I enjoyed hot chocolate, a great table, and good conversation with Elizabeth Bard at Angelina’s near the Louvre on my trip to Paris last year Look, there are her fingers!

Elizabeth came to Paris almost a decade ago and never really left. While she was studying abroad, she fell in love with a Frenchman, eventually married him, and slowly learned how to make a life in the city of lights. Her story is told in her new book Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes which includes dozens of recipes that marked special moments during her transition. These include recipes for seduction, meals to warm you up when your apartment doesn’t have central heat, and slimming summer recipes for the bikini days of French vacation.

I talked to Elizabeth about her book and particularly about what anyone can do to make their kitchen more “Frenchie.” You can catch up with her on the Lunch in Paris Facebook fan page.

Q: One of the most obvious traits of French cooking that I noticed in your book was the [...]

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As I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen yesterday evening, I realized something. I hate cooking! Cooking sucks! Sure, I have occasionally been charmed by gadgets such as the apple slicer and I enjoy eating new recipes that turn out tasty and delicious, but I still hate cooking. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I hate standing in the kitchen for an hour chopping and stirring and measuring and flipping. I hate being confused by recipes that say to squeeze the juice out of grated ginger when no juice seems to appear. I hate cleaning a dozen measuring spoons and measuring cups and dirty bowls when I’m done. Drive-throughs and pizza delivery are popular for a reason.

Still, I managed to cook some of my bok choy and ginger using the recipe for Stir-Fried Shanghai Bok Choy with Ginger from Epicurious.com. I started by peeling the ginger with a spoon over the trash can as some of you advised. And DAMN, you were right, that stuff if potent! As soon as the skin came off the [...]

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I didn’t intend for this blog to suddenly become PastaQueen’s book review bonanza, but that’s how everything landed, so let’s just go with it, ok? My friend, Stephanie O’Dea, who blogs at A Year of Slow Cooking just released her first cookbook, smartly titled Make It Fast, Cook It Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking. Please note the usage of the word “slow cooker” and not “crockpot” which is a trademarked term that we will avoid for fear of litigation.

Steph sent me a copy of her book, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone, or rather kill half a peck of apples with one recipe.

I dug out my mother’s slow cooker, which is literally older than I am, and grabbed nine apples from my freshly picked peck, to make the Apple Crisp recipe on page 402. This meant I got to use my favorite kitchen appliance, the apple slicer!

My knife skills are nothing to brag about, so I spent at least 15 minutes peeling the skin off of the apples, [...]

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Last Sunday I did something I’ve been threatening to do for years, something that required extreme heat, something that required specialized utensils, something completely bizarre and unimaginable which took an hour and 15 minutes.

I cooked all my dinners for the week.

Lately I’ve been so hungry for dinner when I come home that I haven’t been willing to wait 20-30 minutes to cook something healthy and wholesome and all that crap. I’ve been eating TV dinners or stopping at the grocery to buy overpriced sushi. A week ago Sunday I noticed my fridge contained a couple of zucchini and yellow squash in the fresher drawer in danger of going bad, a bag of fish fillets I’d thawed out several days ago, and a chicken breast I’d been meaning to grill for days. “Crap!” I thought. This stuff was either going to go bad or kill me when I did eat it if I didn’t cook it soon. So, I decided to get a little crazy and try a new strategy – I cooked three dinners [...]

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I bought myself an apple slicer for Christmas. Actually, I bought an apple slicer and it happened to be December. Strangely, everything I buy for myself between Thanksgiving and December 25th automatically becomes a Christmas present to myself. Check out those 12-packs of soda I got myself for Christmas! Does the holiday themed aluminum can count as gift wrapping?

I saw the apple slicer at Target and was immediately reminded why I don’t let myself browse that store much anymore. It’s because I buy stuff. Like apple slicers and silicone muffin pans in the shape of hearts and $5.50 DVDs that I will never watch. Thankfully, I have already used the apple slicer, like this:

Isn’t that awesome?! I positioned the tool over an apple, pressed down, and instantly I cored and sliced it into 8 pieces. I didn’t even have to press that hard. The only way it could be more perfect is if it peeled the apple too, but then I’d have no use for my paring knife, so I guess it’s for the best. [...]

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