Yaourt Citron

I spent a significant portion of 6th grade lunch devoted to lemon yogurt.

In my on-going quest to convince my parents that I wanted to be a vegetarian (it started in 3rd grade when Liza and I gave up bologna and hot dogs after my dad warned us of what was hiding inside), I won the battle that yogurt could constitute the main part of my lunch. As much as I had loved roast beef on marble rye with mustard, lemon yogurt was a relief. It was different. It was tangy and comforting as I transitioned into those lonely middle school years.

One day at the Pompidou cafe, I was attempting to use one of Liam's cheques de restaurant to purchase cookies and tea when I spotted this yogurt.

Something about the glass container, the pieces of lemon rind, the salted butter short breads in between spoonfuls and sips of Earl Grey did it for me. It was my new favorite snack.

Devotion to Lemon Yogurt: Part II. Except it's citron yaourt not Dannon Lemon, and the setting is usually a Parisian apartment, not the left-side of the Herberg Middle School cafeteria.

It's this kind of snack that gets me through the waiting for the package. The snack that keeps me calm when Liam's birth certificate arrives from Rhode Island with an apostille attached while my mom drives across Massachusetts secure mine and then drops a small fortune to return it to me by Monday (in order for me to get it to the translator to have it back by the end of the week to give the paperwork to City Hall to wait 10 days for our intent to marry to be public and then, only then, can we set a date).

This kind of snack makes me glad to be here, almost makes me sad to leave.

Last night, as we stood in line to see Sex and The City: Le Film, an American behind us interrupted to ask if we were also in line for it, "the movie starts at 7pm and it's 6:55 and we're still in line!" I re-assured her that this was normal, "this is how they do it" I responded confidently as she wondered aloud when she'll get her popcorn.

It was not lost on me that with less than a month before I depart, on a day I'm fully appreciating small pleasures like yogurt, that I would find myself in a "this is how they do ..." conversation.

I'm not sure that I ever figured out how to make it through middle school, but I'm just figuring it out how to make through living abroad. At least that's what I tell myself.

Perfect Snack for Writing a Novel

As some of you know, I'm working on a novel in poetry for young adults. It's a coming of age tale of a 16 year old Nora Smith: 1/2 Jewish, 1/2 Catholic, trying to define her own identity in the year following the death of her best friend. She is taking a Black Studies course at her high school and falls for an African-American boy. Through the course of the novel, we learn more about Nora, her family, her grief and her growth.

She may even end up in Paris.

While there's not much food in the novel (Nora does prefer a Chai Latte to a cappuccino), there's a great deal of food fueling the author on her end.

A recent favorite any-time-of-day-while-writing snack includes brown sugar sea salt cookies from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian with a cup of homemade chai (all novels are based on some kinds of facts, yes?)

These cookies are incredible - the butteriness is shown off by the addition of semolina flour (sandy, but in a way that renders this writer speechless for a better synonym) and the fleur de sel on top makes you lick your lips and grab another. I've tried them several times in several different thicknesses - I don't have an electric mixer here, so my dough has ranged from crumbly to creamy (and subsequently frozen for cutting because I've melted the butter too much).

The recent batch pictured here started as a creamy dough and then baked very thin and crispy.

A handful with a cup of tea can fuel an author for a pre-lunch revision session, a tea-time hour of drafting two new poems for Part II or an after dinner re-read.

I cannot recommend How to Cook Everything Vegetarian enough, even for meat-eaters (indeed, you are Bittman's audience here), but until you buy it, here's the recipe:

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup dark packed brown sugar
1 egg yolk
1 C. semolina flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 t. salt
about 1 t. coarse sea-salt for sprinkling

1. Use an elect. mixer on low speed to mix the butter and sugar together just until combined, 30 seconds or so. Still on low speed, beat in the egg yolk, then the flours and salt, until the mixture barely holds together; this will take a few minutes.
2. Turn the dough out onto a clean work surface and shape it into a round, triangular, or rectangular log about 1 inch in diameter; wrap it in plastic wrap and refrig. or freeze until firm, about 30 minutes (or freeze the log for up to 3 mos well wrapped).
3. Preheat the oven to 325F. Unwrap the dough and slice it 1/4" thick, put the slices on an ungreased baking sheet, sprinkle each with a little sea salt, and bake right away until the cookies are firm but now browning, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, let them cool in the pan for a minute or two and then transfer the cookies to a rack to cool. Stir in an airtight container for up to 2 days (I've kept them a few more and they've still been good)

Makes 3 or 4 dozen.

