Recently in Whining Category

For a recent talk where I was asked to give for newcomers to Paris, I decided to share some of my coping strategies for living in a foreign country. I came up with a list of eight things that I do when it all seems too much.

Like this morning, when I woke up and found that before I hit the "Save" button and called it a night, my cable company dropped my connection, which deleted two-thirds of this post.

Fortunately, I'm resilient now, and no longer a stranger to having to re-do things over and over. I sat right back down in my proverbial Aeron saddle and re-wrote them, which only took a few hours. Curiously, while I was typing away, a representative called me on my cell phone to try to get me to stay on as a customer. When I mentioned that he had to call me on my cell phone, since my land line service (which they provide) didn't work, he didn't see any irony in that. He probably also didn't understand a few choice words I used, since I said them in English, which was a good thing.

Nevertheless, there's plenty of things you can do, including ripping your cable company a new one, that'll make you feel a lot better when all seems lost and you feel like everything is conspiring against you. Like me, who courageously sat back down and started from anew—with an amazing bar of dark chocolate with toffee and salt (see #1), and went back to work.

The other day, I stood in the middle of my apartment and screamed.

It's not something I normally do. In fact, I don't think I've ever done that before. Being fifty, I'd say my life is roughly half over and I hope to never have to do it again during my last half. (I'm sure my neighbors would be pleased if I never did it again as well.)

I've been dealing with my internet provider, who also provides—or is supposed to provide, phone service.

Since signing up with them last year, my service has been hit or miss. Since the beginning of August, it's been all miss, and I've been missing phone service and internet access since then. I do remember the days before we have the internet, so while it's a major inconvenience, it's not the end of the world. (Unless you have a blog. Then it's pretty close.) But not having phone service for nearly ten weeks is pretty crazy.

There's a lot of grousing about French customer service. I've seen the good, and I've seen the bad. Usually the trick is to find someone who will help you and once you do, they'll do what they can to help. And then the service is top-notch. You just need to find that person.

So far, I haven't found that person at my cable company. And believe me, I've tried.

One of the main differences between American and French food magazines, and recipes in general, is the level of detail provided in the instructions. For example, if you were to publish a recipe in America that called for a cuillère à café (coffee-spoon) of baking powder, folks would go apoplectic. "How much is a coffee spoon?"

Then there was the infamous question a copyeditor queried me about. I wrote instructions to butter a cake pan, but apparently I wasn't clear enough.

"Do they butter the inside or the outside of the pan?"

Another difference is the laissez-faire instructions for assembly: I've seen French recipes for puff pastry that simply say, "Roll the pastry six times, folding it between each turn."

But people here seem to have no problems with that and I'm not quite sure what it means.

If you want to live in France, you need to get used to people speaking their mind.

Years ago when I was young and supple, I'd eat whatever I could get my hands on. And working in a restaurant, well, let's just say that's not the best food to eat on a long-term basis.

But I know all-too well about that because I was one of them. I'd cram foie gras, duck cracklings, and butter-roasted anything in my gullet whenever I wanted. And byy the time my shift was done, I'd head home, twist open a jar or salsa, rip open a bag of tortilla chips, and watch a few re-runs of unchallenging fare, like three episodes of Fantasy Island back-to-back, at 2am on the sofa, glued to the television, wondering at how many times they could work Barbie Benton into an episode while your brain turned to mush.

For a while, I worked in an Asian restaurant. People have this image of Asian cuisine as "healthy", which some of it is. But without pointing fingers, a lot of it is deep-fried or cooked in gobs of chicken or pork fat. And peanut sauce? Don't even get me started on what's in that evil destroyer of waistlines. But when a cook hands you a platter of deep-fried shrimp toasts, who am I to refuse?

So when I left the restaurant business, I had a petit paunch. It wasn't terrible, but was enough so that when I was heading to Mexico on vacation, I had to get rid of it tout de suite.

French supermarkets are funny places. In my book, I touched upon that touchy subject, as well as a few others. But let's not get into that here; let's just say that they're not the best places to buy fresh produce. Which may explain the mystery of the liberal use of canned corn around here.

When I came back from a recent trip, on a late weekend afternoon, I had no choice but to go to my local supermarket to feed myself. I didn't want to buy much, preferring to wait until I could go to my market the next day, but it was necessary to go and get a few provisions. In the produce aisle, I bypassed the sad bunches of wilted cilantro, I didn't stop to pick up any yellowed, spring onions shipped from another hemisphere where it's definitely not spring, nor was I particularly interested in Chinese apples.

But eventually I found what I wanted and headed to the checkout.

At a recent book event, there was a little Q & A session after I chatted and read from my new book. The only guidelines were that I told people that two questions were off limits.

One was; "Why did you move to Paris?", and the other "How long are you planning on living in Paris?" Because I get asked them at least six times a day, and I've been here seven years, (so do the math and you'll understand why j'en ai marre ), I figured I should just answer them in the book and be done with them once and for all.

Except when I said that, for a moment, I kind of blindsighted the crowd as I could tell that everyone was about to raise their hand to ask one of those two questions. Multiply that by 150+ people, and I'm not going to ask you to do the math again, but you see what I'm up against.

But someone did ask me a very good question: "What about Paris would you miss if you moved away?" which rendered me uncharacteristically speechless. In the book, I wanted to be truthful about my life here and balance the good with the not-always-good, and sometimes people focus on the less-alluring aspects of my life in this city, mostly because they're more fun than to hear what a spectacular city Paris really is.

So here are 15 things I would miss if I moved away from Paris.....

I hadn't planned on buying rhubarb yesterday morning, but I was at the stand of my favorite producteur and there it was, and there I was, so our collective fate was sealed.

As I waited for him to wrap my stalks tightly in brown paper, my mind raced to think what I would do with them. By the time I handed over a couple of euros, I'd made up my mind that they'd make a fine filling for the baked tart shell I had waiting at home, with a thin layer of lemony pastry cream.

It's been odd around here lately. I think there's something in the air; le morosité of Paris, as they call it, the general malaise that smacks the city in a collective wallop, like the tiny, sharp grains of pollen that are wreaking havoc on the sinuses of us all. Yes, it's warmed up and the city is even more beautiful, but a string of May holidays has Parisians bolting for the borders, heading away for le petit weekend any chance they can. There's just something odd in the city that I can't quite put my finger on.

A woman who writes highly-regarded bread books recently contacted me. She's coming to Paris, to ask me some questions about various bakeries and their baguettes, and which I liked. I wrote her back, that I didn't want to sound like a dick, but when you live in Paris, you usually buy your bread from the local boulanger (there are four within a block of my apartment) rather than slogging through packed métro stations, being shoved from side-to-side en route or sitting next to some teenage yakking and tapping madly on their iPhone (pronounced EE-phone), and making two or three connections to get to some charming little bread bakery only to find out that they're closed that day, for a fermature exceptionnelle...from 1:37 pm to 4:06 pm...every forth Wednesday of months ending in "e".

I hate to have that whiff of "I'm over it, missy" air about me, but if I have a four hours to kill, I'm not inclined to spend a that time crossing Paris in search of a loaf of bread. Not that there aren't breads worthy of taking a trip like that, but if I have four hours to kill, I need to spend it doing something useful—like I did yesterday, when I used those few hours to go to three different supermarkets to find the lait frais demi-écrémé which I use in my morning coffee.

Well, I wouldn't say it was exactly stealing. But last time I was in the states, I was going through one of my frighteningly-full storage lockers (there's your glimpse into the glamorous life of international living...) and while rifling through cookbooks, I came across my own personal book of handwritten recipes, a fat mess of pages, stained with butter, eggs, almond paste, and lord-knows what else, that I compiled during my years working in restaurants.

It really is a treasure trove of recipes and I was thinking I should start a "working my way through the book" blog, dedicated to doing each-and-every recipe in there. Then I thought the better of it and got that idea out of my mind—fast.

The main reason being that most of the recipes make a hundred servings and call for things like 80 egg yolks or 5 1/2 cups of honey or 8 quarts of heavy cream.

I hate to generalize, but aside from body-checking anyone in their path, there are other ways that Parisians are different than Americans.

If you don't believe me, ask some of the friends I traveled with recently, who have the bumps and bruises to prove it after a plane arrived from Paris and the dining room where we vacationed turned into a game of human pinball.

(But don't ask Deb about how one fine day, her corner of peaceful tranquility on the beach ended up with her being suddenly surrounded by a mass of noisy new arrivals, who didn't seem to mind arranging their chairs all around her...when the rest of the three mile-long beach was completely deserted.)

When I lived in America, it was rare to find leeks. Some of you out there in the states are probably thinking; "Leeks? Aren't those the fancy onion-like things at the supermarket that are expensive?"

Well, yes.

A lot of people love to travel. I am not one of them.

Sure I love wandering through exotic markets, exploring restaurants in new cities, and sitting under an umbrella on the beach. But the hard part for me to deal with is getting there. I know that travel used to be romantic and fun, but it's not anymore. And people like the whiny woman sitting across the aisle from me who just couldn't believe that her enormous suitcase won't fit in the overhead bin just above her seat and was refusing to put it elsewhere, doesn't add to the allure.

The main thing I don't like about travel is this: I don't like being uncomfortable. I don't like being trapped in a plane, unable to move (even when seated), I never sleep well unless I'm in my own bed, and call me crazy, but I like the option of going to the bathroom when I need to go to the bathroom. I'd make a horrible prisoner. And after fifteen minutes trapped in my seat, one can only read about electric butter slicers, portable water washers, and the latest in nose-hair removal technology so many times in the Sky Mall catalog.

The pastry department is always the most popular part of the kitchen amongst the rest of the staff. (Unless I'm in it, though. Then that's debatable.) For one thing, anytime there's a staff birthday, you're called into service to make the cake. And since everyone has a birthday, folks are usually nice to you the other 364 days of the year. Another thing is that regular cooks like...no, love to snack on anything sweet.

Whenever I made biscotti, the ends and broken bits would end up on a plate in the pastry department, and almost immediately the staff would swoop down for the kill the moment the rounded end hit the plate.

After chewing for a moment, invariably, someone would always say, "You know...(pause)...I like biscotti better only once-baked."

I'm sure they were certain I was hanging on to their every word, and how I managed to resist the urge to say, "So what?"—I'll never know...

When I was a newbie, someone in the cookbook biz once told me that if a cookbook has one great recipe in it, it's totally worth it. And I agree with that. I have a mountain of cookbooks, and most have plenty of tempting recipes but I've only made one thing from many of them. But those that do make the cut become standards—or what we call "go to" recipes.

One such cookbook was the Joy of Cooking, which was re-published with great fanfare (and some undeserved derision) in 1997. I remember a blurb on the book jacket from a previous edition, by a bride who swore she toted the book along when she moved abroad. Which I didn't, although I was hardly a blushing bride. So at least I have an excuse.

The yogurt aisle in any French supermarket is the largest, longest, most well-stocked aisle in the store. (Wine, I think, runs a close second.) While there's a disconcerting number of dubious treats there (coconut macaron or lemon madeleine-flavored yogurt anyone?) the simplest varieties are wonderful.

I'm hopelessly boring, but I like whole milk plain yogurt, which is my afternoon snack. I eat it with dried fruits, a tipple of berry syrup, or just slicked with honey. Luckily yogurt here comes in handy 4-ounce portions, the perfect size, and I don't miss those hefty pots of purple, super sweet, gelatin-thickened gloop, which barely resembles what yogurt even is.

In between all the yogurts here, you'll find a few oddities buried in there.

1. Sell Classeurs

The most prevalent fixture in every French home isn't the gleaming shelf of copper cookware, the bottles of medicaments crammed into every nook in the john, or their collection of books, which the French hold in the same reverence as Americans do their flat-screen televisions and their iPhones.

No, it's the shelf of classeurs, the sturdy, colorful cardboard folders to hold the massive, sprawling, spiraling out-of-control amount of paperwork your accumulate here, in the form of les dossiers, which are the two most important words in the French language.

You quickly learn to never, ever, ever, throw away even the tiniest, most insignificant piece of paper or receipt in France because invariably, six years later, someone will ask you to produce it. So it's imperative to save each and every scrap of paper and because of that, soon you'll find you've accumulated your very own stack or dossiers.

I know, because I have at least fifty. Or more filed away somewhere.

I recently read The Pedant in the Kitchen, which Michael Ruhlman also wrote up, and while I found it an enjoyable rant, one vexing thought that stuck in the author's craw was recipe instructions that call for "a handful" of something. He didn't know what that meant and wondered why recipes couldn't be more precise.

Writing a recipe that's acceptable to absolutely everyone can be daunting, if not impossible. The purpose of any recipe is the guide the cook through the process; too much explanation and overtly-long recipes turn readers off, while short recipes often get accused of not giving enough information. How much is enough, and how little is not enough?

I once saw a three page recipe for chocolate brownies from a famed pastry chef.

A dining companion said to me— “Let’s eat inside. It’s too smoky out there.”

This is the salad I made myself for lunch today:

And I decided that I would use it to finish one of the previously unfinished posts.

Note that there's no canned corn. No rice. And yes, real potatoes, garlic, and fresh green beans. Except for steaming the green beans, it took me all of about 2 minutes to put together. The potatoes were leftovers and were just as good cold as they were caramelized and freshly-roasted out of the oven the night before. And the cheese is cut from a hunk of cantal that I buy from the heartthrob-worthy cheese guy at my Sunday market. Needless to say, I always make sure I have plenty of cantal on hand.

My desktop is a mess, cluttered with posts that I started, but never got around to finishing. Like the one about Jamie Oliver, who personally doesn't make me sick, but the camera work on his show definitely makes me quesy.

A lot of times a thought will hit me when I'm out and about, then I'll race home and start writing, only never to go back and follow up and finish the post.

Anyhow, these are some posts that I started and never got around to finishing up. But I have so many new things that I want to write about, it was time to let these go. So here's a look at what could've been, but never was, and never will be...

How To Look Parisian

I found a wallet on the street, and was with my partner, who's Parisian. Opening it up, there was a school ID so we stopped in the nearby school to return it to the front desk. He did all of the talking, I stood by not making a sound.

When it was time to leave, she looked at me, and said...in English, "And thank you very much, too."

I hadn't said anything. I wasn't wearing my fanny pack or puffy white sneakers. Heck, I wasn't even smiling. Yet somehow she knew.

(Ed: Then, for some reason, I went off on this tangent. Don't know what I was thinking...maybe I'd just had a bad encounter elsewhere that day?-dl)

The most important thing to remember is this:

Whenever you approach someone, realize that you're bothering them.

Whenever someone approaches you, act like they're bothering you.

It's a fine line and there's a little dance you do in shops when you need assistance. First, you have to bother them, so they have to act bothered back.

Then if they ask you a follow-up question, you need to act bothered back. Most of the time, even more so than they looked when you bothered them. You don't want them to think you're more important than they are, do you?

So then they think that you being bothered by them is more important than them being bothered by you.

Got that?

(I have no idea where this one was going, but was found it amusing that in spite of the fact I rarely wear sneakers, and try not to smile, I get pegged as an American without even moving a muscle. Then I kind of segued into a thing about Parisians that I never got back to and even confused myself by the end.

I also like the crosswalk signs, showing a notoriously impatient Parisian with his hands on his hips, waiting indignantly to cross the street. That sign says so much, and I wanted to share a photo of it with a story. But I guess I'll just have to let the sign speak for itself. -dl)

3 Sure-Fire Ways to Avoid Going Postal in Paris

1. A few weeks ago I went back to Exceptions Gourmands with a friend from New York.

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.

I don't think I could say it any better than this...

When you fly in to Charles de Gaulle airport, there's a mad rush to get off the plane. Then you're herded to a holding pen-like area, where you wait to go through passport control. It's complete chaos: everyone surging forward, en masse, trying to get around everyone else, regardless of who got there first. That is, except for the Americans, who wait patiently for their turn, but quickly learn that if they don't assert themselves, they're going to spend their entire vacation in that stifling, airless space.

If you leave 4.5-inches of space in front or behind you in France, you may as well not even be there as people take that to mean you're not waiting. I know that because they act very surprised when I tap them on the shoulder and point out that yes, I are indeed standing in that line with my luggage, just like they are, to check in to my flight. I'm not just hanging out at the airport with a suitcase because I had nothing better to do.

So you have to constantly be on your toes and you can't let your guard down for a second. If you do, you'll never get anywhere. It's pretty exhausting.

And how do I know it's spring?

Could it be the trees that are blooming, or the sun desperately trying to poke through the gray, cloudy skies?

Might it be the luscious, ripe strawberries with verdant green stems at my market?

Or could it be that it's no longer just the hearty non-smokers occupying the outdoor tables in the cafés, but everyone, hoping to catch a sliver of sunshine?

Nope.

How do I know it's spring?

It's because the speedy folks at La Poste—just yesterday—returned an incorrectly addressed Christmas card that I'd sent way back in December, to someone who lives about a mile away, in the same city.

I can't wait to see what summer brings.

Maybe some of the others?

...it's a challenge to get through to the person you really need to speak to on the phone.

...the amount of documentation you need seems excessive.

...when there's a screw up, there's no one to complain to.

...all the workers act like they can't be fired—because they can't.

...you're sure the folks up ahead of you are getting better treatment.

...there aren't nearly enough bathrooms.

I find it odd that you can't get laundry detergent, shampoo, shaving cream, or deodorant that's not perfumed around here.

But French Fries?

They're available sans odeur.

Today I had what I call a "Welcome To France" day.

That expression came about a couple of years ago, when a friend who lives in Switzerland came to run in the Paris marathon.

Except when he went to register, they told him he wasn't registered even though he had a letter from them saying that he had indeed registered. And he wasn't alone; there was a roomful of other people with letters being told they weren't registered either. Luckily, he was there with a friend who was a doctor.

It wasn't because people were fainting from having traveled halfway around the world and being told they couldn't run in a marathon they'd spent the last 6 months training for. The French friend intervened (the French are much better at yelling at bureaucrats that we Americans, who crumble surprisingly easy) everyone was told they could re-register. But everyone would need to magically produce a note from their doctor attesting to their fitness.

So even though our friend specializes in breast augmentations and botox injections, he sat down and signed everyone's paperwork.

When I went to meet my friend after the marathon, he was shaking uncontrollably; very, very cold and tired.

Over dinner the other night with a group of friends, I was talking about the excessive use of plastic bags in the world. I told them I easily recalled 20 years back, when traveling in Europe, it was just a given that you brought your own bag to the supermarket and shopping with you. Now, plastic bags are everywhere, but I like to re-use them.

Curiously, some vendors have told me I shouldn't do that because of les bactéries.

Which I find even more odd considering they don't think it's pas hygiénique to rip open a clementine with their teeth, then hand over the sections for customers to taste.

I decided my entryway was a disaster and got on the stick and pulled everything out and straightened it up.

Actually I didn't get that far.

I did pull everything out, but lost interest and didn't put anything back.

The good thing is, I can't leave.

So I have to stay home and work.

That was really dumb.

This my new mobile phone.

I've nicknamed it Darth Vader since it's dark, scary, and hisses at me a lot.

I'm a deadline for a project and am panicking about it.

So...being a world-class procrastinator—what did I do this weekend?

A. I scrubbed the hose of my showerhead.

B. I contemplated the safety of a wild boar sausage some Roman friends brought me. There were some mysterious things in there that I couldn't cut through as well, but I'll spare you that footage. So far I've eaten one-third of it and nothing's happened to me.

