Paris Syndrome

Back in the fall, D. told me about Paris Syndrome – first written about in the French journal of psychiatry, Nervure, in 2004. It primarily affects Japanese tourists to Paris (on average about 20 – out of the 6 million Japanese who visit Paris annually (that seems so high!)). I had never heard of it before but was immediately fascinated, given that I love Paris and also loved Japan when I visited there. The syndrome manifests itself, according to Wikipedia, through "a number of psychiatric symptoms such as as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (delusional belief of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, hostility to others), a derealization, a depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, etc.." Wikipedia also explains that there are 4 main triggers: 1. Language barrier (most Japanese apparently don't speak French) 2. Cultural differences (Japanese society is supposedly much more polite than French society and Japanese don't pick up on certain cultural cues/behaviour) 3. Idealized image of Paris and 4. Jet Lag/Exhaustion/trying to cram too much into everyday. Apparently the syndrome affects Japanese tourists because of the special connection between Japan and Paris. As I remember from when I visited Japan in May-June 2010, French influence is everywhere there. The Tokyo Tower openly says it copied the Eiffel Tower and there is even a crepe stand at the bottom. When French - or mostly Parisian - culture is present all over your own country, the anticipation of visiting Paris must be very great.



I think it's super sad and scary that even 20 people a year feel like that in Paris. That's awful. And I hate to think that Paris is probably ruined for them forever. I doubt any of them ever go back... And I wonder what they feel like in Japan when they see images of the Eiffel Tower or walk by yet another patisserie? Will those kinds of things just always make them sad? It must be really hard. The main positive I can think of in all this is that hopefully the majority of those 6 million annual Japanese visitors to Paris really like the city.



I think it's very telling that this syndrome afflicts people visiting Paris. A. once told me, with such conviction, that he believes you can only hate someone you can also love. In some ways I think his belief is apt for Paris. Something that can make you feel so high also has the ability to make you feel so low. Paris has the (well-deserved in my opinion) reputation as being the city of cities, the city which tops all other cities - it provokes such deep emotions; and it's when deep emotions abound that things like love and hate and high and low and feeling amazing and feeling delusional come into the picture.

Sometimes I feel cliched about saying Paris is my favourite city because it seems to be so many people’s favourite city. But then I remind myself of the ending to Ernest Hemingway's memoir about Paris A Moveable Feast where he writes: “There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it..." I especially love that last line. I also like how it acknowledges that each person who lives (or really visits) there has a different perspective and that this is good (except for people who experience Paris Syndrome). I love the scene in the second to last ever episode of Sex and the City when Carrie is on the balcony of her hotel in Paris and sees the Eiffel Tower and is so so happy. That is what visiting Paris should be like for everyone. (And while Paris in some ways didn't live up to Carrie's expectations, I think if she had just gone there for a vacation as opposed to saying she was going to move there permanently, she would have liked it much more.)



In closing, I'm not sure this post really said too much except that I'm fascinated by Paris Syndrome, while sympathetic to those who suffer from it. I feel like I both get it on an abstract level and am glad I've never experienced it on a personal level. I get it that a place you've wanted to visit for so long that turns out to be not at all what you imagine could cause you to have all these psychological problems. But I also don't get it in that to me, I feel like Carrie every time I see the Eiffel Tower, even after seeing it many many times. I also feel that in a lot of ways Paris lives up to its stereotypes - especially the images of it in Japan. When I visited Japan, I recognized aspects of French culture there in a positive way, and not in an over the top way at all. There are crepes stands and patisseries all over Paris, so I think having them in Tokyo is somewhat realistic and is definitely not romanticizing Paris. I don't know. It's impossible to know why some things affect certain people in certain ways. Maybe if it hadn't been Paris something else would have caused sufferers from Paris Syndrome to experience the same type of symptoms? I wish someone (I'd love to myself one day if I could find someone to interview, but finding someone seems super hard/bordering on impossible) would interview a Paris Syndrome sufferer and ask them about everything from their thoughts about Paris pre-going there to their first symptoms to why they think Paris affected them in this way to what their feelings are about Paris now...Until then, I hope the number of sufferers went down this year, and continues to decline every year.

Exposed Brick

Last December, M. was in Montreal for a conference and she, H. and I had dinner one cold Saturday night at Figaro. Somehow we got to talking about exposed brick, and H. suggested it would be a good topic for a blog post. I agreed, wrote it down on my list of future blog topics when I got home, and am now writing it, deciding it would be good post this month since I feel like I've been noticing exposed brick everywhere recently.

