Peace Love Cupcakes

This post is my third and final one about baking. It's going to be all about cupcakes because there was just too much to say about them in the post about cake. My earliest cupcake memories are from elementary school when I seemingly got to eat cupcakes regularly as whoever's birthday it was always brought in cupcakes that day for everyone in the class. Along with those Duncan Hines Fudge Marble cake mixes I used to love baking, I also made vanilla cupcakes from cake mixes a lot too. I have happy memories of repeated cupcake baking phases in my life. Throughout March 2006, when I lived on Hilgard, I was in a (cake mix) cupcake baking craze and made multiple batches, listening to Mazzy Star the whole time. The year I lived at home in Toronto between Austin and Montreal, I used to make cupcakes for my parents (and myself) all the time, this time from scratch, usually on Thursdays. I didn't teach those days and just worked from home, so in the afternoons I would take a break to bake cupcakes. Then I'd go to a step class and when I'd come home, I'd eat dinner and have a cupcake.

I make 4 different kinds of cupcakes: 1. vanilla cupcakes using a recipe I found online but which is supposedly from the Magnolia Bakery in NYC. (Side note: In December 2009 when L. and I were in NYC for the weekend we went to Magnolia Bakery and the cupcakes were delicious. The cupcakes I make are delicious too but I doubt they are the exact recipe they use in the bakery. In June 2011, L. and I were in NYC together again. This time we stayed with J. in Brooklyn. One day we all went to this cupcake store called Cupcake Land whose tagline was "Where cupcakes rule." I don't remember much about the actual cupcake - I think it was pretty good - but I think the tag line is so cute!) 2. These Mexican Chocolate cupcakes (Mexican because they call for a bit of cayenne pepper; so not exactly hardcore Mexican) I got out of this amazing cookbook L. (a different L. than above) gave me. They are delicious too. 3. Chocolate cupcakes I got from Martha Stewart's website. These are especially moist and delicious, perhaps because of the buttermilk? and 4. Red Velvet cupcakes I got from a recipe printed in the Toronto Star. These ones are fabulous... I think because they contain my favourite baking ingredient: sour cream!

My weakness when it comes to baking in general, and cupcakes in particular, is the icing. I'm not very good at making icing both consistency and quantity wise. The icing I make always tastes good but my cupcakes never look that good and I can never master getting either the right amount of icing or the correct thickness. Improving my icing skills should really be a goal, but somehow it doesn't seem like a goal I'll likely succeed in. I'm always so impatient to just eat the cupcakes that making them look pretty and doing a good job with the icing is less of a pressing concern when I have a batch of freshly baked cupcakes in front of me ready to be eaten.

It's interesting to me how over the past ten years or so cupcakes have become so popular. I've lost count of the number of cupcake stores in Toronto, and they exist everywhere in North America. Three years ago when S. and I drove from Austin to Nashville via New Orleans we saw (but only stopped at one) multiple cupcake stores in all three cities. It was definitely during the winter/spring of 2009, and my last in Austin, that I got a lot more into cupcakes. I went fairly regularly to this cupcake truck there called Hey Cupcake! (whose cupcakes were really good) and I started baking cupcakes from scratch then too. It was so much fun to seek out new cupcake recipes and start trying them. A further indication of cupcakes' popularity/dominance is that at the last two weddings (out of a grand total of 3 :) ) I've been to, my brother A. and his wife L.'s in September 2008, and L. and K.'s last September, cupcakes were served instead of wedding cake. The cupcakes at both weddings were delicious, and I think having cupcakes in lieu of cake is a great idea. It's much easier for guests to just eat a cupcake whenever they feel like it throughout the night (and easier to go back for seconds :) ) than it is to have a formal wedding cake with plates and forks, etc. At both weddings there were lots of varieties of cupcakes too which is important and another advantage over cake, since there you can really only have one flavour.

