Results tagged bacon from David Lebovitz

We had our second snowfall of the season this week in Paris, which once again, blanketed the entire city with a stunning layer of snow. It illuminated what was previously gray and drab, and brightened things up when everyone’s spirits were beginning to sag. Still, a number of people were miffed about it, wishing that winter was over for good. But for once, I didn’t join the chorus of râleurs and seemed to be the lone voice of dissent (“Pas de fraternité, Daveed!”) and basked in the icy crystals spreading light everywhere, covering up a multitude of sins, and gave me a rejuvenating view of Paris.

Continue Reading Split Pea Soup…

Every so often I get requests for “healthy” recipes, or I see things online posted as “healthy” – and I’m not quite sure what the heck people are talking about. What is healthy? My idea of healthy eating is eating fresh foods – some eggs, cheese, and meat, poultry, and fish, along with fruit and vegetables. Buying foods that you prepare yourself so you know what’s in them, to me, ensures you’ll be eating “healthy.” But if you want to only eat good things, the best way to do it is just shop and cook for yourself, so you know what you’re eating.

My “diet” used to be – “I can eat anything I want, as long as I walk there to eat it, and walk home.” Which seemed sensible to me at the time. Although the walks to my corner bakery for an éclair au chocolat became a little more frequent, so I had to come up with a better plan.

Continue Reading Kale Frittata…

I recently had lunch with someone who’d just moved to Paris. I gave her some places to check out and a few tips about living in her newly adopted city, including navigating some of the ups and downs, and what to do when city life became overwhelming.

But shortly after we parted, I realized that I’d forgotten to tell her my most important piece of advice for living in Paris: Whenever you see an available bathroom, use it.

Another vital piece of advice that I give to folks who arrive in Paris to live is that it’s important to get out of the city and see the rest of the country. Cities are great places but when you visit the smaller cities and towns in France, you see life that hasn’t changed so quickly. Paris is not France, it’s part of it – and there’s a huge, diverse country once you wheel yourself out of the city.

Continue Reading Agen…

For some reason, people are obsessed with what I eat and weigh and I get a lot of messages that say things like “How do you stay so thin?” or “How can you eat all that amazing food and stay in shape?” It’s not really something that I’m all that concerned about and not something I pay all that much attention to. And as much as I’d like to, I don’t start the day gorging on platters of croissants, then spend the rest of day wolfing down cakes, pastries, and chocolates. People come in different shapes and sizes. I know people who eat well and exercise, that are not necessarily svelte, and I know people who eat whatever they want and are rail-thin. (And according to CDC calculations, I’m overweight.) And I try to make it a point not to preach about how to eat, but just present recipes that I like, which are how I eat and feed guests.

Because I live in France, there’s a fascination with the French “diet” as well, and I frequently get asked about how they miraculously manage to keep the weight off while seemingly enjoying all the rich food in France. A few hints: They don’t snack between meals, portions are smaller, they smoke, diet sodas are popular, and they don’t delight in “extreme eating.” However that’s changing as well in France and they’re catching up to their friends across the Atlantic in terms of putting on the pounds – or kilos.

Continue Reading How I Eat…

I just learned a few more words to add to my French vocabulary while in the throes of remodeling this week. I already wrote about the five or six words in French for sink. And I finally got the difference between a mitigeur and a robinet (a mitigeur has one knob “mixes” the water, and a robinet has two knobs). Fortunately the word is the same no matter what size sink you have. Well, unless you have a commercial sink, in which case it’s a mélangeur. So if you ever come to France and want to find a faucet for a hospital sink, you can thank me for saving you three weeks of work.

Speaking of work, my quest for regular floor tiles finally came to an end last Friday. I was looking for off-white tiles that had to meet three criteria; 1) They couldn’t be insanely expensive (which wiped out about three-quarters of the tiles I saw), 2) They couldn’t have beige in them (Why would anyone want white tiles tinted with beige, which right out of the box makes them look old and dirty?), and 3) They couldn’t be ugly. (I know they’re just going to see the bottom of your shoes, but why are the majority of tiles ugly?)

Continue Reading Pear-Fennel Soup…

People often ask me how many times I get back to the states. I don’t know why this is such a pressing question but having just gotten off a plane after 1 1/2 days of sitting on plane, where the guy next to me coughed all night* – and he was kind enough to cover his mouth (although each and every time he did, he jabbed me awake with his elbow) – then sitting in a crowded airport bus for nearly two hours in rush hour traffic from de Gaulle at 7am for my final sprint home, I can honestly still say the BlogHer Food conference was well-worth the trip.

The nice thing about the annual BlogHer Food conference is that it’s a good mélange of food folks, from everyday cooks to professional, both of whom happen to have blogs. There aren’t a lot of places in the world where people converge like this on similar footing and it’s fun to chew the fat with young folks under the age of twenty along with folks coaxing bloggers to engage in more adult activities.

Continue Reading Blogher Food ’11, Atlanta…

One of the great joys about having a blog is that your Inbox fills up daily with pitches for everything from chocolate shows in Pennsylvania (hello? I live in France…) to Superbowl Sunday and Forth of July article ideas (hello? I live in France…) There are quite a few products that I would laugh at if they weren’t so silly, and to be honest, my apartment is so overloaded with stuff that you couldn’t fit a stick of gum in here.

Continue Reading “Green” Nonstick Cookware…

Everyone once in a while – and I could likely count the number of times on one hand – I’ve put something in my mouth that silenced me. Unfortunately for the people around me, it doesn’t happen all that often. But when I was told that there was a special lard made in Nyon, I changed my plans for the morning because something inside me (perhaps my rumbling stomach…) told me that it was something that I just had to check out.

When we pulled up in front of Chez Philou, the windows were blocked by stacked crates of cabbages, no doubt destined for saucisse aux choux fumé, or smoked cabbage sausages, a specialty of the region. But a pile of raw cabbage didn’t really interest me as much as the smoky aromas clouding the windows of the shop and wafting outside whenever a customer went in or came out.

Continue Reading Lard de Begnins…