In a way, my first exposure to exposed brick came in my house in Toronto because the wall of the whole back/TV room of our house is brick. It's not so much exposed, however, as original as it's just the actual old exterior wall of the house (complete with a window and a glass single frame door) which the previous owners of the house decided to keep when adding on the back room. The brick is dark and rough and while I love the backroom of my house, the brick is not at all like the more chic red or rusty coloured exposed brick that seems popular these days. I prefer that popular style but I would take the brick wall in my house over whitewashed exposed brick. I like white walls in houses but if you're going to have bricks, I think they should be their real colour and not white.

My first exposure to exposed brick (the kind we don't have in my house) came at Cloyne, this co-op L. and N. lived at our second year of Berkeley. Cloyne was on Ridge Road, on Berkeley's northside, and the biggest co-op (could house 150 people) out of this whole network of co-ops where students lived. Cloyne was known for its parties. Maybe twice a semester, it had big parties - where you had to pay to get in, there were hundreds of people, and long long lines for beer. It also had this other type of party that was maybe only once a semester called a room to room. In these parties, whoever wanted to participate would "open" their room at a designated time and serve drinks according to a theme. Cloyne had three wings - east, central and west, and each wing would be "open" at different times during the night. After all the rooms were closed, people just hung out anywhere in the house. Room to rooms were invitation only (so the people who lived at Cloyne and whoever they invited) and weren't open to the general public like the big parties. My favourite type of party at Cloyne was the Special Dinner (which was again only people who lived there plus their guests) where everyone got dressed up and drank champagne and ate good food and the dining room was lit only with candles. (In May of our second year there was also a Special Brunch, which was the same idea except it happened in the daytime, under bright sunlight, and I had to limit myself to two small glasses of champagne because I was meeting up with some people to study right after it.) Cloyne seemed so much nicer at Special Dinner - everyone was having fun and being nice to each other and I would sense a real feeling of community that I never felt at any of the other parties or any other times I was there.




At one of the room to rooms during our second year (my invitation courtesy, as always, of L.), L. and I ended up in a corner bedroom on the third floor of the west wing whose theme was tropical and who were serving drinks made with malibu rum. Corner rooms are always the best, but this one was particularly nice because one whole wall had exposed brick. If I remember correctly, only corner rooms had exposed brick at Cloyne. Despite going over to Cloyne fairly often I think that was the only room with exposed brick I saw as none of my friends' rooms had it. But I do remember that there was this aura about exposed brick at Cloyne and how those rooms were considered to be better than most of the other rooms in the house that didn't have exposed brick.

I think exposed brick looks best in the living room or the kitchen of a home (although I have to admit it did look good in Cloyne and those were bedrooms) because those rooms tend to be bigger, and because more people gather in them and it's nice to show off the brick. Like I said at the top, I've been noticing exposed brick all over these past few months. I was at Figaro the other day and for the first time really noticed how the walls in their open kitchen are exposed brick. It adds a really nice touch. This cafe near my apt here in Montreal called Entre le cafe et la plume (it opened last summer, after I had written those posts on cafes or I likely would have mentioned it there) is a great cafe (see picture below). It is very small - just one fairly small room but it's so nice. The bathrooms are so clean and bright and the whole main wall of the cafe is an exposed brick wall. Even though I don't drink coffee (and therefore can't order that there), find their chai latte nowhere near sweet enough, and find their tea way overpriced, I still go to that cafe on a somewhat regular basis just so I can enjoy the brick wall (which contributes so much to the overall ambiance).



Exposed brick can make a room feel really inviting and comfortable and provide a charming backdrop for cooking and conversations. It is definitely something that would be an added bonus in any future houses or apts in which I may live.

Movie Mania: from the theatre to your bed

Last December, D. and I went to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in IMAX just so D. could see the first six minutes of the new Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. A few nights before that at 10 pm., D. had gone to the same IMAX theatre at the Scotiabank movie theatre in downtown Montreal to watch just the first six minutes, and then get up and leave. He told me there were people dressed up as Batman, people dressed up as the Joker, and someone dressed as Robin - all for six minutes. D. is so into the director Christopher Nolan that seeing the first six minutes of the Dark Knight Rises was worth seeing twice. (Unsurprisingly, D. obviously went to the midnight show of Batman when it opened last week, and then we saw it on Friday night, and then he saw it again with his brothers on Sunday. That's 3 times in 3 days.)



