Tag Archives: fromage

drizzle be damned

Posted in French by

IMG_1976I gotback from the beautiful, sunny, warm South of France to wet, gray Paris a couple of days ago. Not surprising, but still deflating.

Yesterday, I was wandering around running errands in a dour mood, but I kept noticing charming things despite myself. So I started taking pictures and making a list of them. I posted it on Instagram and am now pasting it here because I realize I have not been writing as often as I’d like.

So… an inventory of delights encountered during a walk in Montmartre:

1. Joyfully screaming kids behind walls shielding a school playground. (At a certain hour of the afternoon you hear this on nearly every block.) The fact you can only imagine what they are getting up to makes it even cuter.

2. Pretty tilework taken to the level of art.

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3. A cat hanging out in an antique store.IMG_1967

4. Hazelnuts in their full natural packaging. First time I’ve seen this and it’s beautiful.

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5. As are french fruit displays.IMG_1968

6. As is vintage french lettering.

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7. As is my tied-for-favorite cheese shop…

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8. …from which i bought the most gorgeous and delicious goat cheese.

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The end. / Fin.

Have a good weekend!

the stuff of my dairy dreams

Posted in foreign food festival by

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I have written about my fruitless search for rose glace in Paris before. About three weeks ago I finally found it – nearly 25 years after the first time I tasted it – at an ice cream shop just a few blocks from my new place in Belleville. And I got doubly lucky, because they also had violet flavor. It tasted sort of soap-like but still wonderful.

I am triply lucky – or very, very unlucky, depending on how you look at it – that the most well-suited cheese shop for my particular palette is also located just a few blocks from my place.

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See that top row of round cheeses? It is made up entirely of goudas. The first time I came in I bought truffle gouda and 3-year aged gouda, along with a humongous ball of burrata. It cost the same amount as the rest of my groceries for that week. I have since returned for the aged gouda at least four more times. It is crystalline and sweet and tart and creamy and every other adjective you might use to describe the world’s most delicious cheese.

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My friend got wind of my cheese obsession and recommended that I try aged comté, which I also found at the local shop. It was heavenly, though aged gouda remains my best cheese friend. That’s the comté and some chevre, below.

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Just for good measure, I leave you with the vitrine of what may be the world’s most beautiful cheese shop, in my old neighborhood of Montmartre. (I’ve been jumping around the northeastern section of Paris and its outskirts a lot; between Barbès and Belleville I spent three weeks in Montmartre and two weeks in Montreuil.) It was in this shop that I bought the best goat cheese I’ve ever had. It ate like cake.

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mission update

Posted in travel by

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It has been a month since my last post. I don’t know why I haven’t written. It’s not like I’ve been too busy. In fact, I have had more time on my hands than I know what to do with. I’ve spent much of it dedicating myself to something that Jean-Paul Belmondo, in my favorite line from Breathless, calls “improving Franco-American relations.” But for some reason my brain and body are unwilling to devote any mental or physical resources to more puritanically productive pursuits like writing or finding a job or studying my French verb conjugations.

Instead, I have spent far too many hours lazing about with a growing sense of distress at my inability to snap out of it. Last week I finally gave myself a strongly worded pep talk and since then I have been getting back, slowly, to responsible-person things. Today I’m forcing myself to write something here even though the words are coming slow as molasses and I circle back every five seconds to approach from a new angle.

I have been wanting to report on my progress attempting to fall in love with Paris. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to unlock some hidden depths of feeling for this city, though I can’t say I’ve fallen heads over heels yet. But I have felt the first stirrings of passion, and I’m pretty sure it has everything to do with my repeated return to the following activities: Continue reading →