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lundi 20 décembre 2010

Day 115: Bio Bakeries: bread & roses

Despite my very recent discovery that baking doesn't have to be synonomous with anxiety attacks and poor results, I am still always on the lookout for soemone else who will bake for me. That's why I ask guests to bring dessert to dinner parties and I am inspired to continue my constant treasure hunt for great bakeries in Paris.

Even though it's a bit off my beaten track, making it more of a rare indulgence than a recurrent provider, bread & roses fits into the pretty great bakery category.

Since it uses all organic ingredients and makes breads that are perfect for cold winters and somewhat fruitless seasons, bread & roses makes a great winter addition to my organic bakery list.

I'm not familiar with the history of this bakery, so I don't know if, like Rose Bakery (another great organic bakery/restaurant located at 46 rue des Martyrs, 75009 Paris), there is an anglophone behind this enterprise, but both the name and menu are proof to an undeniable anglo influence.

Bread & Roses' restaurant prices were a bit cher for my taste- once I saw them I was happy I had chosen a simple french bistro in the neighborhood for lunch instead of sitting down in their somewhat cold (and pricey) seating area. But the prices for breads and pastries aren't prohibitive considering the quality, even in this quartier chic, and I was pleased to find a wide array of desserts that are severely lacking in my French diet- carrot cake and cream cheese frosted cheese cake, for starters.

I ultimately decided on a slice of lemon cake because I'm a sucker for icing (another rarity in Paris) and it seemed the lightest option available- I made the rookie mistake of going to a bakery on a full stomach, alas.

Bread & roses also bakes muffins (3 euro each)and crumbles (19.80-24.50 euro per kilo), which are nice to set aside for your breakfast or afternoon tea.

More seasonally speaking, bread & roses offers beautiful levain raised breads ranging from Irish soda bread, Parisian baguettes, and dried fruit breads. I was particularly intrigued by their selections of breads and brioche incorporating fruits like lemon peel, orange, figs, apricots and raisins. These breads promise to offer what the French call éclats, or bursts, of fruit flavor.

Before leaving I tasted their Christmas fruit cake, which would have been a tall order for my burgeoning baking skills to try recreating at home. Bread & roses provided a welcome complimentary lesson to my growing knowledgeof baked goods, making them yourselves can be relaxing, but finding a great bakery can be decadent.

Bread & Roses Bakery and Restaurant

7 rue Fleurus

75006 Paris

M° Notre Dame des Champs (line 12)

25 rue Boissy d'Anglas

75008 Paris

m° Madeleine

Libellés : 75006, bio bakeries, Dry Goods, organic

mercredi 15 décembre 2010

Day 110: Get Out-of-the-Way Gifts Guide

Whether of the first or last minute variety, one thing is clear when you hit the city streets: everyone is shopping. I enjoy finding gifts for loved ones and am not so bothered by the financial fête that Christmas ultimately is, but as an agorophobe at heart, the hoards of shoppers that one must contend with in order to make a purchase is something I start to resent at this time of year.

Paris is a crowded city and after doing your prefunctory to work from home and back again trip, it's hard to get the energy to ride the metro yuletidal wave in order to go shopping. However, Paris is also a great city to explore and an even better place to make discoveries. In my organic, local shopping spree, I've found and been lead to some off- the-beaten track places where I've found gifts and solace from the consuming masses. Here are a couple of these bonnes adresses and what I bought there.

Union National de l'Apiculture Française (UNAF), 26 rue des Tournelles 75004

You can hardly hit a marché in France without running into an apiculturist selling homemade honey. France has a booming apiculture, in which Paris takes part. I've heard that Paris actually makes a sizable amount of honey sold in France, but you'll have to fact check that, as it is not obvious where all this honey is made. The beehives at the Luxembourg Garden are visable to a garden wanderer, but the enigme of how to taste their honey is a troubling one. I happened to pass through the garden in late October and saw a hand written sign that announced a sale of Luxembourg honey had taken place the weekend before and I immediately promised myself I'd keep my eyes peeled next October to take advantage of the opportunity.