During the year I lived at home between Austin and Montreal, not only was I in a permanent cupcake baking phase, but I was also determined to visit and try out as many cupcake shops around Toronto as possible. I must have gone to about 12 or possibly more... but throughout the year of course. To be honest, they've all blended together in my head. Overall, each store was good, which I guess isn't too surprising since it's pretty hard to mess up a cupcake, especially if you have a whole bakery devoted to them. One store which I actually do remember clearly is called Prairie Girl (its tagline is: "Live life one cupcake at a time" which I think is a very good one.) It first came to my attention just after it opened in April 2011 when I was home for a weekend and had dinner at L.'s house. She had picked some up because the store is located right downtown near her office. My cupcake was good. Then funnily enough a little while later, my dad who works in the same building as L., also saw Prairie Girl and bought some. For a while my parents were really into them and were getting them fairly regularly. I did like them but mostly I remember that there was just way too much icing on them. Icing is the hardest part with cupcakes! The ones I buy in bakeries always seem to have too much, while the ones I make myself have way too little. I need to find the perfect amount... But back to Prairie Girl, in early May I read an article in the Toronto Star which found that a Prairie Girl cupcake had 678 calories and 30 grams of fat. I couldn't believe they had that many calories. That's way too many! It was a good reminder that cupcakes should be eaten in moderation. I also think it's a reason to go homemade as I'm pretty sure my cupcakes don't have that many calories. I think it again ties in to the excessive amounts of icing.

To be honest, I am not as excited about or as into cupcakes as I used to be. I think these things just go in phases though... Montreal is just not as cupcake friendly a place as Toronto is. Cupcakes aren't as popular there. Cupcakes also aren't as easy to transport as cookies and I've been so obsessed with that coffee cake the past few months which explains why I haven't been baking them as much. I should bake some soon though. I will always love cupcakes though, and feel certain that sooner or later, I'll be back in a cupcake baking craze. Until then, I should just enjoy whichever other sweets I happen to be particularly into.

The Way the Cookie Crumbles

My love of baking began when I was little when my mom and I used to bake sugar drop cookies with oil (I never then and still don't now understand why "with oil" was part of the recipe's name) once every couple of months. We never branched out to try other flavours - every time we decided to bake I was insistent that we make those ones. They were fairly simple but I always opened The Joy of Cooking to the right page to follow along as we baked, the page stained with drops of oil and grains of sugar from years of making the recipe. (This habit of looking at the recipe even when I make it all the time and really should (do) know it by heart persists to this day, with many of my cookbook pages similarly stained with ingredients.) My favourite part was at the end when we got to dip the balls of dough into sugar, and then put them on the cookie sheet.

For the six years between 1996- 2002 when I went to the same school, I used to go to Bagelworks (just across the street) and buy a peanut peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie at least twice, usually more times, a week. Oh my gosh those cookies were delicious - especially when I could get them warm/fresh out of the oven when the chocolate was still melted. Sadly, Bagelworks (which at some point between 1996-2002 changed its name to Bakeworks but I always still called it Bagelworks) closed that location (although it is now this popular vegetarian restaurant called Fresh which I like) and I haven't had one of those cookies in years.

In the fall of 2008, the month of October to be exact, I began to bake from scratch for the first time (in way too long) since my mom and I used to bake those sugar drop cookies with oil. I was in Austin at the time and was taking this seminar on early Modern European History and I had to present on the readings to the class and was very nervous. I decided a good way to make myself feel better and make the class more fun was to bake cookies to bring with me for everyone. I went for chocolate chip as it is just a classic cookie type and very reliable. I just googled chocolate chip cookie recipe and found this one which is still my go-to recipe today. When I was a kid my brother used to make really delicious chocolate chip cookies (I think he got the recipe from The Joy of Cooking too) so probably as a result of that chocolate chip has always been my favourite cookie type. So I made them that day and they were a huge hit, and since then I've been a faithful cookie baker.

I think two of the secrets to my chocolate chip cookies' deliciousness and success are that I always add either walnuts or pecans; and I use milk chocolate, instead of regular, chocolate chips. I've had people who take cooking/baking really seriously and cookbook authors (including Dorie Greenspan) go on about how the quality of chocolate used in chocolate chip cookies is so super important and that it's best to buy expensive chocolate and chop it into chunks or chips yourself for all your cookie needs. I couldn't disagree more. The one time I had homemade chocolate chip cookies which had been made with expensive chocolate I wasn't particularly impressed. In fact, I mostly thought how my cookies using regular old Hersheys or Toll House or grocery store brand chocolate chips are better. (Is that a terrible thing to think? I hope not :) ) I agree that quality ingredients produce quality end results but I think that applies much more to dinners and hearty food or desserts involving fruit than it does to cookies.

