Oh Paris, I am not doing you justice

So, I realize that I did not take enough pictures while I was in Paris - which is weird because I took a few hundred of them! But where are the pictures of crusty fresh baked bread? Of handmade chocolates or stores filled with cheese? These were some of my favorite things in Paris, but I did not take pictures of them.

Sometimes I got embarrassed taking pictures of my food in fancier restaurants. It's hard enough to be the young American girl who doesn't speak French (at ALL) and feels intimidated. But the thought of being the young American taking pictures of everything she eats like some sort of crazy person kind of pushed me over the edge.

Plus, I was on my honeymoon! I was enjoying myself! Reveling in the excitement of my brand new marriage and all that jazz. So I don't have as many pictures as I would like. Bear with me. Use your imagination.

One of my favorite meals in Paris was the picnic that Zack and I had in the gardens at Versailles. They are just beautiful.


We sat in a little enclave with a fountain and benches and feasted on a freshly baked baguette, two kinds of cheese (I would tell you what they were if I knew - the guy at the fromagerie picked them for us. All I know is that one was goat and one was cow) and a half bottle of wine (that we got in a grocery store for a few Euros. It had a screw top, but it was delicious). Look how happy Zack looks.


I'm pretty content as well.


On to the palace at Versailles!


Now that it's really fall in New York, I want to be back in Paris even more. It's cold here! And I can't just eat cheese with gay abandon in my regular life. Oh well.

Some people fast today

But not me. As my friend Gina said last night, "I'm against religion trying to dictate what and when I can eat." Plus, who can abstain from eating while looking through pictures of yummy food from Paris? Oh, Paris. I want to go back to that time (three weeks ago) when I was in Paris and didn't have a cold.

So, Zack and I spent a lot of time in the "Jewish Quarter" in Paris. It doesn't seen especially Jewish at this point in time, but it's a cool place to be. Zack really liked the Centre Pompidou - a modern art museum.


But of course, I really just wanted some falafel. Every book I read, every friend I talked to (ok, really just Meredith, but I trust her) said that there was this one awesome falafel place in Paris and gosh darn it, I was going to go there. One day when we were close by, it starting pouring rain, so we made a break for it and ran for the door.


This place was a little different than the other places we went to. First of all, there were plastic plates and paper napkins.


But that just gave the food a chance to outshine the decor. We started with some eggplant in tomato sauce.


It was warm and spicy. I love eggplant. Zack refused to eat falafel (because he's crazy), so he had schwarma.


He liked it. It was kind of like meat stew in a pita. I had the falafel.


It was worth the trip! Crispy on the outside, warm and chewy on the inside - and about as big as my head. I could not finish it - despite my best efforts.

Seriously, this is a not to be missed experience. If you go to Paris - go to L'as Du Falafel.

Steak, fries and couscous

You can get really really hungry in Paris. You spend all day walking around, seeing cool sights, mangling French phrases and then you realize, hey, I need food. One of the places we spent a lot of time walking around in was the Jardin du Luxembourg (that's the Luxembourg garden in American).


We walked around here all day. We saw the little boats.


We took pictures.


And then we went to dinner (many hours later - after a nap. We napped a lot in Paris). The place that we went was Chez Omar.


I read about Chez Omar in David Lebovitz's book - The Sweet Life in Paris. He said it had the best steak frites in Paris, so that's where we went. Zack got this steak.


It's not a traditional grilled piece of meat, it's all tender with yummy sauce on it. It melted away in my mouth like butter. I kept eating it off of his plate. He didn't like that much. The fries were good too (or frites, I guess).


Nice and crispy, soft in the middle, warm all the way through - there's nothing like deep fried potato-y goodness.

Technically, Chez Omar is a Moroccan restaurant, so I figured I'd get some spicy lamb sausage and couscous.


That's about a quarter of my full portion. I could not eat this much food if I tried (especially because I kept eating Zack's food). It was good, but it wasn't steak and fries.

Don't touch that dial, folks, there's more Paris pics and food to come....

