Shaboom and Keri take Paris

Shaboom of French Skinny, and Keri of My Year Started Tuesday Night are in Paris together RIGHT NOW. The blogosphere is all atwitter (sorry, that pun for my beloved father-in-law, who is very punny). Keri had to take a business trip to Brussels, and had one day off, and decided to take the fast train to Paris for the day, and Shaboom is showing her around. I love it when worlds collide! Except when those worlds send me mouth watering, taunting emails filled with photos of where I am not. Today we will go to Larchmont and eat Village Pizzeria. Some small consolation for NOT being in Paris, eating for two. 

death to foodies!

I had the movie Julie and Julia on in the background when I was sewing the other day, and I was so hungry by the time it was over. But I didn't want just anything. I wanted pan sauteed bruschetta with fresh tomatoes, basil, and garlic. I wanted roast chicken with mixed vegetables. I wanted steak au poivre and frites. I wanted a big glass or meritage and some kale with garlic and lemon. I'm pretty sure I went inside and settled for a mixed green salad and yogurt. I love to eat. I love to cook, but I never have the time or the energy or the will to do it. I don't know why? So many of the things I love to eat are very simple.

I read an article once about a mom who had been a food writer, and food lover. By the time her kids were 8 and 10, she realized there were only 4 or 5 meals that she could make that got no complaints from anyone. She was dying from food boredom. It's so easy to get into a recipe rut. To make the same things over and over that
A. your kids will eat
B. you can also stomach
C don't take more than 15 minutes.

I hate most of this food. Nipper and I have found ourselves deep in the territory of making separate meals for Jack and for ourselves. We are doomed. I don't remember my mother making separate kid meals for us. I'm pretty sure we were expected to eat what they ate? Maybe my memory is fuzzy on this. I do seem to remember a good 10 year period where I ate a peanut butter (NO jelly) sandwich every day, so...

I seem to be surrounded by people who love food. They love to talk about food. They love to look at pictures of food. They love to talk about people who write about food. Most of all they love to cook and eat great food. Me, I love to watch food movies. I miss good food. That's not to say we don't go out and eat well from time to time. I just wish we did more of it at home. I wish I was that mom who had the ability to get everyone to the table all at once, happily eating the same thing.

Here's to that. Keri of My Year Started Tuesday, sent me this link to David Liebovitz's website. The link was sent to her by Shaboom of French Skinny. I have no words for the wealth of incredible recipes all in one place. I love and hate this man. He was a chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley for forever, and then he moved to Paris in 2002. He also wrote this book, The Sweet Life in Paris, which I think might be next on my bedside table. Because he's California meets Paris he has 10 billion recipes that are right up my alley.  Mesquite chocolate chip cookies? Yes please. Candied bacon ice cream!? I love you! Polenta ice cream (which reminds me of the corn ice cream, I had at Grace one.) YUM! Carnitas? Yes ma'am! Homemade kosher dill pickles? I can die now. He has everything else from sauces and sides to whole meals, and drinks. I don't know if this is someone that Shaboom knows over there and has the good fortune to dine with. But if that's who's food she's eating and losing pound after pound month after month... I'm in. 

I've got my wax wings and I'm ready to fly!

Ok, I admit I'm not always the most practical when it comes to fashion, and that's particularly true when it comes to shoes. For most of my life I've been willing to suffer for the right pair. When I was in college in San Francisco, I would walk the mile uphill to school in my high heel tennis shoes that I thought made me look just like a fly girl (not with all the hot pants and eyelashes in the world have I ever looked like a fly girl). In fact, I didn't own a pair of flats other than flip flops until I got pregnant with Jack. I wore heels everyday. 


My back started hurting just typing that sentence. I'm not sure how or why I was able to go through an entire decade teetering on stilts. I don't remember anything hurting, but I'm sure it did. Now if I wear heels for work or even an audition, my back hurts, my feet hurts, and I feel CRANKY! 


This brings me to the embarrassing truth about my health habits. When I lived in San Francisco, I was actually pretty fit. This was due in part to not having a car and walking everywhere, and in part to the masochistic relationship I had with an adrenalin junkie we'll call Space Cadet 1. We ran, we rollerbladed, we snowboarded, we did bikram yoga three hours a day. There was rock climbing, and day hikes, and all kinds of microfleece and gore tex in my life back then. Mercifully we broke up and I moved to LA, land of sundresses and flip flops, where I promptly stopped working out all together. It was like I flipped a switch. No yoga, no bike rides. One time I tried to walk home from the Beverly Center, and felt like I was on the Bhutan death march. 

So over the years when I visited a gym, or say went on a trip to Europe where I needed comfortable walking shoes, I wore chucks, or these really cute puma maryjanes. Most of the time, I wore boots, which I saw as a safe flat alternative to heels that didn't make me look frumpy. I suffered. 


A few weeks before Christmas Nipper's cousin's wife Keri started a biggest loser challenge on her blog "my year started tuesday night". I said "I'm in" and then didn't give it another thought as I ate my weight in dark chocolate pecan meltaways over Christmas. Then came the first weigh in day. Uhm, holy shit. I laced up my chucks and headed for the gym. I got on the treadmill and started running. My completely out of shape body fueled by vanity, and competition, and chocolate pecan meltaways, rebelled with every step. It's not wind, I felt like my lungs could do it. Trouble was, I was running in what is basically cardboard flaps with a little cotton duck sewn on. Every step was torture, and when I got home, my calfs were on fire. 


The next day Nipper and I went to a schmancy running store in Brentwood, where I'm sorry, but everyone is SO white. I pushed past all the ladies in their white terry cloth track suits and fake birkin bags, and the 50 year old men dressed in their $200 jeans that their 2nd wives bought them and their baseball caps to cover reality, to find my perfect shoe. After the kid measured my foot and watched me walk to see what my foot does, I told him to show me all the shoes that would be good for my feet, but only those that come in pink. He looked up at me and then I said "Yeah, I'm totally not kidding, sorry, I'm that idiot". 


He obliged, bringing me 4 different pink pair for my particular kind of foot. There was a hot pink pair on the wall with orange trim that apparently wasn't right for my gate. I thought about asking him if I could try it, but I didn't want to press my luck. The first pair was too soft, the second pair was too stiff, the third pair was just right. I didn't try on the fourth pair, because it was uglier than Diego Rivera in the morning, and I'd rather run cripple foot in my maryjanes than wear anything that ugly...

So here they are. Shiny! Pink! COMFORTABLE! I had no idea my feet could not hurt this much. What a dope.