Desperate Anglo Housewives : Bordeaux > she's back and dating in her 50s

In search of freshness, ranting! Lately, this DesperateAngloHousewife has become rather despondent at the lack of decent salads. I am finding salads either totally lacking originality, misrepresentative of their promised content, limp with age or dripping and greasy, floating around in industrial vinaigrettes. I am on the warpath! Like alot of other desperateanglohousewives, I kid myself into thinking that ordering salads will be a great way to induce nymph-like slimness. I would of course do better by spending more money on scarey support knickers and togs with inner panelling!! Too many salads are full of "bad" ingredients...sweet corn,pre-cooked potato chunks,croutons, high salt content charcuterie, etc -  all of which have the cunning habit of sliding down to thighs and waistelines.  Other ingredients can be simply cast as "sad"....industrial vinaigrettes, processed cheeses, precooked saline-injected chicken breast, nasty shrivelled bacon-bits ...

Blasting away the winter blues The winter term in France is slightly north of  "mad."  You trudge your way, in my case somewhat willingly, through 'les fetes"/xmas, new year...foie gras again, bottle after bottle of superb wines, jaw dropping calorific feasts. Recall :Christmas day, a moment of heightened gastronomic excitement ( food version of multiple orgasm!) as I plunge my silver fork into my motherinlaw's asparagus pannacotta and take a sip of a 2007 dry white Meursault...I knew that if I tried to stand my legs would have simply crumbled underneath me such was my total total pleasure . Out the other side of this period and its a time when schools start really putting on the pressure - tests, exams, case studies. For "we, the teachers" its a race to write and grade exams, deal with students in crisis mode and those who have totally lost their motivation. My belief is that its important to feed ourselves well to battle against the stress an...

Try and resist.... I can never resist creamy, yellow, saffron risotto. The first time I ate it I thought I had died and gone to kitchen heaven. Great food writer Claudia Roden, in her brilliant book, The Food of Italy, tells us how this Milanese dish was the classic partner of  Osso Buco and that it was traditionally cooked with the marrow of veal or beef. Marrow really freaks me out..I am clearly not a traditional Italian housewife/mama. Well thank god for that. To be honest I don't have enough hours in the day to spend bent over my sink spooning out the interior of bones...I'd rather go out for lunch with my girlfriends and spoon out the horrors of my week over a decent bottle of wine!! So I use veal stock or fond de veau...thank you Maggi. I sense the real foodies are shuddering at my shortcut..well hey, you can also make your own Fond de Veau too. Good luck to you... Fond de Veau big enormous pot copious amounts of veal bones bunches of parsley bay leav...

Finding good food fast... When I first arrived in France lunch was long, 12 - 14h. I've noticed that it is fast becoming shorter. This is a good thing when talking about France catching up to the norms of global efficiency and productivity, but another thing when talking about eating quality food on the run. Over the last 4 or 5 years there has been an incredible growth of really bad quality sandwich joints cranking out enormous quantities of industrial meat sandwiches with soggy lettuce, under ripe tomatoes, something which is apparently meant to be an egg slice, gallons of petrol-tasting mayo and all served up in rubbery, white, industrial, bread. Actually sometimes the bread is so hard that you end up the next day with a mouth full of ulcers. Don't even get me started on the Panini craze! I say YUCK!! I was brought up with rye or brown bread, never mayo in sandwiches but rather butter or cream cheese ( Philadelphia...mmmM!!), alfalfa sprouts, pastrami, good hams, c...