However, October is a long way away and that is why I was thrilled to find David Lebovitz's blog entry on the UNAF which sells honey made in Paris, at the Ecole Vétérinaire d'Alfort.

Located on a side street of the Marais, this location is home to the Union of French Apiculturists and distributes literature on honey and honey making as well as the finished product itself. For 7 euro you can take home a jar of Parisian honey. It doesn't get more local than that, which makes this a nice gift for both Parisians and Francophiles abroad.

La Cave à Bulles, 45 rue Quincampoix 75004

My Monsieur has been doing the aller-retour from this artisinal beer and bubbly store all season. He has become a pretty popular Secret Santa with his well appreciated beers from France and abroad. The Cave à Bulles disproves anyone who asserts that the French can't make good beer, with delightfully drinkable microbrews hailing from Normandy and Brittany serving as examples to the contrary.

Another selling point of this beer boutique is that it is the only store in the city (and one fo few in France) that sells my most favorite Belgian beer, Cantillon. This spontaneously fermented beer from Brussels is habit forming, so all you addicts can rest assured that you can get your fix on rue Quincampoix. Take some home for you and stuff whatever is left in someone's stocking, you can't go wrong with organic booze, don't even bother fact checking that.

Lion Père et Fils, 7 rue des Abbesses 75018

This store has served as a seed seller since 1895 and, as the name indicates, has been passed down from father to son since then. While they still sell an excellent selection of seeds from herbs, fruits, veggies, and flowers, you can also find a wide assortement of dried and artisinal goods.

I always stop into this under-crowded store around Christmas time because they have a huge selection of easy to ship and sure to please regional products. They also sell products for the home and garden, like charming planter pots and tomato vine scented candles that transport you to Summertime.

Check out their kits à cuisiner which are cellophane bags containing all the ingredients to make savory dishes like rice pilaf and mushroom risotto or sweet servings of riz au lait and muffins.

I hope this spots can help you side step the crowds and find what you're looking for for the last of your list. I'm done gift guiding for this year, so I wish you all the best and Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Libellés : artisanal, Dry Goods, fermentation, growing containers, local, organic booze

samedi 11 décembre 2010

Day 106: Marché of the Month: Marché des Producteurs de Pays

This month's Marché is a bit special because it's occurs only once a year. So if you missed the Marché des Producteurs in Paris this year, I hope I can encourage you to visit it next year. Held annually at about the same time (early December) the market takes place in the charming Village St. Paul (Paris 4th m° St. Paul).

French producers from various regions around the country, such as Dordogne, Charente, and Perigord, come to sell mostly canned, preserved or dried goods. While there were a few fresh items at the market, like vegetables and cheese, many displays included bottled and canned items that are fit for the holidays, either on the table or as gifts.

One particular vendor caught our eye with his much appreciated vin chaud and later with a bottle of his tasty merlot/cabernet sauvignon mix. A product of winemakers Denis and Vincent Benoit in the Charente region, this wine was a real find and reminded my a little of the Californian wines I love to enjoy when I'm visiting my family.

When I got home I was dissappointed that, in typical French fashion, these great wine producers have nothing in the way of a website and hardly anything ressembling an internet trail. While I believe in letting the wine speak for itself, I am glad that they do some marketing and asked me to put my name on their mailing list, I hope to hear from them in the near future, and I'll let you know where to find there wines once I figure it out!

Denis and Vincent's wine has largely affordable price tag (4.50 euro for their Merlot and their Merlot /Cab mix) and a well-balanced flavor which makes their product not only a trésor du marché but also a testament to the Marché des Producteurs itself. Despite the chic neighborhood where the market is held, the producters alter nothing with regards to price and product, everything is affordable and of good quality.

Similarly, we had the pleasure of taking home chèvre made from organically-fed goats in Dordogne. For 2 euro each, both fresh and aged chèvres were a delicious companion for our wine selection.

