September 2004 Archive

September 29, 2004

Happy Birthday Chocolate & Zucchini!

"- Bonjour madame la boulangère! I would like to buy a cake for my blog. - What a lucky blog! Is this a special occasion? - Why yes, it is my blog's first birthday! - My my my, how time flies! I remember your blog from when it was just a wee little baby blog, with just a handful of posts -- and now it's one year-old already? - Yes, I am very prou...

"Happy Birthday Chocolate & Zucchini!" continues »

September 27, 2004

Les Petites Horreurs de Cécile

Cécile's Little Horrors. What a fantastic movie or book title this would make. So far though, it is merely a sign in the window of a cheese store in Bergerac (Périgord), where we bought our tray of Cabécous. Handwritten on a thin circle of wood taken from the bottom of a cheese box, it is here to introduce a selection of extra extra dry -- and I...

"Les Petites Horreurs de Cécile" continues »

September 24, 2004

Petites Tomates au Pecorino

[Plum Tomatoes with Pecorino] The last tasty plum tomatoes of the season, a piece of pecorino cheese your parents brought back from their Florence getaway (oh how well they know you), five minutes of preparation, and here's a pretty and tasty little appetizer to bring to your neighbor-friends' place when invited for the apéro (pre-dinner drink)....

"Petites Tomates au Pecorino" continues »

September 22, 2004

Confiture de Noix du Périgord

The great thing about bringing food souvenirs back from your vacation -- besides choosing them, buying them, fitting them somewhere in your already overbulging suitcase, hoping and praying and crossing your fingers that they don't break/shatter/squish/smoosh/leak -- is that it prolongs the magic indefinitely as you savor your goodies, little by l...

"Confiture de Noix du Périgord" continues »

September 21, 2004

Chocolate & Zucchini Meets Chez Pim (and Vice-Versa)

Pim and I had been talking about meeting for a while : it was just a matter of patiently waiting for the opportunity to arise, since her job has her fly into Paris regularly. It finally did, and we had dinner yesterday at Flora, a restaurant operated by the young lady chef Flora Mikula, and about which I had read good things. We had a fabulous t...

"Chocolate & Zucchini Meets Chez Pim (and Vice-Versa)" continues »

September 20, 2004

Our Smelly Travelling Companions

Try spending eight hours in a car on a sunny day, with a tray of twenty cabécous in the backseat. It's an interesting exercise in willpower and determination to bring home the magic. Not the most orthodox way to age fresh cheese for consumption at their optimal stage of ripeness, but it certainly works! Ah, what one woudn't do, for the love of c...

"Our Smelly Travelling Companions" continues »

September 15, 2004

Cabécou

Maxence and I have left the Vosges, and after a diagonal drive all across the Great Kingdom of France, we now find ourselves in the Périgord, the Land of Aplenty. We will spend a few days here, enjoying the breathtaking sights, walking around medieval villages, and eating as many Cabécous as we can lay our hands on. Cabécou is this little jewel ...

"Cabécou" continues »

September 12, 2004

Lunch at Bürestubel

Oh what a wonderful feast of a lunch we had yesterday! Maxence, our friend Baptiste and I drove to Strasbourg for the day, and decided to have lunch at Bürestubel, a small Alsacian inn recommended by the GaultMillau guidebook. It is located in Pfulgriesheim, a village just outside of Strasbourg, in a beautifully renovated farm building. The weat...

"Lunch at Bürestubel" continues »

September 10, 2004

Coffee Cake à la Myrtille

[Blueberry Coffee Cake] At La Pommeraie, the fruit farm where we picked a large amount of blueberries earlier this week, they gave out little leaflets about the different kinds of fruit they grow, giving out instructions on how to keep them, and a few, wonderfully straightforward recipes -- tarts and compotes, clafoutis and jams. This is how I l...

"Coffee Cake à la Myrtille" continues »

September 9, 2004

Pick-Your-Own Happiness

One of the things I love about driving around the countryside with Maxence is that we share the same enthusiasm for anything that's hand-painted on a wooden sign and planted onto the side of the road. Admittedly, it is the signs advertising edibles and drinkables that receive the most attention, but we also like to think that we could very well s...

"Pick-Your-Own Happiness" continues »

September 7, 2004

Chez Christine Ferber

Maxence and I are spending a few blissful and brightly sunny days, hidden out in my parents' vacation house in the Vosges mountains. Today, we took a happy little daytrip to Alsace, the region just on the other side of the mountain, famous for its wines, its storks, and little houses with pointy roofs and exposed beams. Amongst other fabulous th...

"Chez Christine Ferber" continues »

September 6, 2004

Le Quartier Chinois

Saturday was the first day of my vacation, and Maxence and I decided to take a little trip to Asia : all it took was a twenty-minute motorcycle ride to the Parisian Chinatown where I had, for reasons I cannot fathom, never been before. We sat down at a Vietnamese restaurant for a bo-bun (a delicious salads of noodles and beef with lemongrass, so...

"Le Quartier Chinois" continues »

September 4, 2004

Zucchini Polenta Tart

I have a particular soft spot for polenta and anything cornmeal. Unfortunately, they are not at all common in France : I have occasionally seen polenta served at restaurants (and I will reliably dart onto any dish that mentions it as a component, especially if it claims to be croustillante), but it is rather hard to find in French food stores. ...

"Zucchini Polenta Tart" continues »

September 1, 2004

2000 Merlot from the Las Niñas Winery, Chili

I am very proud to be participating in the very first World Wide Wine Blogging Wednesday, imagined, organized and brought to us by Lenn. The theme for this first edition is "inexpensive new world merlot that is not from the US". I am proud to be participating, but boy, that was close : I'll admit that I almost didn't take part. Why? Well, out o...

"2000 Merlot from the Las Niñas Winery, Chili" continues »