Choco-là-là

As we head to bed on our last night in Paris, here's a peek at our chocolate stash:

We stock up on chocolate on every trip to France.  Got some for baking and got some for snacking.  With some dark hot chocolate to boot.  So much better.  And so much cheaper.

Can't wait to make us some chocolate cream desserts.

And all other sorts of chocolate delights.

Foire de Paris

Yesterday led us on a visit to the Foire de Paris with Karim.  The foire (fair) is a humongous collection of exhibits with stands from all across France, and even some from other European countries.  There are different themed areas, such as a craft area, an audio-visual section, home furnishing/decoration expositions, health and wellness area, and, of course, my favourite, the wine and gastronomy section.  And that is only to name a few.  I was there for about three hours yesterday and barely got out of the wine and gastronomy section, that's just how big it is (and how much I love wine and food)!  

These pictures don't even do it justice. And this was only one of the 10+ buildings.

For lunch, I enjoyed a delicious baguette sandwich, with ham and melted raclette cheese. Mmm.... I didn't get a shot of the sandwich, but they use these lamps over huge blocks of cheese to melt it right into your sandwich.  Too French!!

We also picked up some cheese to make a truffade this weekend (potatoes with delicious melted cheese).  This is what they were making here:

In fact, there were mountains of cheese stands with samples a-plenty.

And the guys had a chance to taste a wide variety of salami.  We also discovered that this is the only form of meat that Logan will eat, other than hot dogs.  What a weirdo that he won't eat chicken or beef, but will eat salami...

The kids enjoyed some homemade natural ice cream and loved every spoonful.

AND had a macaron. 

Twas a decadent day for everyone.  Though the adults saved themselves for the wine...

What would a foire in France be without sampling wine???  We even tried to buy some, but they would only sell it by a dozen bottles at a time (sooooo French), which we can't quite fit into our suitcases.

Yogurt, Yogurt, YOGURT!!!!!

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a little bit of a yogurt obsession. Have for years... and years... and years. Goes hand in hand with my smoothie obsession.  In fact, one of my very first posts was about making homemade yogurt.

Now, I know what you're thinking. It's perhaps a little bit crazy to write an entire blog post about yogurt.  But if you have been following my blog for awhile, you know that crazy should maybe have been my middle name...

I'm not sure I can even really convey how much I love yogurt.  It also turned out to be one of Logan's early favourite foods.  As I mentioned in this post, for awhile, I had to hide every time I wanted to eat a yogurt when Logan was around just so that he wouldn't eat it all on me.  

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we're now in Paris.  Now, I know that when most people think of French food, they think of things like croissants, wine and cheese. Me?? Yogurt.

That's right.  Yogurt, yogurt and more yogurt. Lemon yogurt, rhubarb yogurt, passion fruit/pineapple yogurt, mango/passion fruit yogurt, dark chocolate yogurt (yes! you read that right), chocolate mint yogurt, vanilla like-we-don't-have-in-Canada yogurt.  And the list goes on. 

Too good... Bonne Maman rhubarb yogurt.
One of my MANY favourites. 

more of a cream dessert than yogurt, but delicious!

can't wait to try these passion fruit/pineapple yogurts

Never mind all of the other yogurt-like products that they sell over here that, for whatever reason, we don't have at home.  Such as fromage blanc/fromage frais, which is similar to quark cheese at home, but comes in all sorts of delicious flavours in France, including whipped varieties, and petits suisses, a richer form of fromage blanc, mostly for kids (who are we kidding here???).  We just picked up some delicious fromage blanc fresh from the farm while visiting Jérôme's grandmother in l'Allier.

The yogurt selection over here opens up a whole new world of yogurt obsession for me. Teresa may well remember this from when she joined us on a trip to Paris, in which she whole-heartedly participated in lengthy discussions in the yogurt aisles, as we tried to decide what to purchase. I've been whispering to my yogurt-loving Logan for weeks now how much he was going to love France, if only for the yogurt.  Even though I'm pretty sure he didn't even get much of what I was saying.  And man, does he love it...

Here's a shot of the loot that we brought home from today's trip to the grocery store alone:

And I was restraining myself!

Mmmm Trifle

I wanted to share some delicious variations to my usual trifle recipes that we've made for everyone over here in France.

In fact, today is Ilian's birthday party.  His 4th birthday was on Friday.

Showing off his new bike

Sporting his new Spiderman mask

And today we prepared both a regular and a chocolate trifle for his birthday.

