, and the husband of one cousin dwelled in Paris for a few years at that time)? So many questions! All participating to the mistery of the bookstore from which sprung, I guess, the beauty I felt when looking at this scene.

I left them unanswered since all this very subjective beauty may simply evaporate with the answers. Of course, if you happen to know some of them please share them with us!

I was longing for a sunny, sweet day in the otherwise gloomy, grey-skeyed, coldish Paris. Heck, this is Spring or so they said on TV (and of course, you do believe whatever they say right?). Nuff' talk. See for yourself if you don't believe me. Picture shot this morning when going to work. This is Boulevard Haussmann if you care. The picture was taken by a cheap camera embodied in a far-from-cheap phone.

Oh, and as any other cheap wannabe open-minded, cool Parisian, I usually take the Velib' (an almost free bike service in Paris) for 10 minutes or so to go from Chatelet to work. My path takes me through Avenue de l'Opera where I can see the beautiful Opera in all its majesty shining when Sun is not slacking.

Just a small dose of this miraculous Sun makes me wanna grow wings and fly over to it like Icarus. The only thing that is preventing me from doing so is that very small, insignificant hurdle called Evolution. Damn ! Darwin, why did you have to provide such a theory? It would have been far easier if we were ruled by Creationism (or even its reduced-price version, Intelligent Design). I'd just pray the Flying Spaghetti Monster and I'd grow some hypish Pastafarian wings in no time. Damn Damn Damn.