Breathtaking Beynac

This was our first glimpse of Beynac, the town we were staying in.  Isn't it gorgeous?!

Market Day in St. Cyprien

We awoke to a bright and gorgeous day and headed out to the Sunday market at St Cyprien, a little town about 10 minutes drive away.  The car was driving rather sluggishly and we vowed to go to the nearest Hertz station to try to exchange it later in the day.

The market was lovely, perhaps not quite as picture-perfect as the ones we went to in Provence, but it was pretty darn close.  One of the biggest differences was that every third stall sold foie gras!  We tasted and bought a few tins from the stall pictured above.  This is a short summary of the instructions the seller told me:

1. Store in the cupboard or pantry.
2. Put it into the refrigerator one day before you plan to eat it.
3. Open the tin on the top AND on the bottom, and push the foie gras out.
4. Use a thin, sharp knife dipped in hot water to cut the block into slices.  
5. Make sure the slices are not too thick.  
6. You need to dip the knife into the hot water after every cut so your edges are smooth.
7. Serve with country bread.  Not brioche.  Not honey bread.  Do not toast the bread.
8. Make sure you fan the foie gras out when you are serving it.
9. Make sure you don't spread the foie gras on the bread, just place the slide on top and eat it together.

I may have missed a few details.  He talked to me for a long time ;)

We also bought 3 kinds of cheese, the right kind of bread to eat with the foie gras (!), white asparagus, little teeny, super sweet strawberries and a great ham and cheese crepe for a late breakfast from a lovely husband and wife team.

And finally, of course, we couldn't resist the poulet de fermier, a roasted young farm chicken - which we planned to have for dinner.  Also sold by a lovely husband and wife team!

All in all, a great way to spend Sunday morning!

Alas, things turned a little sour later on, as our deadbeat Ford Focus would not start.  I had to call the Hertz emergency number and a tow truck turned up after a 50 min wait.  Then another 30 min wait for a taxi to take us to Sarlat, where another car was procured.  Note that the new car was procured from a Hertz franchisee in a Shell gas station, where they sold both wine and foie gras!

Foie gras - from a gas station!  That's why I love France.

What An Adventure!

I arrived in London on Wednesday to a cloudy, chilly day.  After a restless night, Thursday dawned bright and sunny.  I headed into the office at Staines (35 min train ride from Waterloo station) to find that some sort of volcano in Iceland was erupting and my colleague's flight from Dublin was cancelled and he would be late to our meeting.

I didn't think too much of it and continued on with my day.  A couple of hours later, I started paying a little more attention to the volcano ash cloud.  We were scheduled to fly from Gatwick to Bordeaux on Saturday morning to spend a girls' week in a castle-side cottage in Beynac, one of the most beautiful villages in France, located in the Dordogne Valley.  My other colleagues began urging me to book some Eurostar tickets as a backup.  I finally did, just to appease them, but I bought the fully refundable fare and really didn't believe that I'd need them.

Fast forward a few days.  Europe is in chaos.  Millions of passengers are stranded, including 3 out of the 5 girls of our group.  My Sat morning flight was indeed canceled and Eurostar tickets are all sold out.  Meanwhile the French railway union have decided to strike and the TGV trains from Paris to Bordeaux were unavailable for purchase.  So we got on a packed Eurostar train, got what seemed to be the last Hertz car in Paris (after waiting in line for 45 mins) and started driving 650 km south to Beynac.

Let's just start by saying that getting from the Gare du Nord to the southern periphery road to the A10 highway is no mean feat.  Especially for someone who hadn't driven in downtown Paris for at least 10 years plus had not driven a stick shift for 2 years.  About an hour and a few u-turns later, we were finally heading south on the highway.

On our way to Orleans, we made a highway rest stop where the ham and cheese parisian sandwich from the Paul bakery far outshone almost any sandwich available in Menlo Park!  Of course, our temperamental car had some issues starting up again plus has some strange choking rough patches when you're running in gear under 2500 RPMs.  We going to try and trade it in to a nearby Hertz tomorrow.

Hours and hours later, about 14 hours after we left our hotel that morning, we made it to La Maisonette, our rental house in Beynac.  It's full of character and wonderfully decorated in a charming manner.  Alas, the 300 feet walk from the parking lot to the house involved an extremely uneven giant cobblestone path sloping down at a 30 degree angle.  Suffice to say, it's lucky that I didn't break my neck or my nice high heeled boots.

And so, the two of us are banging around this house tonight, hoping against hope that some of our friends will be able to make it over the pond before the end of the week.  And also hoping that the darn volcano calms down, the ash cloud dissipates, and that we can actually fly home in a week.

Grand Central and Metrazur

We headed to New York for a 5 day trip over Spring Break and stayed at the Grand Hyatt above Grand Central Station in Midtown. It's really not one of my favorite hotels, but I can get to the office in under 5 minutes, which is super valuable when I'm blearily rousing myself to be in at 9 am eastern time.

