I’m back from Israel and I must say, we had great flights and a wonderful time seeing and experiencing different parts of the country. The new camera did not disappoint. I have lots of beautiful pictures to share, but as I took almost 800 photos, I need to pare them down a bit before I do so. Once I have the pictures ready, I’ll share more info about the trip.

I’m still recovering from jet lag. It hit me much harder this time than it ever has before and I’ve been going to bed at about 7 for the past couple of nights. Tonight that’s not an option so we’ll see how I do and how late I can stay up and remain coherent.

I’ve been holding off on posting, hoping that I could finish my Paris travelogue, but it doesn’t look likely to happen any time soon. I took so many pretty pictures and if you’re interested, go take a look at them on flickr.

My CSA is having an organizational meeting tonight and I volunteered to bake for the “drinks & dessert” after the meeting. I baked a ton of stuff over the weekend and the past couple of days but I didn’t take any pictures because A) I’m silly, and B) I didn’t want to slow down. Here’s what I made: lemon bars, chocolate mint brownies, cream cheese brownies, peanut butter cookies, molasses spice jumbles, and yellow cake baby bundt cakes. I also baked for the Relay for Life bake sale that we’re having at work tomorrow. For that I made Chocolate-Apricot cake (a dense, fudgy torte) and a yellow cake baked in a Mary Anne pan, which I’ll fill with a raspberry jam & raspberry liqueur mixture. I expect there will be some cookies & things left over from the CSA meeting that I can bring to the bake sale.

I got a new camera today, a Canon 800IS, so expect some new pretty pictures soon. I’m leaving for Israel on Saturday and I will do my best to eat as much falafel as possible and to photograph every one.

Our second day in Paris greeted us with sunny skies and surprisingly mild temperatures. Our first intended stop for the day was the marche aux fleurs on Ile de la Cite. We took the metro to Cite and decided to walk up towards Notre Dame before stopping to smell the roses. Ha, ha. We each got a crepe on the way; sucre for me and stewed pommes for Mom. I think these were the only crepes we had during the trip, which is sort of sad.

After taking in the beautiful flowers we headed across a little bridge that took us to Ile St. Louis, famed home of Berthillon and some cute shops.

I’ve been to Paris a bunch of times and in all seasons, but I’d never been to Berthillon even though I’ve intended to a bunch of times.

There were so many delicious sounding flavors (I should have written them down or taken a picture. Whoops.) and it took us a few minutes to settle on what we would get. We decided to share and we got one scoop of mandarin and one scoop of red peach. It was an excellent combination, as the mandarin was sort of tart and bitter and the peach was sweet. Both were very true to their fruit flavors. De-lightful.

Once we polished off our sorbet, Mom and I meandered over to the 6th arr. I wanted to hit up Pierre Herme eventually, but I can’t recall if there was anything we wanted to specifically see or do on our way there. Doesn’t really matter, because we saw and did a lot on the way. One thing you’ll find a lot of in Paris is beautiful chocolate shops with beautiful window displays. The first two photos are from Patrick Roger and the second two are from Pierre Marcolini. I still can’t get over the marzipan fish from Patrick Roger.

This was a day of progressive eating. We shared a cheese baguette sandwich around lunch time and we continued to walk while we ate it. Lots of walking makes one hungry for a little something every so often. Luckily we came upon Gerard Mulot at just the right time. After seeing the beautiful tortes behind the window, there was no way I could resist going inside.

They had a few stools in the back of the shop, which was quite a relief to our tired tootsies. We split a brioche au sucre and rested for a few minutes while we decided where to go next. I really enjoyed the brioche au sucre but I think I’m more of a brioche person than Mom is.

On March 13 I flew from White Plains, NY to Detroit in order to meet up with my Mom for our flight to Paris. White Plains is only about 30 minutes from where I live & work and it’s much easier to go there rather then schlep to Newark or JFK. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I hate driving more than 20 minutes or so at a time and since I never want to take anyone to Newark or JFK, I will never ask anyone to take me there. End of that story.

