I’ve mentioned my new diet in the past. After getting my new diagnosis, I unleashed my inner journalist and researched everything I possibly could about food.
My diet now cuts out high sodium, white flour, white sugar, beef, and dairy (obviously). That’s right. I’m one of those annoying people who only eat whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean protein.
And dark chocolate. Which is totally a healthy food.
This fish and I are currently on the same diet.
I’ll be eating mostly at home, because trying to find a low sodium, dairy free, whole grain option at restaurants is rather like trying to fit the Sears Tower through the eye of a needle: impossible.
As I’m already giving up most food, I’ve decided not to give anything up for Lent. I think this more than counts. In solidarity, my mom and sister Alyssa will be joining my diet. (There you go! I’ve called you both out, so now you have to follow through 😉 )
I also tried to guilt my dad into following it, but he has informed me that as he grew up as a Methodist, Catholic guilt won’t work on him.
If anyone wants to try to talk him off drinking 3 million sodas a day (how about just going down to one a day?), I already played the “sick daughter” card and failed. Good luck.
French Word of the Day: essence (es- sawn-suh)- essence
I had a fabulous 25th birthday. I felt extremely spoiled by the end of it. There was lots of merriment and food, just as every quarter century celebration should have.
One thing I’ve developed courtesy of some of my medication is lactose intolerance. I didn’t even know medicine could cause that until I got sick every time I ate a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. (Don’t judge. You know you’ve done it.) It became a problem when I lived in Paris because those French people are practically made entirely of dairy products, but I’ve been doing decently okay here.
I used to still be able to tolerate butter, but I haven’t been able to after this last round of medicines. As you might imagine, this has limited my options at restaurants. They like to sneak it in, so I always have to ask. I’ve had the following conversation 3 times in the last 5 days:
Me: Does this have dairy in it?
Server: It has eggs.
Me: Eggs aren’t dairy.
Server: Are you sure?
I must have missed the memo somewhere, because a large number of people are convinced that eggs come from milk.
My new butter intolerance has led to a bigger problem: I cannot eat the frosting on cake. Frosting is an essential part of cake, ergo I am missing the essence of cake. And guys, essence is important. And you know what’s more important than essence? Cake.
But luckily, my friends were on top of the situation. My friend, Mike, researched dairy-free cakes, went out and bought a bunch of vegan butter and made me a beautiful, vegan red velvet cake.
Can we please appreciate for a moment how lovely Mike’s cake handwriting is?
Thank God for those vegans. What would lactose intolerant people do without them? I’ll tell you: not eat cake.
French Word(s) of the Day: le chou frisé (lay shoe free-zay)- kale
Rocio and I have been trying to perfect kale chips since basically the first time we ever tried out our oven, and tonight we had success! I’m not going to say how many attempts this has taken. It’s not because I’m embarrassed; it’s because I actually have no idea. More than 5 and less than 300. That’s the normal range, right?
Ingredients:
Kale (cut into chip size)
Olive Oil
Garlic Powder
Directions:
Mix the kale, olive oil, and garlic powder in a bowl. The kale only needs to be lightly coated with the oil and powder. Next, spread the kale as thin as you can across a cookie sheet and bake it for 10 minutes at 450°F.
Kale does have some sodium, so these are low sodium rather than no sodium. But still- sweet deal. For other nutrition information, you should use Google or a nutritionist. I am neither.
French Word of the Day:Prêt à Manger – ready to eat
The above is pronounced pray-a-mon-zhay, not “pret”. I will, however, forgive those of you who pronounce it incorrectly. (As pretty much everyone who talks about it says “pret”, I don’t really have a choice.)
I finally got a pain au chocolat! This greeted me yesterday at work:
I was asked to grade Prêt à Manger’s pain au chocolat, and I give them a B. It’s some of the best I’ve found in America. Nice job, guys.
I’m sure a French person would say “C,” so I’m being generous here.
