Favorite Things

What could possibly bring dry shampoo, local honey, bubble bath, tea, macaroons, tart pans, and special seasoning all to the table at once? A Favorite Things party! Last week I hosted a girl's-night-in, and each friend brought an item (under £6) that represented one of their favorite things. We played White Elephant with our loot, and each took home someone else's favorite thing. This is an incredibly fun and unique way to get to know something new about your friends and try their special secrets for yourself.

My contribution to the festivities revealed my secret love of miniature kitchenware. I don't have many mini kitchen items, but I always want to buy them when I see them. When we first moved to Scotland, I had my eye on mini tart pans for the entire first year, but as a poor phD student's wife, I never felt justified in buying them. But one day they were on clearance, so I could no longer resist, and now I adore them! So in getting ready for my girl's-night-in, I decided to buy a set of adorable heart-shaped mini tart pans as my gift offering.


















I really enjoy making tarts - both sweet and savory. Jordan bought me my first tart pan for my birthday one year, and I've been hooked on it ever since. I love how the edges come out perfectly crinkled without any artistic input. I am not one who produces beautiful bake-goods, so I like the fail proof result of the removable bottom.

Sunday afternoon before my party, I turned on some music and started playing with lemons... I made a lemon tart with coconut crust and a few mini Earl Grey infused chocolate tarts.

Lemon Tart with Coconut Crust

Earl Gray Infused Mini Chocolate Tarts

The lemon tart was remarkable. I love this recipe. The fresh citrus flavor hits the spot for me. The Earl Grey tarts did not have as much of an Earl Grey undertone as I was hoping/expecting. If I was to try them again, I would steep more tea bags in the cream to try to draw out that flavor. Even still... if you're looking for a chocolaty punch, try these. The mini versions are great, because they are very rich. 

This game idea would also function well as an ice-breaker for a new group of women just getting to know each other (bible study, mom's group, book club etc.)

In keeping with the theme of this blog (books and food), I've just thought... what if I had a Favorite Things party just for books? Each person brings a copy of their favorite book to share, and everyone walks away with a highly recommended new book to read. I think I love it...




In case anyone is interested, here are the recipes I used for the party plus a few other favorites.

Meyer Lemon Tart with Coconut Crust

Earl Grey Infused Chocolate Tart (note: This crust sounds amazing, but I did not make it this time, as I used the same crust I had already made for the lemon tart.)

Alsace Onion Tart (this is a staple dinner in our house)

Balsamic Onion Tart with Goat Cheese and Thyme

The Pain and the Pleasure of Henry James

Henry James is proof that literary style changes with the generations just like everything else. Most people today would put his book back on the shelf before giving the second paragraph a chance, myself included, until I read The Ambassadors.

As an English Lit. major, I was assigned some Henry James to read, but with long lists of books on the syllabi, he got pushed to the side and skimmed just enough to make it through class.

But this past year I thought I should give him a real chance, so I picked up this dark comedy, James's most acclaimed work, and his personal favorite. It's the story of a middle aged man from Massachusetts who is sent to Paris by his wealthy and controlling fiance to rescue her son from the wild European lifestyle. He was rumored to have taken up with an indecent woman, and his mother wanted him brought back to America to fulfill his duties in the family business. A tale of American vs. European lifestyle, of duty vs. pleasure, of presumptions and assumptions, and the lived vs. un-lived life. James's inspiration for the story came from hearing one of his friends exclaim that, after having visited his son in Paris, he wondered if his life had "passed him by."It's a fascinating study of the American abroad in the early 1900s.

If you jump into this world, you will find yourself immersed in a glamorous story with beautiful and complex characters and unpredictable endings that left his contemporary critics swirling with praise or disdain. But you will also find yourself tripping over abstract nouns, too many strings of "thats," and verbs as states of being instead of action... a grammatical traffic jam. Sometimes you can't decide if it's genius or ludicrous! (I must admit there were a few times I referenced Spark Notes to make sure I had correctly ascertained the action of the chapter I had just read. No shame!) After publishing the work, Henry James recommended reading only 5 pages a day "to let its effects properly set in." Although I find that quite priggish of him, perhaps I should try it on my second reading.

Henry James is hard to read. Some consider him a "futsy literary dictator," but this story is worth the effort. Take it on a beach vacation when you can slow down your attention span and let it absorb and move you. Although according to James's expectations, your vacation would have to be 85 days long.

My Turn to Cook Dinner...

Jordan does most of the cooking... Partially, because he is super appreciative of the fact that I work a stressful job all day, but mostly because he's just awesome at it! We both love to cook, but he surpassed my skills a long time ago (something I've just recently admitted out loud to him, because I'm too proud). It's a running joke between us who is better at cooking what. For example, he can't beat my roast chicken, but I can't touch his risotto. We of course have our moments of tension in the kitchen. "Don't tell me how to..." is usually how it goes. But then again, our best date nights are perusing the market for ingredients that inspire us and leisurely cooking together, side by side, with a glass of wine and jazz music in the background. But tonight it was just me... together with some beautiful mushrooms... taking my turn to impress my other half... 