As my previous blog post attests, I am a cake girl through and through and will always love it best. Cookies, however, do have their charms and are better than cakes in a few ways. First, baking cookies usually requires less ingredients and easier clean up because I beat cookie dough by hand and not with an electric mixer. Second, cookies bake in 8-10 minutes which is much shorter than cakes. Third, one of my favourite things about cookie recipes in general is the mix of both white and brown sugar in chocolate chip cookie recipes. Such a fabulous combo! Fourth, it's easier and better to eat cookies straight out of the oven. I love them freshly baked when they are still hot and the chocolate is still melted. I also love them an hour later, 2 hours later, the next day, etc. But being able to eat them off the tray is fabulous, and something I can't do with cakes which need time to cool before they can be eaten. Two important things that homemade cookies and cakes do share, however, is that both give one's kitchen/house/apt a wonderful aroma while baking, and that it is so hard to eat just one cookie or just one piece of cake.

Before I finish this entry, I have one more cookie related item to write about. Around the end of March/beginning of April, K. made (and gave me one) these chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. They were so good! And they made me realize that I still had an almost full bag of oats in my cupboard (left over from the fall when I decided that instead of making my own granola every week - 10 days I was just going to buy Nature's Path granola) and that I needed to use it before it expired in July. So when I got home that day, I googled chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipes and I found one. An amazing one that resulted in cookies which that got lots of compliments and tasted super delicious and which I'm really happy about. Here's the recipe - you should try it: you won't regret it! But note: the walnuts are optional and substitute in milk chocolate chips.

Oh I'm craving a cookie right now! And writing about those Bagelworks peanut butter chocolate chunk ones makes me crave those, and since I've never before baked peanut butter cookies I think I'm going to try to make them this summer!

I want to be the girl with the most cake

In the 2000 teen romantic comedy Down to You (which my friends and I watched at my 17th birthday party) Julia Stiles' character at one point exclaimed: "cake is my world." (Truth be told I was considering naming this blog post that. But I love the line from the Hole song so much I had to go with that. I’ve always loved it. Ever since I first heard it when I was 16.) It was undeniably a kind of odd thing to say, but I also got it. Cake really is so good and so delicious and so satisfying. I like to ask people if they prefer cake or ice cream. When I asked E. she said neither, and that her favourite was pie. I guess on one level I get that some people prefer pie - different tastes and everything - but on another level I just don't get it at all. Cake is so much better! It’s so moist and sweet and icing is such a great (and necessary) addition that pie does not have. Pies also do not have layers, and layers separated by the same icing you put on the top of the cake are crucial. Yes, for icing and layers and more, pie doesn’t even come close.

Back when I was a kid and all through high school and actually through university too, I was the cake mix queen. My favourite was Duncan Hines Fudge Marble and I acted like I had this special talent for baking that cake when really anyone who followed the instructions on the back of the box, who added the oil, water and eggs, would come out with the same tasting cake. It wasn’t until the winter I was 25 that I finally started baking cakes (well really cupcakes, but those deserve and will be the topic of a future blog post all on their own) from scratch. I am proud to say I’ve left my cake mix days behind me, and now love trying out new recipes. I love looking for recipes online but I also got this amazing and huge baking cookbook called Baking by Dorie Greenspan (see picture below). It is so massive that at times it seems almost a bit intimidating. There are so many recipes to try! Some are annoyingly and unnecessarily complicated like baking cheesecake over a pot of boiling water; but there are tons I still haven’t tried but am very eager to.

The best recipe I have made out of it is for a classic coffee cake. (It’s funny because while I do love icing, I also adore this coffee cake. Just goes to show there’s a time and a place for everything. This coffee cake is great in the morning, for snacks, and pretty much anytime you want it. Whereas I think I would always feel guilty eating (and therefore never do eat) a big piece of icing laden cake in the morning.) Dorie writes that the coffee cake never goes out of fashion. She said she first made it in the 1960s and that it has been consistently good since then. While I obviously wasn’t around (let alone eating coffee cake in the 1960s) I agree that it will likely always be a fashionable cake. I think the key to its long lasting popularity lies in two of its ingredients: cinnamon and sour cream. Both have such unique tastes in baking (sour cream is my favourite condiment for nachos and so good in baking too) and really make the cake an absolute delight to eat.

While not my favourite place in the world, I was consistently able to eat great cakes in Austin. The Whole Foods in Austin is the original first ever Whole Foods in the world. It has an amazing cake selection. My absolute favourite was the tres leches cake. It’s hard to describe it - it’s name in English means three milks. It was a white cake base covered in a delicious creamy icing and also soaked in this milky syrup. I’m not doing that great a job describing it but I can assure you the taste was just unbelievably delicious. I used to go get it maybe once a month? I could have eaten a piece of it few times a week though. I also once bought a lemon blackberry cake there which had real blackberries and just the right amount of lemons. Sadly, over the two years I was in Austin I only saw (and bought) that cake once. It left a strong (and good) impression though. My other favourite place to get cake was at the Mexicana bakery in south Austin. I first found out this bakery existed when Leah gave me one of their wall calendars (which you can get for free) for 2006, back when we were both still at Berkeley. I was so excited to finally go there (and get calendars – which I did for 2008 and 2009) when I moved to Austin. The bakery is open 24 hours a day (although the latest I went there was probably 11 and the earlier 8 am?) and they had this really simple (no layers, just a sheet cake) white/vanilla cake with pink icing called pink cake. It was so good and so cheap. I still miss it!