French Word of the Day:myrtille (mer-teal)- blueberry
Nothing quite says the weekend like a batch of pancakes. I snuck out of my apartment this morning before anyone had woken up (in the rain) to get some produce from the farmers’ market across the street. (I’m so spoiled.)
Of course, I took a picture of my food. I’ve downloaded Instagram, and as far as I can tell, that’s the whole point of it. It’s currently the world’s largest database of food.
On an unrelated note, I watched the entire second season of Downton Abbey today, and have typed this whole post in a British accent. Blueberry was pronounced “blue-brie.” I know it shows.
French Word of the Day:macaron (mac-rown)- macaron
I’m going to clear something up for everyone. This is not a macaron:
Courtesy of What's Cooking America
That’s a macaroon. It’s Italian, has coconut, and isn’t what I’ve been craving the last few weeks.
This, my friends, is a macaron:
Courtesy of Ladurée
Ladurée, a world-famous, expensive (or “priced well above market value” if you want to be politically correct), French tea salon chain, even has a little story on their website about the origin. They mention adding a pinch of “know-how;” I can only assume what they’re referring to has addictive properties.
Jenna came into town this weekend for a grad school interview, and we met up.
I had found some proper macarons in Chicago, so I insisted she accompany me there. She resisted saying, “No, I don’t want to eat anything delicious today!” but I eventually convinced her. (Actual conversation- Me: Macarons? Jenna: Yes! When and where?)
With 2012 has come everyone’s resolutions. While mine are all lofty goals like world peace and ending world hunger (or they would be if I’d made them), everyone else has the same one: eat healthy.
Now, I’m a big fan of the healthy eating. It’s important for healthy living, blah, blah, blah. I have a chronic illness; I get it. But lately, my food pyramid has resembled this:
When I haven’t had any sleep, it looks like this:
Yes, that is coffee spilling. Spilling is a special talent of mine that I display whenever I’m sleep deprived.
(The color used for caffeine is called “asparagus.” If your asparagus is actually that color, you should probably throw it out.)
My family and coworkers have all embraced the veggies-good, lean meats-good, and carbs-are-evil diet. Well, everyone except my father. As he doesn’t buy his food, he’s on that diet by default.
By guilt/ peer pressure, I’m on it too.
I have had only ONE Oreo cookie today. That’s a third of a serving size. No one eats under a serving size; you eat above the serving size and pretend like the amount you ate equals the serving size. I don’t even really like Oreo cookies (except with peanut butter à la Lindsay Lohan in Parent Trap), it was just the only sugar item available.
French Word(s) of the Day: une quête (oo-nah qwet)- a quest
I got a text from Sam this morning telling me he’d found the “most delicious pain au chocolat [he’s] ever had.” Of course, he found it after I left. C’est la vie.
Just because I can’t have one until some undetermined moment in time doesn’t mean you all can’t benefit from it. (Unless someone has a private jet going to Paris with space for an extra passenger?)
I’m giving all my Parisians a mission. Are you ready?
Find this pain au chocolat.
To help you on your quest, I give you the only clue I was given:
Source: Wikipedia
That narrows it down to only about 6,000 bakeries.
French Word(s) of the Day: crème de la crème solaire (crem duh la crem soul-air)- cream of the sunscreen
This was on the metro today:
You’re all thinking, “Thank God America can share the best parts of its culture with the rest of the world.” That’s what I thought too.
I know, I know. I never update anymore. I’ve been really boring and doing mostly school work. I have to try on these because they’re group projects. If it’s a project on my own/ a test, I could care less. Last week, I gave a speech on how to properly go through Disneyland. I rehearsed it once. I kicked the other speech’s butts. See? Not caring makes you a more interesting person.
Louis, I’m sorry I offended you. I still had a ton of fun with you all at Disneyland and you’re all awesome, but the Americans just know how to get the bang for their buck. I retract that it didn’t count.