Yet.

C. I realized that I really like to make soup.

But later remembered that I really don't like eating it.

1. Dressing

It's not dressing, it's stuffing.
Get it? It gets stuffed in the bird. That why it's called stuff-ing. Even if you don't use it to stuff, you're not 'dressing' the bird. The mere mention of the word 'dressing' makes me wince down to my you-know-what. (It's even hard for me to type.)

If you want further proof, it's Stove-Top 'Stuffing' Mix, not 'Dressing' mix. I don't care what the dictionary says. Don't argue with me. Or Kraft.

Ok, you can call Kraft on it. But not me. I'm too thin-skinned.

2. Veggies

Perhaps the worst offender. They're vegetables, my friends. If you're too lazy to pronounce two extra, teeny-tiny syllables, all hope for humanity is lost. You deserve to read about the mindless antics of Britney and Paris for the next decade.

And I don't mean my mindless antics in Brittany, or Paris.

3. Combine

The jury's still in recess on this one.

That's okay.

I really didn't want to make a batch of ice cream tonight anyways.

(Although I really didn't want to spend the next forty-five minutes on my hands and knees with a sponge and a bucket either.)

Something around here stinks.
And it's not just my neighbor.

When I moved to Paris, I remember my first load of laundry that I proudly pulled out of my little machine tucked in the corner.

After I figured out the seven different dials and nine different buttons on the machine (actually, I've still only managed to figure out what about a third of them do), I remember extracting my clothes from the machine and hanging them all out to dry on my shiny new rack that took me a few hours to buy at the BHV. In Paris, few people have dryers since it's verboten to cut holes in buildings to vent to the outside. And even though each load of laundry takes me the better part of 3 days instead of...say, an hour...I'm happy to report I've reduced my carbon footprint.

And I've also reduced my productivity at doing anything else.

...that people get over the fact that The Food Network isn't all about food and it isn't the place to learn how to cook.

It's probably never going to be and is simply entertainment. It's what it is. Criticizing them for the lack of serious cooking on their programs is like complaining that there's not enough hard-news in Jay Leno's monologue.

If you want to learn how to cook, crack open a cookbook by Richard Olney or Jacques Pepin, take a cooking class, or follow along while watching Julia Child on The French Chef on DVD.

...that people please stop using that phrase "Fat is flavor".

Espresso, ground cinnamon, marshmallows, red wine, maple syrup, fresh ginger, Ranch Gordo beans, arugula, soy sauce, cranberries, Château Yquem, Concord grapes and sea salt are delicious and absolutely loaded with flavor. Yet they have zero or just very trace amounts of fat.

Fat is not a hero nor is it a villain.

But if you think fat equals flavor, eat a spatula-full of Crisco vegetable shortening and let me know how it tastes.

Many times I've been with friends and family in Paris and we'll go into a food shop. Now I'm not picking on anyone in particular, so if you think I'm talking about you, I'm not. Think of this as a composite of lots and lots of people.

And I'm sure I'm guilty too, so I'll toss myself in that mix.

I'll show people something, say...the display of jams made by Alsatian Christine Ferber. She makes lots of different flavors from all sorts of fruits and they're supposed to be wonderful; the best in the world some say.

There's a pretty lively debate over at Amateur Gourmet about the recent appearance of Alice Waters on The View. I'm not going to attempt to put words into anyone's mouth, but there seems to be a lot of mis-information about the message that Alice is trying to bring across.

Alice is an idealist, which is someone who imagines things that are...'ideal'. We need people like that. If no one imagined anything but what already existed, or nixed any new ideas, we wouldn't have telephones, electricity, flour, tires, espresso makers, and the Spice Girls reunion.

When I started at Chez Panisse back in 1983, few people knew what mesclun, goat cheese, or blood oranges were. Now they're common in many supermarkets like Safeway, and sold at reasonable prices. I recently paid $5.99 for a box of Rice Krispies in New York, so I don't buy the argument that convenience foods are cheaper than 'healthy' foods. Quaker Oats are about half the price, although you can't make Rice Krispie Squares out of them.

What are the absolute last words you want to hear when invited to someone's home for a meal?

Well, how about...

"We had some fish that was about to go bad, so we're having it for dinner."

Welcome to my world. A world you thought was all baguettes and chocolate.

Well it now includes dubious fish too.

The rules for hygiene are a little different here than in America. I was pretty shocked to see on my trip to the US in June, little bottles of hand-sanitizer dangling from people's belts and fanny packs, as well as available in supermarkets with towelettes to wipe down the handles on shopping carts. But I'm equally shocked that people think it's okay to leave stock-based preparations on the counter for a day or so, then consume then. (They use stock in science labs to grow bacteria since it's such an inviting medium. Just so you know.)

Although some think we might need those little bottles of sanitizer around here pretty soon for Vélib' hands, after riding around town for a few weeks, I'm almost inclined to agree with her after riding around for the past few weeks.

Although I've been certified in food sanitation, sometimes I just need to suspend logic around here and just go with the flow. The fish, though, I pushed aside. I'm thrilled to be accepted by the locals, but let's not take this "I'm so French" thing too far...

Ah, la salade niçoise...

One of the classics of French cooking and one of my favorite things to dig into sitting on the terrace of a café, dreaming idling away the afternoon by the sparkling Mediterranean. But really, who wouldn't want to dig into a big, fresh salad bursting forth with the flavors of the sunny French Riviera, no matter where you live?

There's always much controversy about the salade niçoise regarding what's authentic and what's not.

Does one use fresh or canned tuna?

Is there a bed of lettuce underneath or does one leave it out?

Are there olives in it?

Boiled potatoes or rice?

Should it be mixed or composed?

And although I'm not convinced about artichokes, there's folks out there who swear by them.

I'm not really sure if there's a definitive answer as to what's correct.

But I'm pretty sure about one thing.

This ain't it...

One baking question that I'm frequently asked—"Is sifting really necessary?"

I hope that answers the question...

(Dispatch from San Francisco)

I simply can't recall the last time in Paris that I was ate French fries that were actually made with real, freshly-cut potatoes. And served crisp, cooked like someone cared about how they tasted. Nor can I think of anytime in the recent past when I've been served fresh, seasonal tomatoes in a salad.

Last week I ate at Nopa, a shockingly-good restaurant located in an off-center location in San Francisco with wonderful cooking by a youthful, vibrant staff. From the opening plate of very crispy French Fries served with Maldon salt, to a thick, crusty, moist pork chop cut from locally-raised pork served with pan-fried peas whose brilliant-green flesh and taste assured me they were shucked no later than that afternoon. The food revolution that's taken place in the past few decades in America has meant a number of excellent restaurants have opened everywhere, not just in San Francisco, and it's pretty amazing the quality of products that are available in America nowadays.

So it gave me pause to wonder why this kind of food is rarely, if ever, found in restaurants and most markets in Paris anymore. (Save for pricey, starred establishments.)

In lieu of promoting freshness and cuisine du terrior, the current trend in Paris is le verrine: a little glass layered with a dice and/or puree of various foods. While the concept is fun, like 'foams', we've seen it and done it. And while it's a cool idea, that's the only innovation I've seen in the past few years in Paris. Still, I'd prefer to have food that simply tastes good; vegetables sourced from a local farm and sautéed briefly with a knob of good Breton butter or a really good, tangy lemon tart, made with freshly-squeezed lemon juice, perhaps from Corsican lemons, in a homemade buttery crust. Made with Breton butter, bien sûr.

Perhaps I'm thinking along these lines since I just finished reading The United States of Arugula by David Kamp. In spite of the silly title, this excellent book unwittingly tells the story of how America beat the French at their own game; namely cooking. While the French were resting on their well-earned laurels, garnered from mastering cooking techniques and developing various repertoires during the last few centuries, the Americans embraced the concept of cuisine du marché and took it to the next level by giving the ingredients more prominence than the techniques used to prepare them. Both ideas have their merits, I suppose, but I don't need to tell you which I prefer.

While this is not a sweeping indictment of all restaurants in either country (there's always the good, the bad, and I've certainly been served the ugly), it seems like the French now have some catching up to do.

All too often, I'm put in the position of being an ambassador between several cultures, spending a fair amount of time explaining and defending the practices of each one to the other. For me it's become part of life, since there's a certain amount of stereotypes that people make about foreigners that are, or aren't, true

I had no idea, for example, that Americans were well-known for uttering the words "Oh my God!" at each and every opportunity possible. I never really thought about it until French friends started saying it to me, half-jokingly in English. (And a waiter in Lisbon said it to me as well...it was the only phrase he could recite in perfect English.) I don't think I ever uttered those words all that much before I moved here. But now, unfortunately, because of all my French friends saying it to me (in English), I've picked it up and now I find myself saying it all the time too.

On the flip side, people have an image that French people aren't particularly clean and are, in fact, smelly. Having lived on both sides of the Atlantic, I wouldn't say that the French are any more- or less-washed than their overseas counterparts.

Sure, I've gotten stuck on the métro with some dude's hairy, rank armpit dangling centimeters from my face. And I have noticed people avoiding seats next to certain riders as well. (And when I dive in quickly to get one of the vacant seats, self-satisfied, I realize my victory is short-lived as my nose quickly discerns why all the nearby seats are empty.)

Closer to home, just few weeks ago I'm waiting for the elevator to arrive outside my apartment door. Since I live on the top floor, seven flights up, the elevator is a necessity. When the elevator arrives and door opens, two young men come springing out.

Sorry to see all the long faces out there.
And I'm not talking about all the Celine Dion billboards around town promoting her upcoming concert.

Which I am sorry to have to see.
(The billboards, I mean...not the concert.)

Anyhow, to cheer you up about me not coming to your town, or to prepare you if I am, here's a post from my archives that gave me a good chuckle when I re-read it last weekend. I was at a friend's house who made killer carnitas and guacamole, along with a copious blenderload of mind-bending margaritas. She'd printed this out and taped it to her fridge when I posted it a while back when I had pondered some of the curious and profound cultural peculiarities around here, which occasionally prompts the necessitude for hi-test margaritas, when all the red wine just isn't quite enough...

What They Say vs What They Mean

When they say,"Non", they mean, "Convince me."

When they say,"We do not take returns", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say,"It's not broken", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say, "You need a prescription for that", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say,"The restaurant is completely full", they mean,"Please come up with a better story."

When they say,"The restaurant is completely full", they mean,"We already have enough Americans in here."

I am definitely French.

Today I went to the bank to deposit 134€ to make a payment.

I had 135€.

The bank teller told me, "We don't have any change."

And the funny thing was—this didn't surprise me.

Like, at all.

If you want to see a what a human head looks like when it explodes, there's no reason to waste your money on tickets to the latest Mel Gibson movie.

Just take me to Ikea.

At first, it seems the shopping day is going to be a lot of fun as you prepare for the big trip, flipping through that cheery Ikea catalog featuring handsome Scandinavian families in sun-splashed Ikea homes: making dinner in their BRANJELLËENA kitchen, happily working away at their SKÅRI LARIKINGG desk, and tucking the kids in for the night between their FØRSKYNNE sheets.

And for those of us not fortunate enough to: 1) Be unbelievably handsome with strong Nordic features, 2) Live in a sun-dappled townhouse with kids, perfectly-arranged by size, weight and material, and 3) Have every kitchen utensil, perfectly arranged by size, weight and material—in other words, for those of us who live space-challenged, in petite Parisian apartments, the appeal of folding tables, chairs, silverware, etc..etc... holds a definite hypnotic appeal.

(We who live by the rule that you can't bring anything into your apartment until you get rid of something else. Just flipping through those shiny-fresh catalog pages is enough to make you start drooling about all the things you're going to buy to fill up all that newly-free space.)

So you make a list of all the fun items in the catalog you're going to buy, like sets of nesting storage containers so you can organize all your breakfast cereals and display them by size, weight, and material in your Ikea dream kitchen and you can finally replace the glassware that's been irreparably-ruined by Parisian calcaire because you're too lazy to wash yours by hand.

The water is Paris is rife with calcium.
Which perhaps means there's a low rate of osteoporosis in women around here.

But it also means for the rest of us, we have to deal with this:

All of my glassware has developed these calcium-deposits which I can't seem to get rid of.

(And, embarassingly enough, someone asked me recently, "Um. Could I get a clean glass please?")

Oh, the humiliation...

But why, I ask? Why me?

Because je suis Parisian, I dump sel to my dishwasher and dutifully pop in one of my beloved Powerballs which releases its magic during each and every spin through the machine. Still, my glasses are covered with calcium. I've also soaked them in white vinegar, a must-have around here to combat the calcium buildup that blocks our faucets and water heaters as well.

And for my last desperate attempt to solve the problem once and for all, yesterday I splurged on a fine bottle rinçage (rinse agent) that was priced more than a moderately-good Burgundy, and washed everything again.

Nothing. I eagerly opened the door of the dishwasher the second the final cycle was done in great anticipation. But through the moist, hazy steam, I lifted a glass skyward and with the sun streaming through, my normally-cheery spirits dropped when I saw the stubborn white film had refused to budge from the sides of the glasses.

What can I do?
I'm can't go out in public, and the weather's getting too nice to hide myself indoors, shrouded in shame, for much longer...

1. I love when people on roller-blades fall.

2. I don't care all that much who wins in 2008, or what party they're from.

I just want everyone to like and respect us again.

3. Once a woman came into a restaurant where I worked and had dinner all by herself.

At the end of her meal, she asked the waiter to put a birthday candle on her dessert.

Fifteen years later, I still feel really sad about it.

4. I think it should be illegal for men to get their eyebrows arched.

5. I live in Paris and I've never gone up the Eiffel Tower.

And I don't really want to!

Rarely do things get marked down in Paris, except twice a year when stores have les soldes during dates specified by the govenment. But they do sometimes reduce the price of something by offering a promotion.

The difference is that during a sale, they mark something down.

A promotion is different: it's when they reduce the price of something.

Got it?

Commonly, I find, that when something's on promotion, when you get to the register it never rings up at the sale, um...or I mean, the promotion price.

For you coupon-clippers out there— sorry, there's no coupons here.
But the supermarkets do send out fliers advertising specials on certain items. But very rarely is the item actually in stock. My beloved Powerball went on sale, or was it on promotion?...this week at Franprix supermarket.

Don't bother clicking on the link. Their site's been non-functional depuis 2002. It advises "Patience!!!"

(You think? Anyone who's willing to wait 5 years for a major business in one of the top cities in the world to put up a web site certainly needs un peu de patience.)

When I went, there my Powerballs sat on the shelf but with no special price was attached. (I'm sure there's a joke there, but after the last post, I'm not touching it.) The other four items, which were advertised on sale in the flier, which were on my list, weren't in stock at all. Still, with my odds, it was my lucky day that there was at least one of them.

Day #2:

Just in case you live in a top-floor Parisian apartment with feeble water pressure, if you're testing recipes involving baked meringues, I don't recommend disposing of them here.

I hope by tomorrow they'll finally be gone.

UPDATE: March 8 (the next day)—they're still not gone!

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.

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!

Sorry about the less-than-stellar photo.

I was trying to take a picture in a hectic métro station, and when there was a break in the frenzy of commuters, I tried to get my shot. But soon the people behind the glass in the information booth started taking notice of me snapping a few pics of the high-security features of the métro, like metal railings and door handles.

So I snapped quickly and packed up my camera fast, especially when I saw one of the guys stub out his cigarette (a sign I took that he was really serious about coming out of that booth), fearing he'd ask me what I was doing. Then I'd have to explain that I have a food blog but I write about Paris as well and I was going to do a post about something called 'Métro Hands' and wanted to take a photo to accompany the text for the edification of my readers which was all in the name of fun but sometimes encompassed serious topics, although often shrouded in stories that are either offbeat, funny, poorly-written, lively, contains typos, insulting, unedited, over-edited, timely, insightful, amusing, pathetic, or when all else fails, is accompanied by a recipe for a chocolate cake or cookies.

(I doubt that he would have understood what I was talking about, though in his defense, I can't blame him—neither would I.)

Anyhow, I don't know if the French have a phrase that corresponds to this, but when you arrive at someone's house or at a restaurant, often one will excuse themself shortly thereafter to wash up, claiming a case of 'Métro Hands', which usually gets paired with a slightly queasy expression. I've seen both French people do this, as well as Americans, who many folks view as a band of raging germophobes (although curiously, you can't touch produce at the market, and men must wear bathing caps and a barely-there Speedo in a public pools in France, for l'hygiene...mais oui!.)

So what are 'Métro Hands'?

One of my friends from San Francisco sent me the local paper the other day, which was dated just before the last election.

In my district, there was an election for Supervisor, the person who would represent my district in City Hall.

This year there were three candidates vying for that position.
Each was profiled and interviewed:

The first was Bevan Dufty, the current Supervisor, who describes himself as "addressing neighborhood concerns and successfully shepherding projects" that were helpful to the neighborhood, including renovating the local library and upgrading accessibility on the city-wide transit system.

The second candidate was Alix Rosenthal, who was the President of the San Francisco Elections Commission and vowed to vigilantly fight the problems plaguing the city at their root cause, including protecting neighborhood schools from closure and pledging to work tirelessly for inclusionary housing.

The third candidate described his qualifications for public service as "bisexual and vegetarian." His current occupations are "escort, masseur, and exotic dancer" and he vows to repeal leash-laws and deter violent crime by "letting people carry handguns for self-defense."
An effective Supervisor he said, should "throw fun, free office parties" as well as dress in drag occasionally, and "take the right kinds of drugs."

His name is Starchild.

I wonder who won?

Just to let you know in advance that this isn't going to be one of those posts that tells you what to do with those Thanksgiving leftovers, like how to make a delicious Turkey Tetrazzini. And by now it's too late anyways. If you have any leftovers, they're probably toxic and I would toss them away right now.

I don't want you ending up in the hospital around Thanksgiving.

Like I did.

One of the fundamental differences between here (France) and there (the US) is that here, they don't have to help you.

It's not that there's no customer service, but unlike the US where they're supposed to (and expected to) be nice and helpful to customers, the onus here is on the salesperson, or the person behind the desk: They alone can decide if they want to help you. Or not.

And you're job is to convince them to help you, any way you can. So the decision is yours.

How are you going to get them to help you?

This is baffling to many American visitors, who stare at me with wide-eyed disbelief, that there are really people out beyond their borders that don't care if they make money or not, which is what 'helping the customer' is presumably all about. That the almighty dollar is worth a lot less than they think (and going down every time I look.)

I explain that this is not a capitalist country or culture, which perhaps explains why the economy here is a tad lackluster right now. But for many of us Americans, we have a really hard time understanding that other cultures are different than ours.

So here's what you need to get with the program:

First I read this...

"These broads are millionaires...reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands death so much."

-Ann Coulter talking about the women who lost their husbands on 9/11.
Her books are national best-sellers.

Then I heard this...

"He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act...This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox."

-Rush Limbaugh accusing Michael J. Fox of making up the severe effects of Parkinson's Disease.
10 million people listen to his program daily.

Now I see this...

OJ Simpson has a new book, 'If I Did It'.

He allegedly received a $3.5 million dollar advance, and a two-part 'interview' with his editor will be broadcast on Fox.

And people still keep asking me why I moved...