A decent enough substitute but not up to the same standards as the cakes at Whole Foods is this little Italian (sort of? The people who own it/work there are definitely not Italian but it has an Italian name and lots of Italian food on the menu) restaurant D. and I like to get take out from. I think there was a stretch in February where we went and picked up food there 3 Fridays in a row. Anyway, they also have this glass case with lots of big cakes that ooze (in a good way…) icing. We’ve tried red velvet (really good), carrot (also delicious) and a bunch of different chocolate ones, some better than others. We actually haven’t had any cake from there in a while and I’m suddenly craving some. I’ll have to get some soon.

To close out this post, I am glad to say that when it comes to baking cakes, I make a fabulous cheesecake (whose recipe does not require a hot water bath but does include sour cream! Yeah!); and Dorie’s coffee cake. My mom makes this really great vanilla cake with chocolate icing (with a layer!) which I have made a few times, and while it was good, it wasn’t as good as when my mom makes it so I’d like to master that. And, ever since my time in Austin, I have wanted to make my own version of Whole Foods’ lemon blackberry cake. Mine will consist of: a basic white/vanilla cake with a layer of lemon buttercream icing and fresh blackberries in the middle and then more lemon buttercream icing and blackberries on top. What am I waiting for? I need to make this soon!

Once upon a time in the month of May in Paris...

The recent French elections on Sunday May 6th in which François Hollande became the new president got me thinking a lot about Paris and specifically the month of May 2007 when I lived there. The days of the month and the days of the week in May 2012 are the same as they were in May 2007. So on Sunday May 6th 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president, defeating Ségolène Royal (Hollande's former long term partner - they had 4 kids together). I remember that election really well - the posters of both (see above) plastered all over Paris, the worries from people on the left about Sarkozy's ties with the media, the way TV stations in France can't broadcast anything about the election as the votes are coming in (like they do in Canada and the US) and can only make a dramatic announcement as to who the next president is after 8 pm when the polls have all closed. My friend S., who was living in London at the time, visited me that weekend and we sat in my apt watching Sarkozy's victory parade through Paris, culminating in a big celebration at the Place de la Concorde. Three weeks ago, I clicked through picture after picture on different news websites of Parisians celebrating Hollande's victory (or perhaps more accurately Sarkozy's defeat) at the Place de la Bastille. Then that night as I tried to fall asleep in my apartment in Montreal, all I could think about was that May of 2007, what it felt like, how I felt, etc. etc. It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.

I once read a review of the Kings of Leon's second album Aha Shake Heartbreak which said if the band's first album - Youth and Young Manhood - was the party, then Aha Shake Heartbreak was the hangover. For me, if April 2007 was the party, then May 2007 was definitely the hangover. April was all sunshine, and heat (hottest April on record at that point), tanning in parks, and drinking outside, and just generally being happy. May was grey, and rain (lots and lots of rain, cold November feeling rain) and big thunderstorms (where on coming back into Paris on the commuter train from the airport where I'd been teaching a group of Air France employees I could see how the sky had gotten instantly dark, and when I got off the metro I waited for a bit under a store front and then made a run for my apartment, getting absolutely and completely soaked in the process), and real hangovers. I drank too much while living in Paris, and as a result, endured some pretty bad hangovers.

That said, Paris is my most favourite place in the world to have a hangover. That's because on days (usually Saturdays) that I was hung over, I'd always do the same thing. I'd get up, drink lots and lots of water, put on some clothes, go down the street to the little magazine store owned by some of the only Chinese people I saw owning/working in stores the entire time I lived in Paris, buy at least one (if not two, sometimes they still sold the previous issue) issue of France's People magazine equivalent (or maybe it's a bit more tabloid-ey than People, I was never sure) Paris Match, come back to my apt, shower, get into bed with lots more water and my Paris Match and spend the rest of the day in bed. In one of the Paris Match issues I read in May 2007, I learned all about how Ségolène Royal (who had just lost to Sarkozy) had gone alone for a holiday on the beach in Tunisia (and there were pictures (I still remember clearly) of her in a blue bathing suit and a straw hat standing at the water's edge) to just relax and be alone after the election. It was in that article that I learned how she and François Hollande had broken up in 2006, but did not tell the press until after the 2007 election (see picture below). I also loved reading around then about Nicolas Sarkozy's wife at the time (he is now married to Carla Bruni) Cecilia who is very pretty (see picture below) and who apparently didn't even vote in the 2007 elections when her husband was elected president! Not only did I get to practice my French reading skills, but I got to be up to date on French gossip. It was perfect.

