My French Kitchen:
A Daybook

"A week ago the weather was so balmy the the pussy willows at the back of the yard were beginning to open, and I was thinking about planting a few radish seeds in the back vegetable bed, where I'd just finished harvesting the last of the turnips." – Klaus, from Weathering Winter










Aug. 19

When a day passes and all I've done cooking-wise is slip a local grocery vegetable pizza in in the oven, what can I say, it never feels enough, incomplete. So I began a little journal on French cooking three weeks ago and had following its recipes fairly closely and gearing up to begin to stock the kitchen with French essentials (I find out what these are as I go along, of course), and then a week long trip to Spain to visit my middle daughter had sent me off in another direction entirely, considering tapas and paella. These weeks later, well, what can I say, I come out of it all with this conclusion: I may prefer to visit Spain, but how could I ever give up my French cooking? Yesterday morning it was cereal, all day long granola bars and, if I remember right, biscuit and bacon sandwich from Starbucks, then later a fine chopped chicken salad from Hollander over at Hilldale. It feels something like food ADHD, skipping around from various quick food to another, all the while those French recipes sitting there in the wonderful books like My French Kitchen, or another, soon for me to review, a local favorite on french baking. Klaus's wonderful little day book is dedicated to his garden; I am convinced more and more as I get older that perhaps nothing is quite so important or relevant in our days that to have something 'hands-on' to do, to create, to then share. Days like yesterday go by a little like flying but without landing. I wouldn't quite go as far as to say migrating, really, but oddly more flying around in circles. Here, as always, is another self-comittment to never give up the fine craft, trade, art of French cooking, so that these wings can catch a rest.