The RATP has started a campaign to try to get Parisians to respect each other when riding the métro, including avoiding the noisy, smelly pitfalls of eating a hamburger, not jumping the turnstiles, talking too loud or swearing, having inane, annoying cell phone ring-tones (yeah!), and not putting your stinky feet on the seats.

Watch the films and animations here.

(In French, but hilariously watch-able, especially the animated short films.)

As seen on Eric's site, Paris Daily Photo.

Whew!
I've finally turned in my manuscript and off it goes back to my editor to check over everything I did. And so I'm turning my attention to cleaning up some of the stuff I have sitting on my computer.

I have this big, massive, overloaded file staring at me on my desktop, called 'Blog Entries'. Living between two cultures often presents a lot of challenges, some good some bad, that's the way it us, but it gives me plenty of opportunities for reflection and observation. Often I'll be out and about, something will happen or an idea will come to me, and I'll race home and start writing, only to never go back and pick it up again. Or I lose interest in it and move on.

Since I'm hopelessly frugal and can't let anything go to waste, here's a few of the entries that I started but never got around to finishing. Please note, they haven't been polished, or in many cases, even finished. Some may be slightly off-beat, or off-putting, or slightly offensive.

And for that, dear readers, I can only beg your utmost forgiveness, and to please be easy on me...

A Day on The Beach In Brittany

Don't you just hate when you're relaxing at the beach, enjoying the warm sunshine, and some asshole starts playing his bagpipe?

(I was at the beach in Brittany this summer, and started hearing this odd whining noise. And no, that was not me. This dude starts playing his bagpipes in the dunes behind us. That was a first. It was funny and I loved it, since normally it's someone with a radio at the beach, blasting away driving everyone else nuts. It was pretty funny at the time, but I couldn't get past the first line.
So there.)

Ice Ain't Nice?

(This was written awhile back when I was on book tour in the US, and everywhere I ate, they kept refilling and refilling and refilling my glass of over-iced water when all I wanted to do was just a plain glass of water, and to be left alone for 30 seconds in peace and quiet to eat my dinner. It was driving me nuts!
I thought it would be fun to get a real, honest-to-goodness French person to co-write it with me, since a lot of Americans don't understand why the rest of the world doesn't share our fascination with a huge glass filled with ice and a teaspoon of liquid barely suspended in it. But then the weather changed, and I never followed up.)

I don't need the busboy to sprint across the dining room every time I take a sip from my glass.

(That was as far as I got. I guess the subject's not all that interesting...)

Why?

(Some thoughts that came into my mind for a few days. Then mysteriously vanished.)

Why do people beg for money around ATM machines?
What is the likelihood of someone peeling off a twenty for them?

Why do people walk on my mat at yoga?
(Is that bad karma?)

Why does that bother me?
(Is that bad karma?)

Why do people think spending $20 for a bottle of olive oil is outrageous, but think spending $20 bottle for a bottle of wine at a restaurant is a bargain?

Why do people think $12 for a glass of wine at a restaurant is okay, but spending $5 for a bag of hand-harvested salt is outrageous?

Did the 50% of Americans who re-elected the current US President think that things were going to truly get better, rather than worse?

Why doesn't someone come up with a flat chapstick that fits in your pocket?

Why don't people pluck those long hairs hanging out of their nose or ears?

Why do people still think it's still funny to correct you when you mention the store Target, with Tar-jay?

Why are so many American against universal health coverage when there are 47 million Americans without any sort of health coverage at all?

Why do Americans keep asking me if the French are worried about bird flu?

Why aren't Americans worried about bird flu?

Why can't the bird flu just attack he pigeons that sit on my windowsill?

Why do so many French people complain about their cholesterol while simultaneously puffing on a cigarette?

Why do companies have email addresses on their web sites for customers questions but don't bother answering the emails?

Why do the phone always ring when I just start cutting up a chicken?

Why do I always suddenly have the urge to go to the bathroom with I just start to tackle the sinkful of dishes?

Why do objects always fall just out of reach if I drop them behind the oven?

Why do people smoke while other people are eating dinner?

Why do public swimming pools in Paris make men wear the briefest-cut, tiniest Speedo-like swim suits?

Why do people talk so loudly on their cell phones in airports in America?

Why is Italian coffee so much better than anywhere else on earth?

Why do people think they have to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day?

Why do people keep saying over and over, "Fat is flavor"?
(Is Crisco "flavor"? Is Oscar Meyer Olive Loaf flavor?")

Why didn't America switch to the metric system when it should have?

Why do French people keep asking me why America didn't switch to the metric system?

Why does everyone ask me why America didn't switch to the metric system?

Why I am obsessed with trying to freak-out the GoogleAds, on the side of this site, which scan content looking for themes in my crazy blog?

Why do readers always think I'm moving back to the US when I say that I'm going back to the US for a visit?

Why would I ever leave here?

Ten Things I Never Want To Hear Again

(Over 'em...)

1. 'Tar-jay'
(This is obviously stuck in my craw)

2. 'Wifebeater'
(Anyone who thinks that's funny needs to have their head examined.)

3. "David, have you read that book by David Sedaris?"
(Yes, I have.)

4. "David, have you heard that radio interview with David Sedaris?"
(Yes, I have.)

5. "David, do you know David Sedaris?"
(Yes, we've met.)

6. "Don't the French hate Americans?"
(I can only speak for myself, and yes, they hate me and are viscous and cruel and everynight I cry myself to sleep.)

7. "Do you know those guys from Chez Panisse who do dinner parties in Paris?"
(Yes, their link is on my site. Please stop asking.)

8. "Have you read that book about French women staying so thin?"
(No. Please don't make me.)

9.

10.

The Perfect Fruitcake

(I was writing about fruitcakes, planning to do a post with a recipe. As you may remember, that experiment ended rather, er, badly. But I found a much better substitute for cheesecloth than I ever could have imagined.)

When I wrote my first book, Room For Dessert, people innundated my web site with recipe requests for fruitcake. Every day I would flip on my computer and find another message begging for recipes. It was driving me nuts! So I put not one, but two recipes in my next book.

One of the hardest things living in another country is it's hard to find things that we take for granted. I spent two weeks looking for mineral oil before finally stumbling across some at Ikea. And cheesecloth seems to be as all-American as using steroids has become for baseball players. You can't get it here, and I wasn't willing to patch together little bits of gauze from the pharmacy.

But being France, of course, they have something far more beautiful; they have étamine or toile au beurre, which is the most lovely, gauze-like fabric you can imagine. I found mine at the Marché St. Pierre at the foot of Montmarte, the multi-leveled fabric emporium which is so old-fashioned, they still have an elevator man!

The first time I went there, I was looking for light-blocking fabric. Since Parisians like to sleep in, I figured there's be spools of it everywhere. After bringing my measurements in, no one would help me, until I cornered a surly saleman. When he growled in my direction, I replied, "J'éspere que si vous vous installez dans un autre paye, vous ne recontreriez pas les personnes comme vous."
("I hope that when you move to another country, you don't meet anyone like yourself, asswipe.")

Anyhow, fruitcakes can be quite good if you make a nice one. My Chocolate Cherry recipe is extraordinarily good and is a great all-around chocolate cake no matter what time of the year. But since it's date season around here and I bought some wonderful Algerian dates that cost practially nothing, I set out to make my Date, Ginger, and Candied Pineapple Fruitcake. This is a great rum-soaked cake, loaded up with a treasure trove of fruits and nuts. I used pecans instead of the macadamia nuts (which are understandably outrageously expensive in Paris), as well as pistachios, candied orange peel (that I made last year), candied ginger and pineapple and a touch of honey.

Marché St. Pierre/Dreyfus
2, rue Charles Nodier
Métro: Barbes-Rochechouart or Anvers
Tél: 01 46 06 92 25

Sampling Capitalism/A Taste of Capitalism

(I never knew which title to use, but I wanted to talk about why French merchants and shopkeepers don't offer samples. And yes, I didn't put the backward accent on the 'tres' because, once again, I didn't feel like getting up and checking what the HTML for it.
If it bothers you, take out a Sharpie and write one on your computer screen.)

They don't typically offer samples in shops in Paris.
Sampling in Paris is not the normal activity it is in shops in the US, especially in cheese shops where in America they give you a zillion samples. In France, you're expected to rely on the expertise of the fromager to help you make a decision. (Which is probably why they don't use French people to hand out samples out at Costco.) And many French cheeses are rounds, which makes cutting a sample out difficult. In my talking to French people about sampling, it's a cultural difference, which I think may stem from that opinion that in France, the shopkeeper is expected to select the finest for their clients. And if you're a tourist passing through, you're not likely to buy anything anyways.
Recently, I had a guest tell me, "But if you get a sample, you're more likely to buy." which is true, I suppose. But people here aren't necessarily interesting in you buying something like they are elsewhere (which may explain their economic woes.) But there's something refreshing to me about people that are more interested in being 'correct' and developing a relationship with their clients rather than simply making money.

France is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with Apple over iTunes, since the songs aren't available to people who use music players other than iPods. When I was explaining that to a French friend, he replied, Well yes, they should be available to everyone.
I then replied that Pple spent a lot of money and time developing their platform, so why shouldn't they be proprietary about it? Why do they have to share what they developed?

He told me that was très capilatalistic.

(Anyhow, the whole thing kind of helped me learn something about the French, and Americans, and our diverse cultural programmaning. Americans tend to think that if something is commercially-viable or economically successfull, it's better. Whereas that's not necessarily an attitude shared around the world. Whether we like it or not. It's things like that which make living in a foreign country so thought-provoking. Even though readers don't always agree with my thoughts. *sigh*)

Dog Doo
One thing that separates the Parisians from the tourists is their uncanny ability to escape from stepping in dog doo. It's a real mark of achievement that I've only had that honor once, which for some reason, means 'good luck' in Paris (although I think the dog's owner is the lucky one, since if they were there when I stepped in it, they'd get an American-style smack down.)

Parisians are very defensive about many things and don't take kindly to criticism from the outside, and if you mention the dog droppings left everywhere, they'll never apologize or offer an excuse (how can you?). They'll simply change the subject to something they can defend.

So why it is okay to let your dog poo wherever it wants and not clean it up? Even though there's a 183€ fine for letting things sit 'n stink, I've never seen anyone give or get a ticket. I think it has something to do with a culture that's used to the government taking care of things for them. "Ce n'est pas mon faute" ("It's not my fault.")
Berlin has a similar problem, I hear, and I found this quote from a resident from awhile back form that non doody-free city, reacting to a proposed law to make dog owners pick up after their pets:

"I am a resident of Berlin. That city's smeared sidewalks testify to the inadvisability of delegating to another the responsibility of cleaning up one's own mess. Although Berlin has a scooper law similar to New York's, it is virtually unenforced and generally disregarded. A recent court ruling determined that in Germany it is unreasonable to expect a citizen to remove his or her dog's waste from public areas. Teams of street sweepers are there to do that...."

So if someone can tell me why it's okay to leave your doggie's doo on the sidewalk for someone else to step in, please let me know. Good luck...

The Perfect Pan

(I have this really crummy pan, a real cheap piece of crap cookware. It looks like it's been through World War V. One day it dawned on me with all the fancy cookware I have, it's the pan I use the most. I was going to write an ode to it, then The Food Whore wrote something about how fancy cookware ain't the bees-knees (try explaining that expression to a French person!), although she didn't use those particular words, so I dropped it.)

A roast chicken fits perfectly in the pan, as do 6 ramekins if I'm making a custard. And it's cheap. And I don't care if I ruin it. What's not to like?

Staying In Shape

(This I wrote since it's the most common question I get asked. I decided not to post it because it's all rather obvious stuff and kinda boring. I added an odd note, which I first thought was funny. Then I didn't think it was funny anymore. But I never trashed the list. I used a swear word too, which I don't normally do...and I'm not proud of it.)

People are constantly, and I mean all the frigging time, asking me, "How do you stay so thin?"

Here's the Top Ten Ways I Keep in Shape:

1. I only eat when I'm hungry.

2. I exercise about 3 times a week doing yoga for an hour.

3. I don't eat junk food. I don't eat at fast-food restaurants or buy pre-prepared foods.

4. I try to sit down and have a real meal rather than eating on the run.

5. I eat fresh foods as much as possible and eat things closest to their natural form. Butter instead of margarine, plain yogurt with good honey instead of all the fruit-flavor and sugar-added varieties.

6. I avoid foods with sauce, which tend to mask flavors and destroy textures. I like crispy, rather than soft foods.

7. I stick my finger down my throat after eating.

8. I walk as much as possible. Going to the gym may work for most people, but I detest treadmills. But just walking to and from places is great exercise. Did you know the average New Yorker walks 5 miles a day?

9. Although a cliché, I go for quality, not quantity. I never turn down great chocolates or a fabulous morsel of cheese, but I don't eat nachos with processed-cheese 'product' or the famed, deep-fried onion blossom (which has 3000 calories!)

10. I cook for myself a lot. People wonder why restaurant food tastes so good: it's because they add butter and oil with reckless abandon. It makes the food taste richer and people complain if they leave restaurants not feeling over-the-top full.

Fat is NOT Flavor

There seems to be this mantra floating around, "Fat is flavor."

I've watched people castigate others who cut off the wide, thick strip of gunky fat from their meat, whining, "But that's the best part!"

And I just say, "Okay, here you go!"
And pass it over.

(I abandoned this one when Adam picked up the topic.)

Hey Asswipe!

(I never got around to writing anything, but one day I realized that no one in France would know what an 'asswipe' meant, so I could call someone an asswipe and they wouldn't know what I was talking about.)

Culinary Confessions, Part II
(I started this after my first post, which is one of my favorites, became popular. I guess I got most of 'em out of my system the first time around, since I didn't find much to say for part II.)

1. I once ate a cinnamon-raisin bagel. And I'm not proud of it.

How To Eat a Wedge of Cheese

(There's a whole etiquette to eating cheese in France. To me, it's kinda fun to learn about it since I am totally enamored of all-things-cheese. But I was invited to a cheese tasting here, and someone, a chef from American, reached over and started taking a slice off the side off a round of cheese. Imagine someone slicing a cake like that!
The cheesemakers eyes kinda widened, and I could feel a lot of sphincters tightening in that room as she desecrated that round of cheese.)

If you're the first person presented with a wedge of cheese, taking the pointed end, or the 'nose' off the cheese is like grabbing the blue-icing roses first off a birthday cake if it's not your birthday.
Hands off!

(Anyhow, I never finished. But here's a rather simple guide.)

Top Ten Questions Europeans Have About Visiting America

(This came about during the student demonstrations last summer when, due to the overblown US media, it apparently looked like Paris was burning. People were emailing me right-and-left about the riot-torn streets since for some reason the headlines in the US were proclaiming, "Paris Is Burning!".
Since there's so little violence in America, I suppose it was a bit of a shock to see it elsewhere, though. Curiously, the immigrant 'riots' in America were not shown to similar effect here.)

So I thought it might be fun to show Americans how a French person might view America, or the questions they might have.)

1. Is the water in America safe to drink?

2. With all the unrest and demonstrations we see on the news in America, is it safe to visit?

3. How do Americans not stay so thin?

4. With all the shootings on the news, is it safe to walk the streets?

5. Aren't Americans rude?

6. Will the waiters try to understand us if we don't speak their language? Will there be menus in French? Will there be French-speaking people at the front desk at our hotel?

7. Will we get sued?

8. Is it safe to eat chicken and beef?

8. If we get sick, how many months is the pre-approval process before we can get treatment?

9. Why do we need three different kinds of insurance to rent a car?

10.

So anyhow...that's it.
I feel like I've cleaned off my desktop and got another blog entry under my belt. And perhaps offended a few people in the process. Apologies if I did, but I do feel better, and am ready to make a fresh start here.

In upcoming posts I'll have feature profiles of the food producers that I met on my trip to a rural farm that makes terrific artisanal apple cider, a visit to the birthplace of Kouing Aman (not to be confused with Idi Amin, who was not so sweet), and a trip to a gelateria in Bologna.
There will be more interviews with notables in the food community, including another studly chocolate-maker and an interview with master baker Nick Malgieri and recipes from his new book.

There'll be a story about the secret French, single-finger lathering-up-in-the-shower technique, plus a post on the most disgusting, vile, filthy objects you're likely to find anywhere. (And I'm not talking about in the US House of Representatives.)

But yes, there will be pictures.

And of course, there's likely to be a few surprises...
...like the lost chicken carcass in my apartment.

Which I hope to find soon!

"I am screwed", I'm thinking.

Ok, I've been living here for a few years now, and I should know better, but I fell for the oldest trick in the book.

A week or so ago, I invited a few friends and acquaintances over for dinner. One of them, who is French, has always been a bit scornful of me, from my lack of complete fluency in The World's Most Complicated Language to thinking it's funny to ask me if I'm going to take out ketchup for my dinner. At my house. Which was supposed to be some kind of joke. I guess.

Anyhow. So I get asked a question, and I should have seen this coming. But really, it just seemed so innocent at the time, he asks"What do you think of France?"

The moment I opened my mouth, to give my opinion, I said to myself, "Merde!...there is no way out of this." I should have shut my mouth right there and not even bothered. What was I thinking? When I moved to France, I purposely avoided political or cultural confrontations. Not only was my French not up-to-snuff, but there never seems to be any way to win an argument. But I've lived here long enough, talked to a lot of people, and have opinions just like any normal-ish person.

So if someone asks,

"What do you think of the Marais?"

If you say...

"It's beautiful and historic. The buildings are lovely and it's a wonderful testament to the magnificent history of France."...

...they'll respond,

"Ugh! It is a horrible place. It is full of tourists and very trendy now."

But on the other hand, if you say...

"Oh, I used to like the Marais but it's become so trendy."...

...they'll say,

"What?! The Marais is the most beautiful part of Paris. You don't know what you're talking about."

You basically can't win.
As I attempted to answer his question, remarking what I loved about Paris, touching on subjects like the fabulous food, French history and culture, the beauty of Paris, and the expressiveness of the French, I also started alluding to the problems here; unemployment, the ailing social state, immigration woes, and the fear of globalization that are plaguing the country (and before any folks start in on the US, I certainly have a few things to say about that as well, but you'll have to visit my top-secret other blog to read that.)
Well, so all of the sudden I'm defending both sides at once in my argument, kicking myself for being such a stupid boy for falling for one of the oldest tricks in the book around here.

In France, the worse thing you can do is not have an opinion, which was something I learned early on, and that it's okay to be critical (except in my Comments, so don't get any ideas...) Unless you're Tucker Carlson, most Americans think it's really bad to get into a heated discussion (which was certainly true in poor Tucker's case, which got his bow-tied ass fired.) But in France, there's nothing worse than being phony, and saying what you want or expressing yourself is far more acceptable than walking around with a big, dopey grin on your face regardless of how you actually feel.

Well, I guess I should backtrack and say that it's only acceptable it seems to express yourself as long as you're in agreement with them.

But the lack of unprovoked smiling is why a lot of people think French people aren't very friendly, when in fact, that's not true in most of my experiences. In Polly Platt's book, French or Foe, she explains that French people wear a mine d'enterrement or funeral expression, and reserve smiling for times when they are truly, actually happy, rather than just slapping a silly grin on their face (...remember the old picture I had on my site here? See how French I am now?) It's not that French people aren't happy, it's just they're not happy all the time, just like David. In fact, I now refuse to smile anymore unless I absolutely, positively have to. It's made my life so much easier not having to act happy all the time.
Try it.

