Petit Dejeuner

Your morning meal in Paris is a wonderful thing if you are of the continental breakfast persuasion. The pastries and breads combined with the wonderful fruits you can get at this time of year make for a delicious start to the day.  This morning we started the day with pain aux raisins, pain au chocolat, baguette, des fraises et des cerises. And of course we had some lovely french beurre and confiture on hand for the baguette.

 One of the things I love about France is that children often start the day with a bowl of hot chocolate. I don't know why they use a bowl but watching kids wrap their little hands around the warmth of of the cocoa makes you consider having your morning coffee that way.

We have started making hot chocolate for breakfast around here and the taste of the cocoa is different than it is in the US. It is less sweet and has a richer chocolate flavor. I think I'll be bringing a few boxes of this home with me in August!

La Cuisine et les Marchés de Paris

I think the single thing I love most about Paris is that I can make nearly every day about food. Shopping for food, learning about food, exploring shops that sell equipment to prepare food, it is a wonderland of exquisite nourishment.

Saturday mornings are all about the Batingnolles Bio Marché. It is small but really good and the vendors there are wonderfully sweet and helpful. The whole market is organic so it takes a bit of the thinking part out of the shopping experience. You can just gravitate to what looks or smells good and go from there.

Plus there is always some sort of entertainment at the Marché and today it was this lovely lady as a singing clown. She serenaded my children with Sur la Pont D'Avignon.

I came home with a lovely assortment of fresh vegetables which won't last long here. The good and the bad of it is that buying fruits and vegetables at market here in France pretty much means they are ready to eat within a day or two. Unlike at home when your produce arrives at your market while still trying to ripen, everything here goes from farm to table ready to eat. 

After the market we had a light lunch here at the apartment and then I gathered the family and we trundled off to the Luxembourg area for some play and some cooking. I enrolled in a cooking class on Macarons which was conveniently located across from Le Jardin du Luxembourg where the children could play for a few hours under the watchful eye of their handsome father. We had a tad bit more of a French experience getting down there than we would have liked with our bus route being shortened due to an unexpected manefestation. No one seemed sure about what the grave was about since we'd just had one on Thursday against the raising of the retirement age. As it turns out it was a series of street closures for the Gay Pride Parade.

The class was run by a fairly new outfit called La Cuisine Paris which apparently opened in October 2009. They have lots of classes at different times all days of the week so if you are a working stiff, a mère au foyer, or a student, there is a good chance you'll be able to find a class that suits your schedule.

There were 7 of us in our english speaking class. Two friends from Hong Kong by way of London, two American grandmas and their granddaughters, and me. We all had a wonderful time learning about these colorful cookies and I am sure that each on of us will be trying them on our own.

We made a green cookie to suit the green-apple vanille crème patissiere filling and then of course we did the obligatoire Chocolate Ganache.

I am excited about trying these recipes while I am here in France and having yet another excuse to go to G. Detou for supplies. I am not however exicted about the fact that I don't have a mixer and will have to use my brute strength and a whisk.

After the class, box of macarons in hand, we scooted home to make a quick dinner before the USA Ghana game. While in France we do things the French way with salad and cheese coming after the main dish. With two kids who actually eat vegetables but don't care for salad dressing, I have taken to just mixing greens in a bowl with dressing and serving salad ingredients on the side with the cheese. Here are some photos of our salad topping plate that the kids pick from while we eat cheese after our main. I added more of everything after this photo but when it comes to the simple beauty of food, less is more.

Hello strangers.

I know. I was so good at feeding you tasty posts and then I fell completely off the wagon. Life got complicated and then got very busy. The good news is that I am now in Paris, France for a few months and will be happy to report on all things food related.

We are still quite jetlagged and instead of spending my evenings blogging, I am trying to get small children to sleep when they are WIDE awake!

We are living in a lovely flat in the 8th arrondissement which is convenient to my husband's office, the kids favorite parc, and the city's oldest bio market (organic). Most people who visit Paris have the unfortunate luck to be staying in a hotel. For the past two years, my husband and I have been coming to Paris for long stretches of time and therefore have been renting apartments. However, I now realize that there are many apartments for rent here for very short-term lets. Even if you are here for a few days you can find yourself a pad with a few rooms including a kitchen. I had a recent absurd conversation with another parent at my daughter's school regarding where to stay in Paris. She and her husband were traveling to Israel and were going to stay in Paris for a few days on either end. She asked me for a recommendation of a place to stay and I then launched into how great it was to stay in apartments and proceeded to give her a list of short-term let agencies. She stopped me mid-sentence and informed me that not only would she never stay in an apartment but that she only stays in 5-star hotels. I tried to convince her of the virtues of having your own kitchen while traveling but she was fixated on room-service. I let her know we should never vacation together.

I love apartments because a) I don't want to have to get dressed to go get coffee in the mornings on vacation b) I generally travel with a knife kit and frankly what's the point if you have no kitchen and c) I like to have an excuse to go to food markets. Now that we are on our third Parisian apartment I will tell you that I hate hotels even more. I love being able to play with food and shopping in foreign markets is such a treat.

So even if you've never been to Paris I bet you have a good idea that fresh food markets abound here and you can't help but stumble over markets selling produce that is bursting with flavor. (see photo above of tonight's quick grab at the market located about 20 steps from my apartment) I of course had all those notions before I came to live here last summer but what I didn't know was that there is a clever little market called Picard here in Paris which only sells frozen food. The insanity of your local Monoprix with loud music, bustling families, and crowded aisles is completely contradicted by the serenity of a Picard. The store is quiet, the people shopping there are quiet and if you've come in with children, you find yourself shushing them because the place is so calm. Most everything is housed in chest type freezers and at the front of the store there are always a few cases of "la sèlection du mois". Those are the unique items they have discounted that month. The products sold here are surprisingly good. Last year we got hooked on mini-ice cream cones. The nice thing about Picard is that they are everywhere and ours happens to be on the corner facing the market street I use to do most of my shopping so when I come home with bags full of fresh produce I can easily stop in to see if they have anything good on special at Picard.

This month we are rewarded with New Zeland rack of lamb on special so I decided to try it and it was fabulous. I seared it and then added a rosemary garlic rub before roasting. Along with some leftover risotto, heirloom tomatoes, a plate of cheese, baguette, and a salad with french vinaigrette - what could be better?? Since they come frozen, I am going to grab a few more racks for my freezer for the special ends this weekend.

I am surprised a store like this has not popped up in the US. 

Dinner.....

I was aiming for a more rare piece of meat but I am still adjusting to a new kitchen with far less equipment than I am used to. I am going to have to get pretty good at the finger-press test to determine how well done a piece of meat is. I think learning to use one's senses rather than a thermometer is a good thing.