February 2007 archives

It started at Michael Ruhlman’s site (which is up to 468 comments) with Anthony Bourdain’s take-down of the Food Network.

Then it moved over to Elise’s Simply Recipes, where I felt compelled to add my 2 centimes worth….

“I’m curious when people say they appreciate these time-saving cooking shows. But really, how long does it take to make good food? A roast chicken can be tossed with a broken up head of garlic and some herbs in less than 30 seconds. And how many seconds does one save by opening a bottle of pre-made salad dressing as opposed to mixing together a few spoonfuls of olive oil & vinegar? Is it really that much easier to rip open a box of cake mix than to drop a stick of butter in the mixer, add some eggs, then stir in some flour?

And doesn’t homemade foods taste better, and is far healthier for you (and much less-expensive), than all those convenience foods? Other than as a gimmick, I don’t see how how saving a few minutes is really worth sacrificing your family’s health and well-being for by using all these processed foods. While I don’t begrudge any tv chefs cooking with real ingredients, it’s quite a disservice to spray things with aerosol cheese and call it dinner.”

While I realize that everyone’s busy (and I’m sure to get some remarks that not everyone gets to live in Paris), I wonder what people are doing where they don’t have time to eat anymore. When I moved to France, they practically had to nail me in my chair to get me to sit down and have a decent meal. I was so used to eating on the run (in my car, in the shower, etc…) But cooking and eating are two of the most fundamental things that human beings do, but what’s happened to us if we can’t do them anymore?

I feel bad when people tell me they don’t have time to cook.
Not everyone has the luxury of going to an outdoor market like I do and doing their shopping, then taking the time to prepare a proper meal three times a day. Especially in these days of multiple jobs and kids running underfoot. But surely stopping in the supermarket, picking up some chicken and vegetables, and roasting them in the oven with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper for an hour takes marginally more time than dumping cans into a saucepan. And isn’t it far tastier and more nutritious, and cheaper than pre-packaged foods you’d heat up in a microwave? I can’t believe that popping frozen waffles in the toaster and dousing them with artificially-flavored syrup really easier, less-expensive, or better for anyone than a few slices of toast with butter and honey.

Why are these programs so popular?

I think I’ve finally become French.

At the supermarket this morning, my total came to exactly 15€.
I fished around my wallet and found a 20€ note.

So I handed that over.

With an apology, of course.

I don’t know if some of you noticed this, but there’s been a petit void in cyberspace lately. As some of you know, Michèle of Oswego Tea has moved to London and at the same time ended her blog. The good thing is I don’t need to add that pesky backwards accent anymore now that she’s moved to England. (Although she started adding the British extra u to words like flavour…who does she think she is anyways, Madonna?)

A while back one of my readers advised if I ever got back to London, I need to go to Melt, one of the highly-regarded chocolate shops in the city. Since I didn’t know when I’d get back there, I thought I’d send Michele in to check it out.

So I started bugging Michele to get over to Melt to hopes she’d write an entry here about it. It took her a while, but she finally wrote back, saying she was really busy after her move, but realized that it was time to “…get my ass to melt!”

However in deference to folks searching the internet for photos of butt-melting (which I’m sure there are out there…) I changed her wording a bit since I didn’t want to get my potty-mouth washed out with soap, like Michele’s gonna get next time she comes back to Paris for punishment.
Which may incite more internet searches, bien sûr…

While I’ve no doubt pictures her butt melting might be far more intriguing to some readers out there who came expecting something other than a visit to a chocolate shop, you’ll have to make do without. But for those of us who’ve missed Michele’s terrific blog, I finally was able to get her to do her guest post here on my site about getting her butt to Melt.
And here it is.

Getting My Ass To Melt

When a friend sends you an email asking for a favour, admit it, sometimes you worry. In the back of your mind there’s this nagging voice that says “Please don’t let it have anything to do with moving a large couch up a narrow flight of stairs..”

Luckily for me, the friend in question was David, who at the first mention of looking for a new apartment will come right out and say “Don’t ask me to help you move.” I think he waved a finger the first time he said that to me.

The favour he wanted of me?

Continue Reading Getting Your Butt to Melt…

Yesterday, I decided that since I was the last person in the world to be using Safari as a web browser, I should switch to Firefox. Everyone says it’s better and since I use Movable Type for the blog, Firefox has little buttons to make things bold or to italicize, so I don’t need to type in a bazillion symbols everytime I do that.