While I stopped filling up my basket at that point, meat eaters can be assured that there was enough fois gras, confit de canard, and meats of all sorts to keep you stocked for tho holiday season.

The Marché des Producteurs is a great spot to pick up authentic French specialties as well as meet the people who make them. Include this Marché du Mois in your plans for December 2011, I'll be sure to remind you the next time around!

Marché des Producteurs de Pays

Village St Paul

Early December- Fri., Sat., Sun.

Libellés : 75004, artisanal, gifts, local, Marché of the Month, organic, seasonal

mercredi 8 décembre 2010

Day 105: Winter Pesto

Keeping in the spirit of my autumn Fallsa, this recipe is a seasonal spin on a Summer classic. Unlike traditional Pesto recipes, which use basil as a main ingredient, this version uses spinach instead. Good and good for you (it contains tons of calcium and iron- vital especially in vegetarian diets), spinach is abundant in the Winter months and an important leafy green to include in your diet as the cold, and cold season, set in.

This is an incredibly simple sauce to pull together and throw on a pizza or pasta. Essentially you do everything you would do for normal pesto, treating your spinach as basil. Just to refresh your memory, here's a guide to making Winter Pesto:

Ingredients:

A bunch of fresh spinach- get as many handfuls as you can fit in your bag of fatty, elephant eary spinach leaves

A nutty element- as I've said before, pine nuts are traditionally used- but those can be pricey, so feel free to use peanuts or walnuts as a replacement

2-4 Tbsps. Olive Oil

2 Garlic Cloves

Salt and Pepper

Opitonal Ingredients: You can throw in some grated parmesean cheese or a dash of white wine to perk up your pesto

Winter Pesto

Step 1: Take your spinach leaves one by one and cut away the stalk using a fancy trick my belle-mère told me about. Simply hold the leave from it's stalk, letting it dangle upside down, then take your knife to it, cutting in a downward motion and seperating the lovely leaf from it's less appetizing stalk.

Do this to all of you spinach leaves and put them in a colander. Wash thouroughly to be sure to get the parts of the farm we don't want to eat off of them.

Step 2: Throw your spinach in a blender, and then pile the rest of the ingredients on top. Start slow with the olive oil, you can always add if you need more liquid (or complement with the wine). Same goes for the salt and pepper, start slow and adjust for taste later.

Step 3: Add parmasean (or not, for a vegan or poor man's pesto), some salt and a pinch of nutritional yeast, if you've got it.

Step 4: Start blending! I noticed that Winter pasta is a lot more liquidey than it's basil buddy, probably because spinach retains more water. Don't be surprised if your pesto seems a bit watery, its supposed to and it's in some ways preferable because it coats pasta really well that way.

Step 5: Enjoy the fact that Winter has great things to offer, and that you don't have to wait until next Summer to have fresh pesto!

In my home, we're pretty much subsisting on soups and stews and other hearty Winter fare, so this was a nice change to our menu. If you are having fun and being creative with cold weather cuisine, please share your recipes, advice, and pictures of finished products on the "Cuisine d'hiver/Winter Cooking" discussion on our facebook page!

Libellés : DIY, Iron, recipes, seasonal, vegetarian, Vegetarian Nutrition, Winter

Day 103: Holiday Gift Guide: Homemade Gifts!

Homemade gifts are awesome and I refuse to believe otherwise, even if they turn out wonky or unworn, what parent, sibling or significant other hasn't stowed away a loved one's lavish or lousy creation to be treasured for years to come.

You can develop all kinds of crafty gift-making skill sets like candle making, silk screening, or making edible treats like jams or baked goods, but my craft of choice is knitting- a skilll which I've recently advanced to include not only scarf making capabilities, but also booties, hats, and mice!

There are quite a few places to buy yarn and knitting supplies in Paris, the Marché St. Pierre in the 18th is a Mecca for fabrics, attracting sewers and knitters alike. I also like La Drogerie which is located near Les Halles in 1st arrondissement, they have a wide selection of wool and other types of yarn of all colors, making the experience as visually appealing as being a kid in a candy shop.