So I've come up with a solution to this dilemma: Only get into arguments that I can win.

Which leaves 2 things that are absolutely inarguable (well, 3 if you count the political state of America): Dog doo on the streets and retirement at age 50.

I've heard some rather ridiculous arguments things around here, such as this choice nugget against the proposed anti-smoking laws..."You have to respect the rights of others," said Valerie, 29, a smoker since the age of 20.

I think I'll let Valerie's comments speak for itself (and maybe cut the poor dear a little slack, since she's only 29), but no one can seem to defend leaving dog doo on the street, and no one seems to be in the "Pro-dog doo" camp. Are people going on strike to preserve the 'rights' of dog owners not to clean up after their dogs?
Likewise with the generous retirement age. I can't imagine retiring in 2 1/2 years...and with full benefits (well, I don't get any benefits, so I can't imagine that anyways.) But letting people retire at 50 seems awfully young to me. I mean, what does one do for the next 40-50 years? (Unless, you're a smoker. Then you can probably shave a few years off that.)
So I've come up with a solution for both problems; instead of those people retiring, voila!: why not hire them to clean up after the dogs in Paris?

Or better yet, teach some of the young people a few lessons in logic.

Who can argue with that?

I was trying to avoid commenting on the Michelin flap in San Francisco, where stars were recently bestowed on a precious few restaurants there. Since I no longer live in San Francisco, I can't really comment on their recommendation (except for Manresa, which I did manage to eat at, and was excellent, stars or no stars.)

I've eaten at several two- and three-star restaurants here in Paris, and while they're always interesting, frankly, I'm much happier eating in a neighborhood bistro or wine bar. The food is generally good, and I don't have to analyze how the chef managed to dry an oyster into a crispy sheet, pulverize it into a powder, then re-liquidifed it with some chemical and form it into a gel to slide up my nose.

(Or since this is France, maybe slide it elsewhere.)

I never really could put my finger on why I felt uncomfortable in those kinds of places, but then read a terrific essay by Charles Shere, which pretty much summarized how I feel: Most of these places aren't really places for eating, but are showcases for culinary techniques and artistry.
And I like to eat.

So I decided to add my deux centimes worth.
I don't care much for guidebooks to begin with, since eating a meal, to me, is about sitting with friends, enjoying good food, and having a nice glass of wine or two. Just because some "expert" says that a place is "worthy of a visit" doesn't really mean much to me. Take Manresa, for example. Normally, I'm the last person to go to a fancy restaurant like that. And if a guidebook told me I had to go there, I most likely wouldn't. But I had met the chef, David Kinch, and really liked him a lot, and the way he talked about food was not reverential or pretentious, but calm and sensible. He had a great spirit and humor about what he does and I really anticipated eating his food.
Then I went, and had a truly outstanding meal. I was blown away.

I worked at Chez Panisse for many years, widely considered one of the top restaurants in America, which was given one-star. It's known for simple, honest fare, prepared rather sparsely. Alice always encouraged us to take things off the plate, rather than adding thing onto the plate, which a great lesson; what's on the plate really has to shine and at Chez Panisse, the quality of the ingredients are supposed to be the star. The food at Manresa (two-stars), while more complex, was designed to highlight the ingredient, not obliterate it, which was why I enjoyed the food so much. Both places are so different; comparing them would do neither one justice.

And I can't help recalling a meal I had at Arpege (three-stars), here in Paris a few years back. It's was alarmingly expensive (my bowl of Tomato Soup was 55€, or $70) and frankly, not the transcendental experience I'd read about. I don't remember much else I had, except for the Burnt Eggplant Puree, which is what they called actually it (which unfortunately, it was). But spending that kind of money, it's difficult for me to enjoy the experience anyways. And I was with a very-seasoned New York diner, a cookbook editor, who's used to expensive restaurants and she was shocked too. But price aside, the experience was rather empty to me. In addition, the dining room was hideously ugly, reminiscent of a business-class airport lounge. I just didn't get it.

Then Michael Bauer of the San Francisco Chronicle chimed in, noting some curious errors in the new guide. While mistakes do happen (with the notable exception of on this blog), guidebooks go through many editors and revisions, and some of the errors were not just sloppy, but really makes one suspicious of the quality and thoroughness of the research they did. I assume they have teams of people working on those guides, followed up by copyeditors and fact-checkers.

There is some talk of a 'French bias' against American restaurants, and I can't tell you how many French people have said to me, "Don't all Americans eat at McDonald's?"
To which I reply, "Don't all French people pick their nose on the métro?"

There is a misconception that American food is bad. But one visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market in San Francisco would blow most of the greenmarkets away anywhere else in the world. There is some great food here in France, but the food in the Bay Area is extraordinary as well. I don't compare the two and neither should anyone else. They're 6000 miles (or 9656.064 kilometers) apart.

I tend to think this is a clever marketing ploy by the Michelin man, designed to twist everyone's culottes in a knot, and get people talking about the guide (like I'm doing here). Maybe it's just a case of sour grapes. Or it could just be a bias against American food. I don't know. And frankly, I don't care.

As for me, I'm looking forward to returning to the Bay Area next June for a visit. While I'll miss my morning pain aux cerials from the bakery next door, the sublime chocolate macarons from Ladurée I treat myself to every week, and the delicious grilled sardines dusted with fleur de sel with charred skin and buttery, soft interior that I had for lunch sunday at Chez Paul...I'll be enjoying those stupendous short ribs at Delfina, tender slices of abalone in nutty brown butter at Manresa, a few icy Cosmopolitans with perfect Caesar salad sitting in the window at Zuni, and a scoop of pan forte ice cream at Ici.

And, of course, whatever Brett's making at Olallie...starred or not.

I'm in the midst of the insanity that every cookbook, author dreads: reviewing the copyedited manuscript of my upcoming book. Writing a cookbook, especially one that needs to be precise like a baking book, is really a task. I started working on this book well over a year ago and it grew and grew to hundreds of recipes before I reined myself it. I just got so excited and I couldn't stop.

So this week I've locked myself in my apartment, taken the phone off the hook, and quit drinking wine. (Well, two outta three ain't bad.) One of the hardest parts was getting it actually delivered to me in the first place. It was sent overnight via Fed Ex.

Normally that means 'overnight'.

In France, it means 'soon'.

So I patiently waited and waited, until it eventually showed up.

Being a tad insane, but globally conscience, I've decided to write the recipes in both cups-and-tablespoons as well as in metrics, which was like writing two books at the same time. So for all you people who complain about American cookbooks not being in metrics, or by weight, if you don't buy this book, I going to come over, tie you up, and leave an endless loop video of back-to-back episodes of Rachael Ray shows on your television and force you to watch them over and over and over and over and...

So I've been working with my editor on-and-off for the past few months and it's finally down to the wire. I've never worked with her before but she's great and has worked with some of the best cookbook authors out there. We seem to agree on most things, and unlike most author/editor relationships, she listens to me and I listen to her. Rather strange I know, but so far so good and everything has been going along fine.

Well, that was until the frantic 67 emails I sent her yesterday.
(Since then, I haven't heard anything.)

In these final stages of writing a cookbook, both the editor and a copy editor goes over the book with a fine-toothed comb, looking for errors and making sure things jibe. (I should've hired some of my readers, come to think of it.) This is the stage that I generally refer to as 'hell'. You pore over each and every word and scan every recipe, jumping up to remeasure something in the kitchen, scrolling through the manuscript countless times making sure things are consistent, eat chocolate-coverd marshmallows from Pierre Marcolini, email all your old friends from college that you haven't seen in twenty-five years that you've been meaning to write to but haven't, checking to see if anyone's commented on your blog, and finding silly projects around the house to avoid the inevidable final edit on the manuscript...all in a concerted effort to procrastinate further.

But at least I finally got around to digging out an old toothbrush and cleaning all the grimy stuff that's collected around the buttons on my kitchen scale. I feel much better now.

Ok, so back editing.
Editors help rein-in authors like me, that sometimes have a tendancy to get inspiration from the most unusual places. Beauty pageants, childhood traumas, and naked men hurling coconuts on the sidewalk all made it's way into this book. As you can imagine, I really have a dislike for boring, dull headnotes, those comments authors make at the beginning of recipes to introduce them.

There's nothing worse than a headnote that reads like...."These cookies go well with tea in the afternoozzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Who has tea in the afternoon? I think I have, like, maybe once. And I was probably in bed with the flu. I usually eat cookies while waiting for my coffee to brew first thing in the morning. Or I leave cakes on the counter and hack away at them all day with a knife. Or rip pieces off with my hands and lick the icing off with my fingers.
With tea in the afternoon? I am so sure.

And it's hard writing a single-subject book as I'm doing, without using some of the same words again. For example, everything I put in my books are my favorite recipes. How many times am I allowed to say, "This is one of my favorite recipe for...."?
As mentioned, I generally reach into the deep, dark recesses of my mind to grasp something to write about that's curious and funny. But sometimes other people think they're odd or weird.

For example, in a recipe for something with bananas, there was a note from my editor...

"Replace this headnote....Too many bugs, not enough yum."

Frankly I'm so bleary from editing that last night I wrapped up a roast chicken carcass, which I ate like a crazed savage, to bring down to the trash room before racing out the door to meet Joy (who does not, by the way, have a potty-mouth in real life) for a late night rendez-vous over a bottle of wine in the Bastille. But when I woke up this morning, I realized I forgot to take the wrapped carcass downstairs and I couldn't find it anywhere. I've looked everywhere; the refrigerator, the freezer, in kitchen cabinets, my clothes closet, in the bathroom and the shower. I know I will find it someday. I just hope I do before it ends up looking like one of my fruitcakes.

As I was racing to meet up, I learned something that I thought I'd share before I get back to work: No matter how pressed you are for time, don't try to iron a shirt while you're still wearing it.

Although on second thought, perhaps that will make an interesting headnote...

Better get back to work.

I keep a pretty clean house.

I bath regularly.

So I wondered why there were so many little flies buzzing around me?

Up until a few weeks ago, I never had a problem with insects, save for the nightly attacks of mosquitos (the bane of Parisian summers). So I was wondered why I had so many little visitors flitting about my kitchen.

Every year I make fruitcakes, and last year was no exception. I spend hours candying orange and grapefruit peel as well as making spicy, candied ginger, which I chop up into toothsome nuggets. I make a buttery batter packed full of brilliant-green Sicilian pistachios, and use my precious stash of rich, crunchy Macadamia nuts sent to me by friends in Hawaii.

Last week, I did my ritualistic unveiling of my lovely fruitcakes to give them their regular dose of Cognac.

As I pulled back the wrapping, something felt oddly unfamiliar, and an uneasy sense of dread spread over me.
The cakes didn't feel solid.

Nor did they even feel like cakes.

Well, words can't really describe what I was feeling, so I'll simply share...

Oh la vâche!, as we say.

This was perhaps the most horrible thing I'd seen in a long, long time.
Flies buzzed, hovered and swooped around the almost-unrecognizable bricks of cake, frothy mold seeped and fizzed from every pore, and little wriggly...well...since you may be eating while you read this, I'll stop there, but you get the message (and hopefully share my pain.)

I'm certain le canicule, the heatwave of July, was responsible. It heated everything up, including my cakes, and turned them into a messy mayhem of mold and mouches (flies).

I made a beeline for the elevator to the garbage area on the ground floor of my building, praying the elevator wouldn't stop to let someone else on. If it had, I don't know how I would have explained what happened. Or the stink. Luckily I arrived tout seule, and with semi-regret, flung the whole she-bang in la poubelle, slammed down the lid, and beat a hasty retreat.

Merde!

Today I learned something.

I learned how to check the statistics on this site.

I can learn what other sites lead people here, and how many people visit here each day.

I can also see what keywords people are using to find the site.

You would think it might be something like, say, 'Chocolate' or 'Paris'.

Or perhaps it'd be something broader, like 'Recipe' or 'Baking'.

But you know what?

The Number #1, Top Search Words that are used to find this site are...

So for all you fans looking for Tucker Carlson...welcome!...

...to both of you.

I recently got this message from someone asking...

"It would be a great help to me if you would be so kind as to just note down some of the problems, bureaucratic and otherwise, you encountered while procuring visas, papers, lodgings, etc."

Since I don't have the enormous bandwidth to describe the entire process, nor the urge to re-visit those repressed memories, the very short answer is that the French certainly don't make it easy to get (or renew) a visa. I guess that's understandable since so many wholly undesirable people, like me, want to live here. But what I don't understand is why they don't make it easier to figure out.
So being a good, responsible person, to that young lady out there, since you asked, here's some answers your questions:

My first clue that something was a tad amiss was when I was starting the process back in San Francisco, while a friend in Boston was doing the same. Comparing notes, we realized the list of documents requested on the French Consulate of San Francisco's web site was different from the list of documents requested on the French Consulate of Boston's web site. When I went into the San Francisco consulate to ask, with both pages printed out (I learned that early on), and pointed out the bizarre discrepancy, the fellow behind the counter snidely replied, "Well, where do you live? In San Francisco...or Boston?"
When I pointed out that that would be like telling someone from Lyon that in order to get a US visa, they would need different documents from someone in Paris, he simply shrugged, and I handed over my dossier and went back home to wait.

The most important thing to realize is that there are two iron-clad rules that you'll come up against:
One, is that the system is not designed for efficiency, but to employ as many people are possible.
And two, just because it's someone's job to help you, that doesn't mean they have to. Or want to. They're under no obligation. So you need to get them on your side using whatever means necessary.

(And if anyone out there wants to get rich really quick, open a photocopy shop in France, since everything needs to be copied in quadriplicate. And invariably no matter how prepared you are, they come up with something completely out-of-the-blue.
"You didn't bring your mother's sixth-grade report card!? Mais oui, but of course you need that! And we need 5 copies too...oh, and all notarized within the past 30 days...from the town she was born in.")

When I finally did get the paperwork granting me permission to come to France, I foolishly listened to them at the consulate and assumed that having gone dredging up every scrap of paper from my past, I was in free-and-clear. Not so fast, cowboy. Upon arriving in France, I was told, I needed to go to the police station and pick up the 'real' visa. But what's this official looking piece of paper I've waited 6 months to get? Oh, just permission to actually apply for a visa.

Okay.

I was not quite a free man in Paris. So once back in town, I head to my local police station. They know nothing, and send me to the main police station in my neighborhood. They know nothing either (This is about the time I started using the phrase, "Welcome to France", and repeating it over and over and over.) I finally discover that I need to go to this stifling, little dingy office out in the middle of nowhere, where I wait in a long, non-moving line for an hour to make an appointment at the main Préfécture de Police, only to be told that the one piece of paper that I don't have in my dossier (I forgot what it was, but it was something rather obscure), so I need so I'll need to come back. Incidentally the Préfécture de Police is located just around the corner from the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette and other less-fortunate souls, waited for the dreaded end to come. As you sit and wait in the crowded, hot room, hoping that if you sit in the last available seat, you won't be next to someone who doesn't have access to a weekly shower. And you wait until your name gets called. And you wait.
And wait. And wait. And...
You begin to feel as if you're about to meet a similar fate as poor Marie.

(Did you know the last time the guillotine was used was in 1975?)

To make a long story short, and to preserve bandwidth, I eventually got my visa, which I need to be renew yearly, and for the most part, everyone I had to deal with (except in San Francisco) was rather pleasant and helpful. (Must be the chocolate I brought them.)
You need to start the process about 8 month before its annual expiration date, so I've simply to re-start the process when I go pick up my visa. If anything, at least I am efficient. So today I come home, and there's an official letter from the government telling me they want the last 12 statements from my bank in the US translated into French (um...Can't you just look at the dollar amounts? Isn't that what you're looking for?) Trying to explain what bank 'interest' is to a French person always draws wide-eyed stares, since the idea of your bank actually doing something for you is a rather unusual concept. And trying to explain why there's ads on your bank statement draws more curious stares.

Welcome to America, I suppose.

So re-armed and re-ready, I head back to the Préfécture de Police to hand over my freshly-translated documents, where they tell me I have to wait a few more months, although my visa's set to expire at the end of this one. So I need to get a prolongation...at another bureau...way on the other side of Paris. Of course.

Then I need to come back. And do it all again.

Exhausted, I eventually made it back home where I decided that perhaps I should treat myself a glass of something with a high percentage of alcohol, polish off the box of chocolate-covered caramels that I was saving for a special occasion from Le Roux, and look at my picture of Frederick. And since I had the Cognac out, I decided to preserve the few kilos of Mirabelle plums I got at the market yesterday.

In August and September, the yellow Mirabelle plums abound in big bins at the markets. These tiny plums are small, roughly the size of a French bureaucrats petit boule, and are grown in various regions around France, but especially in the Lorraine, where the best ones are grown, and locals use them to make everything from tartes and jams to crystal-clear eau-de-vie. They're small and sweet, the perfect size for preserving. Using Judy Rodger's recipe in The Zuni Café Cookbook for inspiration, I began by rinsing and sterilizing my jars with boiling water.

But in case you're a stupid boy like me, I don't recommend making anything involving sticky, searing-hot liquid while wearing only a pair of shorts. As I swirled around the hot water and sugar in the jars, one with a faulty lid began spraying boiling-hot water in a grand arc across the kitchen, and me, eradicating a good amount of the hair from my stomach (couldn't it take some of the fat instead?), leaving a red welt roughly in the shape of Corsica.

Luckily I live in Paris and there's no less than five pharmacies within one block, and picked up the best minor burn remedy on the planet: Biogaze, which everyone should have in their medicine cabinet. (Buy some on your next visit if you don't live here.) After I explained to the wide-eyed pharmacist how I narrowly escaped the world's first Parisian Bikini Wax, I returned home, patched up my rosy tummy, and continued my project using the sterilized jars, happy that I didn't sterilize myself at the same time.

Depending on how many small plums you have, for each pound (450g) of plums, dissolve 3/4 cups (150g) of sugar in 3-4 tablespoons hot water in a 1-quart (1 liter) preserving jar with a well-fitting lid, (or dress more appropriately that I did.) Pour two scant cups of decent, but not outrageously expensive brandy or Cognac the plums. Secure the lid and tilt the jar to mix everything together.

Unlike my stomach, Judy recommends using fruit that's unblemished, and gives recipes and tips for other fruits including cherries, red currants, figs, and raisins too.

(LATE-BREAKING TIP: 3 days later I noticed the plums floating at the top, not submerged in liquor, were discoloring, so I removed them and slashed each one with a paring knife, hoping that would help them get saturated. Seems to have worked.

LATER-BREAKING TIP: another 2 days later, I noticed the tops of the plums were still floating above the liquor-line, so I drained 'em and made jam. I replaced them with sour cherries, and am waiting...)

Store the jar in a cool place for a few weeks, then refrigerate. There's no indication how long they'll keep, but I hope mine will be ready-and-waiting for me on the day that I finally get my visa renewed.

Hopefully the hair on my stomach should just about returning by then as well.

Let's say you're cooking dinner.
And you drop something behind the stove.

Like a bit of meat, for example.

Or a piece of broccoli.

But it's just out of reach.

(Of course.)

What would you do?

One of the hardest things about living in any foreign country is, of course, the language. Seriously, learning any language is really hard I'm sure, but anyone who can master French, who wasn't pushed from the womb and spent their lifetime in an all-French speaking environment, I take my chapeau off to you. For the rest of us, it's a challenge. Even the most mundane task, like writing a check, often requires a consultation with le dictionnaíre.

