It's been nearly two months since we've been on lockdown in Paris. For a while, it was touch-and-go and a challenge, psychologically, to stay indoors and not go out. I missed my trips to the outdoor markets to scan what was fresh and in season, looking forward to bringing home baskets of strawberries and bundles of rhubarb, anticipating when apricots, fresh cherries, and other stone fruits would start to appear.
Well, that didn't happen and my food gathering began as trips to the grocery store and natural food store, which eventually morphed into using an online delivery service as it became quite stressful (and a little disturbing) to go into stores where people weren't adept at social distancing nor were employees practicing sensible hygiene. I wanted to tell one produce clerk that the mask hanging around his neck wasn't the place it was supposed to be worn.
Like many of you, I dug deep into my kitchen cabinets and cobbled together ingredients to cook and bake. I've discovered things I didn't know I had, finding tins I wish I had found sooner! A can of rillettes that I bought who-knows-where-or-when was a delicious appetizer one night before dinner. Bits of the ends of bags of various flours; teff, whole-wheat, and corn, were snuck into a myriad of cookie doughs.
And those 150+ bottles of liqueurs, spirits, and French apéritifs I amassed when writing and researching Drinking French? Those proved to be the best investment I've made in a long, long time.
I still haven't figured out what to make with the spicy garlic peanut butter I found in the back of one cabinet (cold noodles with peanut sauce?) And I thought I had bought too much olive oil last fall when I stocked up on 4 cases of it, that I order from Sicily. However I've been going through almost a liter a week, so it's proved a good, bottled (or tinned) investment. I did have to send an S.O.S. to my local bakery, who kindly came to my rescue, giving me a few kilos of baking chocolate. Whew! That was close...
With it, I dug into the archives of my blog to make Romain's mother's French Chocolate Mousse Cake. A round of Cosmopolitans from my archives also appeared at my in-house, daily Happy Hour on Instagram Live. And I kissed the double package of basil pesto that I found lurking in the back of my freezer.
[I also accidentally ordered two packages of laitue de mer, sea lettuce, which I thought would be good to snack on for iodine. But it tastes like one of those stretchy elastic bands people use for exercise, but heavily salted, and I'm not sure what one could possibly do with those. The package suggested chopping them up and adding them along with salted butter, to mashed potatoes. Of course, I didn't read the instructions that said to de-salt them first, and stuck a wad in my mouth and got my monthly - or yearly - salt requirement. On the upside, I don't think I'm any danger of growing a goiter.]