The flight to Paris was fairly uneventful. Northwest runs an A330 on the DTW-CDG route and the seats all have their own entertainment systems, which is half nice and half annoying, because if you’re not wearing headphones you can hear what everyone else is watching/listening to. I didn’t sleep very well on the flight but I snapped back together once we arrived in Paris. We quickly cleared passport control and made our way in to the city via ‘Les Cars Air France’ a.k.a. the Air France Bus from CDG to the Arc de Triomphe. We dilly-dallied around the hotel for 45 minutes until our room was ready, then we dropped off our things and headed out for the day.
Walk, walk, walk. First stop? Lunch! Granterroirs was on our list of places to try and since it was in the general direction of where we wanted to go for the day, we did! Granterroirs is a restaurant/gourmet food shop and they sell a wide variety of gourmet ingredients from all over France.

It was cozy and very busy when we arrived but there was a small table for two just waiting for us. Mom had caballaud with vegetables (carrot, zucchini, perhaps summer squash) in a phyllo pouch with a beurre blanc sauce and salad. I had deliciously marinated salmon (raw, essentially like thickly sliced gravlax but not salty) drizzled with hazelnut oil and a nice green salad. With a little Polaine bread on the side, it was a wonderful start to the afternoon.

In our jet-lagged state, we knew we wouldn’t be up for anything intellectually challenging so we designated our first day as a shopping day. After lunch, we meandered over to Printemps to pick up some of the things we’d planned on buying, like fancy French face cream and new Longchamp totes. La, la, la I love Printemps. We spent a couple of hours there and then took a nice long walk back to the Champs Elysees.

We stopped at Paul to pick up a pain aux raisins for Mom and a cafe creme and croissant for me. We back to the hotel to enjoy our treats, relax a bit before dinner, and plan for the next day. Relaxing was very relaxing indeed and we decided we were too pooped and not hungry enough to go anywhere major for dinner. We decided to have a picnic in the room, so we headed down the champs a bit to get sandwiches at Pomme de Pain. The last stop of the night was Laduree. The late hour meant there was a limited selection of pastries and macarons to choose from and we settled on a tarte tatin and three small macarons: cassis violette, cafe, and caramel au beurre sale.

I’ve been back for a week now (sad) and I’ve recovered but I haven’t yet unpacked for the most part. I really need to do laundry. I’ve started to put my trip photos up on flickr, but I’m not nearly done editing and I’ve realized that if I try to write the trip into one post, it’s going to be exhausting for me to write and for you to read. I’ll try to break it up over the next few days.

This weekend was very fun. On Saturday afternoon we worked on our taxes (not fun) but then went out for a nice dinner at The Dressing Room in Westport. I’m one of those people who has a hard time switching orders once they’ve latched on to something good and I’m afraid there’s no exception this time. We’ve dined at The Dressing Room three times and each time I’ve ordered the pan roasted trout, but this time it was accompanied by baby bok choy instead of roasted brussels sprouts. Sunday morning we headed into NYC early to meet Kate and Alex for brunch at Enid’s. I had huevos rancheros for breakfast because who doesn’t love eggs and beans in the morning? After that and about four cups of coffee, we were ready to meet the day. Kate and Alex showed us around Brooklyn for a while, then they headed off to run errands and we made our way back to Manhattan. We lollygag’d around Union Square for a bit. The weather was clear but cold and there was a lot of people out and about. We listened to a fun impromptu show by The Crooners and watched the dogs in the dog run for a good twenty minutes. Then we headed up to Madison Square Park to meet Eric and Tanvi for some Shake Shack action. Eric, Jeremie, and I had been there before but this was Tanvi’s first visit. We waited in line for a little over an hour before we placed our order, which isn’t too bad as Shake Shack lines go. We were all pretty darn cold by the time we got our food but Shake Shack is so tasty it was ok.

That’s all for now. Paris is coming.

I’m having trouble figuring out exactly how to write this because there’s so much to say. That’s my fault for not updating in about six weeks. I’ve been trying not to use the computer too much at home since I’m on it all day at work but I need to make some time for regular updates. I promise I’ll try once I get back from my next trip! I’m off to Paris on Tuesday and I’m very excited. Here’s a few works and lots of pictures.