Speaking of Louis (’cause he was there), we were by the Seine Saturday night. It was such a beautiful day that being outside was necessary. Half of Paris joined us on the Pont des Arts (the bridge Big and Carrie met on for all you Sex and the City fans) with their wine. This time, we weren’t stopped by the police. They tried to slap us with a 350 euro fine two years ago, something about “drinking in public.” I assume they’ve given up, as everyone in France drinks in public. (Don’t tell Snooki.)
The Editor’s Weblog (the site where I work) beat its all time record for number of hits in the month of March. We had 73,000 hits, I think. Even if it’s a coincidence that I started working there March 1st, I’m going to take all the credit for it. I assume you all helped, so THANK YOU!!!!
I wrote an article today using only French resource material. You should all just stare at it here. Emma (my boss) also had Federica and I write bios. I had trouble finding a picture, so I put the one from the Fashion Week party. I’m such a professional, I know. Apparently a Finnish guy is coming to join our team on Friday. I’ll let you know how much we scare him.
Now I must study for a test I don’t care about and write a power point for a presentation I haven’t researched. Scholarly fail.
Someday, I will give you your fashion update. Promise.
French Word of the Day: infroissable (en-fwa-sob-leh)- I have no idea what this means, but the washing machines flash this word when they decide to break. Translation websites claim it means “crease,” but that just makes no sense to me.
I went to Marseille and Aix-en-Provence this weekend, but as I still haven’t figured out how to load the pictures from my new camera onto my computer (seriously, how can it be that hard?! I think it’s playing games with me), we’ll wait for that update.
I’ve been searching for laundry places by my foyer in the hopes that I’ll be able to find a machine that will work. Of course, I haven’t been able to find any. In my desperation (not REAL desperation as I’m awesome at washing things in the sink- but that’s time consuming), I bought coins for the foyer laundry machines today.
I walked in that room and knew right away that both machines were broken because they were flashing their “INFROISSABLE!!!!!” messages. Yes kids, someone other than me broke the machines!
When I went to the management, they were a bit disbelieving. They were like, “Are you suuuuuure they’re broken? Maybe you just don’t understand the machines because you’re American.”
I have broken those machines enough times to know when they’re flashing the “I DON’T WORK! DON’T TRY TO USE ME!” signs. But I refrained from mentioning that. I didn’t think it would make me very popular.
The guy came with me to the machines and tried to use them, then realizing they were in fact broken. He gave me extra coins and was like, “Ah well, you’re SOL. Better luck next time.” I assume it will take a week for the machines to be put back in order, because this is France.
At least now I know that I can use the machines at any time of day. (They originally told me not after 11 pm.) 3 am Saturday night washing machine party here I come!!!!
My God, I’m cool.
Today at work, we went for a 2 hour lunch because one of the interns is leaving. I got coffee for the first time at a cafe. Normally, I just buy the coffee in the vending machines at school because I’m in a rush. Because this is France, it still tastes 5 thousand times better than Starbucks.
Coffee in cafes is expensive consider it’s roughly the size of my pinkie nail. There’s about enough room for a single drop of coffee (even though this drop contains more caffeine than 87 cases of Mountain Dew… the French are a mystery). As an apology for not giving you much, the cafe ALSO gives you a little cookie.
Coffee at 5 times its original size
I don’t know if you can read the packet, but it says “Speculoos.” It’s a biscuit that contains pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom and nutmeg. And also 8 thousand grams of sugar. And fairy dust.
It’s the best thing ever after chocolate. Someone decided that having it in cookie form wasn’t enough and turned it into a spread.
It’s like Nutella without the chocolate. It’s gaining popularity, so maybe we’ll have it in the States in 10 years. Everyone from last semester has been asking me to ship it to them.
Just keepin’ y’all current ahead of the curve.
Maybe in the next few days, I’ll write a fashion report so everyone can be in style too. Spoiler: men, your pants are still too tight, and you still will not let go of the man purse thing.
Pain au chocolat count: 66 (I went to TOWN this weekend and had 6 mini pains au chocolat for breakfast, but we decided that 3 minis equal one big)
French with an American Accent 