Last week, for example, I was looking for hand lotion (sans le dictionnaíre). As I combed the aisles at Monoprix, I finally found the moisturizer aisle, lined with lots of pretty pink and white bottles. So I picked a few up, reading the labels. After a careful reading and I finally found one that seems like what I was looking for, "Hmmm, that seems about right," I thought to myself. As I go, I notice I'm getting some strange looks from the women milling around me, but assume it's because they're not used to people reading the labels of moisturizers as if they were Camus. As I make my way to the caisse, the cashier, while standing in line, I re-read the label, picking up a line on the label noting the lotion I'm toting around was intended for cleansing, um, shall we say, 'intimate areas'. And presumably not for men.

(And even if I was, do you think I'd share that with you here?)

So it was no wonder that I got a few strange looks going back, trying to be non-chalant, and returning it to the shelf avoiding eye-contact with anyone in the process.

I've gotten in so much trouble mangling the language it's no longer funny (well, actually it is...) One of my most infamous stories, that I think I may have recounted here before, I was at my favorite épicerie and I wanted red currant, or groseille jam.
So in my picture-perfect French, I said, "Je voudrais le confiture de gros selles (which I pronounced as 'gross sells'), s'il vous plait." She looked at me, her eyes incredulous that she couldn't possibly believe her ears.
It was after a moment, I realized I meant groseilles (pronounced 'gro-zay').
I had asked for Big Turd Jam.

But even the French have trouble with their own language. I was at the Petit Palais museum recently with a gal pal (see video above), and came across a Nature Morte, which literally translates to 'Dead Nature', but actually means 'Still Life'. There was one Nature Morte 'aiguière', a still life of a peeled orange. So I asked the attendant what an 'aiguière was, and she was stumped. So she asked another attendant, who didn't know either. It's not even in my dictionary, which boasts 120,000 traductions. (Béa...help!)

About a year ago, I had just returned for leading a tour to Italy. My group visited Biella, a city famous for its mountaintop convent. One you've made the climb up to the majestic mountain, ensconced in the convent is a Madonna, made of black wood. She's known, of course, as The Black Madonna (not to be confused with the Jewish Madonna, in America.)

At a dinner party back in Paris, I was recounting how exciting it was to climb this mountain in Italy, to see the 'Verge noir'.
"It's amazing, so beautiful to see," I continued, "and people came from all over to see and worship the verge noir!"

Meanwhile, everyone's looking at me with a bit of shock, and panic. As I keep talking, I'm explaining the beauty and magnificence of le verge noir. "It's fantastic. Really a magnificent work of art", until a friend leans over and says that he thinks I mean the magnificent 'vierge noir', the black virgin.

Not the magnificent 'verge noir', the black penis.

Ahem!

So I took it with a grain of salt when a French friend started calling me "Stupid boy!, which I told him was somewhat impolite. Then I realized what he meant to say, perhaps, was "Silly boy." Or I hope he meant to say that.
Now to Anglophones, they are two very different things, but to a non-native English speaker, they're rather different in meaning. "Don't be stupid" is far different than "Don't be silly."

And, yes, sometimes even I am a stupid boy. For example, I know very little about some things, like Armagnac.
But the great thing about being a wonderful, giving, and caring person, is that occasionally you get rewarded for it and lavish gifts get bestowed upon thee.
Or me.

After leading a Paris Chocolate Tour last spring, some of my guests bestowed upon me these lovely bottles of Armagnac. Of course, I was thrilled especially since the packaging revealed they were from Michel Chaudun's chocolate shop and one had a lovely box of his superb chocolates discreetly hidden inside. But I wasn't aware of how truly special those bottles were. When I wrote Kate about them, who lives in Gascony (the epicenterfor Armagnac), I could hear the gasp all the way to Paris, and she told me that I didn't just have "the best", but that I had "the best of the best".

Living in France, I like to try a new cheese, wine, or whatever I can get my hands on (except tripe, which I don't feel any great need to familiarize myself with), tasting new things while mulit-tasking and expanding my vocabulary. And although I thought my precious bottles of Armagnac might remain on my Too Good To Use shelf, they didn't for very long.

So I may be a 'Stupid Boy', but I do know about baking and chocolate. And so you're not a 'Stupid Boy' (or girl) you might want to know that Champagne Chocolate Truffles don't contain any Champagne, but are made with Cognac. I got into an online tiff on eGullet with someone who insisted I was wrong (and some of those eGullet folks get real nasty). She had seen a New York-based French chocolatier on television pour Champagne into his truffle mix. When I went to look at his recipe, sure enough, he did use true Champagne. He also called for a specific brand, and after some checking, I found out...surprise!...the Champagne company is one of his many sponsors.

But for the most part, Champagne in truffles means Cognac and derives from the old French term champaigne which means 'open-field', according to the Bureau National Interprofessional du Cognac.
(If that woman from eGullet is reading this, take it up with them, girlfriend...)

Both Armagnac and Cognac are distillations made from grapes, varieties which are generally not used for making ordinary table wine. Like Cognac, Armagnac is a region in France. It's closely associated with Gascony and it's cuisine (prunes and Armagnac, for example) and produced in the Pyrenees.

Cognac is farther north, on the Atlantic coast, near where oysters are farmed off the Ile de Ré. The salt from the region is famous as well. Armagnac is distilled once, while Cognac is distilled twice and I find when tasting the two, Armagnac feels more rugged to me, which is part of its appeal. Its flavors seems to be fuller and more complex while Cognac is more delicate and refined. It's been said that "Cognac is the girl you can bring home to meet your parents, while Armagnac is the one you keep hidden away."

So if I was making chocolate Champagne Truffles, theoretically I'd have to use fine Cognac. But if I had a choice of what to drink, I'm working my way through these bottles of Armagnac, which I've decided I'm not going to let sit on the self for too long.

What do you think I am...stupid?

Dear Madame France:

Thank you so much for allowing me to live in your wonderful country. I love tasting everything I can, learning more about your rich history and curious customs, and even though I can't conjugate the verbs in the plus-que-parfait-de l'indicative (come to think of it, all those verbs are so darn hard!), I'm trying my best, really, and hope to be able to do them all someday so as not to disappoint you.

I also want to thank you for loosening up the rules around here and allowing me to wear shorts and flip-flops, which was especially important during the recent heatwave. To show my gratitude, I promise to keep my feet in top-top shape...I promise!

But that heatwave we just got over was a killer, wasn't it?
Just putting on clothes was a challenge and I guess that most of my neighbors had the same problem wearing clothes too, which I could see from my window night and day (especially at night). You probably already know this, but in case anyone else is reading this, there is this widespread perception that all French people are slim and in good shape. But from what I could see (especially at night), the people who live in the apartments surrounding my place are getting kinda flabby and certainly not the image of the trim, well-kept Parisian that people think of.
(Especially those people just across the courtyard from me! I think they've eaten way too many of your yummy croissants!!)

But seriously, there is something else that I'd like to talk to you about:
How to deal with future heatwaves.

Although I'm told this is a relatively new phenomenon, it seems like since I've been here, we've had two; the last one killed 15,000 of your citizens. That's a lot of people, don't you think? Kinda sad.
I find it odd that a country where the summer temperatures now normally reach over 100 degrees (38 degrees C), very few places have any sort of ventilation or fans. I've heard from lots of your people that fans are bad for your health (and expensive, although mine was less than 30€, which I don't think is expensive...do you?) but I've been using fans all my life and I'm fine. Really. And so has the rest of the world outside of this big hexagon that we live in.

I heard that the Tour de France riders from other countries almost passed out when dining and during their off-hours, since they couldn't get anyone to open windows or turn on a fan, and were becoming severely short-of-breath. Please, Madame France, help your people see the error of their ways, lead them from the Middle Ages. I hate to see your people, as well as those of us who love and care for you, needlessly suffer year after year after year.

(Well, come to think of it, there's a few people that I don't mind seeing suffering, mostly that nasty woman at my bank who works at the desk and will never help me. She's not very nice and your city would be a better place without her. Is there any way you ask her to leave? She doesn't seem very happy here.)

France is a modern country and I really love it here. Really. You're extremely technologically advanced and you've had so many breakthroughs in various scientific and medical fields that have changed the world. Yet I don't understand why there are no ceiling fans anywhere. They're perhaps the simplest and most environmentally-friendly method of cooling down interior spaces I can think of and I'm not a rocket-scientist like those brainy folks in Toulouse. Could you ask some of the restaurants and other public spaces to put them in? They're really not that expensive.
Pretty please?
: )

(And tell the places that have air-conditioning that if they want it to work, they need to close the windows and keep them closed. It makes the machines work far more effectively, and they'll waste less power so you won't have to build so many nuclear power plants.)

I know sometimes you just say, c'est la vie and folks blame the government, but people here are exceptionally adept at taking to the streets for getting whatever they want (the government, the big bunch of sillies, always gives in...how cool is that?), and I'm surprised there hasn't been some sort of an uprising. Maybe if you offered cold beer, people might go. Just a thought.

While at La Poste the other day, I almost passed out waiting in line from a combination of the heat, and from the bo of the woman in front of me who was furiously waving a fan, blowing the smell in my direction. I was tempted to back away from her, but I've learning living here that if you leave the slightest bit of space between you and the person in front of you, that seems to be an open invitation for someone else to step right in there. But it was really unpleasant...to say the least!

So here's an idea that you should really, really think about:
Why not install some ceiling fans between now and the next lethal heatwave? I've visited extremely impoverished, totally destitute third-world countries, and most public and private buildings have them. Why not put them in Paris? Wouldn't that be wonderful? Maybe you could also replace the bus windows so that they could be opened in hot weather as well. Seriously, it wouldn't cost that much, would it? I know you're a little short on cash lately, so maybe just raise fares (oops...I see you've already done that this month.)

Gros bisous!

David Lebovitz
Paris, France

PS: While you're at it, could you also please ask the Parisians to stop walking right into me as if I wasn't there?

Thanks again! You're the best!!!

So far, this week...

...I ran over a not-quite-yet-dead pigeon by accident with my shopping cart.

...My mobile phone died.

...My ATM card expired.

The bank told me to wait for the replacement card.

Which was sent in May.

...My credit card was cancelled, which I learned while at the cashier with a overloaded cart at BHV.

There were thirty people behind me. And they were not happy.

...I'm almost completely out of money here.

...I got a letter from the IRS that said I underpaid my taxes, and owe more.

Plus interest.

...I got a letter from the State of California that said I underpaid my taxes, and owe more.

Plus interest.

...The cash wire transfer paperwork that I filled out when I was last in the US was incorrectly prepared by the person at the bank.

So they told me I have to go back to the branch, in California, and re-do it.

...A French friend explained that iced drinks make you very sick, since they cool down your stomach too much.

(Er, I suppose traveling a few minutes through my digestive tract won't have any effect on warming up the cold liquid.)

...I got falling down drunk at my friend Olivier's last night.

(He has air-conditioning and my original ruse to to pretend I was drunk and had to spend the night, but then I really did get drunk and was worried about making a fool of myself.)

...I was giving myself a haircut and my hair clippers inexplicably quit halfway through.

I would go to the BHV and get another pair, but my credit card was cancelled.

And my hair looks a little funny.

...There's a new movie with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock coming.

...My absolute favorite olive oil shop in Paris, which has the best selection of oils, is closing for good this Saturday.

(All oils are on sale, 30-50% off, at Allicante, 26 blvd Beamarchais.)

...When I went to pick up my sheets at the cleaners, I found out they're closed until the end of August.

All my sheets are there.

...World War III appears to have started.

...George W. Bush, the most powerful person in the world, has over two years left on his term.

...My manuscript for my book is due on Friday and my Mac feels like it's on fire.

...The temperature in my apartment hasn't dipped below 100 degrees in over a week.

The government says"...go into a store for 2-3 hours a day, to cool down."

( Gee, I wonder if Monoprix would mind if I set up my laptop there?)

...I have a canker sore.

...I feel another one coming.

...I made Peanut Brittle, and left it to cool by the open window...

...then I came home later and found a pigeon feather next to it.

I've been wondering lately why I live here.

Winter is freezing cold. You can barely go stay outside for more than a few minutes without the icy blasts (which sound good now) sending you back indoors, to get under the covers, snuggly with a steaming cup of hot chocolate.

Then we have spring.
Which this year lasted 4 days.

Then summer comes, and Paris melts down. You can see it on every face of everyone in the city. From people waiting for the bus, straining to stand in a tiny sliver of shade, to the women fanning themselves furiously on the buses and métro, everyone here is hotter than heck. Yesterday I went to the movies just to get cool, but unfortunately the film (The Squid & The Whale) was a measly 1 hour long. Who makes a 1 hour movie? I was tempted to stay and see it again just to bask in the coolness of the cinema but it was hard to stay awake the first time around.
Anything to escape my rooftop apartment, just under a zinc roof, which yesterday was104 degrees F. A few friends of mine have similar rooftop apartments, and I decided that no one's allowed to complain to us how hot they are, since we're invariably 10 degrees hotter than they are. So there.

But this time of year, visitors start coming to Paris in droves. I don't know why so many people choose to come to Paris in the summer, but everyone's surprised when I tell them that many of the shops are closed and it's really hot. And I'm leaving.
But come, they do.

So if you are planning to come to Paris in the next month or so, here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Drink rosé.

For some reason, Americans are reluctant to drink rosé, which is inexpensive and delightfully served icy-cold. Rosé in France, for the most part, is dry and very drinkable. And it goes down very well in the summer, speaking from recent experience. Order it by the carafe since there's little difference between that and what comes in the more expensive bottles.

You'll be drinking it so fast that it doesn't really matter.

2. Never order anything they call 'iced coffee' or 'iced tea'.

It's invariably very, very sweet. If you order iced coffee, no matter what you're thinking it's going to be, stop before you do. No matter how tempting it sounds to you, just stop.

If you order something called 'iced coffee', you'll be served a very small amount of dark liquid (very sweet) in a large glass, with a straw, and it will be really sweet. And expensive.

Iced tea is inevitably from a can. And flavored.

And very sweet as well.

(Disclaimer: Yes, that was me you saw on the Boulevard St. Michel at, gasp, Starbucks drinking a Frappucino. It was so hot, we had no choice. But I have a question: Is there any coffee in those things? You'd think if they're gonna charge 4.50€, about $5.50, they would at least taste the slightest bit like coffee. Would it kill them to toss in an extra espresso without charging extra for it?)

3. There is no ice.

You may get a cube or two in your drink, but French people don't use lots of ice and few places have those jumbo ice machines like in America. When I worked in restaurants in the US, the worst thing that could happen was when the ice machine broke. People freaked. I mean, they really freaked. It was like they couldn't deal with drinking room-temperature water. And now, some places in America are charging extra if you don't want ice. It's like there's this vast conspiracy to get you to use lots of ice or something in America. Perhaps someone's putting something in the ice?

(Because whenever I request "No ice" in the US, the waiter gives me this funny look, and I can see him thinking, "Oh great. Why do I get all the ass#%$les in my section?")

Speaking of drinking: You'll notice that it's customary not to fill wine or water glasses to-the-brim full. In France, glasses are generally filled half-full. And in some places or in homes you're expected to use the same glass for both wine and water, so if you fill it too full with wine, you gotta finish all of it before you get any water.

And vice versa.

4. Don't expect air-conditioning.

Or I should say, very little is air-conditioned, especially like the icy-cold turbo-blasts experienced in the US. Electricity is very expensive in France. That, coupled with a general dislike of cool breezes (or open windows...or any kind of ventilation in general) but it can get uncomfortably and unbearably hot and people will sit in restaurants and apartments with the windows firmly closed.

That includes the métro, which can be downright intolerable in the summer. Especially when it's jammed full and your face is directly in some dudes hairy armpit who forgot to take his weekly shower. but you can't move. Most of the buses aren't air-conditioned (except I got on the #63 recently, and it was un peu de paradis), nor is the RER from the airport, which is downright miserable in the summer and you should avoid it. Spring for a cab or a shuttle.

5. Spring for some decent sandals.

Parisians do wear sandals and flip-flips (les thongs, except you don't pronounce the 'h') but in general they wear rather sporty ones. If you want to wear rubber flip flops, stop at Pay-Less and get pair that doesn't look skanky.

(And while you're at it, make sure your feet look decent. Like mine do.)

5a: Don't ever wear dark socks with sandals.
5b: Don't ever wear dark knee socks with sandals.
5c: Don't wear socks with sandals, period.

And remember, you can only wear two of the following at the same time: sandals, shorts, or a tank top. Never all three (if you do, then it's obligatory to add a fanny pack and carry a Rick Steve's guidebook.)

6. Spring for some nice shorts.

Parisians do wear shorts, in spite of what you hear, but do not wear them if you're planning to go into sophisticated places or nice shops.

Do not wear your ultra-short shorts, or anything that looks like something Mariah Carey would wear...unless you're trolling for les clients on the rue St. Denis.

(And men: If you're planning on doing any shoe shopping during les soldes, please remember to wear undershorts. A friend of mine was a shoe salesperson and was always amazed how few men didn't wear undies and whenever she looked up to ask about the fit, she was greeted with an eyeful.)

7. Take time to relax.

I've seen too many people coming to Paris who want to take in six museums in one day, rush from place to place with a rigid schedule, and generally make themselves and their friends crazy. You'll notice that Parisians sit in cafés for lo-o-o-ong periods of time, thinking, reading, or doing absolutely nothing. It's a skill I've finally mastered.

Just sit around and watch the world go by. Remember that citron pressée that you paid 6€ for? It's for the privilege of doing just that. And it's hot, so just relax. Or go to the movies. Paris is a great movie city. And most cinemas are air-conditioned.

8. Get out of the Left Bank.

While there's lots of interesting things to do in Paris; fabulous chocolate shops, great bakeries, and shopping galore, there's other neighborhoods in Paris worth exploring besides the Boulevard St. Germain-des-Pres.

Have you been to Belleville and Boulangerie 140 at Place Jourdain?

What about the Canal St. Martin for a stroll in the evening?

9. Parisians eat much later in the summer.

The sun doesn't go down until around 11pm, so things happen later. No one will be eating dinner at 7 or 7:30pm, and many restaurants won't even be open before that.
So plan accordingly.

If you want a seat outside (en terrasse, make sure to specify that when you reserve, as they're the first to go. Otherwise, if you want a seat near the window, those go second and it's best to show up earlier in the evening rather than later.

And if you're staying in a hotel in a popular neighborhood, and need to keep the windows open, bring ear plugs to block out noisy Brits getting pissed or the Aussies and their birds drinking cans of 1664 under your window.

10. Prepare for les vacances.

Realize that lots of places close for a month, mostly in August but starting in mid-July. It's said that Americans "live to work" and Europeans "work to live", which is rather true, and they are outta here.

The upside is that you'll have Paris much to yourselves and it's very pleasant and uncrowded. But expect many, many places to be closed.
Any other tips?

I recently attended a dinner here in Paris, at a well-known hotel, where the first course was Caesar Salad.

That was the Caesar Salad.

Yes, it has lettuce.

And anchovies (speared around skewers).

And cheese.

But, like, what is with those batter-fried Chinese shrimp?

Who gave the ok to put batter-fried shrimp on a Caesar Salad?

Mon Deui, what is so friggin' hard about making American food?

