Fri, Dec 26 - Thai Spicy BBQ

11.26am - chestnut oatmeal w/ candied pecans, at home2.37pm - mushroom-prosciutto omelette, at home

7.59pm - I've been thinking about what my favorite meals were this year, and this was definitely one of them: the spicy Thai pork patties w/ fried basil and mint at Spicy BBQ restaurant, way over yonder near Thai town. We'd been wanting to go back there for months, but they were closed for renovation as a car had plowed into their storefront.
This is one of their signature dishes that we got to know thanks to Jonathan Gold's recommendation, hence my fierce devotion to the man at the time. Without him, we'd never have had this experience, so thanks very much Mr. Gold!

8.08pm - This is easily the spiciest thing we've had all year, and we eat spicy! A Thai-spiced serrano chili dip that you eat with sticky rice. It is insane, and we couldn't stop eating it until our stomachs were on fire and ...

8.10pm - ... we had to order Thai Iced Tea for some of that soothing dairy action.

8.20pm - a veggie curry w/ glass noodles that was really nothing to write home about. Really, the thing to get here is the pork patties and the chili dip, everything else is just so-so

11pm - some Moroccan orange-date salad w/ mint, toasted almonds and orange-blossom water, at home, still trying to soothe our burning stomachs. This is the same salad we made for our Moroccan Christmas dinner and that I forgot to take a picture of at the time...

Tues, Dec 23

8.33pm - Moroccan leftovers - perfect breakfast food: The sugary and buttery cinnamon-almond flavor of the bisteya, along with its fake chicken protein, plus the nice spice of the veggies - kind of like a plate of French toast and breakfast links w/ hot sauce. Loved it.10.20am - some Lebkuchen, at work. Am still very pathetically tied to my desk, slaving away like crazy to tie up this year.

1.30pm - some of Ritesh's mom's home -cooked rajmah (Indian kidney beans) that she brought when they came over on Sunday , with some naan, at work6.38pm - sadly cheese-less French onion soup, from Bristol Farms, at home, with Ritesh. We need to make one of these soon - it's a Christmas tradition at my parents' house, and I'm really missing it these days....

7.02pm - some Death Valley Chipotle Kettle chips, at home, with Ritesh - and that's a Christmas card from his relatives from Texas that I got a kick out of....

Mon, Dec 22

7.54am - oatmeal made w/ some leftover apples that didn't fit on the ill-fated tarte tatin of yesterday, plus some of the caramelized apples plucked from the top of same, at home, with Ritesh12.14pm - Annie Cheung's Udon soup, at work

2.15pm - some leftover couscous and veggies, plus some OJ, in the lunchroom, at work3.03pm - chocolate cherry bumble bar, at work

6.54pm - more Moroccan leftovers, at home

7.03pm - some Lebkuchen, before heading over to Nady's to drop off some food and cuddle my new godson (Ritesh had to stay home and do traffic school...)

9.50pm - some Moroccan almond-rose cookies, back at home. This plate is from Morocco, too - but unlike the precious tagines that I haggled over at some market stall in Marrakech, this one is from a random corner grocery store in Casablanca and cost less than a dollar. And it's dishwasher safe!

Sunday, Dec 21 - Moroccan Christmas

9.22am - sampling the tea we're going to serve tonight after our Moroccan Christmas Dinner with the family : Mariage Freres' Casablanca, which is a mix of green and mint teas flavored w/ bergamot. Picked this up in Paris this summer and am very excited to finally have an occasion to try it!9.23am - and here's the tea, in our new Moroccan tea glasses. It's nice, but not nearly minty enough. Will have to add a LOT of fresh mint tonight to get the flavor right.

3.28pm - we've been cooking non-stop all day - this is the veggie layering for the Bisteya, a Moroccan sweet&savory pie made with phyllo dough that is normally filled w/ chicken or pigeon. We're using soy based fake meat, which works just as well. The next layer is egg scrambled and curdled w/ spices and lemon juice, topped w/ sugary and cinnamony almonds, and then baked.

5.08pm - we're celebrating Christmas early this year as Suzanne is going home to Wisconsin tomorrow for a wedding. In spite of all the wedding prep and assorted packing she had to do, she still managed to find the time to chocolate dip some pretzel sticks (see below) AND to pick out some lovely Christmas decorations for us, the seasonally challenged - see the very cute red (!) Christmas tree below - Thanks, Suzie!

