What to make of the lavish feasts that come after a funeral? When I attended my first funeral, at age 27, I cried a lot, even though I didn’t know the deceased, my sister-in-law’s father. My grandparents all died before I turned 20 and lived 1250 miles away. Living as my family did on a…
Category: Desserts
Macarons – Food of Dreams and Fairy Tales
Macarons. Truly an example of “Don’t try this at home.” But how I longed to recreate the taste and the crunch of the macarons I greedily ate as often as I could, when I passed that fairy-tale bakery on the Rue de Rivoli, close to the Hotel de Ville metro stop: Maison Georges Larnicol. Although…
Thomas Jefferson: The Francophile Who Became the First U.S. “Foodie”
Thomas Jefferson. President. Scientist. Writer. Man of many passions, some hidden, some not. In his writings and in his actions, food clearly revealed itself as one of those passions. Above all, Jefferson was a Francophile. From the design of his dining room in his house, Monticello, to the gardens surrounding him in the foothills of the…
Oreillettes, A Part of Provence’s Thirteen Desserts
Fried dough, a universal love. Grease, sugar, what more could you dream of? In the south of France, when you want fried dough, you’ll get oreillettes. As with any traditional holiday dish, each cook has his or her version. The signature taste with these oreillettes is the orange flower water. In New Orleans, oreillettes come…
Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: M. F. K. FISHER
Anyone who reveres food and eats oysters, who yearns for security and longs for love, and who seeks out experiences and thinks much must discover M. F. K. Fisher. Just who was M. F. K. Fisher and why did James Beard, that gentle giant of the food world, call her a national treasure? And why did John Updike refer to her as “the poet of the appetites”?
