While eating lunch, the French discuss dinner. While eating dinner, they discuss the next dinner. Or the quality of the food and wine they are presently eating [which can cause raised voices]. Or what they ate last night [clenched fists, dirty looks]. Or the merits of particular cheeses [family estrangements, marital breakups]. Or the best place to buy cheeses, sausages, meat, wine, bread, olives...
My hostess, Marie-Denise, is a wildly energetic cook and gardener, the producer of exquisite meals taking three to four dreamy hours to consume [and far longer to digest]. She's the kind of kitchen magician you think of when speaking of French home cooks. Last night she whipped up this delicious, visually pleasing starter in just 5 minutes. Best of all, this can be made 6 hours ahead and only improves with refrigeration. What more can a harried hostess want? Click to read more...
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
IT AIN'T EASY, MY FRIENDS
What an idea! What a concept! Stop sending chatty e-mails from foreign places about foreign food to a thousand of my closest friends! Instead, blog to thousands (hopefully) of new friends who might actually want to read my ruminations and recipes from the Taj Mahal or the Temple of Luxor, the Great Wall of China or the Eiffel Tower.
How hard could it be to set up a blog, I thought optimistically. After all, I can cook a five course meal - plus orduerves! - for 20 people without breaking into a sweat or murdering the veggies. I can whip up Chinese, French, Greek, Moroccan, Cuban and Colombian, Italian, chocolate, Turkish, and maybe a score of other cuisines. Blogs are, I was assured, a cinch to set up. A kid could do it! Just click here, and there, and...
Oops, jeez, what happened? My scrambled eggs looked better than this screen! The vision and the reality just did not match...but that isn't anything new in my life.
If you are ever told how simple a blog is to set up, consider the source. I'm here to tell you it's totally counterintuitive (to me, at least), incredibly obtuse and frustrating. Maybe the problem is that I'm not a kid? So, yes, this blog is a bit tentative and unfinished-looking, but it will improve. One of these days.
And the ruminations from the Sphinx, or the ancient stone city of Petra, or the oldest city in the world (that's Damascus, or so they claim), or the southern coast of Turkey will soon come your way...along with recipes that will make you think you've come along with me!
How hard could it be to set up a blog, I thought optimistically. After all, I can cook a five course meal - plus orduerves! - for 20 people without breaking into a sweat or murdering the veggies. I can whip up Chinese, French, Greek, Moroccan, Cuban and Colombian, Italian, chocolate, Turkish, and maybe a score of other cuisines. Blogs are, I was assured, a cinch to set up. A kid could do it! Just click here, and there, and...
Oops, jeez, what happened? My scrambled eggs looked better than this screen! The vision and the reality just did not match...but that isn't anything new in my life.
If you are ever told how simple a blog is to set up, consider the source. I'm here to tell you it's totally counterintuitive (to me, at least), incredibly obtuse and frustrating. Maybe the problem is that I'm not a kid? So, yes, this blog is a bit tentative and unfinished-looking, but it will improve. One of these days.
And the ruminations from the Sphinx, or the ancient stone city of Petra, or the oldest city in the world (that's Damascus, or so they claim), or the southern coast of Turkey will soon come your way...along with recipes that will make you think you've come along with me!
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