Sunday Morning Painting

Mystery Watercolor...

I Will be sending this watercolor to a mystery recipient!! Stay tuned!

2nd Water Color

I Louvre You

My Love Affair with The Louvre; A Photo Essay

The Infatuation

The Seduction

Cupid's Arrow

True Love
The Wedding

The Consummation


The Other Man

The Other Woman

The Confusion
The Tears


The Break up

... For now..

It's going to be an on-again-off-again sort of thing..

Improv Cooking

Normal Cooking requires planning, precision, calculation, and patience. It's a talent. It's an art form. It's a chemistry experiment you get to eat.

Cooking in my 2x3' kitchen, luxuriously complete with two burners, a clogged sink, and minimal utensils, requires a whole other skill set. First and foremost one needs an open mind, followed by creativity, preserverance, determination, and insensitive taste buds in order of importance. It's kinda like a Mensa Puzzle in which there is no right answer.

Yet, despite my spatial and economic disadvantages, I have managed to makes some pretty good meals for my friends.

In my last post about my neighbor I mentioned that on my first night she has cooked me a traditional Italian meal, so last Wednesday it was my turn to cook un plat Americaine for her. As I don't eat meat, hamburgers and hot dogs were out of the questions, so in honor of the upcoming American National Holiday, Super Bowl Sunday (even though I can count the number of football games I've watched on one hand) I decided to make Black Bean Chili, with Rice and Sour Cream. Which, upon arrival at the marche, quickly turned into Just a Vegetable Soup with Rice and Creme Fraiche, as there were no black beans, or any beans for that matter, to be found.

Actually that's a lie, there were dehydrated chickpeas, which I bought not realizing they require a 12 hour soak in order to be palatable.

Without the luxury of an iPhone to double check whether I had indeed purchased ingredients that even remotely resembled a complete recipe on Allrecipes.com, I got home with a hodge podge of vegetables and ingredients that looked like they might be willing to lend them lives and nutrients to a soup.

Yet once I made it back home, climbed my 9 flights of stairs I couldn't find a single recipe that would consider my bags of ingredients a proper meal. And since going back down to street level was not an option.. I improvised...

The recipe went something like this:

Ingredients:

1 eggplant (cubed)
1 Zucchini (cubed)
1 Green Pepper
3 small onions (diced)
1/2 cup cheap red wine
1/3 cup olive oil
3 stalks of chives/ scallions (sliced)
1 clove of garlic
3 cans of skinned whole tomatoes
a couple dashes of dried chili peppers
2 cups of Basmati Rice
A tub of Creme Fraiche


1. Glaze the onions in olive oil. Once they are light brown add the eggplant cubes. When it feels right add red wine and continue cooking until wine is absorbed.

2. Cook Zucchini and green pepper in another pan. Add minced garlic.
3. Once Zucchini and Green pepper look cooked add them to the eggplant.

4. Add whole tomatoes.
5. Stir in Chive slices.
6. Add a few dashes of dried chili peppers into the mix
7. Add some hot sauce for extra spice
8. Continue to cook on low heat for as long as you want, or until dinner needs to be served.

9. Serve with a dollop of Creme Fraiche and Grated Cheddar ( but if you can find that, Parm will do)
10. Open both windows to give the impression that your room can hold more than 2 people at a time.
Enjoy!



Hindsight's Lessons...

-It would have been nice to actually have had beans to add
-A jalepeno pepper would have added flavor
- My room is too small to ever cook onions in again.. even though I left my windows open to air it out it smelled for the next three days. And for some reason my shower towel also absorbed the smell from hanging in such close quarters ( on the other side of the room) so I, too, smelled like one big onion for the whole week... great way to find love in paris.. smell like an onion.

My Neighbor

Stephania is my neighbor who lives in the Chambre de Bonne next to mine. She's from Milan and works at Christian Louboutin.


Last night she invited me to go for a walk with her up to Montmatre to visit Sacre Coeur and have a crepe and a drink.


She's really sweet and makes me speak only French to her. It's hard to joke around in my limited vocabulary, but somehow we manage to understand each other.

She is training for the Rome Marathon and has invited me to come running with her. This could be my get out of obesity free card! Because right now on my croissant, baguette, jelly, and brie diet I'm on the "Do not pass Go. Do not collect your former size 2 jeans" fast track.

The first night we met she invited me over for dinner because she had just made Spaghetti Bolognese. I didn't have the heart or the bad manners to tell her I have been a vegetarian for 4 years. So I said a little prayer for all cow-kind and indulged in some carnivorous activity.