The drink is a hot holiday punch made from a recipe we got in our little goodie bag at the Vintage Tea Leaf last week: it consists of their English Christmas pudding tea (which is very light and citrussy), made not with water but with equal parts of heated apple and cranberry juice, and then spiked with some red wine. Good stuff!

5.20pm - the finished Bisteya - turned out great!

5.47pm - finally getting to use my tagine dishes that I schlepped all the way through the Sahara way back when...

here's the spicy lentil pumpkin tagine

and here's the Royal Couscous (minus the Royal, as we're not actually serving merguez sausage with it). Very happy with the way it all turned out, plus we made a bunch extra for Nady and David, who've got their hands full with a little one and a newborn, so the all day cooking extravaganza was totally worth it.

5.48pm - fabulous salad that Prashant and Suzanne brought, with a great tahini dressing. Perfect complement to the other food - I wish there were some leftovers of that, too :) We did get to keep the leftover dressing, though - thanks, guys!

This is what happens when you say "Let's not do gifts this year, guys" - you get a bunch of gifts anyway! These are lots of goodies from Suzanne & Prashant, including some real Hawaiian vanilla bean that I can't wait to use. Thanks again, guys!

I was so flummoxed over all the gifts, I totally forgot about foodie pictures for the rest of the night. We had another great salad, an orange-date-mint salad that we'll have to make again, plus the Moroccan almond-rose cookies I made last night, with the long-awaited Moroccan mint tea.

I did take one more picture before going to bed, of today's attempt at the tarte tatin (French upside down caramelized apple cake) from the Bouchon cookbook. It took forever to prepare, but in the end it got burned in the oven. I'm not going to point any fingers because I most definitely should not have listened to whoever it was who told me to keep the cake in the oven because the crust wasn't brown enough. Suffice it to say I was disappointed, and ready to just toss it, but Ritesh and Prashant were very good sports and pretended to like the chewy gooey burnt-caramel flavored mess. Ahrgh.

Fri, Aug 22 - flight to Paris

10.25pm - mint tea from Starbucks and some peanut butter crackers from some airport store, waiting at the gate at Los Angeles airport.12.46am LA time (3.46pm Paris time)- welcome dinner aboard the Air France flight to Paris, including a glass of champagne, a personal bottle of chardonnay, some grilled salmon with a tomato coulis on saffron rice, a provencal pasta salad w/ olives and tuna, some cheesecake, fresh strawberries, and bread and cheese, of course. God bless the French and their airline.

8.02am LA time (5.02pm Paris time) - breakfast on board. Even Air France has to scale things down a bit it seems. I have fond memories of lovely cheese and ham omeletts and toasted croissants and bread from previous flights. This was all cold :(, so all I had was juice and tea.

9.40pm Paris time (12.40pm LA time) - first meal in Paris - Moroccan! An aperitif on the house at Au Bon Couscous in St. Germain.

9.47pm Paris time (12.47pm LA time) - the tagine de Fes, chicken so tender it fell from the bone, cooked with (and buried under) onion, raisins, cinnamon and orange (juice I would think), plus a big ole plate of couscous, at Au Bon Couscous.

10.27pm - stumbled across this on my 40-min walk from the left bank through the Marais to east of the Bastille. I had so wanted to do some walking here, and loved it! Funny how you don't appreciate things - when I lived here, I spent all my time in the metro.

11.08pm - also walked past the house I used to live in on the corner of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine and the Rue Traversiere - my window is just to the right of the circular corner thingie, third floor. The one with the broken/missing balcony. Ahem. I swear it was still intact when I left..
12.02am - my second caipirinha, with Nicole and a bunch of her friends at her farewell party at Bottleshop on Rue Trousseau. I met Nicole when we were both teaching in Rio de Janeiro, hence the caipirinhas - and tonight I caught her on her very last night in Paris before she heads back to New York, after a year at Sciences Po.

Mon, Feb 4, 2008

8.54am - oatmeal w/ Valhonra chocolate, walnuts and stevia, at home12.39pm - leftover bell pepper, green beans w/ ground beef and quinoa, at work
(trying to save on those disposable dishes)

3.18pm - snacks, at work

5.32pm - leftover Moroccan lentils, at work

7.53pm - leftover tomato soup, sesame Wasa crispbread w/egg and anchovy butter, at home

Sun, Feb 3, 2008

10.24am - fresh coconut, at home2.12pm - steaming tomato soup, at home

2.36pm - spicy Moroccan lentil tagine, at home

6.57pm - Ritesh's mom's raajma (Indian red kidney beans, here w/tofu)
and green beans, cucumber salad, poppadum