We used my mom's trifle recipe for the regular trifle, but substituted a homemade crème pâtissière for the vanilla pudding. And we just left out the jello, since they don't have any in France.  And used a homemade quatre quarts recipe instead of the pound cake.  I will post this when I get home.

Then for the chocolate version, we just followed my regular chocolate trifle recipe, but instead of the chocolate pudding, made another crème pâtissière and added 100g of dark chocolate that we had melted with a bit of milk.

Can't wait to try them!! 

Difficulty level: moderate

Oh My French Goodness!!

We had a wonderful day full of deliciousness today here in Paris.  It is 9:30 pm here as I type this and I am still full from lunch.  In fact, now that we're back at Karim and Assia's, everyone else is at the dinner table while I type this.  

Jérôme's mom's cousin invited us over for lunch today.  And he's a fantastic cook!

We started the day with a train ride out to their house.  Which Logan adored, even though it doesn't seem so in the photo.

Our meal started with a delicious salad that was so good I didn't even get a picture of it before it disappeared.

Then came the beef bourguignon.

And then a pâté aux pommes de terre (potato/cream pie). My absolute favourite, and Joel does this particularly well.

And, of course, a cheese platter.

It goes without saying that none of this would have been complete without some (aka lots of) good wine.

And delicious champagne.

Ma copine de trottoir.  Don't ask, but vodka was involved.
An awful lot of vodka. On her wedding day...

Even Chloé joined in.  I mean, she is half French, after all.

And then we most certainly had to have dessert. I mean, you can't end such a wonderful meal without having some homemade apple pie.

Wow... I feel sick just reading how much we ate this afternoon!!!!!  And yes, it was all only for lunch!

In any case, we all had a blast.

Waiting for our bus back home

Photo Update from Paris

To date, this visit to Paris has been nothing but a culinary delight.  A mixture of Algerian dishes, from Jérôme's best friend's wife, Assia, Brazilian dishes from one of Jérôme's mom's best friends, Maria and various dishes from home that we are sharing with them. And I am in the midst of preparing other posts to share all of these dishes with you.  But as I mentioned, we've been super busy since we got here and I haven't had much time to blog.

Chloé ended up with a stomach bug last night and Logan ended up with a fever today (here's hoping he's not the one puking tonight...).  This led us to cancel our plans with a longtime friend today and left me a little bit of time to throw together a small post of photos to share what we've been up to over the past week or so.  

The delicious recipes will come.  Perhaps only once we have returned back home and I have a bit more time.  But here are some photos to hold you over in the meantime.

Chloé and Maria, one of Jérôme's mom's
best friends

Chloé and Mayas, Karim and Assia's son, who is 12 days older than Chloé

Just like the old days... only now with kids

Maria, Mayas and Chloé

Maria, giving a girl a hand and breastfeeding Chloé for me, lol.
And Maria's husband Bob, along with Mayas.

Mayas and big brother Ilian

omg I so do not want four kids!!

or twins

already got my hands full with the two I've got!

Evelyne, another of Jérôme's mom's best friends

So Much to Share, So Little Time

We are now on our fourth night in Paris and I have so much to share... from how the kids started of by fighting like dogs to videos of them giggling together...  from Assia's DELICIOUS Algerian cooking to the French dishes that Jérôme has been teaching her to make....

I've been wanting to get on here to blog for the past couple of days, but with 4 kids under 4 years old here, it's been a bit of a gong show getting anything done. Much of the day is spent doing bathing the kids, doing groceries, cooking, doing dishes and breaking apart minor fights between the kids.  And by the time the evening rolls around, we're all too exhausted to do anything but sit around the table chatting, and catching up. But I do promise some delicious recipes will one day come of this visit.

Happy Easter

We decided to not go home to my parents' for Easter this year, as the drive for such a short stay is a bit much with the two little monkeys these days.

We nonetheless had a great Easter morning outside in the backyard today.  Logan enjoyed his first Easter egg hunt and had a blast hunting for his "cocos" (eggs), outside, on a beautiful, mild sunny day.  So un-Quebec like!  

Egg hunting in the yard in the summer-like weather

 

Loving his new house from Olivier and Félix

and the eggs hiding inside

Hunting through the gardens

Cocos (eggs) where are you?

Mmmm chocolate :)
We had a bit of a fit when we told him "no more"

P.S. Thanks for my outfit, Helen :)

Easter loot

And then we enjoyed a delicious lamb roast, greek potatoes and peas for dinner, followed by a homemade chocolate cream dessert, which I will post shortly.  Mmm....

Happy Easter everyone!  What did you do this Easter to celebrate with your family?