Too Beautiful To Be Food

Now I ask you, could you bring yourself to eat something so surpassingly gorgeous?  It was tough.  And yet, an eggplant is nothing if not food.  Left to its own devices it will simply ripen, wither, and reseed itself.  Which, when you come to think of it, is about all we ourselves do, so who am [...]

Why There Are So Many Cats In France

Cats are absolutely everywhere in France.  A few, like Beppo, may have come from abroad to snooze through la vie française, but judging by how many people are surprised and delighted to make the acquaintance of an actual American cat, I rather think he’s in the minority.  And, thank the cat goddess, he normally stays close to [...]

Black Is Beautiful

Truffles for two, please.  Oh, and a side of foie gras, if you will. 
For Eric’s last dinner with us before he heads back to the States, we decided to throw both caution and our investment in the truffle economy where they would do the most good: namely, directly onto our plates.  We had two truffles, each about 20 grams, [...]

Le Plus Beau Moment

Here’s what I wore to the Inaugural Ball, which I described to various reporters as “le plus beau moment de ma vie,” the best moment of my life.
The fact that our inaugural festivities took place in Avignon instead of Washington didn’t matter a bit; we watched America celebrate on a huge screen, in real time, [...]

A Bite Of Black Gold

I guess they got asked so many times for the recipe that the nice ladies from the Uzès Office of Tourism  just wrote it on the tablecloth:
3 kg truffles
3000 eggs
20 litres oil
30 litres cream
And that’s all they wrote.  But that’s not the whole story, of course, because to pull it off you need a town [...]

Old Is The Color

We’re all getting older all the time, a fact that has been forcefully brought home to me this week by having two birthday boys in the house at once.  But no matter how old they get, they’ll never be really old, not by French standards.

Here old is measured in centuries, as in “we’re having a [...]

Someone’s In The Kitchen

Before one even has a chance to get the post-holiday blues, in France it’s time for galettes des rois, which could sweeten up the most stalwart Grinch.  As I explained here, there are a number of rituals associated with this cake, but our main ritual this year was to collect fèves.  Just so you know, we [...]

La Belle Neige

A beautiful snow is falling. At lunch in the café today, the proprietor ducked as a regular customer with impeccable aim threw a snowball into the midst of lunch service.  Later, when the second one hit, he first yelled “pas de boules de neige dans le café” in a fruitless attempt to forbid snowballs to enter, [...]

Something To Sweeten Your Year

Here, in all its heady glory, is the Cognac Sorbet our friend Barbara made on New Year’s Eve.  With its mint leaf and lemon zest décor, it’s a minor miracle, blending the warmth of the Cognac with the wintry chill of the smooth ice crystals.  And you don’t even need a sorbet maker to produce this [...]

A Beautiful New Year

The parties are over.  The dust of 2008 is largely swept away, the final load of holiday dishes is sloshing gently in the dishwasher.

The last crumbs of our gaudy and gay bûche de Noël have been brushed from the table.

The presents have been opened and admired.  Not so many as in years before la crise financière, but enough to [...]