I love Paris in the fall

So in case you forgot, Zack and I got married and went to Paris. See, here is Zack pointing at the Notre Dame!


One of the nice things to do in Paris is to stroll along the river, stopping in little shops along the way. There are some little islands in the river Seine, like the Île Saint-Louis. We stopped at this shop:


Zack proposed to me with a bottle of olive oil and vinegar from this shop (one in NY, obviously). This is the original shop so I made Zack take a picture in front of it.

There is a famous ice cream shop on the Île Saint-Louis called Berthillon. The fact that it was a rainy day in no way deterred us from eating ice cream.


I mean look at it!


I had raspberry (that day - we totally went back again because it was so good). The ice cream was creamy and smooth. The flavors were very vivid - the fruit was especially delicious. Look how happy the ice cream makes me!


Ah, to be in Paris again....

Honeymoon in Paris!

Thanks to Paul, I have finally got my honeymoon pictures off of my camera and on to my computer! Hooray! And so, we start with a classic French dish - Croque Monsieur and a classic French location - the Moulin Rouge.


It may be a schmaltzy place to go, but that's what honeymoons are for. We wandered up the street (okay, to be fair, my Lonely Planet: Paris directed us there) and found a little cafe that happened to be the place where Amelie was filmed.


We sat outside, in a cloud of cigarette smoke, drinking espressos and fumbling over French words (I pronounce French atrociously - although it's not just French - I totally never learned how to sound out words correctly, which is ironic, because now I get paid to teach 1st graders how to do that - but I digress). We ordered Croque Monsieurs, which are basically fancy ham and cheese sandwiches.


They were so good. The French really pay attention to ingredients, so the "ham" is thin sliced with lots of flavor and the cheese - do I really have to even say it? The cheese in France is AMAZING pretty much wherever you go. I will never understand how "Swiss cheese" in France is delicious aged Gruyere or Emmenthal and in the US it is white mold with holes in it.

The salad that came with it was surprisingly good as well. The tomatoes were ripe and fresh and the greens were light and crisp. Writing about this is making my mouth water....more Paris food and pictures to come soon, I promise!

Argh!

So, I'm back from Paris! I took a lot of pictures of food for you! And I can't get them off my camera.....

Stay tuned.

I haven't posted in over a month

I've been busy - getting engaged, working full time and planning a wedding in 6 weeks (which is taking place this Saturday). It's not that I haven't been doing anything - in fact my sister and I did the Great West Village Gelato Tour (which we made up and photographed) and I've cooked pies and cookies and yet nothing has inspired me to actually get any words/photos typed into the blog....until tonight!

It's been a stressful couple of days - people canceling and uncanceling and canceling again, people wanting to bring more people and less people and more people to events, food allergies, family drama and a big hurricane that may or may not be blowing into Queens on my freaking wedding day.

I needed a break.

I threw myself into making Coq au Vin (basically, a red wine chicken stew) from Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking. I got it as a wedding present and this was the first recipe I tried. As I parboiled and peeled pearl onions, butchered a chicken and peeled potatoes, I felt better - my stress was still there under the surface, but I couldn't focus on it - there were things to chop, for god's sake! Thyme to be stripped, wine to be poured, lots of things for my brain to be distracted by.

And then the coolest moment of my cooking non-career happened:

As directed by Julia Child (I could hear that flutey voice of hers in my head), I dumped a quarter cup of cognac in the pan with the chicken and LIT IT ON FIRE with a fireplace starter. Flames shot up to the cupboard above immediately (totally freaking Zack out). I shook the pan until the flames subsided, giggling gleefully the entire time. My stress was on vacation - I lit the kitchen on fire! On purpose! And man, the chicken tasted good after that.

"I should have taken a picture!" I bemoaned to Zack later. "My readers would have loved to see that!"

"Sure," he said. "And maybe next time, you don't light alcohol on fire under a wooden cupboard."

In my defense, the cupboard did not catch on fire. He's such a worrier.