Pumpkin Cookies

Pumpkins are for Cinderella, not for eating Liam's French grandmother replied last fall when he held out a plate of roasted petit marron for her to taste. I had gone to my first French market in Provence and fell deeply, madly in love with the orange-until-it-bursts color of this squash and had roasted it simply for dinner. Well, for American dinner.

I have always loved pumpkins and fall and sweets that come with both. In 1997, I found this recipe - and that fall, the Pumpkinwiches were born.

I have changed them a bit over the years - in the picture you can see two of the new version with an old school 'wich in the background - but not as much as I have changed them in Paris. It pains me slightly, since in a world of new things new people new friends I want everything as good as it is as home, for people to say, 'ah ha! you are the woman who brought the pumpkin cookies!' to a potluck or Thanksgiving party. But here, without Libby's packed pumpkin or her organic cousin, I figured, it can't be that hard, I'll just get the ol' Cinderella fave.

Twice now, I've tried. This last time with more success thanks to a new friend's suggestion to roast with lemon rind, honey and cinnamon (I added some ginger too), and a bit more judiciousness with the 'puree-ing.' I have warring Bittman voices in my head: "good chefs only need 10 appliances/tools" and "you'll never regret having a food mill" as I mash up roasted squash with a fork in my one bowl. They are getting there, a bit more tasty, although the pepitas I found here are from China and I worry will choke someone with their Bay leaf edges. The fresh squash gives them a 'health food' flavor that I'm not that into, but perhaps brings them back to their roots from Veggie Life magazine.

In a few weeks, we're off to Nice to make Liam's family a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Well, a 'traditional' one. I thought about making these and an apple pie, and also some vibrant sides (we vegetarians go into our own carb coma after T-day sometimes) of ginger flecked green beans and lime flavored yams and beets braised in pomegranate and orange. We even had a can of cranberry sauce (I know, but there just aren't cranberries around these parts) in our belongings from Sicily, but that too was confiscated, so I'll see what I can do with dried, which they do have here.

Yesterday, I was about to bring them to my French class when I had this sudden fear of rejection, of my multi-national class frowning or refusing or even grimacing with an unfamiliar groan when the orange cookies passed by on a plate I don't even have - like I should just come in with Starbucks and shrug and say je suis tres americaine. And then I felt terrible, sending Liam to work on his first week with all sorts of non-French foods like black bean chili and cheese biscuits and lentils with rice and onions and imagined him in his cafeteria today happily peeling back the plastic wrap on his gooey trio l'orange only to have his French colleagues snickering that the new guy not only has trouble with his French but his wife makes him some bizarre food as well.

And so, while I fancy myself an immigrant mother in a Jhumpa Lahiri story, I will stand by the cookies this week trying to make them a bit more like home. And for now, for those of you who've been asking for it again, here is the recipe:

1 Cup sugar
1 Cup canned pumpkin (or, see above)
1 lg egg
2 T vegetable oil
2 Cups unbleached white flour
1 t. ginger
1/2 t each: nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, powder, soda
1/3 Cup pumpkin seed kernels (pepitas), toasted

Filling aka Frosting
1 1/2 Cups powdered sugar (or more)
2 T canned pumpkin (or, see above)
2 T soft butter
1 t vanilla

1. preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease a baking sheet. Combine pumpkin and sugar, then stir in egg and oil, mix well.
2. in another bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Add to pumpkin mixture and blend thoroughly. Stir in pumpkin seeds.
3. Drop dough by small scoops or rounded t. onto sheet, about 2" apart. With a dampened finger, swirl each mound into a wider flatter disk (necessary if doing sandwich cookies, not as much if you're going to frost the top). Bake 8 min. until edges begin to brown. Put on a rack to cool.
4. While cookies cool, combine powdered sugar, pumpkin, butter and vanilla. Whip to spreadable consistency. Sandwich cookies together or frost tops.