Dejeuner

Last week, Sara visited us, and we were able to show off our now-nearly-honed Tour Guide skills. Early morning walks to Ile St Louis for a cafe creme with a view of Notre Dame, pictures on various ponts, and petit sacs of macarons at Pierre Herme to be consumed at Luxemborg Gardens. Following the sunny walk and garden tour, we decided to avoid a touristy haunt and thus, we ended up lunching at Bread and Roses - a British place that I had passed many times on my way to French class in the fall, but had heard wasn't that good. It proved us quite wrong.

I had the "Ploughman's Lunch" that you can see above. A fat old slice of cheddar with a beautifully soft piece of Irish soda bread and some water crackers. A little bit of 'pickle' it was called in French, but was more like chutney and some salade on the side. I decided that despite my aversion to cold lunches, this was the perfect dejeuner for me.

Lunch has been a weird experience for me now that I spend most of my time at home in the day.

I went through a short-lived "I can cook lunch every day!" phase. What followed was the "Bittman was right, baking an egg is the way to go!" ramekin phase. Finally, there's been the "Alice Waters says you don't even need to cook to eat well a perfect loaf of bread can be a great lunch!" phase.

Today, I had a pain aux cereales from the fabulous Veronique Mauclerc with some 48 month aged Gouda and a few lucques olives with some hot peppers. Yummy, but I will admit publicly - sometimes I think it would be nice to have Annie's mac and cheese and a Smart Dog for a "I was a child in 1982 who ate Kraft mac and cheese and hot dogs but now I'm grown and eat organic/vegetarian lunch."

That is a favorite dejeuner phase too.