watch: pardon my french, part 3
here it is! the third and final video of Garance Doré‘s NYFW experience, titled Hey Ladies!. here, she chats with her equally chic friends and sits down with the great DVF. the best part: she announces that there’s more to come from Paris!
my own screen shots of the video
mind your manners
growing up, I always said please and thank you to my parent’s friends, I chewed with my mouth closed, and I tried my darndest to be super polite. my biggest test of manners was in high school, when I was on vacation with one of my best friends on Martha’s Vineyard and we went to a family dinner party. normally, this type of situation isn’t too scary, but this dinner party happened to be composed entirely of the Emily Post Society since her step-dad’s great-aunt was the great Emily Post and the family business is being etiquette-ly correct.
so I kept quiet, accepted anything that was offered to me, and did my best to smile and not say anything wrong. it got me through that night, but I don’t think that as a twenty-something this is how I would like to go about this kind of social situation. looking for a little bit of guidance, I stumbled upon these books in my mom’s library. I feel like the rules are much looser in 2012 than in past decades, but I found the guidelines that Amy Vanderbilt’s Everyday Etiquette and Common Courtesy provided to be pretty entertaining.
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Amy Vanderbilt’s Everyday Etiquette: America’s Foremost Authority on Manners Answers Your Questions and Offers Realistic and Up-to-Date Advice about Correct Behavior in Today’s Busy World
“
How do you get stray bits of food on a plate on to your fork?
A combination of European and American style eating is very usual among sophisticated people and makes it easy for a diner to retrieve skiddy bits of food — like peas — on his plate by using his knife in his left hand as a pusher. Once never uses the fingers for this purpose.
Does one open one’s napkin in the lap as soon as sitting down at a table, or is it proper to wait until the food is served?
Guests wait until the hostess has taken up hers before placing their own, entirely open if they are lunch-sized, or in half if they are dinner napkins. Napkins are tucked in only for children. They are never refolded; at the end of the meal they are gathered and laid causally to the left of the place setting.
Is it ever correct to have one’s elbows on the table when one is eating? I was brought up to think it’s not.
It is not correct to put one’s elbows on the table when one is eating but it is permissible to rest them on the table between course.
“
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Common Courtesy: in Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem that Baffled Mr. Jefferson
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The idea that people can behave naturally, without resorting to an artificial code tacitly agreed upon by their society, is as silly as the idea that they can communicate by a spoken language without commonly accepted semantic and grammatical rules. Like language, a code of manners can be used with more or with less skill, for laudable or for evil purposes, to express a great variety of ideas and emotions.
…
A major handicap of women in the business world is that while men were taught the difference between social and professional manners — the phrases ‘an officer and a gentleman,’ and ‘a gentleman and a scholar’ suggest that different behavior is appropriate in the drawing room than on the battlefield or even in the library — women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn’t, and we all know what the latter meant.
“
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and now you know.
eat: el cortijo
on Valentine’s day, my mom and I treated ourselves to lunch at El Cortijo Taqueria Y Cantina, a new taco place here in Burlington, Vermont, right off of Church St. it’s owned by the same guys who run the Farmhouse, one of my favorite restaurants in town, so we knew we were in for a tasty & locally-sourced meal.
it’s small, but it wasn’t too full on a weekday at 1. I’m sure that it gets to be rather busy for Sunday brunch or on a Friday night. there aren’t many places in the city that sell a decent margarita and from the looks of their drink menu, El Cortijo is trying to fill that void. alas, we both had to go back to work after eating and refrained from knocking a few back midday.
their menu is pretty simple, offering a few appetizers and several tacos. their brunch menu had a few other dishes that aren’t offered any other time. we started with the papas fritas, which are amazing seasoned & fried potatoes doused in a white queso sauce ($6).
we also both opted for a plate with rice, beans, and our choice of two tacos. the beans weren’t anything extraordinary, but the rice was moist and flavorful. to fill my organic soft corn tortilla, I went with the pescado, crispy line-caught North Atlantic fish, and tequila-lime slaw ($4.5), and the camote, with organic sweet potatoes, braised kale, guajillo salsa, and pepitas ($3.5). maybe having locally grown kale and organic sweet potatoes in your taco are a Vermont thing, but I highly recommend this combination if you can.
we left full but without that gross, greasy feeling that accompanies so many Mexican-inspired meals. so if you find yourself on Bank Street late on a Thursday night, squeeze into a booth here and pair one of the many local brews on tap with a big plate of delicious tacos.