About twenty years ago, which I hope means the statutes of limitations has run out, when working in that vegetarian restaurant I mentioned, someone brought in something for us to, er…well…let’s just say, it was something that was designed to change your perception of reality if you took it.
So of course, we did.

When you work in a restaurant, you develop a rhythm, especially when it comes to setting up your statio in preparation for the rush of customers. If you have a fixed menu and you’ve been working in the same place for a while, when you arrive, you can almost work on auto-pilot to make sure everything’s in place (called mis-en-place), so when the rush comes, you’re full-organized and never get buried under orders (or as they say, ‘in the weeds’). If you’ve done it right, the evening runs like a finely-tuned Swiss watch. If not, you’ve got no business in a restaurant kitchen.
And your night will be a catastrophe (not to mention the customer’s as well).

So one evening, someone brought in something which we ingested that was terribly strong and radically alerted our ‘perception of reality’ (yes, even vegetarians have their vices). As we started our work, though, the owner arrived and surprised us with a brand-new menu, full of items we’d never seen before. So we had to completely change our set-ups and prepare all new dishes.
It was a massive bummer, to put it mildly.

It’s like your computer crashing, taking everything with it, and you need to re set-up everything again. To make a long (long) story short, once the customers arrived, it was like your worst dream coming true, the kind where you’re running towards something, but the faster you run, the farther away it gets. So as the order tickets started coming in, we all panicked and found ourselves seriously in the weeds (in more ways than one), and the evening was a catastrophe.

When I installed my new browser yesterday, everything changed on my little Mac.

My beloved bookmarks, which I’ve spent years collecting, I cherished as your grandmother cherishes her Hümmel figurines, were gone. And the look of my blog platform changed: Yes there were those terrific little buttons that add links, italics, and what-not, but each time I used one, it jumped up to the top of the document, meaning I had to re-scroll back to where I was typing, prompting a mad dash to find where I left off. So like coming down from a bad high, back to my familiar reality, I’ve returned to Safari.

I guess old habits die hard. Like my love for rustically grainy breads, and had a chance to return to one of my favorite bakeries in Paris yesterday when I had a doctor’s appointment on the other side of the city.

Continue Reading Browsing in Paris…

When I moved to Paris, I was pretty shocked at how expensive things were. And I don’t mean Louis Vuitton suitcases or Kelly bags. Something as simple as a sponge at the supermarket would cost 4€ or a plastic storage container at the BHV might run you 15€ around here.

Ouch!

Then I learned about the Paris pas cher stores all over town. Although concentrated mostly in the less-chic neighborhoods, they’re sort of ‘catch-all’ shops that sell everything from scissors, thongs, cookware, hammers, luggage, shampoo, and old Nicole Kidman movies she made when she was a teenager.

I’ve found they’re great places to scratch your shopping itch. You never know what you’re going to find exactly, but they’re great fun to wander through and see what they’ve got if you pass one. You’ll know you’ve found when if there’s lots of stuff hanging from the ceiling, stacked out front, and piled high if you peek inside. Frequently there’s an overwhelming smell of insecticide or mothballs, but you get used to it after a few years, I guess. (Judging from the people who run them, who seem to be oblivious.)

Paris pas cher, in case you didn’t know, means ‘Paris Not Expensive’, and the term is also used to denote bargains in the city. Since the dollar is tanking, I thought I’d share a few of my money-saving tips with you I’ve learned along the way:

Drink Like a Parisian

If you’re sitting in a café, you’ll notice that few people are drinking soda. Most are lingering over tiny coffees, which cost about 2€ instead. You can stay as long as you want without having to order anything else once you’ve finished, no matter what you ordered. My theory is people order coffee because it’s the cheapest thing you can get. I’m often guilty of that too. (If they ask you to pay, it’s usually because the waiters are changing shifts, so don’t fell obligated to split.)

Standing at the counter cuts the prices roughly in half so if you’re just looking for a quick thirst-quencher or a shot of caffeine, you might want to stand.

(I’m a total rube myself. One of my first times in Paris, I ordered a coffee at the counter, then carried it over to a table. That got quite a response!)

In a café, order wine by the carafe which is usually drinkable and inexpensive. Don’t feel like you need to spend a lot of money on wine in a regular restaurant either. Unlike in America, it’s easy to find good wines in the 15-25€ range. Don’t be afraid to order the Vin du mois or something they’re featuring.