Tomorrow is my turn to cook. She has requested Un Diner Americain... I'm thinking Chili.
Any other suggestions?

10 Things That Do Work

Last weekend I went to a birthday soiree for my Irish cousin who is living in Paris this year for her year abroad at Oxford. The party was a UN Millenial Assembly of sorts. Ireland, Britain, France, Australian, and The United States were all in attendance. Cheap wine, Madeleine cookies, chain smoking (pas moi), and the obligatory apathy and pessimism were also present.

After a couple glasses of wine, a British bloke and I stumbled upon the light topic of world politics. Neither of us had any real business touching the subject, but Hey! isn't that what study abroad is for? Seeing the world from a different perspective, listening to foreign points of view, finding the similarities, learning from our differences, and all that good stuff?

Before our 4th glass of wine, but after, in typical self-absorbed American fashion, I had asked him what he thought of Obama, the British diplomat was on a roll. "Media is the new religion." "Here is everywhere and could be anywhere (re:globalization)" and then he rounded it all up with:

"Nothing is working right now."

And with that, the Edith Piaf record stopped abruptly, the voices and laughter faded, the smoke cleared a bit. I sat back in my chair, looked into my glass of wine and thought.. I think you might be right ole chap...

And then we moved on to the more pressing subject of where to go dancing later.

The next day began my Museum Marathon a Paris. I've ticked Centre Pompidou and Musee L'Organgerie off the list thus far (but I'm sure I'll be back).

At L'Orangerie I chilled with Monet for a long time. After, I hung out with Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Soutine, Cezane, and the whole gang for a while. Sans wine and youthful angst these guys had a lot more interesting things to tell me about about current events.

Before I impart to you what they had to say, the very essence de this post, here's a fun fact:

NYU registered all the students in the program as Art History students because there is this baller mandate in France that entitles all Art History students to free admission to all the museums.

A lesser known perk of the mandate entitles the students to pontificate like art history scholars for the duration of their studies. It's a sorta role-play, psychological, I-think-therefore-I-am thing...

Now that we've cleared that up...Here I go...

10 Things That Do Work.


10. Multiplicity
9. Inversion
8. Food

7. Community

6. Innocence


5. Confidence
4. Self Criticism

3. Practice...
makes...
Perfect..

2. Body Language



1. Reflection

Croissant Count

Today was a big day for the Croissant Count:
Today: 3.5
Total: 13.5

Francophone Pop Music Suggestions

Ceour de Pirate

2nd Water Color

The €20 Challenge

Given my recent financial mésaventures, I have only €20 in cash to my name until my bank sends me my new debit card. So Ryan, Tom and I have given ourselves a challenge to only spend €20 until Sunday night by any means necessary (excluding theft and prostitution).

Par Example:
If a really nice boulanger offers you a free baguette because he feels bad that he doesn't accept credit cards, you accept the baguette (and pay him back later).

or

If you university is holding a meeting and in the description it says "sandwiches will be served" you go... even if you have no idea what the meeting is for.

So far I have spent €1 on my daily morning pain au chocolat.

Total Croissant intake: 8

How to Cook a Three Course Meal in a 2x4 Kitchen in a 8x10 Room With No Utensils

Let's begin by defining "Three Course Meal" very loosely:

Premiere Plat: Baguette and Brie
Deuxieme Plat: Linguine avec Sauce des Legumes
Troisieme Plat: Une Salade avec Vinagrette

Begin by buying the bare minimum ingredients at a the store:

• 1 head of bib lettuce
• 1 baguette
• 1 wheel of brie
• 1 green pepper
• 1 onion
• 3 mushrooms
• 1 bag of linguine
• Olive oil and balsamic
• Salt

1. Bring your groceries back to your apartment and walk up your 9 flights of stairs, enter your apartment and realize you have no utensils.

2. Don't freak out. Find something you can do with your hands. Begin tearing lettuce and washing in the sink.

3. Boil water. Watch the water boil while you think of how to cut your onion, peppers, and mushrooms.

4. Remember that you have an Xacto knife in your water color set.

5. Cut 3 mushrooms and 1/3 of a pepper with an Xacto knife.

5. Take a big swing of 1 euro white wine.

6. Cut half an onion with your Xacto knife.

7. Take a huge bite of baguette and brie.

8. Plop the linguine in the boiling water.

9. Brown the onions, peppers and mushrooms in your skillet.

10. Add plain tomato sauce to the veggies.

11. Strain pasta, dress salad, tear off some more baguette.

12. Enjoy!