Three Great Days of Cooking (and Eating)

Well, hello, dear Reader... long time no write! If you've been following my culinary journey as of late via Facebook, you'll certainly be much more prepared for the next set of posts. Indeed, I hope I can catch you up on my cooking before this Sunday, when I'm scheduled to take a cooking class in Columbus (French themed!). In any case, it's hard to be believe that it was just this past weekend that my family came down to visit me, and my sister stayed through the weekend until mid-week. In that time, we/I did quite a bit of cooking (and subsequently, eating, of course). From favourites in my growing repertoire of recipes to on-the-spot adaptations, what follows in this post are meals that may or may not induce some kind of food coma.

Six Courses for Six (or More)

Greetings, dear Reader. As I'm sure you can tell from the timing of this post, I've continued the tradition of late night blogging. One thing I've recently noticed about my blog, and have had confirmed earlier tonight, is that none of the dishes I have prepared and posted on-line have not been traditionally laid out as you'll find on other blogs and websites. Indeed, my approach is to guide you step by step through the process of multi-tasking a variety of dishes; however, in situations such as tonight's dinner, whereby chronological detail would get too involved and not accurately convey simplicity without me showing you in person, I have grouped my notes as closely together as possible.

Tonight, I had five guests over in celebration of two birthdays, as well as for our post-Valentine's Day get-together. In actuality, if I served smaller portions, I think I could have served at least twice as many... but then again, I've built up a reputation from my study abroad days in France that in order to get through one of my multi-course meals, the best advice is to eat as little as possible beforehand (if not to fast completely).

And the Jazz Goes On

Before my séjour in Paris, jazz was one of my least familiar genres of music. And yet, throughout my time there, it quickly became a staple of my life (alongside the language and food, of course). Guided by my roommate's strong interest in the genre, as well as the Parisians' apparent love for such music in, I stepped foot in many a jazz club and came out fully enjoying the experience. Unlike the case of our favourite location for pain au chocolat, two jazz clubs in particular became the staple centres: l'Hippocampus and Duc des Lombards. Ah, yes, and here's the gallery from the first one we went to: voilà.

I make mention of this here for two reasons in particular: first, whenever I now hear jazz, I think "Paris." And in my Ohio apartment, at least three and a half times (?) larger than my Parisian chambre de bonne, a small sense of Paris returned today when I found out my television picks up a jazz audio station. Second, coincidentally, the sister of Denison's French TA arrived from France this afternoon, and after settling in a bit, both of them came over for dinner as we ate crêpes to the sound of the melodious jazz.