After what seemed like a year, and a rather long one at that, my bathroom and shower have finally been fixed. What seemed like ages ago, I came home from lunch with a friend one day and heard a bubbling, brook-like sound coming from my bedroom. When I walked in, a steady cascade of water was rippling out of the wall and about a centimeter (1/2-inch) of water covered the floor, as well as the floor of my bedroom, courtesy of a broken pipe in the building.
People in Paris are no strangers to fuites d’eau (water leaks) and this wasn’t my first. And unfortunately, it probably won’t be my last. A combination of ancient plumbing, rising rivers, old buildings, disagreements between neighbors, and property managers, who Capital, a French Consumer Reports-style magazine described as having regular “bad buzz” and défiance institutionnalisé (widespread suspicion), keeps Paris awash with water woes.
Quiche got a peculiar rap back in the 1980s when eating it was described as something that was not masculine. I’m not sure where that came from, but in France, everybody eats quiche. As the French debate how to address gender pronouns, in a language where crème, baguette, and salade are feminine and pâté, vin, and quinoa are masculine (although quinoa is a plante céréalière, which…
There’s a lot to like about savon de Marseille, the French soap made in Provence. Its history dates back nearly 600 years and in 1688 an edict came into effect under Louis XIV that standardized what savon de Marseille was; a soap with no artificial additives, no colorants, no perfumes or fragrances, no animal fats, and must contain at least 72% olive oil, which accounts for…
I’m back on the wagon of tackling the recipes in the bulging files of recipes that I’ve been collecting and hanging on to for the past thirty years. Many pre-date the internet and were from food magazines (made of paper) that I subscribed to. A surprising number of the savory recipes have the words “adobo” or “chipotle,” and “pork” in the title, so if I ever…
After my summer break, I came back to the blog and found out that it still thought it was on vacation…and wasn’t accepting any photos at this time. I was proud of myself for finally tackling a recipe that I’ve had on my radar for a while and spent a day baking it, taking pictures, and writing up the post. The recipe was quite a…
Years ago, at a flea market in Paris I pickup up some old metal letters from a bakery in France that spelled out PATISSERIE. Being a baker, of course I was thrilled (although still despondent that someone else snatched up the matching BOULANGERIE letters…) and proudly displayed them on the shelf of my apartment. Since my apartment at the time was so small, shelf space…
It used to be that if you wanted ice cream in Paris, you went to Berthillon. While there were other notable places on my list (circa 2007), if you wanted a scoop of ice cream after dark in other parts of the cities, you were out of luck. Like bakeries, ice cream options tend to be few and far between in the evening, and there…
My Netflix queue has gotten out of control and is entirely too long. And to make matters worse, I keep adding to it. Being out of the U.S. for so long, I missed watching binge-worthy, must-watch classics like The Wire and Breaking Bad when they came out, and I’d love to sit down on the sofa for another few months and watch them now that…
Way back in 2008, probably before some of you were born, I posted a recipe for Panisses, chickpea flour fritters. They weren’t so well known outside of the south of France, and even in Paris, people don’t really know what they are. So it was fun introducing these Mediterranean specialties to a wider audience, even if some readers were scratching their heads as to how…
