Brandon Eats

"His Face Always Looks Like That"

I had next to no internet access (this was about as pleasant as having half of your big toenail ripped off on a boat trip--which also happened) during my trip to France over the past couple of weeks. I did, however, keep a sort of diary. During the next week or so, I'll post that diary, along with a few of the photos I took.

First of all, you need French friends. In fact, you could say that they’re essential to a successful trip around France. Our friends live just outside of Paris, in a suburb that once was a village.  It’s a town called Rueil Malmaison, famous for the small island there in the middle of the Seine beloved by the Impressionists. Renoir painted Luncheon of the Boating Party, a scene on the terrace of a restaurant still open for business—and little changed—today. 

Rueil Malmaison is a perfect amalgam of small and large. Narrow, old streets with an open air market on the weekends and an old church in a square in the center of town are just a metro ride away from the Place de la Concorde and all of what Paris has to offer. Any European trip is exhausting--the unfamiliarity, the feeling of never knowing what to expect--and so, for us, it was wonderful to come home each day to a place quiet (except for those frickin' mufflerless motorbikes) and yet near enough that every night the light from the Eiffel Tower shone through my bedroom window.

More after the jump

Apologies

I was cleaning up my blog in anticipation of my forthcoming trip to France, when inexplicably, this old, oft-read post popped up below. I've put it back where it belongs, but it doesn't seem to go away. My apologies!

Anyhoo--

OH MY GOD, I'M GOING TO GO TO FRANCE FOR THREE WEEKS! A few days in Paris and then off to the south of France for a houseboat trip along the Canal du Midi. More time in Paris, and then home. I am the luckiest woman in the world.

I plan to blog all about it, as I did from Spain , but you know, there was a real learning curve to that little enterprise, so we'll see. This time around, I'll be with fluent, native friends and that fact, I'm hoping, will streamline the process.

So, I'm off to buy a new battery for my laptop at the Apple store, re-purchase all of the summer clothes my children have mysteriously vaporized over the last two months, clean the entire house, and probably procrastinate about all of this until the very last minute. Like right now.

Green Grub

For the armchair environmentalist/cook—in other words, those of us with good intentions who need a little reading material to truly inspire the lazy right out of us, Michael Pollan’s exceptionally lucid book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals  (featuring Virginia’s own Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm), has become the gold standard of references about current thinking in organic farming and localism, besides being a great read.   

Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen by Anna Lappé and Bryant Terry (Tarcher/Penguin), is even better, because while it dissects commercial and organic farming practices as it makes its argument for localism, it also goes into effects on our health, and has a nice section on practical steps to go green. Lappé (daughter of Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet) and Terry deconstruct the hidden costs of cheap food ("The Six Illusions") and the dominance of the organic market by major corporations like Heinz (Hain Celestial), M & M Mars (Seeds of Change), and General Mills (Cascadian Farm). Best of all, their book’s got a whole bunch of great recipes with printable shopping lists for each on Lappé and Terry’s website, Eat Grub.  Try the flavor-packed shrimp and veggie kabobs (p.167) or the fresh beans with garlicky citrus vinaigrette (p. 169) for an easy blast of organic eating.

To read more about cooking and eating green, follow this link to HomeStyle (the issue with the fabulous cover), and this one if you're thinking about a greener kitchen. 

Richmond Days: or, Whining the Hours Away

I can't do it, I just can't get inspired these days.  I mope around pining for my days in Spain and all I can think about is how much I'd rather be there than here.  Eating home-cured jamon and chorizo, recoiling from a tub of skinned rabbits (!), crushing wild chamomile between my fingers, and eating lunch at 2:00 pm (with wine), snacks at 6:00 pm (with wine), and dinner at 10:00 pm (with wine). 

I spend my days now thinking about where I can go next for take-out so I don't have to bother to cook, and how I can afford my beloved Albariño now that it no longer costs $5.00 but $14.00 a bottle--AND ponder how I too can become an Albariño importer.  I long for days that seem to be filled with endlessly attenuated hours, hours with no TV, no radio or Internet, no phones or any real news at all.  For my non-Spanish brain, it was wonderful to have all the chatter that ceaselessly surrounds us reduced to  static, signification-free and essentially meaningless.  I was illiterate and dumb, and I had to work out the meaning in the world from just the rudiments that prop up language.  It was the perfect vacation for an English major.

But I'm not there, I'm HERE.  And it's hot and when I open my windows to let the cool night air flow in, it's trash pick-up day again and the trash guys not only seem to back down the street to maximize the beep-beep-beep feature of their fancy garbage trucks but also to shout even louder to each other in order to to be heard, given the hearing problems they all seem afflicted with, and THEN the newspaper slams against my door because I complained about it being stolen when they dropped it on the sidewalk. And I don't even have to get up for another hour. So I suffer.

But I've still got to eat, right?  See Style Weekly for my review of take-out places this Wednesday, and if I can bring myself to cook, I'll post away this week and try to dispel the gloom of my tragically ordinary life. 

Duck Soup

Ah, my little sand monkeys, you've been spoiled, spoiled rotten with a post every day while I've been on vacation.  Of course, they're old and recycled but every day you've had something to read and a photo at which to gawk anew and. . . well. It's been comforting to know my old crap has seen new life as it fired off every day, automatically, with absolutely no work on my part at all involved.  Now it's back to reality and no kitchen (did I mention my husband tore out our old one while I was away?).  Deadlines and day camps.  Heat waves and housework. Vacation is over.

Café Du Monde

Cafe Du Monde, originally uploaded by Hankins.

Yesterday, one of my very favorite places anywhere re-opened finally in New Orleans. No where else in America can capture the continental ambiance of the Café Du Monde.

technorati tags: richmond, food, food and drink, coffee, new orleans