I was so proud handing the beautiful little tart to Jordan... waiting to hear him gush with compliments. He takes a bite and the first words out of his mouth were... "It needs salt."

(Sigh!) He was right. 

Paris... Dinner for Two... Wait.. What?

A dinner to remember for sure. Relais de l'Entrecote. We had been walking up and down the streets of Paris for awhile trying to decide where to eat, not wanting to waste a precious meal in Paris on a restaurant that was not worth our Euros. This restaurant had a line of people waiting to get inside... so we joined in assuming it must be worth the wait. Seated at our table we were surprised to find no menus. Here the waitress asks you one question, "Quelle cuisson?" (How do you want it cooked?) Service was table-side, and they heaped our plates with fries and slivers of sirloin steak covered in a rich green sauce. Delicious! Some of the best steak I can remember eating. 

Such a charming atmosphere! Everyone being served family style... plates overflowing with steak and fries. It felt like you were in a Parisian grandma's kitchen. Once we scarfed our plates down, the waitress came back asking us if we wanted more... so she heaped our plates full again. Who could resist? Accompanied with a bottle of wine, watching the Paris night life stroll past, we were in heaven.

Then the dinner check came. What we had assumed was a family style feast was indeed being tallied on our bill as 4 meals... that's right, we were those tourists... and I'm sure the subject of a great deal of laughter in the kitchen that night. We paid our bill and sauntered back to the hotel feeling quite fat and foolish having eaten for four. 

So although we highly recommend this restaurant. Be prepared to stand in line (as there are no bookings), and don't be fooled by the friendly face offering you seconds... unless of course you want to pay for it. 

Address: 20 rue Saint-Benoit, 75006 Paris. Tel: 01 45 49 16 00

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Meh... I've read better. No need to bore you with the details.

For the Love of Coconut!

For most of my life I despised coconut, avoiding it at all costs. But I've come to realize that what I don't like is coconut flavoring. You'll never see me sipping a piña colada on the beach... I don't like it. (I know I hold a minority opinion on that one, but don't judge me.) But oh the difference between fake coconut flavor and the real deal!! I began to give coconut a second look while eating my mom-in-law's German Chocolate Cake (Jordan's traditional birthday cake). Delicious! And covered in coconut to my surprise! I then started to notice that my favorite Thai dishes were coconut-milk based. I love coconut curries. However, coconut stole my affection forever through the Aberdeen International Market. This street market comes four times a year, and its most anticipated delight is a macaroon. A fluffy warm pillow of coconut. Made fresh and hot right there on the street. Most foods need to be covered in dark chocolate to make me this happy, but somehow, this one has charmed me. 

More pictures from our visit to the market today and our spot of tea with friends afterwards. 

My Little Act of Rebellion...

Eggs for £3.70, please.

I consider myself a quasi-green-thumb, partial hippie-wanna-be. How uncommitted does that sound?! What I mean by this is I care about the earth, I wish I had a garden and chickens, sometimes I clean with vinegar (much  to Jordan's chagrin), but I don't have dreadlocks, and I prefer to shower twice a day.

I think living in Athens, GA during my University years started it all (it's quite a hippie town). What drew me in was Earth Fare. It happened to be the closest grocery store to my apartment, and it was a mini version (but on steroids) of Whole Foods. This is where I became obsessed with organic food. And it's a slippery slope... what started out as a selfish interest (my own health), slowly turned outward, and I began caring about the environment. I started to avoid plastic (milk came in glass bottles at Earth Fare), and I wanted to eat organic meat, not just for health reason, but because I wanted happy cows.

Not that any of this is unusual. I am, in many respects, a creature of my generation. These issues have become hot topics. Food Inc., and Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (to name a couple) have brought our food crisis in America to the forefront of many people's minds. In Athens I was even using earth-friendly laundry detergent. You vote with your purchases. Yes, that detergent cost more, but I was telling the market that this was what I wanted to see on the shelves.

THEN graduate school happened. This had two effects. While in Boston for Jordan's Master's degree, we lived near an organic farm. I went from getting my milk in glass bottles (which I did think was pretty cool), to hand-picking my own organic green beans and blueberries. Talk about "vine-ripened!" I was hooked. The other effect was running into the problem of no longer being able to afford all the luxuries of green-living I so wished to choose. And I do mean "luxuries." (As a side-rant, there is a problem with the fact that these healthy choices for body and earth are not widely affordable. See the recent documentary A Place at the Table.)

Now in Scotland, with the Master's degree and farm far behind us, pushing through Jordan's PhD, finding myself with the least amount of buying/voting power yet, I have to set aside (for now) much of what I wish I could do (no more earth-friendly laundry detergent for sure).  However, I can't completely suppress the wanna-be green-spirit. I desperately hold onto a few principles. I may have to choose the non-organic or the non-recycled paper products most of the time, but I always buy free-range, organic eggs. Jordan cringes at the price, laughs at me, and turns a blind-eye all at the same time as I reach for the carton of eggs that cost £3.70. I don't know why I can't let this one go. Call it my little act of rebellion...