I like that kind of devotion. I like people who love directors and certain movies so much they have to see the first six minutes, or they have to go to the midnight showing the day (or rather the night before) it opens. I like people who dress up as Batman (or as pirates which L. told me she and her friends did in a movie theatre in Dallas when Pirates of the Caribbean came out 9 years ago). I like people like N. who could always be counted on to see the Harry Potter movies at the midnight showing, and who saw Serenity at midnight too. We crossed paths in front of a movie theatre on Shattuck in Berkeley in March 2006 when N. was lining up to get in to the theatre on the opening night of V for Vendetta. I was super embarrassed that I was leaving the theatre at this point, having just seen Failure to Launch. (For the record: I have a weakness for Matthew McConaughey which is why I saw that movie, but I am the first to admit that it was a bad movie. I also saw Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in theatres for the same reason, and had the same disappointed reaction.)

I love going to the movies, and I wish I could go more. I always love winter vacation because, especially in high school and during university, I would go see so many movies. But I don't have the same passion for the movies that I have for other things, like books for example. And some people, like my brother, think my taste in movies is appallingly bad. I do like seeing cheesy movies, that's true. But I think it ties in to how for me, movies are mostly just fun and entertainment, whereas reading for me is about more than that. As an example of my relationship with movies, the last movie I can remember being really really excited for - to the extent that I went to see it on opening night with A., E. and L. way back in June 2002 - was the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and that was because I had loved the book so much!! Sadly it wasn't even that good.

Every once in a while, however, I'll find a movie that I love. Most recently those movies have been Whip It which Drew Barrymore directed and which is so good. It did really badly in theatres and I don't know why because it's so good! I wish Drew Barrymore would direct another movie but I worry she won't because Whip It made so little money. If you haven't seen it, you should rent it. I saw it in theatres, and then I watched it twice in a row on a plane ride. I watched it once, contemplated watching a different movie for about half a second, and then pressed the screen to re-watch Whip It. The other most recent movie I loved so much was The Lives of Others. This is another movie that if you haven't seen it, you must. I first saw it in Paris in March 2007. It moved me so much that I happily went to see it again with N. 2 months later when he was visiting Paris and staying with me for 6 days. Both times I was seeing a German movie with French subtitles and was curious to see if I'd find the movie any different if I watched it with English subtitles. S. and I rented it once and I actually think I preferred the French subtitles. Maybe just because I felt like some of the English translations seemed different than what I remembered reading in French. That movie was especially intriguing to me because I am fascinated by the history of the Eastern bloc, and much of the movie is set in 1984, the year I was born.



Another movie related thing I like is seeing two movies in one day. I've done it at home a few times - gone to see a movie in the afternoon with a friend, and then another movie that night with my parents. Sometimes it's just good to make it a movie day and watch more than one. On a June Friday in Paris, I had the day off from work and decided to go see one movie which started at 10 am and another that started at 3 pm both alone. I went to more movies alone those first six months of 2007 that I lived in Paris than I ever had before or ever have since. In fact, I'm not sure I've been to a movie alone since I came back from Paris. But I can think of 5 right now that I saw alone, and there were likely a few more thrown in there too. Paris in general is one of the best cities for movie going in the world. (Another great city for movies, unsurprisingly, is LA. S. and I especially like the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood.) There are hundreds of movie theatres there (see picture below), and they show a wide variety of French, European and Hollywood movies. Plus, movies start as early as 9 am there while in Toronto, I feel like the earliest movies start is 11:30 am. They should start earlier!



This post has really been about going to the movies but I have to just quickly say that renting movies is pretty great too. S. and D. are tied for my favourite people to watch rented movies with (and it's not just because I've watched the most movies with one or the other of them.) While there is definitely something special and fun about going to the movies and watching a movie on the big screen, there is something equally special about watching a movie at home on my laptop from the comfort of my bed. Since we graduated Berkeley and stopped living in the same place, S. and I have spent many subsequent visits in Salt Lake City, LA, Moab, and Mont Tremblant lying on comfortable beds or couches watching movie after movie (there's always so many to watch and we never can choose just one!). Our movie watching marathons started in November 2007 when I visited S. in Salt Lake City. I missed her so much, didn't like Austin, and didn't want to go back there early Monday morning. On Sunday we woke up to lots of rain. I needed to watch The Battle of Algiers for a class I was taking and S. said she'd watch it again. I had rented it and brought it with me before leaving but given the terrible weather, we thought it'd be fun to rent some other movies too. So we braved the rain, drove to Blockbuster, rented 13 Going on 30 and Center Stage and bought some chocolate at the drug store next door. We then spent the whole day on her bed next to the window with the rain incessantly falling outside but us warm and cozy inside watching 3 movies in a row and eating lots of chocolate. I could have stayed like that for at least a week :)



To close, watching movies is always fun, whether at home or in theatres. I also like that you can go to a movie in different countries and cities all around the world and the experience is usually going to be pretty similar. So yeah for movies, and let's hope I find a new one to love so much I want to see it in theatres and/or on planes multiple times soon!

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.