Since the last update I’ve been to Ann Arbor once (hello, Zingermans) and to Grand Rapids twice (hello Mom & Dad). I celebrated my birthday in Grand Rapids

29th birthday

with the most fantastic cake

strawberry glace from the Grand Plaza hotel

Last weekend was Jeremie’s birthday and we celebrated with a nice dinner at home with

seven layer cake. I did not bake it.

Jeremie’s sister, Adena, visited us for the weekend and we had a very relaxing time. On Sunday before Adena headed back to school, we baked hamentaschen.

apricot and strawberry. yum!

I used my Auntie Na’s dough recipe and they turned out great. It’s a very sticky dough and the hamentaschen stay together well and are very tender. Just how I like them.

Time to get some sleep. I’ll take lots of pictures in Paris and I’ll have much to tell you in a week!

The ship has sailed on posting pictures of xmas time treats and I’m well on my way back to healthy town. Thank the darn goodness for that. Trader Joe has stopped carrying nice boxes of bulgur and that makes me very sad. I’ll have to get over to Wild Oats and see what they have in the bulk foods department.

Jeremie and I went to Belgium for MLK weekend to visit his family and we had a very good time. We flew Air France from EWR->CDG and then took the train from the airport to downtown Brussels. Sadly, no miles for the train part but the service in the AF car is very nice. We got in to Brussels on Friday afternoon and we spent the afternoon relaxing at his Oma’s apartment and then had a nice dinner with the family. On Saturday we spent some time exploring town and we stopped in the Japanese garden, which was very beautiful and I hadn’t seen before. On Sunday we drove to Bruges with his Aunt, Uncle, and Oma. Bruges was incredible and I highly recommend visiting if you’re in the area. You can see my pictures of Bruges here. It was a beautiful day and there were lots of people around. After Bruges, we drove North to the seaside. I had never been to the North Sea and I’ve always wanted to see it (the Noord Zee! How could you not want to see that?) and it was really cool-looking. Very different than other seas or oceans but I’m not quite sure how to describe that. We took a nice walk on the pier at Blankenburg and had some tea De Haan before heading back to Brussels. I didn’t take any pictures on the pier because I am afraid of Things Falling Over The Edge but I think Jeremie did. If so, I’ll add a link in. On Monday morning we took the train from Brussels back to CDG and then hopped on the plane back to Newark. We only had an hour and 15 mins for the connection and we had to check our luggage in. By the time we were done with that, it was about 40 minutes before takeoff. We walked and walked to the gate and when we got there, instead of a plane we were met by a bus. We were able to get right on the bus but it was about 25 minutes before the absolutely packed bus left the “gate” and headed off to the plane. Now, I’m a gal that likes to get on the plane early and get situated and getting to the plane 10 minutes before scheduled takeoff was not my idea of a good time. I figured that given the timing, we were on the last bus but about 15 minutes after we got on, a whole new crowd of people got on the plane. Almost every seat was full but that’s ok because Air France has great service. Plus, every seat has it’s own entertainment system and there’s a camera mounted on the front of the plane so you can watch what’s going on on the runway and even watch the plane take off. It was pretty cool.

Since I’ve gotten back, I’ve planned trips to Paris and Israel. Three cheers for travel!

I am munching on raw almonds and to my surprise, they are much tastier than their roasted, salted, or smoked counterparts. Mmmn, almondy.

As usual, I am behind on putting things up. Pictures of homemade marshmallows and other holiday treats to come soon.

ps. Happy New Year!

I grew my hair out for a couple of years so that I would have up-do-able hair for the various weddings I was involved in, including my own. I promised myself that after I got married, I’d cut my hair off for Locks of Love. A few months before the wedding I got really excited about cutting off my hair and I even made a hair cut appointment for two days after the wedding. However, as the day drew near I knew I wasn’t ready to do it. Six months later, I finally flew home and pulled the plug. Yes, I still go home-home to get my hair cut. Yes, I know that’s not exactly normal.

before

and then

after.

It’s fun, but I’m still getting used to it.

butter & cream, cooking, cooking, done!

Cutting the caramels up wasn’t too difficult, except for the fact that I can’t make multiple straight lines to save my life. Let’s just say there were a variety of sizes available for sampling. Cutting up the wax paper squares didn’t go that much smoother, but the end result was some pretty little candies.