Another interesting thing about that May were the two long weekends in a row. May 1 - May Day - is a holiday in France. It fell on a Tuesday that year and so a lot of French people took a 4 day weekend (so they also took off Monday April 30th) and they called it "le pont" - taking the bridge. I, or the language school I worked for, did not take the "pont" and I had to work that Monday April 30th. But I only had to work until 1 pm and then I spent the rest of the day hanging out, eating crepes, and just generally having a good time. May 8 (which was the following Tuesday) marked the end of WWII in Europe and is also a holiday, and because it was another Tuesday, many people took another "pont." This one my work did take. S. left and went back to London late the afternoon of the 7th. That night I went to my friend husband's birthday party. He was turning 30 on May 8th and just before midnight there was a countdown to 12:00 am and then my friend brought in his cake. She told me later that it was cool his birthday was on a holiday because it meant he could always celebrate the night before and be assured lots of people would come since they wouldn't have to go to work the next day. To me that seemed like a lot of pressure on all his friends to always come to his birthday parties... But I got her overall point. I'm not sure I'd want my birthday to be on a holiday because yes, it's cool you never have to go to work/school on it, but sometimes it's nice to go to work/school/out on your birthday and have everyone celebrate you.

In April of 2007, I taught a 3 week session of pretty much beginner English to a class consisting of almost all women, and one man. One of the students asked me, in front of the whole class, how old I was. I didn't want to say "23" because it seemed so young and was almost definitely younger than all but maybe one or two of the students in the classroom. So I told them I was 28. It did feel a bit odd to just add 5 years to my age but the students seemed satisfied. This spring I actually am 28 (and am very glad I did not miss the intervening 5 years of my life/experience/etc.), and while I miss Paris still so much and still think about it regularly, my life is different now than it was then and I don't think I could have or would have wanted to be in Paris this past spring, even if all the days/weeks of the month matched up with how they were in 2007. Six months of a carefree existence was just the right amount for someone like me; although I do want to spend a multi-month stretch of time there again at some point in my life, taking walks through the city, drinking too much wine, and getting over my hangovers in bed with Paris Match.

I meant to write it on the plane...

...high above my earthly pain but I slept right through the flight and that was all. That line (which started with the title of this post) is from the Sarah Harmer song Uniform Grey. It's from her album You Were Here which came out in 2000, I think, but which I first discovered in the winter/spring of 2001 when I was 17, and which I still love so much. In April of that year I went on a school trip to Washington DC and they took us to a baseball game in Baltimore. During one of the breaks between innings, I walked around the stadium looking out over Baltimore and listening to that Sarah Harmer album on my discman. The sky was a really pretty orangey-pink and I felt happy, which was nice, because that school year (S5), particularly the fall, had been tough.

As promised in my last post, here is one dedicated to planes and cars. It occurred to me just now I should probably put boats in here too in order to cover all forms of transportation. However, I plan on writing some posts (eventually... likely not any time soon) on rivers and lakes and oceans and I'll be sure to cover my love of boats in one of those.

I'll start with planes. I've always loved that Sarah Harmer line because I love writing in my diary on planes. Plane rides, especially long or long-ish ones (so say 3 hours or longer), are such good times to get stuff done - you are literally strapped in a seat with no escape and minimal opportunities to procrastinate. I often plan out what I'll do on a plane ride, factoring in reading my book, writing in my diary, and sometimes if it's a long flight watching a movie. Planes are great places to write because you're in between cities and time zones and exist in this type of suspended reality in which you are are free from many of the other demands that take up our time and can just focus on the writing.