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El Cortijo Taqueria Y Cantina
189 Bank St
Burlington, VT
802-497-1668 (they do takeout, too!)
watch: pardon my french, part 2
eat: durgin park
when I was little, we would go down to Boston every summer to watch my mom play her flute in some annual concert. I wasn’t always a huge fan of sitting in a stuffy concert hall in the middle of July, but I did love our regular stops at Durgin Park. my dad used to come here when he was a little kid, too, and while I’m sure the prices have gone up a little bit over the decades, the pile of delicious cornbread that are plunked on each table taste exactly the same. I hadn’t been here in several years, but when my dad, sister, and I made a quick trip to Boston in January we just had to stop in. try the clam chowda and don’t be intimidated by the huge platters of fried clams. with the ocean just a few blocks away and a steady crowd that starts coming in early in the day and doesn’t leave until late, it’s obvious that the smock-clad crew at this joint know what they’re doing.
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340 Faneuil Hall Market Place
Boston, MA 02109
Ten decisions shape your life, you’ll be aware of 5 about
-I’ll Try Anything Once, The Strokes
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some of my favorite images for right now & one of my top ten favorite songs of all time.
happy Monday.
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1. source 2. badlands 3. sofia 4. coco 5. elle scan
6. elle scan 7. charlotte 8. kitty 9. jeans scan
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Ten decisions shape your life,
you’ll be aware of 5 about,
7 ways to go through school,
either you’re noticed or left out,
7 ways to get ahead,
7 reasons to drop out,
when I said ‘ I can see me in your eyes’,
you said ‘I can see you in my bed’,
that’s not just friendship that’s romance too,
you like music we can dance to,
Sit me down,
Shut me up,
I’ll calm down,
and I’ll get along with you,
There is a time when we all fail,
some people take it pretty well,
some take it all out on themselves,
some they just take it out on friends,
oh everybody plays the game,
and if you don’t you’re called insane,
Don’t don’t don’t don’t it’s not safe no more,
i’ve got to see you one more time,
That’s when you were born,
in 1984,
Sit me down,
shut me up,
i’ll calm down,
and i’ll get along with you,
Everybody was well dressed,
and everybody was a mess,
6 things without fail you must do,
so that your woman loves just you,
oh all the girls played mental games,
and all the guys were dressed the same,
Why not try it all,
if you only remember it once,
oooh ooooooh,
Sit me down,
shut me up,
i’ll calm down,
and i’ll get along with you,
(okay one more time)
lately, via my iPhone
1. sunny skies on I-91 2. Middletown, CT
this weekend I roadtripped down to Wesleyan University with my mom to watch my little sister perform in the Vagina Monologues. the show itself was rather both hilarious and depressing, thought-provoking and uncomfortable. while it may not be appropriate for all ages, the show is a great vehicle for the discussion about women’s bodies in today’s world. plus, I was so proud to see my little sister do a phenomenal job handling a rather difficult role.
3. the ’92 theater on Wesleyan’s campus 4. the First & Last Tavern for a pre-show dinner
5. back in Vermont 6. does your state have weather vanes atop its rest areas?
7. and a little caffeine to make the long drive a little more bearable
I hope you had a wonderful weekend!
psssttt… follow me on instagram: @chicorgeek
watch: ‘pardon my french’
I have a biigggg old girl crush on blogger Garance Doré. I basically think everything she does/wears/says is automatically chic and brilliant, and it doesn’t help that she’s rather funny and easy going.
one of her most recent creative projects is no exception: Pardon My French. the first episode is a little glimpse into her own NYFW. watch it and you’ll want to roll with her crew wearing matching (faux) fur trimmed anoraks.
all images are my own screenshots from the video
