So we’ve had the first bean-to-bar chocolate maker open in Paris. And now we have homemade tortillas. Or as I call them, “Two more reasons to stay put.” Which also means I can give the valuable luggage space I was devoting to lugging corn tortillas back from the states to something else – like pecans and memory foam slippers.
With just a week left before my move, things have gotten rather frantic around here. I won’t bore you with stories about delays, budget overruns, a bruised eardrum from someone yelling in my ear when I’m standing just a foot away, and so on, but I can now say with confidence that I understand why there are so many pills in the medicine cabinets across France. Chez David has become a mini Vallé des poupées (Valley of the Dolls), with most of my efforts right now concentrating on trying to obtain a minimum of three hours of solid sleep per night. And, of course, making sure blog posts don’t have a single typo in them.
Needless to say, visitors can forget my requests for bringing over corn tortillas or dried cranberries – I need a reload on ExcedrinPM. What I thought would be a relatively straightforward project has become a lesson in how much patience and good humor are left in me. I made the grave error of stepping in freshly poured cement, which has occurred only once during my 53 years on this earth, but someone on the job has not let me forget it and has mentioned it at least seven times since I did it. And it was only yesterday.
It’s that time of year, when I evaluate a variety of things in my life (not all necessarily food-related…), including the contents of my refrigerator and pantry, and go through all the corners and crannies, and clear things out. When I visited the Barbès market a while back, I got an amazing deal on dates, so good that I had no choice but to buy a few kilos of them. Because one doesn’t really want to eat a lot of dates all at once, I put some in a jar with some dark rum and let them sit in the back of my refrigerator. Where, of course, I promptly forgot about them.
I’m beginning to think we should have our next Food Blogger Camp in some dark, gray place (like my apartment in the middle of the winter, back in Paris) instead of alongside a gorgeous sunny beach in Mexico. Because as much as we were all having fun learning about food styling and photography, and talking about the nature and intricacies of blogging, there’s also a considerable amount of time we are obliged to spend poolside or on the beach, taking a break from the arduous studying everyone is deeply engaged in.
Okay, that’s not really true. We’re finding a good balance between playing and learning some photos tips, practicing with Mexican fruits, breads, and Kerrygold butter, which was especially good for me because I think there must be a few hundred posts on my site alone that feature butter.
Yesterday was the best day of my life. Okay, it was the best day of the year. And since the year is only a couple of weeks old, there’s probably going to be a few other contenders in the next fifty weeks. But still, yesterday would be pretty hard to beat.
To any ‘normal’ person, they might think that lazing in the sun for a few hours was bliss. But for me, it’s all-you-can-eat tortillas. And I’ve been doing my best to make the buffet here at Club Med in Ixtapa live up to that designation.
It’s nice to know that even after living in France for a number of years, I still haven’t lost my uncanny ability, like many Americans, to be able to pile our plates to the max of whatever we feel like shoveling in our craws.
Last week, when I spoke at the Blogher Food conference, positioned on stage between Ree and Elise, I was sure during the moments when I was going on and on, everyone was biding their time, waiting for me to shut my trap, so they could get back to listening to the other two.
Then I made an announcement that seemed to grab a bit of attention: I said that there were about forty-one blog posts started on my computer, which seemed to get quite the reaction from more than a few of the couple of hundred bloggers in the room. A good portion of those posts will never see the light of anyone else’s computer screen. But inspiration strikes me at odd times, and I’ll just start hammering away when I think of something to write about. I’m certain I’ll get back to it a day or two later, only to never get back to it at all. And now, my desktop is littered with half-written posts and other illiterate detritus.
When I did a reading in Paris a few months back, someone asked me a good question about what are some of the things I’d miss about Paris if I moved away. Which actually made the to the finish line and became a post.
Before I high-tail it outta Austin, I thought I’d share a few things I ate while here. The tour of ice cream shops around town will have to wait until I’m back home, but there were plenty of other things to sample….
Austin is the hip town…or city, in Texas. I say ‘town’ because it feels more like a big town than the capital of the state. There’s lot of quirky people here; tattoos, piercings, and general goofiness seems to be the norm and celebrated by all. No complaints from me either! Of course, there’s also some mighty fine Tex-Mex food, including unending bowls of chips and salsa, which are dangerous when heaped in front of me. I can’t resist polishing off the entire basket. And if there’s a margarita (or two) involved, all bets are off on how many I’ll pound down.
(That’s baskets of the chips, not the margaritas. Those I need to limit myself to one or two of. Unless they’re really, really good. Then I can perhaps manage an extra one, just to be polite.)
Migas, a lively scramble of eggs and crispy corn tortillas is my breakfast of choice (hmmm…crisp corn tortillas…anyone else see a trend?) I like mine sitting at the counter at Las Manitas, one of the last diner-style restaurants left in town. It seems almost all of Austin converges here for their hearty breakfasts, accompanied by endless amounts of the all-American bottomless mug of coffee, a habit I quickly reverted back to.
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