I’ve had this book on my shelf for a very long time, and I’m not sure why I haven’t got around to reading it; I guess I just haven’t been in the mood for a twenty-something-in-love-in-Paris memoir with recipes.
I’ve finally read it. Turns out this might be a Thing. To the point where I’m tempted to go look at Amazon and check out If you like this, you might like…
Elizabeth Bard is a romantic, preferring museums over night clubs and dreaming of living in the past. She begins her story with “I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date” and goes from there, describing weekends in his French flat and exploring the city, the food, and their developing relationship. It’s definitely nice to know that they do end up together; it makes it a more comforting read, to know the ending.
The story is basically an analysis of an intercultural relationship, as well as the somewhat difficult* road she took to get from innocent-arrogant-American thinking she can do anything to eventually writing this book. She had a lot of ‘who am I and what am I’ moments that struck a chord with me. It’s a nice story overall, and the memoir aspect is touching – her remembrances of her mentally ill father, the difficulty of making friends in France, negotiating with her own and his parents: it’s well written, with appropriate pathos but no eye-roll-y over-the-top woe-is-me wailing. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would; I was at the hankering-to-keep-reading stage at 11pm.
And every chapter has recipes at the end.
I’ve never been especially keen to try French cooking. For a long time I harboured a deep-seated desire to make croissants, until I saw a video about the endless folding, and then voila! I was cured. Anyway, I suspect that this somewhat American take on French cooking 
is likely to be a bit easier for me. And when I saw the recipe for chouquettes, I thought – really? that easy? So I tried, and I made them, and they worked, and now I can make chouquettes. I AM VERY EXCITED. This might be a new thing for me.
Available from Fishpond.
*yes, the difficulty is all within the context of white privilege; she admits that she isn’t exactly in the hardest place in the world, but I think we all know that when nothing is going our way it feels like the worst thing ever.
In the cupcake book, these are dark chocolate wedding cupcakes. And they’re good, ok, but I don’t think they’re quite that good. Now maybe that’s my fault because I didn’t use Grand Marnier – I used orange blossom water instead – and I used Greek yoghurt instead of creme fraiche – but whatever. I also didn’t make the very rich chocolate icing, which in the recipe included double cream; icing sugar, milk and cocoa seemed to me to do the job.
In which Karlee talks GINGERBREAD HOUSES and I’m living a
Anyway, I’ve just discovered Dinner at Tiffani’s. It’s Tiffani Thiessen having people over for dinner, and cooking for them. All the people she has over are famous (…ish…), and she talks through what she’s feeding them. STAGED. But what I have liked, around the amazing American celebrity nature of it (with Tiffani chatting to the camera in between segments), is that she often gets the celebrities to help with the cooking. And I’ve only watched… um, three… today… but the number of them who don’t seem to know anything about cooking is a bit sad. One of them asked what is that? and the answer was thyme! (who knows whether that was staged.)
1. A dessert that worked.
On 
True story: a few weeks ago we ordered Indian takeaway and it was dire. My beloved, frustrated, announced “we must learn to cook good Indian!”
Acts of Kitchen 