My bronchitis is down to a repetitive and annoying runny nose, sniffle, and occasional cough, and I'm feeling more human again. Several days of doing very little may sound good on paper, but in practice it really gets boring.
Yesterday, finally, I was feeling well enough to venture out for the afternoon with Georges' daughter. We had a mission: she asked me to teach her to bake cookies! Apparently, cookies are not something the French "do". My first thought was: "Toll House chocolate chip cookies!" because the recipe is always on the bag, and they're a cookie everyone loves. And the French love anything with chocolate in it. Which of course meant I had to buy the ingredients. Where to find the chocolate chips, baking soda and dark brown sugar in Paris? Only one place I knew: the Thanksgiving Store.
I had been seeking a reason to go shopping at this store for a while. Looking at their web site to see which American products they carried, I got very enthusiastic and made a long list of treats I wanted to buy... little things to remind me of home. Like Vlasic Bread-n-Butter Pickles. Aunt Jemima Pancake mix. And Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, of course.
Our first stop, though, was "lunch" at Breakfast in America in the Marais, to treat her to an American-style breakfast. (We ate WAY too much. Hint: if you're not really REALLY hungry, don't order the 3 Pancakes. They're HUGE, the size of the plate, and very filling. I only ate half, and half my side order of bacon, so it was kind of a waste. But very delicious.)
After "breakfast" (which we ate at 1pm) we wandered around the Marais for a while, walking off the meal, doing a little shopping. Then we went to the Thanksgiving store where I dropped about 83 Euros buying 12 products (WOW, their import markup is HUGE! I don't expect to be stocking up regularly at this place, that's for sure.) Then, we headed down to the 15th to my apartment, where all my things are stacked in boxes and bags in the middle of the room, awaiting the moving van on Saturday. I located my cookie sheet, and measuring cups and spoons (the measuring spoons were also a curiosity to her... apparently these don't exist in French cooking either? Even in metric?) and we headed home to start baking.
I haven't baked in years, although I used to do it regularly when I worked in the corporate world because I could bring whatever I'd baked to share with my colleagues. (When you live alone and work at home, baking is NOT a good habit to get into, so I just sort of stopped baking when I went freelance.) I had to look up the temperature conversion for the Celsius oven on-line, and we got part-way into the operation before realizing there was no electric mixer in the house (we made do with the Cuisinart). I had to actually measure a cup of butter in a measuring cup because their "sticks" of butter aren't the same size as ours in America. I wasn't at all sure how they would turn out, quite honestly, as this was my first attempt at baking anything in France and I could only find salted pecans to use in the recipe. But in the end, we had 2 dozen perfectly baked, totally delicious American cookies for her to show off to her friends... and her father, of course!
So we had a nice afternoon together, where she learned how to make cookies, and I learned that I don't need to look far for ways to bond with the kids. The bonding seems to be taking care of itself; all I have to do is be prepared when the opportunities arise, and show up with a willing spirit and an open heart.
And I have plenty of both.
