Last night was the second-to-last night of the chocolate tour, and we spent it on Mort's boat, which is anchored in the Seine, just off the place de la Concorde.

Like so many things, the evening began with the best of intentions.

On the next boat over, la mère and le père went away for the holiday weekend, leaving the teenage son alone to have a party. In an odd twist, the (French) neighbor's dining table was stocked with jugs of Coke, bags of le chips, pre-fabricated chicken wings (sold in foil pouches), and their host was grilling off some hot dogs. He also knocked over the grill of burning-hot coals—twice—on the deck, forcing a mad dash to hose it down.

We Americans started with cold Sancerre, bowls of Lucques olives, crisp Iranian pistachios, jambon de Bayonne, before peeling cold shrimp, with a big platter of cheese before we ended with dessert: fresh mint ice cream and chocolates. In between there was also pâté and terrine Gascogne and wild asparagus.

As I type these words—ouch!—I now accept that it's probably not a good idea to drink white wine, red wine, rosé, Champagne, absinthe, and water with all that. (Ok, I was just kidding about the water...) but I did get an invited to join the party next door, when the music started and I passed the bottle of absinthe in their direction. Hey, after all the damage done to int'l relations over the past few years, someone's gotta repair the damage, right?

I don't recall too much, and most of my photos are fuzzy, for some bizarre reason. I do recall that the evening began by me losing my skivvies but I did find them before heading out. (That's the kind of week it's been.) Apart from Mort dropping his cell phone into the surging waters of the Seine and me making a new group of friends, we were fortunate to have Michael Recchiuti crash the party, ensuring that there was plenty of chocolate.

I'd hope to post some better shots of yesterday, but had to rely on one of North African pastries from earlier in the week. And this morning I'm nursing a tepid café au lait, slipping on a fresh pair of unmentionables along with a neatly-pressed shirt, and heading to a chocolate-tasting with the experts at La Maison du Chocolat.

And if that's not worthy of a spanking-clean, fresh pair of undershorts, I don't know what is.

I wanted to post a few shots and notes in my spare seven minutes—it's 5:34am so forgive any typos or missed links. I'll catch 'em later...in my free time ; )

Cheerful, and the amazingly-talented, Jean-Charles Rochoux shows us a chocolate replica of his arm in his laboratory. He made it for a Halloween display at a Parisian department store. The scoop of passionfruit sorbet is from Le Bac à Glaces, an ice cream shop just a few blocks away, where we stopped to cool down.

At M. Rochoux's swanky boutique, his assistant Murielle, packs up a box of chocolate. Check out the sexy glove. Oh la la! I may need even more sorbet to cool down...

If you do stop in, be sure to get a tablet of his chocolate from Peru. This is one of my favorite chocolates in his shop, along with the tablets of caramelized hazelnuts from Piedmont enrobed in chocolate as well as his latest; a bar of chocolate with a unctuous layer of creamy caramel oozing out.

A light French salad: la salade parisienne. Yes, there is some lettuce tucked under that mountain of ham, but I was more focused on the yummy house-made fries at Le Nemrod that I dove on as soon as they landed. Unfortunately, being the consummate host, I did share a few with my table mates. But not before grabbing all the crispiest specimens. Since my salad was so light, my guests knew I needed the extra nourishment to make it through the afternoon.

Did I mention how light it was? Just checking...

Of course, it's not lunch in Paris without un peu de rosé. I had a little pitcher, which was just enough to carry me through the afternoon. Well, at least until dinner.

If the above salad looked too light for you, the salad with soft-cooked egg melting over a huge mound of crispy bacon and studly croutons, may be more suitable to carry someone through a week of tasting chocolates. They also make a letter-perfect croque monsieur (and madame), if you're in the neighborhood.

Who'd a thunk it?

Using good 'ol American ingenuity, a little over a year ago, Alan McClure started grinding up beans and molding them into lithe bars of very dark, and very sleek, bittersweet chocolate.

His company, Patric chocolate, makes bars that are "micro-produced," and he's got two in his line-up, both using cacao from Madagascar.

When I asked Alan what attracted him to the cacao from that region, he said "Since the bars are made from cacao that come from one single estate, and since the family there has owned it for quite some time, they really have been able to exert an extremely high level of control on the quality and consistency of the fermentation and drying, which is actually quite rare in the cacao world."

Alan proclaims that this isn't pure "criollo" chocolate, a much-touted term for a varietal that almost all chocolate experts say no longer exists in its pure form. (Some chocolate-makers are claiming to the contrary.) Right now, the all the beans for Patric's bars are from a plantation in the Sambirano Valley.

This kind of machine has a canister that gets pre-frozen in advance, twenty four hours prior to churning—some people simply store theirs in the freezer all the time. The upside is that they're inexpensive and they don't churn a lot of air into the custard.

They also chill up a pretty mean margarita, too.