Take Caesar Salad, for example. It's simply torn leaves of Romain lettuce with a mustardy dressing seasoned with anchovies and a touch of worcestershire sauce. All balanced so no ingredient dominates the other. A handful of croûtons get tossed in, some Parmesan grated over the top, and voila!

That, ladies and gentleman, is a Caesar Salad.
Will someone please explain how hard that is to me?

Unlike French food, American food has few fancy sauces and is really pretty straightforward. While admittedly a lot of American food isn't spectacular, I fail to understand why it's so impossible to replicate. I've had the best cassoulet of my life in Berkeley, amazing Lebanese food in Mexico, marvelous French desserts in Tokyo, superb Moroccan food in France, and terrific Japanese food in Hawaii. So why is it so hard to make American food anywhere else but in America?

While I didn't move to Paris expecting hamburgers and pizza, I fail to understand what possesses any rational person to spoon canned corn over a pizza. (Why would a country that shuns corn on the cob embrace its frozen kernel-y counterpart?)

Who the heck gave anyone permission to top a hamburger (or pizza) with a runny fried egg?

And if I get one more Salade Niçoise with a big scoop of white rice on top, I'm going to drag the chef down to Nice, force him to stand in the center of town holding their Salade Niçoise avec du riz in hand, and invite the townsfolk for a look-see.

And stand back.

It's like those insane people, worldwide, that put cream in their pesto sauce.

For the love of humanity: Please stop!

Thanks. I feel better now.

I am a bad food blogger.
I mean, who would post a picture like this?

The most successful and popular food blogs start with a clever idea or beautiful image, and generally follow it with a witty or an emotionally-involving story behind it all.

Instead I'm posting this picture of the room where was to spend the entire weekend locked inside, which was to be my private retreat. Think Edvard Munch and The Scream, and I think you get the idea of my internal torment.

Last week I had left Paris to work on my next book, since it's impossible to get anything done around here with all the caramels, chocolates, and glasses of red wine interrupting all the time. So off I went to the countryside for the weekend, armed with my laptop, some paperwork, too-little chocolate (which I later discovered, in a panic) and a good book.

So I arrive, start unpacking, and Merde!, I forgot my powercord! No electricity, except for the few hours on my battery, which luckily was new enough to get my through the first day. Since I'm two hours from anywhere civilized, and the hope of finding an Apple retailer is undeniably nil (although there is a nice egg farm & retailer next door) I was stuck doing nothing but reading and baking all weekend. So when you buy my next book, and find the last third of it blank, you'll know why.

But all was not lost, since the house was surrounded by red currant bushes and the branches were loaded with tiny red berries, I spent a good portion of the weekend picking the little red orbs, relieving the branches of the tiny clusters of gorgeous little fruits.

And as I greedily filling my mouth with the puckery berries, I was overcome with a feeling of having to bake something. So all was not lost, and bake something I did!

For dessert the first night, I made a terrific Rhubarb and Red Currant Crisp with Polenta Topping. I sliced rhubarb into little pieces (about 8 cups), tossed it with some sugar (about 1/2 cup), some flour (about 3 tablespoons), a vanilla bean, and a few big handfuls of freshly-picked red currants, and voila, we had dessert practically right from the garden. Except for the sugar and vanilla and flour, although the house was surrounded by wheat fields, which was too green to pick and mill into flour. And besides, I'm not thatcrazy. Although I did go picked some wheat and cracked it open, but it was too fresh and I'll sadly have to wait a few more weeks.

Aside from red currants, there were black currants (cassis) too, but they weren't quite ripe. But the white currants were sweet and lovely but too precious to cook with, so I enjoyed them right off the branches. And next time you, or anyone around you, complains about the price of a basket of berries, go outside and pick a few hundred red currants and tell me what you think each basket is worth.
There's a few running debates about the price of locally-produced, hand-picked berries, but you're welcome to post comments here. And if you feel like picking any red and black currants, we're heading back in a few weeks and could use a few extra hands.
(Warning: The pay stinks, but the rewards are delicious.)

Oddly enough, last year I saw a few baskets of white currants in my local convenience store. (You know, the kind of place where you can buy milk or butter or wine on dimanche if you urgently run out.) In their tiny, miserable produce section, just next to the shriveled carrots and brown, wilted lettuce (who buys that?), there were three baskets of plump white currants, so I made a mental note that if it's ever a Sunday and I need some white currants in an emergency, I'd know exactly where I could get some. But finding a powercord in an emergency?...c'est pas possible.

No, the grapes weren't quite ripe for picking yet...

But the egg farm nearby had lots of fresh eggs, so I made a Tortilla Española with bacon, and pomme de ratte potatoes, which everyone tries to tell me are called 'fingerling' potatoes in America, but I don't think they're the same thing, since I've never tasted any potatoes in the states that were as good as these. But if anyone out there can define what exactly is a fingerling potato, please let me know. Is it just any tiny potato?

So since this is summer, I'm becoming obsessed with making a lot of fruit crisps (instead of earning a living). One of my favorite ways to top them, and to ensure they live up to their crispy moniker, is to make a topping with polenta, coarsely-ground cornmeal. It can be difficult to find in Paris, and although instant-polenta is available, I bought it once...and that was one time too many. (C'mon folks, we're friggin' right next door to Italy!) But I was happy a few years back to find a good source for coarse polenta at the Arab markets that I like to prowl through, which they stock in abundance.

Fruit crisps are perhaps the best and easiest of desserts to make during the summer, when all the great fruits and berries are at their peak. They're incredibly easy to put together if you're anything like me and keep a bag of Polenta Crisp Topping in the freezer, so you can make one at a moment's notice. In general, I find that 2 to 4 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 tablespoon of flour, plus a dash of vanilla is just about right for almost any mix of fruits and berries. Mix it all together and put it in a 2-quart baking dish. Cover with crisp topping and bake in a moderate oven until the fruit is bubbling and the top is crispy and nicely-browned.

If using plums or apricots, double the amount of sugar, since they get rather tangy once baked. Although I used rhubarb and red currants in mine, you can use any mixture of peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries, and plums. Add a few raspberries or blackberries as well. Although I wouldn't necessarily use white currants, you're certainly welcome to. But if it's Sunday and you're fresh out, go check at your corner store to see if they have any in stock.
There's something nice about living in a country where it's impossible to find a powercord in an emergency, but white currants are available whenever you need them. Talk about priorities!

(More pictures from the country are on my Flickr page.)

Polenta Crisp Topping

Enough for about 8 cups of fruit filling

3/4 cup (105 g) flour
2/3 cup (90 g) polenta
1/2 cup (55 g) almonds or walnuts, lightly toasted
1/2 cup (110 g) firmly packed light brown or cassonade sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
8 tablespoons (115 g) salted butter (chilled), cut into 1/2-inch pieces

Put the flour, polenta, almonds or walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse a couple of times to mix everything together.

Add the chilled butter pieces and pulse until the butter is finely broken up. Continue to pulse until the crispy topping no longer looks sandy is just beginning to hold together.

If you don't have a food processor, chop the nuts finely with a chef's knife then work the butter in with your hands or use a pastry blender.

Storage: Topping can be made in advance and stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Can also be frozen in a zip-top bag for up to one month.

Recipe Adapted From: Ripe For Dessert.

Summer is here in Paris. It arrived without warning last week and was brutal. It was hot, and it hit around 31°(about 88°) and so humid, I faced a real-meltdown of chocolate. And just about everything else around here, including me, suffered the same fate. Just when no one couldn't bear it anymore, it stopped. Then we had rain and cool weather. It's so other-worldly (hey...am I back in San Francisco?), but summer arriving means a lot less clothes, and since I'm now European, it's obligatory that they're much, much tighter. Damn Europeans and their fine-tailoring. So that means it's time to pay for the last 8 months of eating too many pastries, tasting too many chocolates, snacking on too many macarons, and drinking perhaps a bit too much vin rouge. I don't know if I can hold my stomach in consecutively for the next three months, but I'm going to try. I've unpacked my shorts for summer and they definitely are un peu serré.

Speaking of tightening ye olde belt, last week I got to spend the morning at my favorite place in Paris, getting rid of a few excess US dollars I had lying around. My favorite place isn't the Eiffel Tower nor the Louvre (they don't take dollars), nor was it the Museé d'Orsay or the Jardin du Luxembourg. Yes, I got to go to the American Embassy, my favorite place in Paris! I like hanging out there, since everyone there understands me, unconditionally, and without judgment. There's no raised eyebrows or startled expressions, like last week when I recently ordered 'Big Turd Jam' (confiture des grosse selles), when I meant red currant (confiture des groseilles). Luckily they were out of the first one.

But the American Embassy is great: I can argue back with impunity and get huffy with them. Hey, why not? I'm on equal turf, and I'm an American and my English is just as good as theirs.
And I can argue with anyone all I want and make perfectly-formed sentances with correctly-placed pronouns and not worry if this verb is masculine to I need to match the adjective to the gender as well, or decide if I need to decide which of the gazillion French verbs I need to conjugate correctly, unlike I have to do at the Préfécture.
What are they going to do if I screw it up my English at the US Embassy? Kick me out? Or in?

So there I was, on the rue St. Florentin, where I waited, stood in line, got scanned, went through the metal detector, then had my water bottle confiscated (I guess it's a threat to national security), then headed to the IRS office. Being a foreign resident you get an automatic extension for paying your taxes, which comes in handy when the mail isn't very reliable. I guess somehow they caught on and give us expats a break.

So in my bid to help fight the war on terror and make the world a safer place (though things don't quite appear to be quite heading in that direction) I sat under the over-sized, overly-glossy, and over-polished pictures of George and Dick (whose has a rather curious smirk on his face for an 'official' portrait), and the Only Uptight Black Woman In The World, and wrote my checks.

And prayed things wouldn't get any worse.
And in fact, for me, they were about to get better.

A whole lot better.

Since I was in the neighborhood (well, not really, but since I left my neighborhood, I'm gonna stretch it), I decided to visit chocolatier Jacques Genin. A lot of people talk about M. Genin with a hushed reverence and most of it is directed at his terrific chocolates. But one bite of his Passion Fruit Caramels and I'm singing a different tune. And you'll be too.

I had stopped at a bakery down the street for bread and noticed les palets Breton, delicate buttery cookies made from salted butter, so I bought a stack. Four was the minimum for some reason... this from the country where you can buy half a baguette for 42 centimes, and when madame wants to buy one fig, madame will be given the same courtesy and service (and take as much time) as, say, an American pastry chef trying to race through the market buying a flat of figs or a few kilos of nectarines to test recipes.

So I bought four, but M. Genin was happy to relieve me of half of them. In exchange, he swooped his hands into the tray he was wrapping of caramels and stuffed them in my bag (and those caramels are as precious as gold, since you can't buy them in stores.) As you can see, each caramel is buttery, tender, and keeps its shape just long enough to get it into your mouth, where it dissolves into an explosion of creamy-smooth sweet goo, slightly tangy from the passion fruit, with exactly enough of the tropical pulp to offset the restrained sweetness of the caramel.

So I can't say I'm going to get any thinner, or my shorts will soon fit better, or when I hit the beach in August, I'll be turning any heads. But when you have a guy like Jacques Genin feeding you chocolates and handing you caramels, who cares if your belt needs to be loosened out a notch.

Or two.

Jacques Genin
18 rue St. Charles
Tel: 01 45 74 68 92

(Not a store. Call before visiting...and pray he's available.)

Someone has a lot of catching up to do.

Back soon...

Almost every foodie worth their salt, including those who hang onto every word by that scary, bow-tied gent, adore their Microplane zester. The rasp-style graters have turned zesting into one of the hottest fads of the new millenium.

(Did anyone catch those steamy photos of Vince and Jen zesting lemons on their balcony? Or Brad and Angelina passing time until the baby came, grating orange zest for God-knows-what-those-wacky-lovebird were going to bake up?...Keep it in the kitchen, guys, okay? Or how about the worst culprit of them all; Britany almost dropping hers while the cameras snapped away? That girl is unfit for zesting, if you ask me.)

But in non-celebrity news, I just got the best non-kitchen gadget from Microplane...

In case you're wondering why I'm so excited (or maybe you're not, but if you're reading this far, I'm assuming you are...or you're just indulging me), this is the new Microplane Foot File. It's not something you use in the kitchen. And if you do, please don't invite me for dinner. Mine's staying in the bathroom, just in case you get invited over.

But for those of us who spend a lot of time on our feet, it's pretty easy to develop leather-like skin. I ordered one of these green-meanies, knowing that anything from Microplane would likely exceed my expectations, but I didn't realize that within 30 seconds, 30 years of hard-earned callouses would disappear right down the non-proverbial drain.

One use, and bam!, my whole foot-care world turned upside-down.
I don't know what to believe anymore (which may also be from watching White House press conferences, as well.)

I won't go into the skin-cell-by-skin-cell details here, since you already know enough about me, but with sandal season coming, I'm going to be able to walk proudly down the streets and boulevards of Paris this summer. So forget anything you ever knew before about my foot care regime and get one of these. You won't regret it. And remember; keep it out of the kitchen.

Shameless plug. You can order one from Amazon right here, right now:

You can thank me later, as I'm sure many Parisians will be silently doing as well when they see me out for a stroll this summer, proudly wearing sandals.

1. I would like to state, once and for all, to clear up the persistent rumors: It was indeed a Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

2. I became a Treehugger.

3. I learned that if your French doctor prescribes suppositories, it's not a good idea to take one just before going to yoga.

4. Am I the only one that hopes that if Star Jones Reynolds keeps losing weight, she'll eventually disappear for good?

5. The Good News: I discovered that Amazon just started carrying high-quality frozen passion fruit puree from an excellent source.
The Bad News: They don't deliver to Paris.

6. I found a great method for using up my mini-marshmallows.

7. Pim's coming to town.

8. Will Tom and Katie, Charlie and Denise, and Britney and Kevin just divorce already, so I can finally move on with my life?

9. There's a new product that can change everything, everywhere.

(Be sure to check out the voicemail "Testimonials" too.)

10. Please help me explain to my French friends: Martha Stewart, foods designed specifically to be eaten while driving, Betty Crocker, "The Customer Is Always Right", The B-52's, why public schools need to hold bake sales, a treehugger, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Rocky Road Ice Cream, and the electoral college?

When I take Americans to a market here in Paris, a common query is, "What do they think about organics in France?"

The two markets I shop at regularly, the Richard Lenoir Market and the Marche d'Aligre, don't have much in the way of anything organic. There is one vendor who regularly shows up at the Richard Lenoir market with a gorgeous array of fruits and vegetables. The downside is the price is much, much higher than conventional produce, often 3 to 6 times higher. Still, I always stop to take a look and admire what she has and since it can be difficult to find unusual vegetables here, such as parsnips and multicolored Swiss chard, I sometimes buy from her, but wish that I wasn't so frugal.
*sigh*, I am my mother's son.

I've spoken to a several French chefs about organics, inquiring why it's not really a movement here in France like it is in the United States.

Surprisingly, every response is similar; "Why are Americans so obsessed with organics? We use very little pesticides on the produce in France."

While I don't have exact facts and figures, from the looks of fruits and vegetables, I would take an educated guess that the French probably use as much, or as few, pesticides as any other industrialized nation. Is the movement really a major cultural change in the United States? Are Americans finally taking a much closer look at the foods we eat? I would definitely say "yes", as evidenced by the popularity of natural-foods megastores, artisan chocolates, and the like, but that doesn't seem to be happening here. Maybe it's because the French never strayed that much from their agricultural roots to begin with. Farmhouse cheeses and good breads are easily available, even in supermarkets, and wine is chosen based on the region, not by the grape variety (which is changing, in a rare nod to globalization.)

Most French chefs seem primarily interested in the terroir, that vaguely-translatable term that means that the product is a sum of the elements from where it's grown; the soil, the climate, the cultivation techniques...the 'territory' of origin, gives food its certain "Je ne sais quoi." That's why the sweet corn in New England will always taste different than the corn in California, even if it's the same variety. Or brownies in America taste better than the ones in Paris (I think I'm the first person to ascribe terroir to brownies). And why baguettes taste much more authentic in Paris than the ones in America.

I seem to be one of those people who goes organic when it's truly better tasting, when buying or eating American beef, or isn't priced stratospherically high. The organic carrot juice at Trader Joe's that's 50 cents more seems to be a price difference I can live with. But there's no Trader Joe's in Paris, yet, and I don't forsee their arrival anytime soon. And I try to live responsibly; I bring my own basket to the market, I schlep my lettuce-washing water to my plants after washing salad greens, I don't drive in Paris (which is why I'm still alive), and I've never, ever thrown away a twist-tie in my life, and guard my stash of them with my life (...thanks for that one too, mom.)

But then I worry if washing my plastic bags for re-use wastes more energy in water usage than simply tossing them out. Is sporting a wicker basket at the market mark me as a tourist? And my first (and last) experience buying 'green' toilet paper made from recycled wood pulp was, um, rather unpleasant.

I spent over 13 years working at Chez Panisse, where Alice Waters insisted that we forage as much of our ingredients as possible from organic producers and sources. At first we had some difficulties, but soon we found we were able to get most of what we wanted organically and developed wonderful relationships with farmers. Since we paid more, they'd spend more time growing what we wanted. Alice didn't mind that food costs were very high, spending $5 per pound for organic butter, and the like. She encouraged us to be leaders in a global movement, which was possible due to the high profile and popularity of Chez Panisse. Being in sympathetic Berkeley perhaps didn't hurt either.

But it seems now it's fashionable to complain about organics and there's lot of articles I've read lately that attack organics. I wonder about the backlash that's happening. Yes, the organic movement is criticized for being hi-jacked by big business. But don't we want Frosted Flakes to go organic? (Not that I eat Frosted Flakes...) And don't we want Coke without all the preservatives? (Not that I drink Coke either...) But isn't it better than all those chemical being dumped into our eco-system?

The same people who joke about the high price of shopping at "Whole Paycheck" don't seem to remember that a little over a decade ago, finding anything like radicchio, goat cheese, espresso, blood oranges, and hearth-baked breads was practically unheard of. And they also don't seem to mind spending a fortune on cars, gym memberships, and watery soy lattes. Just a few years back, if you wanted anything organic or 'natural', you had to brave getting trampled by Birkenstocks or getting strangled by someone's dashiki drawstrings while sorting through crinkly apples rotting in wooden bins at the health food store.

There's been lots of press about the downside of organic. We've all been saying how we wanted better foods available to all (Safeway has introduced an organic line) and how it's out-of-reach for the less well-off (Wal-Mart is soon to introduce several lines of organic goods.) But the scare to small farmers and growers is that the large corporations will flex their muscles to force down prices, and the little guys will go out of business, who can't compete with corporate organic agri-giants. That's why I'm a 'local trumps organic' kinda mec. I feel it's far more important to keep local businesses and neighbors afloat. Still, I can't help but give credit to large corporations for responding to the public and expanding the availability of organics to the masses.

We have two thriving organic markets here in Paris and even though they're across town, I'm trying to visit them more often. One is the Batignolles market in the 17th, and the other at Boulevard Raspail, which draws a bit more of an upscale crowd, including an occasional Brangelina sighting. On Saturday, we braved the intense rainstorm, which alternated with moments of brilliant sunshine, and sloshed around the Marché Biologique Batignolles.

