May is the month of holidays in France. There are eleven public holidays a year, called jours fériés, which we might call “bank holidays” in the United States. They’re official holidays/dates when government offices, schools, banks, and most stores are closed, except for a few supermarkets, convenience stores, and bakeries, which need to follow certain rules as to when they can close in the summer, so they’re…
I have to eat fruit every day. If I don’t, I wither away psychologically. When I was in New York for a while this winter, it was tough because there weren’t a lot of fruits available. I like apples and pears very much, but local pears had finished and while an apple a day may keep the doctor away, I needed something a little more exciting to…
How excited was I to get an invitation to be a speaker at the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Litfest festival at the Ballymaloe Cookery School? It popped into my mailbox a few months ago and although I had been to Ballymaloe a few years back, I remembered the exceptional food of Cork, Ireland, and the lovely people – which meant there was no way in heck I was going…
I was trying to explain to my French other-half what an incubator was. In America, we don’t use the term just for babies, but we use it to describe groups that exist in places like San Francisco, where new ideas are born from creative minds which are often the result of thinking “outside the box.” There are the tech giants, like Apple, Facebook, and Google, that started that…
People see the outdoor markets in Paris and think that everyone does their shopping there. But if you work a 9-to-5 jobs, or whatever hours normal people work (ie: not me), it’s hard to take a few hours off to go leisurely pick out your fruits and vegetables – not including the time waiting in line behind madame, selecting the two figs she is buying as…
A number of decades ago, I was lured away from gin by other liquors; namely whiskey, bourbon, and other non-clear libations. There were no martinis and no gin and tonics in my cocktail repertoire. Back in the day, I used to go out and have 3 or 4 martinis, and have a good time. Sometimes, someone at work would bring a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin…
Whenever I visit a foreign country, I go to the supermarket. I’ve found myself pushing carts through supermarkets in countries, from Mexico and Lebanon, to Italy and Portugal. Not only does it help with my vocabulary, and provide a little glimpse of how the locals actually eat, but I invariably find a number of things to stash in my suitcase which are better souvenirs than…
I didn’t believe them when they told me, but when I was in Washington, D.C. a few months back, when having dinner with my friends Carol and Joe, they swore that if I stopped at Zahav in Philadelphia on the way back, that I’d have a life-changing experience. While I wish that at least several times a day I’d have a life-changing experience (sometimes I…
A few years back, all of us elderly ladies and gents who were blogging for a while were suddenly surprised (and delighted) at a group of young ‘uns, in their teenage years, who up and started food blogs. And let me tell you, it’s really nice to see young people doing something worthwhile with their time — like cooking and baking, for example. My introduction…
A
Get David's newsletter sent right to your Inbox!
Sign up for my newsletter and get my FREE guidebook to the best bakeries and pastry shops in Paris...