During my four years at Berkeley, I took many red eyes between San Francisco and Toronto. Those were bad in the sense that I usually tried to sleep (airplane seat uncomfortable hurt your neck sleep) and therefore did not have time to write in my diary. But, in their own way, they had their charms - which, admittedly for me, are mostly nostalgia infused charms. I particularly remember the red eyes I took during that fateful fall of 2003 when I was 19 - the first when I went home in November for American Thanksgiving, and then when I went home only three weeks later for winter break. On both flights I had window seats, and as soon as the plane took off I'd keep my eyes glued to the window, watching as we crossed the Bay and then headed over Berkeley. I loved seeing the Berkeley campus and especially the Campanile (all lit up) from the plane. After Berkeley was behind us, I'd plug in my discman ear phones (I got an ipod in June 2004!) and try to fall asleep listening to the Strokes' second record - Room on Fire (that fall was the peak of my Strokes obsession). I usually would manage to fall asleep for a while, and then regain consciousness only to discover the cd had played all the way through or was on the last song of the record. I liked waking up because I could look out the window and see the moon and stars so close. It is especially cool to fly on full moon nights because the moon really does look extra beautiful when full and seen from an airplane. In a high school French class I had to read an Antoine de Saint-Exupéry memoir called Wind, Sand and Stars about his time flying airmail planes over North Africa. His descriptions of seeing the stars and moon from his plane were so beautiful, and I always think of them when flying at night.

During my last year at Berkeley, in my lovely little Hilgard apartment where I could hear the trains so well, my bed was next to a big window which I never covered with curtains. I usually went to sleep around 10 or 10:30 pm and after I’d turned out my light I’d lie in bed and watch the several airplanes that flew overhead, night after night, week after week, all through the ten months I lived there. I was always sure that one of the planes I could see high above was the red eye flight to Toronto which I’d taken so many times. I’d wonder about the people on it as I lay in my bed back on earth, the same way I’d wonder about the people in the houses below me when I was in the sky flying over Berkeley.

I went to Miami Beach for vacation with my parents once where we had a hotel room on the 17^th floor with a balcony that had a view of the ocean. At night my dad and I sat on the balcony and watched the planes appear in the black sky in front of us. (The airport wasn't too far away). We both preferred the ones that swung out over the Atlantic, as opposed to the ones that headed north over the mainland. We wondered which city they were going to – London? Paris? Berlin? Were the people on the plane looking down at the hotel’s bright lights before they left North America far behind them? I watched those planes until I couldn’t see them anymore, like a ship dipping below the horizon. After my dad went back into the room, and the planes became infrequent, I stayed on the balcony, my eyes fixed on the dark ocean, during the daytime so blue, and now a reflection of the night sky.

Now turning to cars: road trips are so fun!! S. and my dad will always be my favourite people with whom to drive! And an honourable mention goes to J. because she loves driving so much. (I also don't have anywhere near as much road trip experience with her as I do with S. or my dad so it's not really fair to compare.) S. and I have taken some awesome road trips. In August 2005 we met in Buffalo, NY and drove across the country to Berkeley. Road trips are such good times/places to talk, because other than listen to music there's not much else to do. In May 2008, we drove from Austin to Los Angeles. That road trip was especially good because I had been counting down the days until S. arrived in Austin (it was May 7) since February. The drive took us through West Texas, New Mexico (a very pretty state) and then Arizona, which I loved! A detour to avoid construction around Phoenix took us off I-10 to Interstate 8- which goes right through the Sonoran desert. The land on both sides of the road was dotted with cacti as far as the eye could see. A really neat experience. In August 2008, my dad and I did that same drive in reverse Los Angeles to Austin (I'd left my car with my brother in LA all summer). It was fun too. But also kind of sad. That summer had been an intense one, and something I'd looked forward to (as I wrote above) all winter and spring and so it was sad to know it was over, and to have to return to a place I didn't really like.

I also have really good memories of driving to Mont Tremblant at Christmastime with my dad. We'd usually take two cars because my brother would sometimes leave early and drive from Tremblant to New York to visit friends for New Years. So my dad and I would drive in one car and my mom and brother in another. It was always so cold and snowy and dark outside, but felt warm and bright inside the car.

In our world which has become increasingly connected and where people seem to be regularly on the move, it's nice that at least (usually) our methods of transportation are pretty cool.

I can always hear a freight train baby if I listen real hard

I was going to call this post Planes, Trains and Automobiles (yeah that movie!) but then I decided I had enough to say about just trains to fill one post and that my thoughts on planes and automobiles would have to wait for another time. I also love the line in "Raining in Baltimore" which is the title of this post. Sometimes I feel like I can always hear a freight train too. I have an interesting relationship with trains because I don't actually like trains that much but I adore everything surrounding them. I definitely prefer travelling by planes or cars. (I don't mind/actually kind of like subways and commuter trains. When I was still in high school I used to prefer buses to subways because being underground kind of freaked me out. But once I left high school I started much preferring subways. They are faster, I can read on them, and they don't get slowed down by traffic, etc.) I don't normally get motion sickness but I find the motions of trains, the slight tilting or rocking side to side, sometimes gives me a headache or makes me feel a bit nauseous. Train tracks, however, and train whistles, I absolutely love.