We arrived around 8 pm and headed into the Main Concourse of Grand Central to sort out some dinner. Although the basement food court was tempting (I'm serious, I love that food court), we ended up at Metrazur on the east balcony.

The restaurant is beautiful and the ambiance in Grand Central can't be beat. They also had a great deal for a prix fixe - pick 3 courses off the menu and get 2 glasses of wine for $44. Since each appetizer was around $15 and the entrees were in the high $20s, we decided this was the way to go.

I started with a white asparagus salad that was excellent - my first white asparagus of the year! I followed with some wild striped bass with more asparagus (green this time), which was very good. We also ordered a couple of the angus strip steak with french fries - which I liberally sampled from Amara and Sean.

Desserts were pretty but somewhat unmemorable. We finished eating around 10 and wandered back upstairs to our room. Which was billed as a parlor suite. But had the smallest bathroom in creation. Do not book a Lexington Suite at this hotel - trust me on this.

The NYC cupcake challenge

I like my cupcakes small and cute. So I never used to like Crumbs in the cupcake wars. I'd prefer Magnolia Bakery (made famous by SNL's viral hit Lazy Sunday) or Buttercup Bake Shop any day (I'm referring exclusively to the NYC cupcake challenge here - SF Bay Area is a completely different matter).

The regular Crumbs cupcake which I first experienced a few years ago was the size of a small cake. I can't even remember if it was good. I just remember it was huge. And that I ate half and felt sick.

But this time, a new Crumbs outlet opened up in Grand Central (as did a new Magnolia outlet) and a colleague told me about their 12 pack of mini-cupcakes, known as a Taste pack. It's pictured above - 12 mini versions of their top sellers.

It was awesome! 2 little bites of heaven per cupcake. At $18 for the dozen, it was definitely not as good a deal as their mega-monster cupcakes. But so much more enjoyable for me.

My favorite was the red velvet. There were a few unusual chocolate variants including cookie dough, oreo cookie, mint chocolate and brownie. I loved this pack! I can't wait to get it again next time!

Breakfast in New York

I'm a girl who likes her protein in the morning. I learned this the hard way when I got gestational diabetes with my second pregnancy, and had to monitor my blood sugar like a hawk. My blood sugar spikes very high in the morning with carbs, more so than any other time of the day. So now, I make sure to have protein every morning - usually involving eggs and ham.

There is no protein at the continental breakfast supplied in the Hyatt's Grand Club. There is a whole counter full of carbs. OK, there are some desultory looking cold hard boiled eggs sitting around, but really?!

My favorite breakfast is a breakfast sandwich on whole wheat english muffin. That's what I make when I'm at home. In a pinch, the breakfast ham sandwich at Starbucks also does the trick very well. That's what I had on my first morning.

On my second morning, I wandered into a local coffee place called Macchiato. I had a really nice chai tea and an excellent ciabatta roll with scrambled eggs, cheese and ham. So big I could have had the other half for lunch, had I not had other lunch plans. I was very sad to throw the other half away later in the day :(

The next couple of mornings, I remembered that I last had great breakfast sandwiches at a little place called Dishes in the Grand Central food court. I love this place. Not only did they make a mean ham and spinach muffin sandwich, they also had chocolate croissants from Balthazar! The latter for my daughter of course.

And that's what I love about breakfast in New York - some form of the breakfast sandwich is offered at practically every outlet. Fast, reasonable and gets me anchored with the protein I need!

Full Time Job = No Time for Blogging

It's pitiful that my last post was over 2 months ago. I swear that good things have been happening in my life that I want to share with everyone. I just keep forgetting. Plus the fact that my not-so-trusty MacBook Air died once in January (right after the last blog post) and once again in March (and is currently in the Apple Store ICU) has put me off my game in terms of personal productivity. Plus I can't get my hands on the iPad we bought yesterday because my kids and hubby keep fighting over it!

But here's a short summary to bring everyone up to speed:

• Came back from Thailand and started a new, more than full-time job. Work a lot. More than you'd think. Email and powerpoint are my life.
  
• Went to Vegas for said job's Sales Kick-Off, slept very little. Blackjack bonding with new colleagues.
  
• Went to Northstar at Tahoe for our annual ski trip. Left the slopes to take conference calls for said job. Tried Traci des Jardins' new restaurant at the Ritz. Too tired to blog about it.
  
• Called for jury duty for a 60 day long murder trial. Managed to get excused due to said job.
• Went to management offsite at Half Moon Bay for said job. Actually slept very well and took some lovely walks along the cliffs.
• Went to New York for spring break where said job allowed me to work out of the Midtown office for a few days.
• Preparing for a trip to London for said job next week which allowed me to expense the airfare for wonderful upcoming trip to the Dordogne.

That's about it - will now work on posting details about New York food and fun.