There were beautiful vegetables everywhere, that the crowd seemed to be buying. Yes, prices were higher, but to me, they seemed proportional to the exceptional quality of most of what was available: rounds of organic camemberts and wheels of brie de meaux, mounds of golden-yellow butter riddled with flecks of sea salt from Brittany, and meaty pâtes and pintades, of Guinea fowl, raised in the open-air of the French countryside.

One of the most curious things we saw people frying up the globally-loathed veggie-and-lentil patties, which resembled what people used to think of as 'health food' back in the days of yore....although I'm probably guilty of frying up perhaps a few of them a while back as well. Still, to do it publicly should be a crime. Especially here in Paris.

There's a certain amount of potions, creams, and tinctures for what ails you, as well as lots of beautiful, dense, grainy breads. One vendor had wood-oven baked breads made with everything from kamut to buckwheat, quinoa to cornmeal, and dark Russian rye that was as black as charcoal, which I would have bought except I had three loaves of bread sitting in my kitchen. My 'French Bread Crisis', as I call it...how can I possibly eat all the bread I seem to collect?

So there is a thriving organic movement here, although I got the feeling that most people were like me; shopping there because of the exceptional quality of the food. Now that the weather's nicer (mostly), I'm going to venture across town more often to the Batignolles market on Saturdays, to support the local producteurs.

Perhaps if I support organic cheesemakers and boulangers, I won't feel quite so guilty buying non-recycled toilet paper.

Now if I could only find some that was locally-produced, then I'd be in business.

Marché Biologique Batignolles
Every Saturday morning
Métro: Rome

Marché Biologique Raspail
Every Sunday morning
Métro: Sèvres-Babylon

I love the internet.
It allows me to trans-Atlantically track the demise of Star Jones Reynolds, witness the triumph of man over beast (which some might say bears an eerie resemblance to the previous scenario), and allows otherwise successful writers to fritter away his... I mean...their talents, in lieu of earning a living.

Today is Save The Internet Day.
Living abroad often makes me forget how the US government valiantly fights on behalf of its citizens; making sure that you won't suffer the dire consequences posed by raw milk cheese, ensuring that 47 million people living in the richest country on the planet don't have to worry about that pesky health insurance, racking up a staggering $305 billion dollar deficit, and introducing legislation making high-speed internet accessible only to the highest corporate bidders, blocking or slowing access for other web users using search engines, telecommunications devices, and visiting a host of web sites and, gulp, food blogs.

If you can't imagine your access to the internet being reduced, think again. It's about to happen. And soon. Really.

Concerned? Read more about it here.

When I decided to move from San Francisco, the two places I narrowed it down to were Honolulu or Paris. The beauty of living in Hawaii is...well, the beauty of Hawaii. Lots of warm beaches and surfing, alarmingly-fresh sushi, tropical fruits galore in your backyard, and an accumulation of frequent-flyer miles from trips to the mainland.

Paris, on the one hand, was France.

So I moved to France.
Here I am, going about my everyday life: in line at the boulangerie waiting for my baguette, negotiating with the fromager for the most interesting cheese of the season, and sitting in cafés all afternoon reading Kant and Kafka.

So this year I won a blog award, and was thrilled that my prize was being donated by 'Ono Kine Grindz from Honolulu. The prize turned out to be two oversized, heavy cookbooks on Hawaiian cuisine. So instead of the books (one of which I had), Reid offered to send me a selection of tasty Hawaiian products instead.
"Awesome", I thought, "I can't wait."

But wait I did.
And wait some more, did I.

Then then I waited some more.

I know it's kinda rude to ask, but I finally shot him an email asking him if he had indeed sent it, which he had way back when.
Now I don't know if it's La Poste or the US Post, but living in the US I always received packages, most arriving relatively quickly. But in just a few short years in Paris, the arrival rate for packages is hovering at about 26.4%. I mean, where are they going? Are they sitting in some warehouse? Are they being pilfered or stolen? Do packages just simply vanish?

(Note: If any French people have anti-US Postal service stories, post the link to your blog entry in the comments section. Similarly, if anyone works for La Poste and would like to anonymously give some clues as to the whereabouts of my other packages...no questions will be asked. And I promise never to write anymore about lost or stolen packages.)

So even though I didn't move to the island of Honolulu, I realize that I'm living on an island right here. One that is impenetrable when it comes to deliveries.

Anyhow...so my second package from Reid managed to arrive this week, and I was so happy when I unwrapped all the fabulous things:

Loose-leaf Pacific Place Tea, which I am busy brewing. This dark, long-leaf tea is beautiful, scattered with colorful little petals of marigold and cornflowers, with tropical fruit aromas as well. I hope it's not sacrilegious, but I'm brewing up some iced tea with it.

A sack of real Kona Coffee! Most of the time if you go to Hawaii you'll get served something called 'Kona' coffee, but if you look at the percentage of real Kona coffee in it, you'll find it's blended and the actual amount of Kona beans in it is around 10% (my delivery rate is better than that!) I was at Peet's coffee once and was served true, 100% Kona coffee. And it was amazing and well worth the lofty price tag.
And mine was a gift!

I screwed open the jar of Kiawe White Honey and stuck my finger in the blank-colored, crystallized honey. Boy, was that good! This very rich organic honey is made from the flowers of the kiawe tree which grows from the volcanic soil of Mauna Kea.

Poha Berry Jam. Poha berries are related to what are called physalis in France and Cape Gooseberries (or Ground Cherries) in America. Poha Berries resemble tomatillos with their papery leaves hiding the dull-orange fruit inside. At the market recently, a Frenchwoman told me they were called, "les feuilles d'amour", the leaves of love, in French.

I remember reading about Lilikoi Curd from Planted by the river from Heidi. I adore anything with passion fruit in it, one of my favorite fruits ever. This jar of curd has li hing mui, dried salted plums added. I'm thinking of making Heidi's Lilikoi Passion Fruit Curd Cake but I fear I'm going to eat it all for breakfast instead. (In fact, I'm certain I will.)

Being a baker, I am avidly interested in vanilla and always looking for unusual pods to sniff and bake with. Vanilla beans are the most labor-intensive crop in the world, hence their price and scarcity. In 1998, Hawaiian Vanilla began planting vanilla orchids in Hilo, and now they sell vanilla beans and extracts, all cultivated and made in Hawaii. When I pulled the pod out of the glass tube and gave it a sniff, it was sweet and fragrant, one of the best-smelling vanilla beans I've had. I'm going to use it to make some Vanilla Ice Cream, plain and simple.

Mahalo to Reid at 'Ono Kine Grindz. Go visit his site.

Do you wander the aisles at Whole Foods, soaking up all the good vibes from the organic, sustainable, and good-for-you products?

Ever been tempted to snitch a sample?

Well, you'd better not...

When they say,"Non", they mean, "Convince me."

When they say,"We do not take returns", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say,"It's not broken", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say, "You need a prescription for that", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say,"The restaurant is completely full", they mean,"Please come up with a better story."

When they say,"The restaurant is completely full", they mean,"We already have enough Americans in here."

When they say,"Do you mind if I smoke?", they mean,
"Don't answer 'yes', or we're going to pout and scowl while you try to enjoy your dinner."

When they say,"It does not exist", they mean, "It does exists...just not for you."

When they walk right into you on the street and say nothing, they mean,"I'm Parisian."

When they say,"I don't have change", they mean,"I want a tip."

When they say,"Do you want directions?" they mean, "I look forward to telling you what to do for the next five minutes."

When they say, "I'd like the practice my English", they mean,"For the next 20 minutes, you'll feel like a complete idiot while I speak perfect English and demonstrate a far better understanding of world affairs than you do."

When they say,"They're up on the seventh floor", they mean,
"They're right around the corner from where you're standing."

When they say,"We don't have any more", they mean,"We have lots more, but they're in the back."

When they say,"It's not my fault", they mean,"It is my fault...but I'm not taking the blame."

When they say, "That is not possible", they mean,"Loser."

When they say, "I am a Socialist", they mean,"I'm not responsible for picking up my dog's poop."

When they say, "You package hasn't arrived", they mean, "I'm just about to go on break. Come back and wait in line for 30 minutes again tomorrow."

When they say, "The fat's the best part!" , they mean, "I'm under 40."

When they say, "The cheeses in France are the best in the world", they mean, "We are indeed a superior culture."

When they say, "America is culturally-deprived", they mean,"Please don't show us Sharon Stone's vagina again."

Someone, anyone...help!...bring Rice Krispies!

I think I brought too many marshmallows back...

This April marks a very special three-year anniversary.
Do I celebrate with a coupe of Champagne?
Do I whip out the KitchenAid and make a celebration cake?
Do I pull out what's left of my hair and be bitter?

No, no...and maybe.

In April of 2003, I shipped two cases of books to my address in Paris, and somewhere between here and there, someone is enjoying a very carefully edited collection of cookbooks that a certain American living in Paris would really like to be using. So here I am, 3 years later, sans my favorite cookbooks, unable to find solace that someone else is leafing through my personally-autographed copy of Mastering The Art of French Cooking by Julia Child herself, (or using it for kindling), or Alice Medrich's Chocolate And the Art of Low-Fat Desserts (if you're snickering, stop it. It's an amazing book.)

Living abroad certainly has many challenges, but one of the most vexing of mine is getting anything delivered. When I moved to Paris, a French friend advised me that you need to be standing there with your door open and your named emblazoned across your chest when they show up to make a delivery.

Before...

And after...

When Andrew announced Euro Blogging By Post, it sounded like a fun idea. Those of us living in Europe would swap packages of our favorite local foods via the post. A great idea, so I carefully spent a few days shopping, and off went my package to Kristina at Clivia's Cuisine in Sweden.

A few weeks later a package arrived at my doorstep, feeling suspiciously light, from Gerda at Dinner For One. I ripped open the package to find lots of ripped packaging and a few meager crumbs, along with a few mouse 'souvenirs'.

Apparently the little euro-critters couldn't resist participating in Euro Blogging By Post #4 either, but at least they left me the bottle of Grüner Veltliner wine that I'm saving. But I salvaged a few of the Mozartkugln, each wrapper emblazoned with a picture of everyone's favorite Austrian (and no, it's not the Governor of California...), but the Linzertart, the orange-scented chocolate, and the sausages (Meat?) were gone for good.

Attached was a note from Gerda, "MOZART Of course!!" but thankfully she included a book for making Austrian desserts that apparently held little interest for the mice and soon I'll tackle some of the recipes, like Burgenländer Marillenknödel and Powidltascherln, or maybe Weicher Marillen-Topfentommerl.

(Raabtaler Weinbackerl and Salzburger Nockerln mit Ribisel-Rotweinsosse sound good too, don't they?)

Or...I could wait until the next round of Euro Blogging By Post, and take my chances....

Four Jobs I've Had:

1. Restocking the salad bar at The Vineyard restaurant.

You wouldn't eat the hard-boiled eggs at a salad bar if you saw where they come from.

And I don't mean the chickens.

2. The photo processing counter at Service Merchandise.

We would wait for certain customers to drop off their film.

Some were famous.

At least amongst us.

Especially Mr. Sabatini.

3. Bonanza Sirloin Pit.

My first job.

The waitresses wore naugahyde mini-skirts and the cooks wore leather-like aprons.

Reminiscent of a bar in San Francisco that I used to visit.

Except the women weren't really women.

At least I don't think so.

I loved the Texas Toast at Bonanza the most: A huge, thick slab of white bread, drenched with a melted butter-like-substitute, then char-broiled over the open fire until crispy.
If we wanted real butter, we had to pay 5 cents extra.

If caught using real butter, the manager would throw a fit and threaten to fire us.

Gee, I wonder what he's doing now?

I live in Paris.

4. Scooping Ice Cream at the University Deli.

We were famous for giving HUGE scoops, really huge, of ice cream. Some jerk would invariably come in and say, "I want just one scoop, but one really, really HUGE scoop of cream!"

We perfected making that one HUGE scoop...one that was hollow inside. The moment they got outside and took their first lick, the ball of ice cream would flop over onto the sidewalk.

People never learn: Don't mess with people serving you food.
They will mess back.

Sometimes you can even see it.

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over:

1. Freeway
2. Auntie Mame
3. 9½ Weeks
4. Showgirls (The Unrated, Director's Cut only, please!)

Four Places I've Lived:

1. Ithaca, New York
2. San Francisco
3. Paris
4. Honolulu

(Ok, I only dream about living in Hawaii.)

Four TV Shows I Love:

1. The Sopranos
2. Six Feet Under
3. Strangers With Candy
4. The Nanny

Four Highly-Regarded and Recommended TV Shows That I've Never Watched:

1. West Wing
2. Lost
3. The O'Reilly Report
4. A Very Brady Christmas

(Ok, I confess. I did watch the last one.
But only because it was "Highly-Regarded and Recommended")

Four Places I've Vacationed:

1. Bangkok
2. Merida, Mexico
3. Sarajevo
4. Istanbul

Four of My Favorite Dishes:

1. Fried Chicken, without gravy
2. Malomars™
3. Duck Confit
4. Hot Corned-Beef on Rye Bread

Four Sites I Visit Daily:

1. The New York Times
2. Pandora
3. Gawker
4. PostSecret

Four Places I'd Rather Be Right Now:

1. On a warm beach in Hawaii
2. On a warm beach in Thailand
3. On a warm beach in Mexico
4. Anywhere it's not cold or raining

Four Bloggers I am Tagging:

Hehehe....You Know Who You Are and You Can't Escape...

If I have to put on a sweater and carry an umbrella one more day, I'm going to scream...

When I used to get sick in America, I would get congested, a sore throat, sometimes a runny nose, and a fever.

In France, whenever I get sick, it bypasses every other organ and heads straight to my stomach.

I don't know if it's the rich foods, the dubious rules of storage, or a new set of germs as foreign to me as the 14 different tenses of French verbs.
But since arriving in France a few years ago, I've been felled by a few serious bouts of la gastro.

Yes, even though some people think I'm too careful about hygiene than I should be (and no, I don't scrape up chocolate off the floor and re-use it either), I suppose it's just a matter of taking chances before all those unrefrigerated dairy products, rosy-pink, barely-singed beef and pork, eating an unusually large amount of raw cookie dough, and touching the petrie dish-like metal handrails on the mètro, would eventually catch up with me.

So last week my descent began when I was at le cinema, watching Walk The Line. I started feeling dizzy. Figuring maybe I was sitting too close to the screen, I moved back. I still felt funny in the gut, so I unbuckled my belt (Now I wonder if anyone was looking and thought I was the neighborhood perv.)

By the middle of the movie, I was fighting the urge to race to the bathroom. The movie was so good and I didn't want to miss the last part, where Reese Witherspoon had her hair all teased-up in the front, real pretty and all.

Luckily I made it through, but I got home and was shaky, feverish, and ready to hit the bedroom.
(After a slight detour to another room pronto.)

I may be shallow, but the good thing about stomach flu is that you can eat whatever you want when it's all over. Hell, you've just lost 10 pounds. The whole experience wasn't pretty nor was it easy, was it? So eat up. You've earned it. And those new abs ain't gonna be around forever.

But while you're lying in bed, semi-delirious, mustering all your energy to lift the remote control, all you want is a bowl of nice, hot chicken soup. Unless if you're Jewish. Since at the same time you're imagining that you're certain to be remembered as the first person in France to fall victim to the Avian Flu.

Which certainly presented me with a deathbed dilemma: If the chicken from the market I ate made me sick and will be the end to life on earth it as we know it, how does one justify eating hot chicken soup as a cure? Is it like making anti-venom for snakebites out of the venom of the deadly snakes? Is it another of the great Jewish dilemmas?

(The other dilemma is bacon at half-price.)

So I got into bed with my laptop, the modern equivalent of the teddy bear, armed with the remote control, to watch the Olympics. A bit too much gyrating, sequins, and glitter...would I later suffer from Post-Glitter Disorder, like Mariah Carey, I imagined? All those twirling, glittery dudes gliding across the rink. (Is there anyone in the universe, outside the skating world, or a few Eastern European countries, that finds those men's outfits even remotely attractive or flattering? And why do the men have more glitter than the woman? And since I'm asking questions, can someone should ask those men who speed skate to slow down a bit as a courtesy to viewers trying to get a closer look?)

The beauty of France is that if you need any medication, there's at least one (usually more) pharmacie on your block and they're ready to send you home armed with as many as you can carry. And the doctors here still make house calls. Gladly, I might add.

The bad thing is if you need something simple like a battery for your thermometer, you need to mètro across Paris to the special shop that sells batteries for thermometers. When you get there, they're invariably closed that particular afternoon. They're open from 9:45am to 11:15am, Monday through Tuesday, and from 2:45pm to 4:15pm on Wednesday.

Except in February, when they're open on Thursday, instead of Wednesday.
But only from 2:45pm to 3:45pm.

Unless the people who sell batteries for thermometers are on strike.

In my stupor, I wondered if the few 'comfort foods' (a word I hate, but it's appropriate here, I think) that I depend on in these rare hours-of-need are available here. If I manage to drag myself to the supermarket, will I find Canada Dry Ginger Ale? (yes) or Campbell's Chunky Chicken Soup? (no).

(I did have one dream-like vision over and over, in my delirious haze. It was the Most Fabulous-Looking Chicken Soup Ever. I swear I had a dream about that soup. Would they send me some? Could I call Germany? How many numbers do I need to dial? Will they think I'm insane? How far is Munich? Do they deliver? Did they really somehow manage to link Bob Ross with food?)

But unless I had some chicken stock in the deep- freeze, chicken soup wasn't gonna happen chez David. The idea of being vertical for longer than 10 seconds was impossible to imagine, let alone buying and eviscerating a chicken, then simmering and straining the stock. And yes, I know all you Americans sitting there all smug with your freezers are loaded up with chicken stock. I hope it's all freezer-burned next time you need it. Ha! That'll teach you to be prepared when I'm not.

Ok, that doesn't make any sense and was kinda mean. I'm still delirious, so at least I have an excuse. (But did you see what Mariah Carey wore at the Grammy Awards? What's her excuse? Is she the only person in the world who can wear couture and make it look like she's getting ready for a gynecological exam?)

The first thing you do when you're better is go to the refrigerator and toss out anything that you ate within the last few hours, before you first got sick. Even if it wasn't the culprit, out it goes. I was more than happy to toss the rest of the leftover rotisserie chicken, or as CNN would have politely said, "He culled his roast chicken."

Most Americans who move to France wonder, "Where can I get canned chicken stock?" For some, canned chicken stock is the magic ingredient in the pantry, able to turn a plate of rice into risotto, or pilaf with the turn of a Swing-A-Way™. Last minute batch of jook? No problem.

When I moved to France and couldn't find it, that surprised me. The land of great cuisine, and no ready-to-pop stock. So I began making my own. And what did I learn? Homemade chicken stock makes everything taste so much better. And from then on, I vowed I would never use the canned stuff again.
Which admittedly is easy to brag about, since I don't exactly have a choice in the matter.

So on the mend, I trekked out to one of my new favorite food shops, where I bought the chocolate bars with quinoa a few weeks ago, called Markethic. They have lots of unusual things from all over the world, mostly organic, and I seem to always find something to bring home, from tamarind pâte de fruit to fragrant shards of brilliant-red mace.

Then I saw them up.
I swore I would never do it. But I picked them up.
The culinary version of going to the 'dark side'...

