Books, blogs, and mistakes

Betty Rosbottom was my cooking teacher at the Lazarus department store in Columbus.  When in town I would schedule as many of her sessions as I could around my trips and hers because she and her husband 'worked' Paris and they still do. She has had a cooking blog for years and I just rediscovered it.  She has a list of blogs that she enjoys based on food places in and around Paris because they go to Paris to eat. She told me once that when she would arrive in Paris she would choose where to eat, starting usually with a patisserie and she would select several small delicacies and then sit and try to figure out how they were made and with what. She would come home with a load of recipes that she had figured out just with the tasting of the product and some chef begging.  I will list them here for you to enjoy too:

The Provence Post
Paris by Mouth
John Talbott's Paris

Note:
The Nightingale is one of the best books I have ever read. I just finished it.

I am in my six weeks' reading cycle and have discovered a favorite author and I say this having only read half of the book so far.  I found her on Amazon books and put The Nightingale on my Kindle. I'm enjoying the book and looked on Amazon and luckily for the world she has several more books.  I love it when that happens. I have a friend, my seatmate on the Italy trip, who reads 100 books a year.  I never thought to count what I read, but I wish I had.  It is not nearly 100 I can tell you that.

I use Grammarly or more truthfully it uses me when I write on the computer.  It is free and it catches a lot of mistakes.  I find, however, they want to 'compound' words too much of the time.  I always thought compound words were kind of lazy. I would never have thought to compound seatmate because looking at the word quickly when reading I would think what the heck is that word. But, I compounded it and hope for the best.  Also because I am tired of seeing that red error line under my words.

Back to food: Andy and I did not travel to Paris to eat, believe me.  We stayed in a semi comfortable hotel but it was not fancy.  We did not search for places to dine but we found some good food anyway.  Also, our dealer friends took us to many different restaurants. It was antiques that we concentrated on but it was the eating in Paris that gave us the most fodder for laughs.

The first miserable time we went to Paris French friends had stayed at our house for the week- end several times and they are the ones that gave us the name of this restaurant, unfortunately. We thought it would be friendly.  It was not! We spoke no French and they tried not to speak at all.  We were asking about dishes, or the special and he replied after a snort that the asperge was beautiful.  It sounded like perch, the fish.  So Andy ordered that.  I don't know what I ordered but out came the most beautiful plate of white buttered and sauced asparagus that one could only dream about, that is if you liked asparagus which Andy loathed. We didn't know either that one dared not send a plate back to the kitchen, especially one so full of pride and beauty.  All hell broke loose and we were cussed by the kitchen staff, the chef, the chef's relatives, the other customers, and their relatives. They called in people off the street to cuss us in French for insulting their beautiful spring asparagus. It wasn't pretty. Finally, the waiter came back and threw down his order pad and asked in perfect English, "what WILL you eat?"  I said salad and Andy said spaghetti...another faux pas. you don't say spaghetti in France, it's pasta and there are hundreds of choices and sauces. I think Andy got just plain noodles. I could not deal with his pain I  was too busy eyeing the salad that throbbed.  On top of the lovely greens was a row of quivering beef, bloody and which had only felt the heat of the grill for a minute on each side. We yelled for the check and made it out the door, but even at that we were followed by a few screamers; they may have been armed.