One of my favourite things about Berkeley (along with the hills and November full moons) were the train whistles. I could always especially hear them at night. Maybe because there were less cars out and so less background noise? Or maybe because more trains went by at nighttime? I'd hear them sometimes in the daytime too but it was always more special at night. I have so many very happy memories of sitting at my kitchen table in my lovely Hilgard apt and hearing the train whistles. I must have heard them before 2005, but all my memories surrounding hearing them come from my last year there. To this day, whenever I hear a train whistle, I always think about Berkeley and that year I lived on Hilgard. I mentioned to K. once, sometime after we'd both left Berkeley, how much I loved the train whistles there. She told me that during our second year when she lived in that house on Oregon St. and slept in the little sun room turned bedroom off the kitchen that she could hear the train whistles really well and also loved it.

I got to indulge my love of train tracks, but not whistles, in Paris. Near my fabulous apartment on rue des Batignolles were some wonderful train tracks. Paris has a really good commuter train system with an extensive network of tracks and trains taking people to and from Paris and the surrounding suburbs. I got well acquainted with these trains while living in Paris because I needed to take one of them in to Paris that first week I got there when staying in Meudon with my family friends. I loved that train because it was a short ride into Paris and you could see the Eiffel Tower for part of the ride. I also had to take commuter trains out to the airport when I was assigned to teach English to Air France employees. These trains were great because they functioned much like subways except above ground and didn't have any of that tilting that I don't like. Anyway, at the end of rue des Batignolles is a lovely little park called Square des Batignolles. It has a little pond, some nice paths, a playground and lots of greenery. On the far side of the park, there is a big long fence and on the other side of the fence, a steep drop to some commuter train tracks. I used to love going to that park and standing by the fence watching the trains go by below. I also used to walk over a bridge located above those same train tracks on a regular basis and I'd love stopping sometimes to watch the trains go by, or just to stare at the tracks. (See the picture of the tracks below.) When I first discovered that there were train tracks so close to me in Paris it felt like fate, and further convinced me how much I belonged in the 17th arrondissement.

Another amazing train track/whistle experience I've had took place in Marathon, Texas - this little speck of a town in the vast and magical West Texas desert. I've been to Marathon twice - once in May 2008 with S. en route to Los Angeles, and once in June 2009 with J. after we left Big Bend National Park. Ever since I first heard the song "We Danced Anyway" by Deana Carter when I was 16 I always loved the line "Well they say you can't go back, baby I don't believe that" because it's true that people do always say you can't go back. But Deana is right (!) since three times in my life I have gone back and going back has been perfect: 1. the two times I went to Marathon 2. Going back to Paris and living at 45 rue des Batignolles again in June-July 2008 and 3. returning to Berkeley for the 2005-2006 year after spending the first 7 months of 2005 in Santiago.

But back to Marathon, it is very beautiful there. The sky is so blue and bright during the day, and so so full of stars at night. It is also the most beautiful rich blue at sunset. Both times I stayed at the Marathon Motel which is located at the edge of Marathon and basically right in the desert. All the rooms are little cabins and when you step outside the cabin, you are confronted with the desert. The first time in May 2008 when S. and I were there, I was awoken in the middle of the night by long, loud and clear train whistles. Instead of wishing it would stop so I could go back to sleep, I lay there smiling and thinking about Berkeley and its train whistles and about how much I already liked West Texas. S. and I had arrived in Marathon in early evening and left early the next morning so we didn't get to enjoy the town much. J. and I arrived in the afternoon. In daytime, Marathon was awash with light, in brightness, the hot West Texas sun beamed down on our shoulders, our heads, the backs of our knees, our summer dresses, as we walked along the train tracks that scorching hot June day. It seems the trains there mostly go through at night and so in the afternoon we had the tracks to ourselves, to walk along and to explore. That night, I was awoken by the whistles again, and again I lay in bed smiling, so happy to be back in the vast desert with the night train and its whistles to keep me company.

