muscat comfort

I used to be addicted to muscat gummy candy. I would head to my favorite Echo Park grocery, A1 Grocery, each week in LA my first year teaching and pick up the same things: taro cake to fry in flour and oil for lettuce wraps, rice paper wrappers and mint and basil and rice noodles to make fresh spring rolls, and for my treat, muscat gummies. If I hadn't blocked out portions of that time, I would be able to state more accurately, but I believe I ate this every night for an entire semester. I made chili-garlic sauce and peanut sauce and created myself a plate each night. I have no idea when exactly I became enamored with the transparent color and alluring aroma of muscat gummies to close the meal, but they are easy to tuck into pockets and tote bags when you're off to teach each morning.


No, I haven't located muscat gummies yet, nor have I even ventured into the Vietnamese restaurants of Paris, but we did buy some fantastic muscat grapes at the market. I don't know if it's just me, and perhaps my Bay Area friends can help out, but why did I never eat muscat grapes in Oakland? Can you even get them there? California is the grape capital of the US, yes? When we were visiting Liam's sister in the south of France this weekend, she had a bowl of them on the counter, as she usually does, and I forgot how addicted I became to them when we visited last year. I promise that once you start eating them, you may never return to regular grapes (and I don't even like grapes unless I've juiced them with green apples and strawberries).

We ate the bunch in two sittings, seeds crunching and all. I'm ready to get more at tomorrow's market - and they're not even bio (organic), although I hope to locate those soon as well. There is surely a comfort in the sweetness of muscat that transcends week two in Paris of navigating French bureaucracy.* Now, if I could only find some good green tea.

*Bureaucracy update II: joint bank account. We cannot get a joint bank account until I have an official plastic-stamped carte de sejour, even though I have a temporary one. I cannot get a carte de sejour without showing our joint account savings. Liam needs an account to get paid from his forthcoming French job, but he cannot open an account until he gets paid. The dollar is falling (1.44 euro = $1) so we want our money changed over before it falls more. My appointment to get my official carte de sejour is not until December 20.