Continue Reading Paris Pas Cher: 8 Money-Saving Tips for Paris…

Truth is, I don’t eat croissants very often for the simple reason that I don’t like to get dressed until I’ve had my morning coffee & toast. So having one is a relatively big deal for me, since croissants are only good early in the day: I refuse to eat one after 11am if I can help it. Like anything made with copious amounts of butter, they don’t get better the longer they’ve been out of a hot oven.

Although stories abound, no one quite knows who invented le croissant. It’s believe to be in an invention of the Austrians, who created a crescent-shaped pastry to oppose the Ottomans, who had invaded their country. They symbol of Turkey is a crescent, and granted, who doesn’t like to eat Turkey?

Except maybe vegetarians. So maybe croissants were invented by and/or for vegetarians?

Aha…a new theory emerges…this is how rumors get started on the internet, folks, and perhaps people will be quoting me decades later: “David Lebovitz says croissants were invented for Austrian vegetarians!”

But today, I think few would argue that the croissant is most closely associated with France and in fact, one rarely comes across a bakery in Paris that doesn’t offer their own version. If you need further proof of their proprietary alliance with French gastronomy, ask yourself when was the last time you heard the words das croissant?

Continue Reading The Best Croissant in Paris…

Back in my intrepid youth, when my hair dipped below my ears (when I had hair, that is…), I flirted with vegetarianism.

I should probably say it was more than a passing fancy; I was a veg-head for about six years and even worked in a vegetarian restaurant. At Cabbagetown Café in Ithaca, New York, we’d ladle up bowls of Cashew Chili or curious soups, like the one that a bra-less (and pendulous) co-worker would insist on enriching with generous dollops of peanut butter.

And don’t get me started on the bizarre customers we’d get. We had one regular, whose name we didn’t know (so we just called her ‘Beyond’) who would sit in the dining room and order only a bowl of brown rice. Then she’d spend hours in the dining room writing in her journal, in the teeny-tiniest letters imaginable, eating her rice grain-by-grain.

And we never knew what our long-haired baker would come up with. He once made a lovely-looking, golden brown-crusted pie for dessert. When I cut it open that evening to serve the first wedge, I’d discovered that he filled it with sweet black beans and an alarming amount of cumin.

(Unfortunately, it, um, accidentially fell into the garbage before I could serve it.)

Eventually I got tired of being served pizza smothered with soggy ‘veggies’ (God I hate that word…is it really all that hard to say ‘vegetables‘?) and was constantly dreaming about diving into a big, soft, overstuffed corned beef sandwich.
When I told my ‘alternative’ doctor about that, he said, “You know, if you’re craving something, that means your body needs it. So you should probably go ahead and have it.”

With that advice, I left his office and made a beeline to the nearest Jewish deli, and ordered a big, honkin’ mound of hot corned beef barely contained by two sharp-crusted pieces of caraway-flecked rye bread with a smear of hot mustard. And from that day on, my vegetarianism was kaput.
My mother, by the way, could not have been more pleased since before, whenever I’d arrive home for a visit, she’d be carving a big slab of alarmingly-rare roast beef.

Continue Reading Do You Know Beans? Les Haricots Tarbais…

Free Bikes In Paris

Over 20,000 bicycles are on their way to Paris as part of the mayor’s plan to make the residents of the city less-dependent on cars. (Many citizens of the city are absolutely irate about the new bike lanes.) The bikes will be free to use and can be picked up at one of 1451 stations, then dropped off at any one of them as well.

The system is set to be in place early this summer, just in time for tourist season.

Pack a helmet!

Partial Smoking Ban Begins Today

Today marks the beginning of the ban on smoking in public places in France. It’s believed that 12 million people smoke in France, and nearly 66,000 smokers die each year due to smoking-related illnesses. 25-30% of all adults smoke in France (which is below the European average), and half of all young adults under 35 light up too.

(Tip: If you’re smoke-sensitive, don’t sit next to a table of teenage girls. Trust me.)

The air in 42% of all places that allowed smoking was considered “dangerous”. Smoking is now prohibited in public buildings like hospitals, stores, offices, and schools, and there are stiff fines for smokers (68€) and business owners. The total ban on smoking in bars, caf&eagrave;s, and restaurants, will begin in 11 months, starting January 1, 2008, and the EU Health Commissioner has proposed a total ban in all 27 EU countries.

Currently it’s illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving, considered a public danger. But curiously, smoking indoors has been tolerated and vigorously defended. Today I expect to see a lot of people grousing in the street (les râleurs).

And speaking of ‘as seen on the streets of Paris’…

C’est très Parisien?

I’m heading out for a walk…it’s gonna be fun out there today!