
Our Christmas Eve celebration this year was just the two of us. Vincent cooked a grand, festive meal of Steak Diane- tournedos of beef with a reduced mustard and cream sauce, potatoes with lemon and rosemary, and a salad of pears, radiccio, and mozzarella. Dessert was three slices of buche de Noel, each with a different filling from Maison Aleph.
The usual Christmas ritual is that we don’t exchange any gifts until Christmas morning, but this year Vincent, in a break-through moment, decided we could exchange a stocking stuffer on Christmas eve. Remember, since Vincent is Catholic, and I am Jewish, so he makes the official Christmas rules of the house.
I had wrapped all of my presents a few days ago, and two of them were almost the same size and shape, so I couldn’t figure out which one was the stocking stuffer and which was the big gift. Vincent gave me a Snoopy T-shirt, (I have a big collection of Snoopy t-shirts from before) and when he opened his it was the big gift, a newly released CD box set of Joni Mitchell’s early recordings from the 1960s, with some never released tracks.
Many of you know and that Vincent makes a special art gift for me every Christmas and to those of you who are new to Eye Prefer Paris, my partner Vincent, who is an artist and filmmaker, makes me a special art gift every year for Christmas. It takes a different form each year such as a collage, a drawing, a box, a sculpture, a book, and sometimes something in between.
This year it was a 12”x13” profile portrait, taken from a previous photo of me wearing a gold crown from when I was crowned the king from the gateau de roi celebration of a few years ago. The portrait is done in graphite, and is surrounded by squares of metallic paint, and the crown is made of gold leaf. It’s titled You Are Gold 11, as Vincent has created 10 other editions of You Are Gold over the years.
Needless to say, I was blown away and I cherish these art gifts so much, I decided that if god forbid where was ever a fire in our house, they would be the first things I would grab.
Usually this time of the year I am out of the house a lot because of my tours, but because of Covid-19, I was home, so Vincent had a hard time creating my gift without me seeing it. He found the solution by locking himself in our tiny bathroom, and turning it into a makeshift atelier. The funny thing is that I kept on hearing him using a blow dryer, which I thought was really strange. (You are probably wondering why we even have a blow dryer in the first place, since both of us are practically bald. The reason is because for many years we had a refrigerator that wasn’t frost free, and Vincent used the blow dryer to melt the ice). Usually I may hear some last minute banging or the sounds of wrapping paper, but the blow drying was really throwing me off. When I received the gift, I asked Vincent what the heck the blow drying was about and he said he had to dry the paint each time he painted one of the squares in the portrait, so he could continue with the next one.
In case that wasn’t enough of a gift, Vincent bought me a really cool sweatshirt and a cashmere cap in a chartreuse color.
Besides the Joni Mitchell CD collection, I gave Vincent some practical gifts including a mini-chopper, a new pastry brush, a kitchen scale, and the Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook, Flavour, since he does most of the cooking at home. I also made Vincent black and blue, by giving him a facial cleanser that is black in color, and a facial mask that is blue in color.
I hope all of you still had a wonderful Christmas even if you couldn’t spend it with your loved ones. I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate for what I have, as many people around the world have had a difficult year dealing with the effects and loss from Covid-19.



my cool new sweatshirt and cap

Vincent in black and blue


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