Bread Again--

It is much more interesting than politics. Recently my husband and I spent some time in France and decided this was no time to kick the gluten habit, or the wine habit or the fine food habit for that matter. After stocking up on 6-8 loaves of Suzanne’s wood fired bread in July, it finally ran out. Once in France my husband’s favorite pastime is to look for boulangeries and patisseries of the highest caliber—not a difficult task, you look for the line (the queue). Before long we had to trim our croissant per day habit to a half of a croissant each and the bread and cheese habit to every few days which is hard as there is so much good cheese. We started out in Ramatuelle. We have stayed in that area many times and I am always reminded of looking for places to rent over the years and coming across one owned by a Kris Kristofferson. It was perfect, had Internet (which was rare 10 years ago), had a great kitchen (I like to cook) and a view of the Mediterranean. The only problem was the price as we were only two people. I thought of emailing him and asking if he was THE Mr. K but I never did. Instead we stayed in a farmhouse in a vineyard. After Ramatuelle we went to Aix-les-Bains where I had the pleasure of cooking on an induction cooktop. It was fantastic—water boils in a few minutes, the cooktop stays cool so you have no burned on spills, the kitchen stays cool and it wipes clean with no special cleaners. Aix is a pretty little harbor town on the largest lake in France which happens to be near a well known cooking school and thus there are a handful of Michelin starred restaurants in the neighborhood. Then it was on to the fast train to Paris where one has only to walk out the door and there are shops and restaurants and boulangeries on every block. We stayed in a 600 year old building, re-furbished of course but oh if the walls could talk, what tales would they tell?