Food blog

Paris food blog

Food is so much a part of this trip, from shopping, to cooking, to snacks, to gourmet, to trying to figure out new appliances in French.  But not everyone wants to hear about it all the time. 

Thus the food blog.  If food blog appears in the title, read or skip as you choose.  With Kate's nut allergy and so many of us trying not to overspend, you'll see a lot of home cooking, but with French ingredients.

 

Apr 28:

Dinner and wine were not listed on the plane tickets, only breakfast, so it ended up being the fourth/fifth meal of the day.  The wine tasted good, but left me feeling like I was going to faint.  Weird.

Apr 29/30

The most messed up time day of my life.  Only appropriate that when both rooms woke up, we both went out and bought strawberries, baguettes, cheese and juice.  Oh well, breakfast and lunch.  I think we forgot to eat dinner on the first day.  Sleep was the priority.  While I have not figured out the microwave/convection oven, we did figure out the automatic setting for pork roast, which was delicious once Kate made gravy.  More baguettes. Since then we have toast chocolate crossants, and made tuna melts, all on the auto setting for pork roast.  I'll figure the rest out eventually.

The shopping superstore across the street (Monoprix) had a section of 3 gallon smelling jars set up, so a demonstrator could teach about the different bouquets of wine: earthy, leather, fruity, preserved fruit, oak and spice.  Red wine progresses through different bouquets as it ages.  The bottles were filled with items like leather, not with wine, so that you can separate them out for teaching.  However, I still can't tell from a bottle what to expect except that young wines are fruity.  They don't have the sweet/dry scale on the labels here either.

We went out for gelato which was very pretty as well as delicious. They press spatulas of gelato on to a narrow cone, and the result looks like a rose.

May 1

Today is MayDay, or labour day.  Many stores are closed, but some bakeries are open.  Sherrill and I again both bought tarts, which were actually bland, but multigrain baguettes warm from the bakery were fabulous.  MayDay is also the day for lilies of the valley which are on the table.  All the plants in the window boxes were dead, so we replaced the kitchen ones with live basil and thyme.  The next challenge was learning to cook on an induction (magnetic) stovetop.  The final result (beef bourguignon ) it still cooking for a few hours, so we will see.

Alia