Recently in Whining category

Tradition schmadition. Something I’ve noticed every time I come to New York is that the bagels keep getting puffier and puffier. (Which happened before everything started going 3D.) When I eat a bagel, I want a chewy exterior with lot of seeds on it and enough dough inside to support a swipe of cream cheese. I don’t want a whole loaf of bread in there. Is that too much to ask?

Roaming around the streets of New York, I’ve seen bagels practically as round as a baseball and others as fluffed up as a burger bun. And I know you’re not going to believe this, but I even saw bagels with dried fruit in them. Oy. What is this city coming to?

Continue Reading Flat Bagels…

Just the other day, I saw a tweet from Jennifer, asking her the question that many of us who live here get from time-to-time, “Should I Move to France?”

It’s pretty hard to decide to make such a life-changing move, for many people. Moving to a foreign country isn’t easy, but it does have it’s rewards. So I put together this quiz to help people make that all-important decision…

1. You’re working as a guard in a museum filled with priceless treasures. The alarm in the museum has been broken for two months and thieves have stolen €500 million worth of art. Video monitors showed the entire robbery in progress but as one of the guards on patrol, like the others, you somehow missed the whole thing. Do you…

• A. Blame the mayor.
• B. Blame the lock company that installed the crummy padlock which the thieves snipped off the gate, which was the only thing standing between them and one of the most exceptional collections of art in the world.
• C. Blame the anti-smoking law because you had to go outside to have a cigarette, along with all the other guards at the exact same time, and the people who came up with that law couldn’t possibly expect you to keep an eye on things.

2. You’re in a café and just finished a €2 cup of coffee and you’re ready to pay. You suddenly realize that you only have a €50 note. Even though the waiter has a billfold bulging with euro notes, do you…

• A. Order twenty-four more coffees because he’ll swear he doesn’t have any change.
• B. Offer to buy a round of drinks for everyone in the room.
• C. Unbutton your blouse a few notches and lean over and give ‘em a good squeeze when handing the waiter the money.

3. You’re stuck in traffic when you hear an ambulance coming up from behind. Cars start moving off to the side of the road to let the ambulance through. Do you…

• A. Move your car over to the side of the road, too, so the ambulance can pass and get quickly to the urgent medical emergency they’re going to.
• B. Grudgingly move your car off to the side because even though the ambulance is racing to take save someone’s life, complaining that you’re going to miss the start Star Academy.
• C. An opening in the road? What are you, crazy? Allez-y…!

4. You just bought a pricey new pair of trousers. When you get home, you realize the zipper is coming apart. Do you…

• A. Block off two days on your calendar to exchange the trousers at the store for another pair.
• B. Take the pants to the local tailor and pay the €32 out of your own pocket to have it fixed.
• C. Throw them away.

Continue Reading Should I Move to France? (28 Questions to Ask Yourself)…

I noticed something weird this week: just about everything I ate tasted odd. No matter what it was, from bland rice cakes to strong, dark coffee, a few minutes after I ate or drank it, there was an odd, bitter flavor lingering in my mouth.

Being me, naturally, I assumed the worst: That they were going to have to remove my mouth, or something.

Continue Reading Pine Nut Syndrome…

When I was speaking at the Blogher Food Conference last year, one of the organizers was telling us that on the last day of each month, she carries out what she calls E-mail Amnesty Day. On that day, she deletes all her e-mail in her Inbox, then issues an all-points-bulletin to everyone she knows that if there was anything important in there, to e-mail her again. She swore that it drastically reduced her e-mail and any meltdowns one might have trying to answer it all.

I thought that was an interesting idea, and when I looked around my apartment the other day, (which wasn’t half as scary as my Inbox), I realized that I had a huge miscellany of half-bags and jars of stuff left over from various baking projects, odds and ends that I was saving, which I said to myself (at the time) that I’d certainly use in the future. And this weekend, I thought it was high time to do something about it and get rid of them all, to do an exhaustive, clean sweep and get rid of everything.

What also prompted the purge was when I read where Adam made something called “Compost Cookies”, a recipe which includes anything you wish to dump in it, from chocolate chips to Fritos.

Continue Reading Amnesty Cookies…

Last time I was in the states, because I had a few hours to spend strapped in a seat (on an airplane, folks—it wasn’t Folsom Street Fair weekend), a friend gave me a stack of magazines which track the comings and going of various celebrities. I know they were meant to be entertaining, but I must’ve been away too long, because I had no idea who about eighty percent of the people in the magazine were and if Suri Cruise or Ke$ha was strapped in next to me, I wouldn’t have any clue to how blessed I was to be in their celestial presence.

There were a lot of women with names like Trista, Jilly, and Bethany, who wanted to win husbands on television programs and were wearing turquoise dresses with remarkably sturdy-looking tetons and well-toned arms, which presumably meant they were ready for battle. I even learned of a crafty woman who was using her uterus to pick up a little extra spending money, even though from the looks of things, she had plenty of other things to already keep her pretty well occupied already.

Continue Reading French Napkins…

I’m probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer, because about a decade ago, I met two guys who were planning to start a bean-to-bar chocolate company in America. And I remember thinking, “Hoo-boy, are these nut-jobs going to lose their shirts! Who in America cares that much about chocolate?”

Fast-forward to a few years later, and Scharffen Berger chocolate became a huge hit, challenging, and changing the way Americans thought about chocolate. It was eventually sold for a substantial sum of money, and the rest is history.

And I’m living in a drafty, two room rooftop apartment where getting hot water is a miracle that might happen weekly. If at all. So who’s the nut-job now?

Continue Reading Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread…

Maybe we shouldn’t count out le Kir quite yet. (# 2).

Although I’ll take a pass on one spiked with violet, or à la rose.

The other night I was sitting at Le Garde Robe, minding my own business, trying to get down a glass of natural wine. Being seven o’clock, naturally, in addition to being thirsty, I was starving, too.

And the lack of food (and sulfides) must have started affecting my brain because I started thinking about how I often hear tales from visitors, such as when they told a Parisian waiter they didn’t eat meat and shortly afterward, were presented with a plate of lamb. Or they ordered a salad, that was supposed to come with the sandwich, and was actually just a single leaf of lettuce. Hoo-boy, and yes, I’ve made a few gaffes of my own, too: I once ordered a glass of Lillet (pronounced le lait, which isn’t well-known around Paris) and the perplexed café waiter brought me out a long, slender glass of le lait (milk), presented with great panache, on a silver dish with a nice doily. Of course, everyone was staring at the grown man who ordered a tall glass of milk. And I don’t think it was because of the starched doily.

Anyhow, I was scanning the chalkboard at Le Garde Robe, looking at the various charcuterie and cheese on offer, and noticed filet mignon, and thought, “A steak is a funny thing for a wine bar to serve, especially one that doesn’t serve hot food.” Until I remembered what it is in French. And if everyone wasn’t already staring at the idiot at the wine bar, nursing a stemmed glass of milk, I would’ve kicked myself for thinking that’s a big, juicy steak. Which it’s not, in France.

1. Mixing Up the Mignons

Mignon in French means “cute”. And to my pork-loving friends and readers, that can only mean one thing: pigs. French people think cows are attractive.

Continue Reading 10 Common Ordering Mistakes People Make in Paris…