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Showing posts from March, 2011

TRUE TO YOURSELF

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...relationships and "self." Spring is in the air. So is love. Even at the supermarket one is surrounded by hormone-charged love nymphs. After 17 years in France one would think/hope that my anglosaxon self would have become accustomed to the French openess of ardent PDA, public displays of "affection,"...well, I haven't.   Picture this... Last week, arms loaded with groceries, at the queue in my local minimart...a beautiful Spring afternoon.  Whilst I am thinking "mm salad" the young anglo couple behind me were thinking " mm sex!!"  One can only imagine they were under the belief that not a soul in France speaks/understands english. Their conversation, at highly audible volumes, was "rated!" To boot, their dialogue was punctuated with the most FRENCH of PDAs. My local minimart cleverly merchandises all the Lindt chocolate beside the checkout. As any self-respecting women will admit, there is nothing quite as inte

GO DUTCH!

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Going back to Amsterdam as my adult self.... A week in Amsterdam is a week imbibed with culture, a true sense of everything " European" and... cake.  Yes, cake! After nearly 20 years of prissy french patisserie it was a gastro pleasure to stop every 100 m to simply gaze through the cafĂ© windows at mountains of fruit-full, nutty, chocoholic, wondrous cakes. Even better was to step inside and relish them. And that, we did. Deep dish apple tarts made with finely chopped crisp aromatic apple, tossed in cinnamon, in linen-thin sweet short crust pastry served with ladles of whipped cream . Small lux tarts, sweet pastry filled with feather light almond cream, apple, glazed with the most apricot of jams and roasted almond slithers.   Cranberry and roasted grain and nut tarts ...nut topping included pumpkin seed, cashew, sunflower, almonds and all tossed in caramel.   Mini roasted cashew tarts on a bed of gooey caramel.   Sacher Torte ( ok so it's Austrian but the Dutch h