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. 

Why must they torture me so?

Just before every holiday Dean and Deluca sends me a catalog filled with the most beautiful little confections. Sweets so pretty, you'd have to be a monster to destroy them by sinking your teeth into them. 

When I was a little girl there was a candy store and lunch counter in Ann Arbor called Drake's. The midwestern version of Laduree. (Please check out this flickr album on Drake's it made me SO nostalgic!) Every Saturday we would go to Border's books. The original Border's books was in Ann Arbor. It was a great old bookstore, with two stories and a big staircase in the back that lead to the kids books section. We would spend the morning there, and after, we'd go to Drake's and my mom would let us each pick out what kind of candy we wanted out of the jars. I can't recall if we scooped it ourselves, or if they scooped it for us. But I always chose the same thing, violet pastilles. 

They must have been these C. Howard violet mints, but they were sold bulk from the jar, right along with the lemon drops, and the licorice. I didn't choose them because I liked the way they tasted. As a matter of fact they sort of made me gag. Candy should never taste like flowers. Blech! I chose it because it was beautiful. It was the palest chalky lavender. En masse it looked like Marie Antoinette candy, although this was before I knew who Marie Antoinette was. 

One day my mom opened up the desk drawer in my room and found it filled with parchment bags of violet candies. I told her that I didn't like the taste of them, but I thought they were pretty. Maybe the first sign of me hoarding pretty little things I have no use for. After almost 6 years of marriage, Nipper has finally learned that when I have amassed some weird pile of candy hearts en español, or scraps of fabric, or tiny little cardboard inserts with goldfish printed on them, not to bother asking "what's this for?" The answer is, I don't know. But someday I'll have a use for it. 

Book worm

Jack has handled the transition from his crib to his new bed in his new room like a champ. He's also been surprisingly obedient about staying in his room until Boo, his monkey alarm clock "wakes up" at 7, even though we suspect he's in there at 6am playing. Until yesterday that is. I made the mistake of telling another mom that he doesn't seem to know that he can get out of his room or hasn't tried anyway. Why did I do that? I said it all self deprecatingly, like "oh he's too dumb to realize he's free" so it wouldn't come off as braggy. But the universe knows. 

That night, Nipper and I went to dinner at a place downtown called Bottega Louie. It was amazing! We had portobello mushroom fries, and corn with bacon and swiss chard, and a rocket salad, and chicken with lemon and capers, and pasta with rib-eye and swiss chard, and a chocolate souffle, and WHOLE bottle of Magnificat meritage. Whoops. Oh, and they have french style macaroons, and their boxes look very laduree-ish. 

We came home, and I immediately passed out on the couch watching American Idol. I'm really romantic like that.  First time we've been out since the infamous Christmas date, and I'm like Gary Busey on a Tuesday. Jack's nanny Brenda had put him to bed, which has only ever happened one other time in his life. SO around 1:30 in the morning, Jack wakes up, thinks, "Are mommy and daddy still gone?" get's up, walks into the hallway, then, stunned, he says, standing in our bedroom, "Hey! I just opened that door". Sigh... I cursed myself, took two advil, and lay awake the next two hours, as Jack went back to sleep ON Nippers head, and the two of them battled for mattress real estate and who can snore the loudest. Jack won. 

Before he made his big break I was finding stuff like this when I went into his room in the morning:

Yes, the iphone, and the helicopters are in there, but also BOOKS! And a flashlight! Could it be I already have a little reader? Is he too young to be reading under the covers with a flashlight? Do kids even do that anymore? More likely he was using the flashlight to "shoot" something, but a mom can dream.  When I was very small we lived in a small town, right next door to the public library, which was also very small. The librarian had to make a rule that I was not allowed take out books and return them on the same day. I would walk over, get a stack, take them back to my room, where I would curl up in my closet and read them. She also had to make a rule that I wasn't allowed to eat red pistachios and read her books. Somewhere out there, are a whole slew of public library books with tiny pink fingerprints all over them. 

je ne veux pas travailler

Je ne veux pas travailler

Je ne veux pas déjeuner

Je veux seulement oublier

Et puis je fume

-Pink Martini

watercolor copyright and courtesy of Carol Gillot

So I'm sitting there last night minding my own business and I stumble upon Carol Gillott's blog Paris Breakfasts. Finally someone more obsessed with the Laduree macaron than me. I was planning on getting stuff done, but instead I spent two hours reading her blog. Looking at pictures of Paris, reading about her obsessive hunt for the perfect macaron and how they are made. Her posts on what French women are wearing, and the subtle "non non's" that shout AMERICAN TOURIST are great. Apparently she travels to Paris from NY several times a year, and I'm thoroughly jealous of her hop on a plane distance from heaven. 

I've tried my hand at making the macaron at home. Last year I got the Paris issue of Gourmet magazine (RIP) and they had a recipe for chocolate macarons with a bergamot ganache filling. They tasted amazing, but they weren't even close to perfect in terms of looks. You have to be very scientific, and know how to measure things by the microgram to make perfect French macarons, and I am more of the pinch of this dash of that kind of cook. It's also very hard to get blanched almond flour here. I used regular almond flour from Surfas which contains the brown hull so they aren't as pretty and it probably also changes the flavor somewhat. I wonder if I bought blanched almonds if I could get them to a fine enough consistency in my cuisinart to make the flour. A new project!!!

Ms. Paris Breakfasts also has an etsy shop where she sells her watercolors of Paris scenes. In my favorite one she will paint your dog, or cat, or I'm guessing if you really want, your goldfish Momo into the scene in front of Laduree. Genius. I'm smitten! I think I'm going to need to commission one of her paintings for the new Laduree themed office/craft room. I wonder if she could paint my shoe collection in front of Laduree? Those are kind of like pets...

watercolor copyright and courtesy of Carol Gillot

paint chip-itis

Everyone has a drawer somewhere that is filled with these right? I'm wondering if the sheer number of them is a sign of an unwell mind. We are working on the finishing touches of our garage which is soon to be MY CRAFT ROOM...I mean our office. The electrical outlets were put in today. The drywall is finished. Now I have to pick a paint color. I want to do something fun, but then I also feel like I need to paint it something neutral in case I end up doing a lot of my photo work out there. Ugh! It's so hard to decide. Right now I'm kind of leaning towards a Laduree kind of color scheme. Cool jadite green with dark grey trim. Or maybe dove grey walls and fun apple trim. Pale pink door no matter what. Duh. 

I'm not sure if this is still a croquembouche when it's pink and green but it sure is pretty

Laduree Tokyo, don't you just want to put on a petticoat and soft pink shoes and twirl?

Sigh... I would like my cosmetics laid out in my powder room like this. I mean I know this is a sweet shop and not a bathroom. But I could make pretty in this room.

If I had only known this existed before we signed the lease on the new prius! 

I lifted this little collage off a blog called c+j.bond.ny. It's perfect and it pretty much summarizes my love of Paris

Batter bowl green, mercer green, tears of joy, vulcan grey,la fonda spanish dancer, herbal mist, pale tidepool, stingray, hobnail, nottingham, tin man, parkside dunes, anonymous, sparrow, palatial pink...