If you're looking strictly for organic wool, however, the choices get a bit slimmer. Fibris (40 boulevard St Marcel 75005, M° Gobelins or St Marcel) offers organic yarn as well as knit clothing for men, women and kids in it's Paris store. You can also order yarn (5.50-10 euro)directly from their site.

I also found this online guide , which offers a list of online vendors of organic fabrics, including cotton and hemp fabrics and yarn made from yak's wool!

If you want to be extra resourceful and DIY, you can check out this post by Patti Wigington on homegrown.org, which explains how to make "Plarn" out of plastic. The concept is simple, by cutting strips out of plastic bags and tying them together, you can amass a ball of plarn and make some pretty great recycled creations like a meta-grocery bag or reusable growing containers.

Have a happy, crafty Christmas!

Libellés : DIY, gifts, growing containers

dimanche 5 décembre 2010

Day 100: Becoming a Paris Paysanne

It has only been 100 days since I decided to do my food shopping outside the confines of the flourescent-lit aisles of industrialized food stores, choosing whole and local foods over corporate products that are farmed and fed to us under the control of a for-profit system which refuses to consider health and sanitary measures with the slightest importance.

Starting this blog has led to huge changes in my life. In the past 100 days I have found alternate sources of food, in the coops and open-air markets of Paris, where agriculture and community come together to provide the valuable service of exposing locals to local and organic food.

I have not only discovered new food sources, but I've also made my own creations with new foods. I've fermented and produced pickels, salsa, sauerkraut, jams, and kimchi. My shelves are stocked with bulk grains and seeds and savory nutrients of all sorts. My kitchen is a center of culinary creativity and my investment in food has become just as important as the people enjoy meals with me.

Choosing to do my shopping Not at Carrefour has brought me closer to food sources, community projects, and to the pleasure that is assuming my right as a consumer, voting with every meal against the food industry and the corruption of our food chain and environment.

I know that I am not alone in feeling this way and that there are others in our city and all around the world who want quality foods from authentic and ethical sources. It is for this reason that I hope to inspire a networking of people who want to take part in the exciting experience of growing and producing their own food, within the context of the Paris Paysanne project.

Paris Paysanne aims to bring our community together to inspire projects like urban gardening, food preservation, and DIY projects that extract us from corporate food and the capitalist economic system and bring us closer to community, creativity, and agriculture.

Check out Paris Paysanne's website (in French and English) which includes the project's mission statement, a list of resources for anyone interested in the topics addressed by this blog, and a link to our Facebook Page.

Please support the movement not only by "liking" our page, but by sharing your experiences of local growing, eating, and shopping experiences in Paris or wherever you have put down roots!

By joining the Paris Paysanne page you can get in touch with people who are interested in both growing and producing food locally and in an urban environment.

Paris Paysannes can exchange ideas, advice, experience and the fruits of their gardens with each other, inspiring community and self-sufficiency.

I do hope you'll join in and spread the message. It doesn't take 100 days to become a Paris Paysanne, but the feeling gets better every day, you'll see!

Libellés : Paris Paysanne

mercredi 1 décembre 2010

Day 96: Holiday Gift Guide- Books!

While I grew up eating recipes out of cookbooks published by the Moosewood Collective, books which later became my vegetarian bibles and first sources for nutritional information, I haven't read a lot of literature related to foodie and food politics issues, so this year I'm hoping to buff up my library and become a better-read food activist. The following list includes some books I've read along with some books I'm looking forward to reading in the new year.

If you have any suggestions or additions to this list, I would love to hear them, especially French authors, who are lacking in this list. In any case, here's a start and if any of these titles seem like possible pleasers as presents, I encourage you to track them down and support the work and research done by these authors.

Aside from my utter disgust with shopping in depressing supermarkets, I credit my interest in, and the fun and factual basis of my introduction to, food culture to two books; Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation and Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.