My only experience with dried soup was years and years ago, and it was so salty and tasted like stale spices that I couldn't imagine using one again. It felt like taking a deer at a salt-lick. It was about the time when we were fixated by all-things-Knorr™, blending the dried-vegetable soup mix with sour cream, thinking how sophisticated we were for graduating upward from Lipton Onion Soup™ Dip. But in my case, with my head facing bowlward most of the weekend, I fondled the tight little box as something to have on hand in case I needed a quick, emergency broth-fix.

But after I got home and opened it up, I sadly looked at the pathetic, dry little square, and tossed it in the back of a drawer where I would most likely never see it again...

...and entered the Munich telephone code into my speed dial.

A baker takes advantage of the sub-zero temperature of Paris...

There's always much debate over when it's okay to telephone someone at home.
How late is too later? How early is okay to call? Are they friends, or family?

When I moved to Paris, a friend told me, "Never call anyone before noon on Sunday."
I made that mistake once, and that was all it took.

So I'm sound asleep at 8am this Saturday morning (after getting home from dinner last night at 2am), there I am tucked into my bed, so warm-and-cozy, nestled between my linen sheets and goose down duvet, by little head dreaming of....
....and...
".....brrring....brrring....brrring...brrring!....Bbrring!....

Grrrr....

So.
Since I was up, I decided to hit the Marché aux Puces, or flea market. By the time I finished my coffee and got there, I'm sure most of the good stuff was gone. But this week I managed to pick up something I've been admiring for a long time.

I've been eyeing this casserole whenever I'd come across one, for the past few years. Designed in the 1958 by Raymond Loewy for Le Creuset, I love the combination of modernity and French utilitarianism. Vintage examples in good condition are rarely found since most have been well-used by French cooks. And recently it's been re-issued, although in newer colors, not like the classic orange that you see.

Raymond Loewy was born in Paris at the end of the 1800's, but made his mark in corporate America. He became the most influential designer of our time and designed so many things that we just take for granted. But during his era, the Industrial Revolution, people were fascinated by all that was new and suggested a better, and more modern, future. What he designed suggested speed and forward-thinking, an emerging machine-age where everything was sleek and streamlined, and this casserole for Le Creuset is no exception.

(This piece of cookware is called La Coquelle and was recently reissued here in France in several colors, including this one, called 'Madarin Sorbet'.)

In addition to this casserole, Loewy designed the Studebaker, as well as the Lucky Strike, Nabisco, Shell, and Exxon logos. One of my favorites, though, was for New Man, a French clothing company...

Not many people realize this, but f you turn it over, it reads the same thing, "New Man".
Go ahead, flip over your computer and see.

Kevin at Seriously Good tagged me with this, The 2006 Food Challenge of This Year I Dare! You're supposed to talk about things you're going to do different in the kitchen this year.
Here's a few...

Garbage Bags
I'm only going to buy premium, top-quality garbage bags this year. No more el-cheapo, whisper-thin bags that you could read Le Monde through.
I generate mounds of fruit peelings, coffee grounds, egg shells, and all sorts of other icky stuff that doesn't exactly get any better if it sits around for a few days or so. The last thing I want on my trip to the garbage room in my building is another accident in the elevator. Trust me. Having your garbage spill in an enclosed space crammed full of your fancy Parisian neighbors, where your every single move is scrutized, really sucks.
Like cheap toilet paper, that's not one of the places you want to skimp on quality.

Madeleines
I'm going to master le Madeleine. And I promise not to mention 'Proust' in the same paragraph as the word 'madeleine'...ever.

Yes, we all know he wrote extensively about eating one. But was he kind enough to include a recipe?
No.

What a jerk.

Vanilla Extract
I made the sorry error of buying cheap vanilla extract when I was in the US. Pure vanilla extract made from vanilla beans and alcohol is unavailable here. (Yes I do know, I've searched exhaustively. Please don't leave comments that I don't know where to look. The American-stores don't count; I'm not paying those prices for tiny bottles of vanilla, the way I go through it. Read the ingredients. They all contain sugar, or no alcohol, and area labeled arôme, which ain't pure extract.)

I was mesmorized by everything that's available at Trader Joe's on a recent visit to San Francisco.
People brag to me all the time, "I buy vanilla extract at Trader Joe's! It's so cheap! It's only $4.99 per bottle! What a bargain!", they go on and on and on and on...

So I arrive back in Paris, twist off the top, and take a sniff. Phew!, this stuff smells like pure alcohol with maybe the idea of vanilla somewhere vaguely in the background.
Trader Joe's has a lot of very good things, but their vanilla isn't one of them. Nor is it a bargain. Cheap food that doesn't taste good is no bargain.
And you may quote me on that. Or have it tatooed on your chest.
Or wherever you want.

Then I checked at Vanilla.com and their Bourbon vanilla is the same price when you buy a quart. And believe me, it's amazing. And a quart lasts me about a month. Especially when I'm making all these madeleines.

(Yes, there is shipping, but since if you live somewhere that you don't get charged 10.21€ for calling customer service, you can afford to spring for it...)

Memes
I promised not to tag anyone for a meme anymore. It's like getting a chain letter. You feel guilty for not answering it, and you feel like an idiot if you do. So I'm not going to tag anyone.

Ok...on second thought, I'm going to tag Michele and Cindy, just to be a brat.

Is that bad?

When my internet service went down a few months ago, I telephoned the company to arrange an appointment for the repair. After three long weeks, service was restored.

Then this came with my phone bill:

In France you get charged to speak to someone in 'customer service', at 35 centimes per minute.
Let's say you're on hold for 30 minutes. You get a bill for 10.21€, about $12.50.

So next time, I should...

Ode To A Powerball™

By David Lebovitz


I think that I shall never see,
A Powerball™ as lovely as ici.

The rosy ball ensures success
Against my dishes, which entered a mess.

Inside the dishwasher, so full it is scary,
But I just press the button! Could I be more merry?

A sudsy froth, I'm sure it will yield,
Behind the closed door, its fate has been sealed.

An unequaled tablet, whose gift is released,
Round and round goes each cycle, until all has ceased.

Without it I know that my life would be worse,
Washing dishes by hand is indeed quite a curse.

A mess is made daily by fools just like me,
So I give thanks to Calgon, for they make what you see.


(...with apologies to Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918)

To see something very sad, click here.

Yes. It finally happened.

(As seen in The Food Section)

Sometimes I feel like I must be walking around with a sign on me that says...

"Even though it's obvious from the way I'm holding it, I'm carrying a fragile dessert that I've spent hours making...

...But please feel free to walk right into me anyways."

Yes, that was me trying to navigate Paris, tranversing the sidewalks and mètros of Paris, hoping to make it safely to the New Year's party I was invited to with my Almond Tart.

As those who read this blog regularly may recall, I'm a target for Parisians when carrying fragile cakes and tarts down the street. For some reason, they'll just walk right into me.

But this time, I got wise to their antics and thwarted their efforts to derail me by remembering a favorite recipe from my past, Lindsey's Almond Tart, one of the all-time great desserts that I made almost every day at Chez Panisse for years and years. Once baked, the tart is bullet-proof: and as anticipated, the disk of firm caramelized almonds successfully withstood both the Line #1 and #14 mètros.

I made it safely to my New Year's Eve fête with the tart. I did get body-checked by a Parisian in the Bastille mètro, forcing me to crash into the tile wall, and heard the loud "Thwack" of the porcelain cake plate it was resting on.

"Zut!, I thought.
But the tart arrived safely and after dinner, everyone nibbled on it happily along with the last of the cold Champagne along with the Chocolate, Sour Cherry, and Toasted Almond Bark that I made with fleur de sel, which was equally a big hit.

So here's a few resolutions for my life in 2006...

-I'm going to avoid the black tar as much as I can...

-I'm going to perfect my Madeleine recipe...

-I'm going to cut back on the amount of chocolate I eat...

-I'm going to get to work on my next cookbook...

-And I'm going to become a true Frenchman and no matter how impeccably or fashionably dressed I am, I'm going to wear the wackiest socks I can drum up...

I will avoid socks with images of Homer Simpson or Asterix, though, so popular with the men here in France, though. Even I have my limits.

Sleepy-eyed after a very long night of wining & dining, I crawl out of bed and pour myself a steaming hot bowl of café au lait and toast slices of pain au levain...

The beginning of another year in Paris.

I bring the bowl to my lips and take a comforting sip.
MMmmm...

I slather butter on my warm toast. It melts and forms little buttery puddles in between the delightfully irregular bubbles revealed each time I slice and toast another slab from the hearty loaf.
I drizzle it with bitter chestnut honey. Delicious.

The sweet, creamy smear of butter and the sharp, amber honey pair feel just right this morning after a night scraping briny oysters from their shells and washing them down with endless flutes of icy Champagne. After we polished off several platters of les huitres, our next course was tiny roasted quails, expertly roasted with root vegetables, accompanied by the smoothest puree of potatoes, mounded alongside, bathed in a delicate sauce made from the savory pan juices.

Afterwards, a long sleep was in order while all of Paris closed up for the night. My re-entry to the world begins when the late winter sun peers out from behind the curtains. A few slow, tentative movements as I slide out of bed, and I find myself back into the world.

That wonderful luminosity of Paris!
The sun peering through the grey still of winter.
The heater buzzes softly in the corner, the only sound, except for the faint patter of traffic on the street down below.
The gentle quiet of a slow morning, as Paris begins to wake up. Curtains are tentatively opened in buildings across the way. A queu begins at the corner bakery, Parisians exiting with slender baguettes tucked under their arms and warm, buttery croissants enclosed in stiff bakery paper.

How wonderful to live in a city where breakfast inspires a photograph.
I finish the last, warm sip of my café au lait.

My clothes are draped carelessly over the sofa where I dropped them the night before. I gather them up.

Then I smell it.

That ever-present, overpowering smell.
Cigarettes.

My clothes reek of cigarette smoke.
The woman sitting next to me last night spent the evening chain-smoking. She went though an entire pack of cigarettes during dinner. No sooner did she finish one cigarette then she lit up another. The room became so smoke-filled that I had to get up several times during the night just to catch some fresh air in another room. My eyes burning with acrid cigarette smoke, at times I was barely able to breathe. Every so often, the room would clear of it's grey, foul, heavy smoke...then someone else would light up, prompting everyone else to reach for their cigarettes and light up another.

My clothing will have to go to the cleaners.

I settle in at my desk to check my email.
My email doesn't work, nor does my internet connection.
Click. Click...ClickClickClick....CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK...
No email. No internet. Nothing.

I consider calling Noosnet Customer Service, then I remember the last time I tried that.

Four weeks later they re-connected me.

Brrrr...
I shiver and wonder why it suddenly feels so cold? Why does it seem so dark inside?

I switch on a light. Nothing happens. I try another lamp.
Nothing.

The heater has stopped buzzing and the metal feels cold to the touch.

My electricity is off.

I begin to get chilly, thinking a nice, hot shower will warm me up.

I run the water for a few minutes.
The pathetic spittle of water that comes from the shower nozzle is barely tepid. I let the water flow for a few more minutes. It's still cold, the water just slightly warmer than the now almost near-freezing temperature inside my apartment. I shiver and think about getting in, then turn off the sad trickle, putting it out of it's misery. I decide to get back into bed, burying myself under my fluffy down duvet and crisp linen sheets, where it's all warm and cozy.

"Bienvenue à Paris...let's give it another year."...I sigh to myself, before dozing off.

To Whomever This May Concern:

I apologize for stealing your Sharpie® during my current book tour.

As you can see, I couldn't help it.
It started with the one I borrowed when booksigning in Virginia but somewhere my obsession went horribly wrong.

But you see, we don't get Sharpies® in France.

And I just couldn't resist yours.

Your Sharpie® was so new and so very alluring with that perfectly tapered ink-filled tip.
So round.
So firm.
So plump.

Yes, I kept promising myself, "David...make this the last one!"

But one thing led to another.
And another Sharpie® found its way into my pocket.
Then another.

But I will make sure that your Sharpie® has a nice, cozy, and safe place in Paris.
I apologize for an inconvenience this may have caused you.

Thank you for your understanding.

Yours truly,

David Lebovitz

1. Everyone's always in a big hurry.

...except the ones who are waiting on you.

2. Could there possibly be any light more unflattering than the lighting on the Paris métro?

3. All the newspapers are in a funny language.

And the Sunday New York Times is 13 euros.

4. The coffee is universally awful.

Yes, much of the coffee in America is horrid and/or disgusting, but at least the possibility exists of finding decent coffee in America.

5. Parisians will just walk right into you. Even if you're on a deserted sidewalk, they'll veer away, then curve around, and bam!...walk straight into you.

6. Les Madames.

I don't mean hookers, I mean those mean women of a certain age who wield their shopping chariots and expect you to move outta their way. You can easily spot them; they wear squared-off wire-rimmed glasses and are proudly bundled up in overcoats, and cut in line pretending not to see you. Then when it's their turn, they spend 5 minutes arguing with the vendor over the price of one fig or a slice of cheese (and then take forever trying to count out the centimes to pay, acting like it's a big surprise and inconvenience when they have to fork over the cash.

As my pal Kate pointed out, this is the last generation of them.

Good riddance.

7. Everything is so damn expensive (except bread, wine, and cheese).

Le Creuset cookware, made in France, is cheaper in America than in France. My Delonghi heater (Italian) was 3 times the price it is in the US... and why is a Phillips Sonicare (Dutch) toothbrush twice the price?
Can't they just truck stuff across the EU border?

8. Dog crap is everywhere...and it's disgusting. Even most French people think so.

If you have a dog, pick up after it. I had a dog. I picked up after it. It's part of ownership. If you have kids, you clean up after them. It's a unknown concept called "responsibility".

(Although I should let you know that with all the dog poo here, the last time I stepped in some was in, of all places, San Antonio.)

9. The French language has 14 verb tenses. English has 6.

Really, how many past tenses does one language need?

10. The French are explosive.

An organic bakery I visit often, Moisan, is lovely. Everything is picture-perfect. Glistening, caramelized fruit tarts, rustic hearth-baked breads, golden croissants, and little savory pizzas bubbling with melted cheese and fragrant with fresh herbs. I go in there all the time and the saleswomen could not be nicer.

Last time I went in, there was a lovely tray of fresh-baked Madeleines; deep-golden, buttery, and still warm from the oven. And they were picture-perfect.
So I complimented them, "Ce sont très jolie, madame." ("Those are very beautiful.")

The saleswoman, who's always been so very nice to me, snapped back, "Ce ne sont pas jolie, Monseiur. Ce sont delicieux!" ("They're not beautiful, they're delicious!")

And with that one little interchange, she will no longer wait on me or speak to me. If she happens to get me in line, she ignores me.
Salope

NEWS FLASH: At a dinner party tonight, I asked some French friends about this. They said if you use the word jolie (beautiful) to describe something, it's rather pejorative. Like saying it's 'cute', in a trés-Disney kind of way.
Who knew? (see #9)

11. The French don't seem to be as interested in coming to conclusions, instead preferring to discuss things forever without resolution. Everything takes a lo-o-o-o-ong time.

You also realize that it's not about helping the customer, but about employing as many people as possible to keep them working (25% of the people in France work for the government.)

Last week, for example, I needed shoelaces.
Simple task. Right?
The enormous BHV department store has everything.
Sure enough there's a wall of shoelaces...every variety, material, width, brand, color, and size imaginable.
Except, or course, the one I needed.

(And forget asking for help; it's non-existent. Their normal tactic is to send you to another floor just to get rid of you. Now I'm on to that ruse and don't fall for it.)

12. Why does it take 2½ hours to wash your clothes in a French washing machine?

(See previous entry. Perhaps the washing machines are also more interested in the "process", rather than the "results".)

And good luck finding unscented laundry detergent. I took me months and months to finally find some. The smell of the normal laundry detergent was so strong and fragrant that I couldn't sleep in the same room with my freshly-laundered clothes.

13. Charles de Gaulle Airport is consistently rated the worst airport in the world. It's a major embarrassment that one of the world's greatest cities has an airport that would rival one in a third-world country. Gee, I wonder why?

For two years, all the bathrooms were broken in the Terminal #1 Arrivals terminal, where you pick up your luggage. After sitting on a plane all night, you gotta go.

How many years does it take to fix a bathroom?

Last time I arrived, each and every elevator in the terminal was hors service (broken). People in wheelchairs and those with luggage carts were scratching their heads figuring out how to get downstairs.

How long does it take to fix an elevator?

And once you check in and go through security in Terminal #1, there's no bathroom. Since you need to check in two hours in advance, you have to leave the waiting area and re-go-through security.

Gee...that's efficient.

(I am sure the Olympics organizers who arrived at the primitive and crumbling Charles de Gaulle were as shocked as most visitors, and it sealed the fate for Paris hosting the games.)

14. Le President™ Camembert

France has the greatest cheeses in the world. Walk into any cheese shop, or even a supermarket, and you'll find a bounty of delicious products from dairies and cheesemakers across France.

So why do the supermarkets stock some of the worst cheeses in the world right alongside the good stuff?

Because people buy them. They're vile, rubbery, flavorless cheeses with little resemblance to the real thing. It can't be the price difference, since they're roughly equivalent or a few centimes more.

15. French people smoke too much.

I don't mind cigarette smoke. Really I don't. I'm used to it. But recently, the past few times I've been out for dinner, the people next to me as soon as they sit down they drop their packs of cigarettes on the table and chain smoke the entire night. I don't mean one to two cigarettes, I mean lots of cigarettes. The other night the woman next to me had six cigarettes during the course of her meal.

I'm not on an anti-smoking crusade, but how many cigarettes does one person need to smoke during a dinner out?

And did you know that one-third of all people in France smoke, and 50% of all teenagers between the ages of 15-24 years old smoke too?

The French parliament is taking up the no-smoking ban in restaurants this fall, as they've done in Italy and Ireland. I think it'll pass.

What are the French going to do? Take to the streets and go on strike in support of smokers?

Whew!
Once you get started, it's hard to stop.

For some reason, people keep asking, "Why do you live in Paris?"

Well...

1. No one freaks when they find little black flecks in their vanilla ice cream.

2. If introduced as a pastry chef and cookbook author, I hear oh-la-la la's instead of a litany of complaints about everyone's diet.

3. The chocolate popsicles you buy at the supermarket are studded with real cocoa nibs.

And no one freaks about it.

4. Teenagers have three-course meals with their friends in restaurants. With wine.

5. Coffee, water, and wine are all the same price.

6. I live next door to the best croissants in Paris.

7. I can go to Laduree for a dark chocolate macaron, Berthillon for a superb scoop of their new salted butter-caramel ice cream, Pierre Hermé for an Ispahan fix, Poilâne for just-baked, crusty levain bread, and Jean-Charles Rochoux for chocolate pavés...whenever I want.

Every day if I want.

8. You can talk pharmacists into giving you cool prescription drugs if you have a good story.
(I don't personally know if this is true, but I've, um...heard it is.)

9. I can buy a mind-altering selection of cheeses from my fromagerie for way less than the equivalent of $10.

10. Lucques olives...

...and the open-air markets!

Coming Soon: Ten Things I Hate About Paris...!

One of my favorite actresses, and the first lady of American theater, Pamela Anderson, has a new progam called 'Stacked' on Fox television wednesday nights. Starring alongside Pam (who plays a bookstore clerk), and prominenly displayed behind her enormous talents, is Ripe For Dessert.