Hello fellow IMK friends! I'm late to the party this month as I finally got to take a break and go to the beach last week.. June was a bit better than previous months, but the heatwave hit super early, let's say June was a Jungle June.. I'm afraid there's zero sense or order in my post today, let's just take a wild ramble through Jungle June!
Ritz le Comptoir opened near us recently and we finally got to try it. This picture does not do justice to how amazing this "chocolate biscuit" was. It's a full tablet of chocolate with a creamy white chocolate filling, a speculoos crumb and a hazelnut border. Yum yum
We went to the countryside for a quick weekend and enjoyed our dinner outside, just a simple gnocchi with tomato sauce
A beer to wash down the end of the day
We bought these incredible strawberries fresh from the farmer at the tiny market in Compiègne
I know, I know, tomatoes aren't made for pots but when all you have is a railing this is all I can manage and the growth of these tomato plants have brought me so much joy
I went to the Réanimation conference for the third year in a row and visited their super fancy Monoprix (in the Palais des Congrès building)... look at this amazing display of soup!
It was a bit emotional for me because the first time I was there in 2024, G was 0.5 and I was just about to do the specialist exams, S even brought him at lunch so I could feed him. The second time in 2025, he was 1.5 and I just went back to work. This time he is 2.5 and I've been at work for a year, and actually saw colleagues I can catch up with. The story of my reconstructed life in France...
My dad arrived from Australia and brought these beautiful macadamias
I visited my favourite tofu shop for breakfast..
My dear friend visited us in Paris one weekend and it was so hot we ended up hiding in cafés with air conditioning. For some reason I just love this water jug in the Finnish institute..
The heatwave was pretty bad. My dad tried to combat it with traditional Chinese green bean soup to cool down (it's surprisingly effective)...
And I tried to cool down with cold beer.. here you can just see my window planter herb garden too. I don't drink much and I had brought this beer back from Deauville a long time ago. It was time though when it was so hot... one day it was 35 degrees at 10pm, how is one supposed to sleep?
Which brings me to the curveball. This is how the public hospitals in Paris function - this is not even the tiny hospital in whoopti-doo that I work in, this is La Pitié-Salpétrière, the largest hospital in France (I was there for a couple of days for a conference). Without AC, the temperatures are dangerous indoors. We have a limited number of portable AC units, last year we had 5 for 22 patients and had to ration which patients were the most severe. This year they seem to be arriving every week and most rooms now have them, although we had to take one severely dehydrated patient out of a room that measured 41 degrees. INDOORS in an ICU!!! It's one of those "you won't believe that it's true" kind of things...
I'm breaking all the rules this month and sharing another curveball from the stupendous Matisse exhibition at the Grand Palais, focusing on his later years. Here he is painting with Chinese ink!
I leave you all with my monster who discovered fairy floss (in French, barbe à papa or papa's beard) for the first time at the Fête de la musique...
Sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly IMK series. Have a great July everyone!