I looked at several books on fermentation before I picked up Katz's, which I chose because of the author's clear passion, exhaustive knowledge, and enthusiastic interest in the subject matter. The book includes recipes for fermented favorites like sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, bread, and yogurt, along with guides to brewing your own beers, wines, and meads.

With it's illustrations and simple, unintimidating instructions, this book is the only guide you'll need to turn your kitchen into a bubbly, briney, lab of wonders. Fermenting is fun, easy, and addictive, anyone that you turn on to this awesome form of food production will thank you for years afterwards.

Katz has also published a book called The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved which tells the story of various grassroots activists and their methods of fighting against the industrial food machine. I haven't read this yet, but it's on my list!

Michael Pollan's work is well known, with In Defense of Food existing as a volume among his many publications on the subject of Big Food and the politics of what we are sold and eat in America. Other titles include The Ominivore's Dilemma and Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. These books offer simple and manageable guidelines for understanding the affect that what we eat has on our bodies as well as the world around us. I devoured (bookavore?) In Defense of Food and am looking forward to reading his other work.

Michael Pollan can also been seen in the documentary Food, Inc. , which is less cheery to watch than The Grinch this Christmas season, but has a moral that is definately worth internalizing during this festive, foody season. I suggest you organize a viewing and revolutionize they way you and those around you think about what you eat (and where it comes from).

Other books on my "To Read" list include Food Not Lawns by H.C Flores, which is published by Chelsea Green Publishing, which has published Katz's titles among other books addressing the subject of sustainable living and food politics. Food Not Lawns offers a guide to turning "your yard into a garden and your neighborhood into a community". Keeping with the principles of Paris Paysanne, the book advocates leaving no space untended and no garden unrealized.

A classic of American literature and journalistic muckraking, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair never made it on my list of required reading in highschool, so I'm adding it now. The insight this book offers into American slaughterhouses is very à propos given the American governments current botching of attempts to pass food safety legislation.

If Harry Reid and other members of the House and Senate had this book on their nightstand, I think the food regulation and inspection bill S510 would've been more rigorously written and then subsequently happily and swiftly accepted into law.

Probably voted most likely to blow something up to defend his principles in high school, Derrick Jensen is a passionate, eloquent, and educated environmental activist. After hearing him interviewed on Democracy Now!, I was inspired to get my hands on Jensen's complete works, which include books such as Listening to the Land, A Language Older than Words, Endgame, and Resistance Against Empire. If anyone is familiar with these books or any others by Derrick Jensen, I would love some advice on where to start.

Pour les francophones petits et grands, j'en ai deux idées des livres à lire sans hésiter.

Le premier, Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme par Hervé Kempf, annonce la nécessité de mettre à fin le règne de deux cents ans du capitalisme- que l'auteur accuse d'être la menace le plus destructif pour l'environnement. Kempf, qui a aussi écrit Comment les riches détruisent la planète, encourage une réflexion sur le péril pour la planète ainsi qu'une revolution économique.

Le deuxième livre m'a été suggéré par une amie, il s'agit d'un livre d'enfants qui s'appelle Planète écolo: Le grand livre des activités écologiques. Ce livre à la fois ludique et pédagogique propose aux enfants plusieurs activités qui les apprennent des leçons importants sur l'écologie, c'est à dire, qu'est ce-que c'est les OGM, d'où vient nos sources d'énergie d'où est ce-qu'ils vont venir dans l'avenir, et, la plus importante, qu'est ce-que l'on peut faire pour l'environnement dans notre vie quotidienne.

You can also check out Homegrown.org's list of holiday selections for some great ideas for practical books to help in the garden and kitchen as well as Democracy Now!'s bookstore for a treasure trove of stories of grassroots organizing, speaking truth to power, and Standing Up to the Madness.

Libellés : books, Democracy Now, Derrick Jensen, fermentation, gifts, Hervé Kempf, Michael Pollan, Paris Paysanne, Sandor Ellix Katz, Upton Sinclair

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