OMG I want Summer to come RIGHT NOW!!! Obviously, screaming it out will not make it come faster (nor at all), but it gave me a good idea today. If Summer can’t come to me by itself, I’ll have it come to me by force. In my plate. Mmmmm I have made a delicious Cherry…
36 Hours in Gdansk, Poland.
After I saw a single beautiful picture of the city on the web and found out where it was, I decided in an instant to check out about flights from Nice and actually booked one immediately. And so I went to Gdansk, Poland, over the first weekend of February 2018. Gdansk is located by the…
Red Mullets with Tapenade and Mandarin Juice
Tonight after work, my husband wanted to go to the movies with friends and watch a movie I was not interested in, so I decided I would treat myself at home with something nice that he was not interested in. An eye for an eye. Or a win-win situation? I also decided that I would…
Flemish Carbonnade. Belgium.
A few months ago, I visited my good friend Marie in the countryside of Louvil near Lille, in the most Northern part of France, not far away from the border with Belgium. It’s only many years after Marie first invited me over that I finally decided to go there last Spring, given that such a…
Lobster Salad deconstructed “roll”, Maine-Style. USA.
This week was my birthday. On the morning of January the 3rd, the sky view from my window was so extraordinary and unusual that I decided that this week will have to be as exceptional on all levels. Those colors reminded me of the skies of Tahiti when days were expected to be windy, and…
Sweet Potatoes & Fried Bananas. Marshall Islands.
After a really cold Christmas week in Nice, 2018 has opened to a wonderful warm and sunny first day, which I think is excellent news to get the year started with good spirit. I began the day by doing a little bit of gardening on my balcony in the morning, enjoying the strong rays of…
Mouhalabieh. Syria.
Long gone seems to be the era when one talked about Syria for its culture, its folklore or its food. Partly because of that, and partly because I never really wondered about it before, my own knowledge of Syrian food actually is close to none, and although what I know of Middle-Eastern food encompasses the…
Biathlon IBU World Cup 2017. Le Grand Bornand, France.
I just come back from a weekend away that was as amazing as a day dream to me. Like, you know, the bucket list type of dream. It’s been years since I started watching on television the Olympics and World Series of Biathlon, this winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and riffle shooting. My mother…
Roasted Pumpkin over Roquette
A few months ago, my Aussie friend Sue went and tried a new restaurant in Canberra, the Tipsy Bull. Among other vegetarian dishes, she ate a very well plated Roasted Pumpkin salad with candied walnuts, that I surprisingly found really attractive although I am usually not too keen on everything “pumpkin” in the first place….
Kapusniaczki. Poland.
This will be my first world food challenge with a dish from Eastern Europe. I don’t know what took me so long to get to it, maybe the idea that Eastern European food might be less exotic or less “flashy” (than Mediterranean or Asian food for instance) thus less attractive (to me). Let’s say it’s…
A weekend away in the Pink City. Toulouse, France
More than ever in the mood for discovering France further away from home, we booked tickets to go and visit Toulouse, and flew over there on the weekend of November 11th. Toulouse is called the Pink City, as its entire Old Town is built out of salmony pink bricks. Those really are impressive, given that…
Creamy Tomato and Basil Pasta with Mascarpone.
This is the easiest vegetarian pasta option that requires very little preparation for a comforting weeknight dinner. Or lunch. Or breakfast. Yes, that sometimes happened to me when I was a student and had some delicious left-over pasta that could not wait for the next night meal to be gobbled up. The original recipe was…
Daube Niçoise
Niçoise Beef Stew. That’s the best translation I can come up with, even though Daube Niçoise, our special local regional dish name, is nowadays making its way through the world. Slightly exaggerating, but this is what we do around here, for fun. I read that the dish is actually more frequently acknowledged as Daube Provençale…
A chic gateway in Aix-en-Provence, France
It had been seventeen years since I left Aix-en-Provence, this small town near Marseille where I first began University, 20 years ago. Ouch! That hurt. I can’t believe how time flew so fast, it seems that it was just yesterday that at the age of 17yo I started my adult life away from home. I…
French Meringue
Last October, my husband and I went to visit my favorite cousin in Auriol, in the beautiful countryside of the region of Provence. We traveled by bus to the neighbor city of Aix-en-Provence, where I began University in 1997. The city has changed a lot, and so have we, and no longer being students makes…
Udon. Japan
Since our trip to Japan in 2016, our love for everything Japanese has been an ongoing phenomenon. My husband and I have recently been experimenting new foods in several Japanese restaurants that opened in Nice lately. We are always curious about tasting new flavors, and beyond that I am myself very much into trying to…
Pasta Al Forno.
In 2015, a couple months after I started blogging, I rapidly got in touch with a fellow blogger whom I had immediately loved the way she was trying new recipes. Falafelinlove has got this unique way of seeking perfection step by step, gram by gram, ingredient by ingredient, and taking notes about all of these;…
Montpellier, France.
In September 2017, I have made the decisions both to regularly travel in France over the course of a weekend every 4 to 6 weeks, and also to reconnect with old friends or relatives every time I could or felt like it. I have set in motion these decisions almost immediately, as the next weekend…
Stir-Fried Beef with Greens and Scallions
Time for a new challenge. I read so many blogs that sometimes, telling myself I’d love to cook this or that is too overwhelming. I often get the feeling that I see a lot but don’t do as much. So I’ve made the decision to regularly make a selection of the dishes I “like”, whether…
Fresh Figs & Custard Tart. Turkey.
I have been willing to bake this Fresh Figs and Custard Tart for ages. In France, there’s only a short time-frame during which one can come by fresh figs of excellent quality, and it seems that I have missed this window every single year, for many years! When I thought I had been cursed one…
Chorizo Bread
Baking is fun! Bread is gooooood. Chorizo spices up life. Chorizo bread rings like a Sunday lunch at my in-laws. Near their house, there is this fabulous bakery that sells a lot of “flavored” breads. On many occasions when we eat at their place for lunch, they’d come and pick us up right after buying…
COOKING TRIPS 