Don't know how long they plan to feature these machines, but since they're at the top of their best-selling kitchen items, they'll probably go fast...

For more advice on ice cream makers: Meet Your Maker

*Update: Amazon is currently sold out of the very low-priced reconditioned ice cream makers, but it's worth keeping an eye on their site as these kind of deals come and go frequently. To those who got machines—happy churning!

I had high hopes for the recipe, enough to schlep it with me across the Atlantic and look at it wistfully every once in a while, guarding it for almost a decade, until I finally got around to making it this week.

But what I really wanted to do was spend some time at Tèo, lapping up gelato.

The Lee family has become, I'm sure much to their chagrin, part of my extended family. Or more likely, I've become part of theirs. I've known Matt Lee's mom for years and when she told me her son owned an authentic gelato parlor, I dialed my lawyer and had him draw up the adoption papers.

Let's hope they sign.

Matt, aka Matteo...aka, Tèo...learned his craft in Florence at Vivoli, and his gelato is the real deal. You won't find him in the back dumping mixes into a machine.

I was very fortunate to work with two exceptional, experienced food photographers on my first books: Michael Lamotte and Christopher Hirsheimer. And in both cases, they insisted I do the food styling. Michael's style is more studio, where things get plated and a crisp, clear photo gets taken, and Christopher's style is more casual; I'd scrape a bowl clean of chocolate and she'd be right there as I set it down, snapping away. My ice cream book was shot in California, and since I live too far away, it was styled by George Dolese, who had a lot of experience scooping and coaxing ice cream into place.

So I learned a great deal from them about how to shoot things, what angles look best, and most importantly, when to leave things alone.

When I take photos for the site, I try to do one or two images to accompany the text, but in some cases, I'll do more.

I've been reading through a nifty, new guidebook to the bakeries, chocolate shops, and tea salons, called The Pâtisseries of Paris. This handy little book is full of great addresses and tips, and is just small enough to slip in your shoulder bag when hitting the streets of Paris, should you come to Paris on a mission for sweets.

I was surprised at how in-depth this guide takes you. Naturally, the usual suspects, like Ladurée and Stohrer, are in there. And chocolatiers like Jean-Charles Rochoux and Patrick Roger are always a stop whenever I'm on the Left Bank, so I was happy to see the nods toward them.

There's few places that aren't worth the trip. Such as Au Panetier bakery, where the dry cookies don't make up for the glorious art nouveau tilework.

Let's get right to the point: this is my killer app recipe, the one I go to more than anything else. I could tell a million stories about this, but I'll just skip all that stuff for now and scoot right to the goods.

I love these peanuts! Not only are they absolutely scrumptious and the easiest candy you can make, but if you keep a sack of raw almonds or peanuts on hand, you can make them in about 10 minutes. Tied into a little sack, they're a great hostess gift in lieu of a bottle of wine (and cheaper!), and I serve them often as a cocktail snack, or after dinner, in a bowl for everyone to dig into.

I also like to mix these candied peanuts in just-churned ice cream, which I'm going to do with this particular batch, along with a swirl of homemade dulce de leche. A handful chopped and sprinkled over a spinach salad or batch of cole slaw would be pretty terrific, for those looking for savory apps. And at the risk of infuriating any purists, topping a bowl of Asian noodles.

The two women working there were quite nice and helpful, and my friend ended up picking out a few things to buy. The amount was something like 7.53€. So my friend opened her wallet and handed over a 10€ bill.

"Oooohhh," the saleswoman said, eyeing the lone bill laying on the counter. "Do you happen to have exact change?" she asked.

A you can imagine, being a vegetarian in Paris can be a challenge. During my 5 years in Paris I've witnessed many die hard veggies succumbing to the sins of the flesh. The usual excuse is that it's just too hard (or the temptations too great) in the self-proclaimed food capital of the world. "I never ate meat till I tried the duck," one friend told me while another announced, "Technically I'm still a vegetarian, though sometimes I do eat steak."

If you're dining at a neighbourhood bistro, you'll probably get by okay if you eat fish. But if you're vegan, then you might need to smuggle in a nut cutlet or two under your raincoat as you'll soon get tired of munching on side salads. Unlike many other European capitals, restaurants here don't necessarily have a vegetarian option on the menu.

Paris does, however, have its fair share of vegetarian restaurants.
Are they any good?

Skip the chocolate, I'll take prunes.

I figured out why I don't really like traveling. Or more specifically, why I don't like staying in hotels.

It's not the stack of singles that you have to peel off every time someone smiles at you. Nor is it the way they swarm your car when you pull up to the front, yank out all your luggage and pull you out the door before you've even had time to collect your things. And it isn't the lousy, weak coffee that you have to drink four cups of just to get a suggestions of caffeine in your system. (Do the people working there drink that coffee, too?)

No, what drives me nuts is having to wear clothes.