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1) When you have a stressful afternoon at the doctor’s office and walk outside, turn the corner and see this. And you can't help but smile. 2)  Paris offers endless opportunity to sit down, slow down, and watch the world go by 3) Beautiful, aged mimolette 4) Yes, it smelled incredible 5) Chocolate, as far as the eye can see

1) A long line, but worth the wait for this delicious bowl of udon at Kunitoraya . 2) I could spend every day surrounded by Monet's Waterlilies at le Musée de l'Orangerie 3) Sunny afternoon apéro at le café 4) Recently had the chance to stop by Paroles de Fromagers . I highly recommend this new fromagerie in the 10ème. 5) Hard at work

When my family gets together it means many things; laughter, dancing in the kitchen, good wine and lots of cooking and eating. And the one thing we always cook together is a big batch of my grandma's meatballs. If she wasn't doing the chopping, mixing and cooking herself, she would be the chef, guiding us along and making sure we never over mixed! Since she passed away, making her meatballs keeps her memory alive and is always one of the highlights of our time together. They're full of fresh parsley, garlic and Parmesan, and even though the first ones out of the pan are scalding hot, we will happily burn our tongues eating a few because they're simply irresistible. And by the time the entire batch has been cooked and the pasta and sauce are ready to serve, we've usually eaten so many that we just want to go pass out in a meatball induced coma, but we somehow always find room for just  one   more. Overeating is inevitable, but we know that when the first meatball goe...

1) Coffee 2) Love 3) End of summer at le marché 4) Les Deux Plateaux 5) Montmartre colors

1) A typical, quiet August café in Paris 2) Une bicyclette 3)  Washed rind and extra creamy! 4) Distressed 5) Beautiful angles

Train travel spoils you. No need to get to the airport 2+ hours before your flight, no waiting in long security lines, no strict weight and size limits on your luggage. You arrive a bit before your train is scheduled to depart, stow your bags, find your seat and away you go! Living in Paris spoils you too. You quickly learn that much of France and many parts of Europe are just a few hours from the city. (and escaping from time to time is good for le moral ) Feel like going to Amsterdam? No problem! Jump on a train and you'll be there in just over 3 hours. Want to taste some wine in Bordeaux? It's only 2½ hours away. Craving some bouillabaisse and time on the beach? You can be sitting in the sun in Marseille in a little over 3 hours. And of course there's Lyon , a city that is considered paradise for the French food lover and a place that had both intrigued me and been recommended to me by several friends over the years. So last summer I hopped on the TGV and just 2 hours la...

Walk into any fromagerie in France during goat cheese season (April to November) and you will be faced with a tempting array of wrinkly rectangles, fresh drums, blue mold covered cylinders, two-toned cones, grey pyramids, white diamonds, discs wrapped in leaves, and a distinctive four-leaf clover,  le Trèfle du Perche. In the French cheese world, this one is fairly recent creation. Back in 1999 a group of 7 artisan cheesemakers in the northern part of the Loire Valley and the southern part of Normandy established  l’Association des Fromagers Caprins Perche et Loir  (after numerous meetings involving copious amounts of local cheese and wine I like to think) and created a new goat cheese. Their goal was to come up with a fromage de chèvre that would be instantly recognizable and that would become associated with their region. During its inception, one of the members spotted an unusual, four-leaf clover shaped clay cheese mold in a local rural museum and the rest is h...