Toronto also has some really cool train tracks. There are some good ones downtown, running along the lake. They go right by all these big tall condos and if I'd lived in one of those, I'd love to look out my window and watch the trains go by. There are also the Dupont train tracks which cross over Avenue Road just above Dupont and which run behind Dupont St. and a few other streets in that area. Some friends of my parents used to live right on Dupont and said that the trains running basically through their backyard were noisy and annoying. I know I wouldn't think so though, and would actually love to live super close to train tracks like that. Hopefully one day I'll eventually get to.

Une journée sans chocolat est une journée sans soleil

D. and I went for a walk the other night and passed this restaurant called Juliette et Chocolat (I love the name!). In the window they had the words above and as soon as I read it, I thought how perfect! I need to use it for my blog :) I've actually only ever been to the restaurant once (and it was great!) and so I need to go back. Their motto is perfect, and so true. But it didn't always used to be this way for me. I've always loved chocolate but for many many years I didn't eat some every day. That changed in March 2011. I was home in Toronto for a few days at the end of that February and my parents had a Lindt 70% chocolate bar lying on the counter. Never one to say no to chocolate, I tried it and was instantly hooked. March in law school is really stressful and so I decided chocolate would help me get through. I kept buying 70% and also branched out to try Intense Mint, 50% and 85%. Intense Mint quickly became my favourite, closely followed by 70%. At that time, I limited myself to two pieces per night and told myself I would only eat chocolate through the month of March and maybe April.

Since March 2011, three important Lindt chocolate related things have occurred. 1. Starting in September 2011, I began buying the chocolate regularly and now eat some almost every day. So much for only needing chocolate during the stress of March. (Although in my defence, other months are stressful too). 2. Also in September, I began eating usually 4 squares a day. I know it's bad! I know I should go back down to 2 but I can't help myself. I also do not seem to have gained weight so I tell myself the extra chocolate intake can't be that bad. 3. In terms of variety and selection in drug stores, Montreal beats Toronto any day. In Toronto I pretty much exclusively go to Shoppers Drug Mart. Very occasionally I'll go to PharmaPlus which my mom told me is now called Rexall. In Montreal, there are three competing drugstores and they are all in convenient locations across the city and all very close to each other. They are Uniprix,
Jean Coutu, and Shoppers (called Pharmaprix). These three drugstores continually rotate who has Lindt chocolate bars on sale 2 for $5. I am positive they coordinate so they have their sales at different times. It's perfect because I rarely have to pay full price since the deal happens so frequently (at one or the other) and I always stock up on a lot when they are on sale. I love these sales and it's a good feeling to pop into one of the stores for some toothpaste and also leave with 4 chocolate bars. Sometimes, though, I have to admit I feel like all I do is go from drugstore to drugstore hoping they'll have the deal on Lindt chocolate :)

The last time I was so consistently into chocolate was in the winter & spring of 2007 when I lived in Paris. It started the first month I was there when taking that English teacher certification course. There were only 8 of us taking that class together and we used to take turns going up the street to the little grocery store (called Franprix - a Paris grocery store chain; there was also Monoprix which was another chain whose stores were bigger. You can't walk more than a few blocks in residential parts of Paris without seeing a Franprix or Monoprix) and buying chocolate which we'd then share with all the others. That class was pretty stressful too and we'd all look forward to the chocolate all day. I think we mostly used to get milk chocolate back then. I do like milk chocolate but if I am just going to eat chocolate plain I prefer dark. Eating chocolate every afternoon was definitely a highlight of my day that whole month.

I had two other cool chocolate experiences in Paris. One Sunday in early June, I went with some friends to this little restaurant called Puerto Cacao (it focused on fair trade cocao and coffee) for a chocolate brunch. Back in 2007 the restaurant was located in the 17th arrondissement. However when I just googled it now it appears it has moved to the 12th arrondissement. If you're really into chocolate I think I would recommend going but I think it's the kind of thing I am glad I tried once but wouldn't really want to be a regular thing. The menu consisted of hot chocolate, chocolate croissants and then lots of bowls of hot dark chocolate into which you were supposed to dip bread and fruit. I left fairly satisfied, I guess, but I wouldn't say it was the best chocolate I'd ever had.

One rainy Sunday in May I ended up in a cafe in a part of Paris I didn't normally go to as I had just gone to an art gallery and then wanted to escape the rain before heading home. I ordered a hot chocolate, which was a good choice as Paris cafes take hot chocolate very seriously. The waiter brought me a cup with milk and then a bowl of hot melted chocolate. I could then put as much or as little chocolate as I wanted into the milk. I liked how I could control how chocolatey it got. It was the perfect escape from the rain outside. I wish I could have one right now actually! But since I can't, I think I'll go have my daily pieces of chocolate.