Honey Smacked

So I bought some bulk puffed wheat and puffed millet. I still love my Uncle Sam cereal, but I'm looking for something to keep breakfast new and exciting. So I bought the puffed grains, and the smell of the puffed wheat in my bowl reminded me of something...the smell of Honey Smacks cereal eaten as a kid. Voila, a tiny pot of acacia honey brought all the way from petite dejeuner in Paris.

I drizzled this lovely honey over my puffed wheat and poured on some milk, wondering if the end result would taste anything like Honey Smacks taste in my memory.

And you know what? They totally did, but better! Explosions of drizzled honey in my mouth, that toasty taste of the puffed wheat. Awesome. I've since added it to my internal Childhood Comfort Foods menu. Three ingredient comfort food is always a good thing to have as back-up for a bad day.

Bonne Vacances!

My first dinner in Paris with my love (who wined and dined me, and in some cases, beered me): entrecote medium (sirloin steak) topped with chimichurri sauce, served alongside perfectly crispy frites. Frisee salade as a starter. Table vin rouge. And chocolate profiteroles filled with vanilla ice cream for dessert (why did I forget to take a picture? WHY?)



Laduree, fine patisserie since le fin de siecle. Creator of the famous French macaron, a tiny sandwich cookie made of chewy nut meringue and usually filled with flavored ganache. I sampled dix macarons, saveurs assortiment. My favorite? The caramel avec fleur de sel. Also, fleur d'orange and fleur de rose were pretty spectacular. Next time, I'm getting something millefeuille-y, and something chocolat mousse-y. I did order fresh strawberries with champagne saboyan, though. Amaze! Fantastic. Insane. I died. My girlfriend is not into patisserie, so she was probably thinking about pretzels, or frites, while I was dying a sweet death.



Breakfast in bed, how many times? Quite a few. My favorite was mind-blowing crusty-outside, fluffy-inside multigrain baguette butts, perfectly tender scrambled eggs with pepper, pain au chocolat, croissants with butter and rhubarb jam, a two-cup pot of cafe americano accompanied by a tiny pot of milk, and fresh squeezed orange juice in a heavy tumbler.



Obligatory French food, remarkable for having been served and beautifully presented at 3am. Note the perfect fried egg, delicately broiled cheese and toast, hot crispy frites, and framboise kir. They do not screw around with food in France, even at 3 am in a corner bar. I was even more pleased to find a paper-thin slice of ham under the broiled cheese of my sandwich.



Salade Visconte: romaine and arugula ("rocket" or roquette), cucumber ribbons, chunks of parmesan, small delicious garden tomatoes, basil pesto, walnuts, poached chicken, kalamata olives. A perfect midnight snack, breakfast, or festive dejeuner.



"Avez-vous des escargots plus?" I enjoyed eating garlicky parsley snails way more than expected. Juicy, chewy, rich, buttery. Much like eating a substantial small mushroom stuffed with cheese and garlic. My girlfriend may have compared eating good escargot to eating a buttered region of female anatomy. JUST SAYING. I'm not arguing with her, either.

Catering Hyena Snags a Bagel!

A special weekend breakfast for cheap: free bagel cut into thin slices and toasted (one slice discarded to save calories), two large organic eggs, 1/2 cup corn and one small tomato = 400 calories, 14 grams of fat, 20 grams of protein!

Less if I had been really vigilant and used smaller pieces of the bagel. Meh.

Nest Egg

French-cut frozen green beans on the bottom, red lentils in tomato sauce in the center, and a foached egg on top. Bird in the Nest. Nest Egg. Not quite Toad In The Hole, though. The paleo-diet version of Toad In The Hole, maybe.

Fueling Up

Green beans (french-cut, of course), corn off the cob = my two favorite frozen vegetable options. Great emergency food, great stormy weather food, great quick lunch-in-a-box food with chicken or egg or tofu. Truly. Organic is better, but conventional will do in a (penny)pinch. Today I added a small organic tomato, four dice-sized blocks of frozen cilantro, and two foached eggs on top. A little oil to help my corn get crispy on the bottom of the pan, yum.

It's a cool, sunny, breezy day in the high 60's, low 70's. Perfect day to fill a hydration bladder, stuff some mini Clifs in my bra, and run the Emerald Necklace. It's one of the best things about Boston, in my opinion. I'm going to try to get from Jamaica Pond to Boston Common and back again. Between ten and twelve miles. Thus, fueling up with a large breakfast - eaten on top of Uncle Sam, soy milk, and blueberries at 1 am this morning. What can I say! Fueling UP.

My weekend has been fun, sociable, and relaxing, but I'm really missing my someone special. Thus, my rabid desire to eat chocolate and ice cream to make up for those missing romance endorphins, word. Yesterday, minty chocolate fudge ice cream in a cup. The day before that, a bar of dark chocolate with shredded orange peel - delicious! Today, maybe...some sort of Lindt bar after my run? I do love the Lindt chili. Lindt orange-almond will do as well. My sweet-tooth is so out of control, I was transfixed by this wallet in a fancy shop - it looks just like those candy buttons glued to sheets of wax paper.


Yes, the ice cream did mess my guts up, and did make me feel a bit queasy, but it was SO GOOD. Romance endorphins are easier on the waistline, though. And they have much more of an afterglow.

Upgraded my Camera Phone to the Palm Pre!

Amazing. Such a great phone (so far). Aside from dropped calls - but that could be AT&T, who knows. But what's exciting is a camera with more megapixels, and the ability to send them to my email easily and without the added distress of crashing my phone in the process. AWESOME.


So I'll take pictures again. Of food that I'm eating. Below, we have my Poor Person's Breakfast consisting of from-a-box drop biscuits with zucchini and tomato sauté, and a foached egg. Earl Grey tea with milk. The classy, Anglophilic poor person, I guess.


Let's recall what my Mom said about me: "Champagne taste on a beer budget." Why am I not a doctor or an engineer or something that actually requires brain power. I think it's low self-esteem, actually. BUT that's a different post, for a different blog. This post is about HOT frickin' BISCUITS.