I recently told someone that I was totally over my phase of buying kitchen stuff all the time. With a straight face, I explained that I was content with my current equipment, and that I needed nothing more, really. I'm afraid this is true in a distorted version of reality that exists only in my head. I can delude myself all I want, but the fact remains that, over the past three months, I have acqui...

[Blue, White, and Red] Today is the French national holiday, known in the English-speaking world as Bastille Day, but simply referred to as le 14 juillet in France. I wish I could offer some sort of culinary tradition tied to this holiday, but as I explained in this past post, there is none: the celebrations revolve mainly around fireworks, military parades (I had to interrupt the typing of this po...

Although smoothies have been around for decades in North America, only in recent years have they grown popular in Europe, and in France in particular*. We call them smoothies too, if you want to know, except we don't pronounce the final "s," even in the plural, and the "th" sound, ever a challenge for the French tongue to produce, varies in accuracy. Most people opt for a straightforward smoo-zee,...

When it comes to ice cream, I am hopelessly predictable. As far as I'm concerned, if the ice cream parlor, glacier, or gelateria offers dark chocolate, pistachio, and/or yogurt, he might as well not have any other flavor: I am blind to them. I always go through the motions of hesitation, though (I scratch my temple, chew my lower lip, and hum lightly -- it's easy to fake, really), for the benefit o...

Paris supermarkets stopped giving away plastic bags for free last year. The deal is this: you can either 1- bring your own shopping bag, 2- purchase a jumbo reusable plastic bag, or 3- purchase a flimsy plastic bag if you really insist. Despite the corporate claim that they're pretty (um, hello?), the jumbo reusable plastic bags they sell at my supermarket are ugly. But I admit they're sturdy and v...