Risotto. With green peas, basil and lemon.

It’s what Lulu and I will be having for lunch today. I am waiting for her to wake up from her nap to sit down at the table and eat.

“Lulu, réveille-toi, maman a vraiment faim !” (Lulu, wake up, mummy is really hungry!)

One day, she’ll understand that risotto cannot wait–although P. argues that he *loves* when I reheat risotto.

So she’d better hurry and wake up soon!

Bon weekend à tous !

I woke up craving a bowl of lentil soup.

”White lentils! How unusual!” I thought after grabbing a bag from the shelf, so that I could look more closely. The label on the package read Ivory white lentils, and that name piqued my curiosity right away. With their pale fair color, the lentils looked delicate. Will they cook like green lentils? I wondered. Or like red? I didn’t think twice. I knew that I had to try them and dropped one bag into my cart. And as I walked through the aisles of the store to finish my grocery shopping, I started to brainstorm ideas on how I would use the légumes. Perhaps a salad, or add them to a vegetable stew.

Until I thought about a hearty soup.

For the entire week that followed, however, the bag sat at the corner of the counter top. Untouched. I’d catch a glimpse of it every morning when I walked into the kitchen. It seemed that it was looking back at me, saying “c’mon, do something with me!” So I thought about my soup idea again. The hearty soup I had imagined at the store with slices of spicy Spanish chorizo and winter vegetables. The soup I eventually imagined to serve topped with a poached egg, a generous dollop of crème fraiche and a dash of paprika, so that the dish would become substantial and more nourishing.

Soups like this one are dishes I enjoy preparing during the winter a lot. Perhaps once a week. They are everything-in-a-pot kind of dishes that are really easy and quick to prepare, something that I must say, I find quite convenient while I am trying to work and look after Lulu at the same time. Once started, I can leave the soup to simmer on its own, almost unattended, and come back to it half an hour later to find a pot of delicious nutritious food.

If you decide to make the soup, you’ll find that white lentils cook quickly — just as red lentils do. They do not require any soaking, which is rather practical too, should you decide to prepare the soup spontaneously. Once the lentils are cooked, they develop a mild flavor and soft texture that blend perfectly into a thick broth when combined with small pieces of butternut squash, carrots and tomatoes. The overall flavor is spiced up with Spanish chorizo and the soup becomes truly irresistible with a generous dollop of crème fraiche dusted with paprika, and a poached egg. Who, really, could resist the thought of a soup finished with a poached egg in it? In our household, we surely can’t.

The first time I made the soup, Lulu and I ate it with pieces of whole grain bread for lunch. At first, I was unsure whether she was going to like it but was still decided to give it a try. When I saw that after the first spoonful, she was asking for more, I felt my heart leap with excitement.

“C’est bon, non?” (It’s good, isn’t it?) I told her while putting the food inside her mouth. She was banging two teaspoons on the table with her mouth wide open. Asking for more.

We left the table filled with great energy from our food, which Lulu was quite pleased to use later on the swing. And I just went along.

Read the rest…

I was looking at my baby girl and started to feel tears in my eyes. She was playing with her music box, unaware that I was observing her. I felt thankful. And so lucky. To have her. To be sitting in the comfort of our home. To have food and everything we need. Us. Our family together.

I had just watched pictures of Haïti. Pages of them, the ones more painful to look than the others. It was hard to imagine that this natural catastrophe had happened. That it is real. And that it’s leaving a country already destituted in an even more precarious state . I don’t think that it’s possible to even start to imagine what it must be like. Awful. Once again, it shows how fragile life can be, and how one second will never look like the previous one.

So when I take food and water — and medical care — for granted, the Haitian population is struggling for their basic vital needs.

Words weigh little if there aren’t gestures. Anything we do to help can make a difference.

I personally chose to donate to Unicef so that food is sent to children who are always so much more vulnerable. Many other donation organizations exist, and other bloggers have shown wonderful support, to only name a few.

Thank you for any help you can give too.

“Everyone is in for a hot chocolate?” I asked our friends M. and A. as we all sat around the table. It was early afternoon and despite the bright sun shining outside, it felt bitterly cold. We didn’t mention it but we felt glad to be sitting inside. Home to drink hot chocolate. And eat muffins.

“You don’t mind if my muffins have cocoa in them too, do you? I added, suddenly unsure that we should actually drink hot chocolate to go along with the muffins I’d baked.

A. was the first to look at me. His face lit up with a wide smile that made him look like a child excited to be standing in front of a piece of beautiful candy.

“Are you kidding?”

He was right. What was I thinking? It didn’t matter that we had them together because when it’s cold and snowy outside and the fireplace is going–and it feels so toasty warm that I could almost sleep inside it–I cannot help but think about Chocolate. Baking. Muffins.

These words sound so melodious when they are put side by side. Enchanting. They feel cozy.

Baking, to start, has a magic buzz. It carries this je-ne-sais-quoi that invariably makes me feel peaceful. Secure. When it happens spontaneously, I like that I don’t feel the need to be original. A list of ingredients naturally flows in my head and that’s enough to start the process. I’ve done the maths and tried the combination so often before that I am confident that nothing can go wrong. Nothing can get between me and my muffins.

And Chocolate, more precisely.

Read the rest…

I know. The title does neither sound nor look like a yummy chocolate dessert or a delicious vegetable soup.

But it’s fun! And it might surprise you as much as it did surprise moi. The truth is that the engineers at Google have been pretty nice with me. Consistently. It’s the third time that they are asking whether they can use La Tartine Gourmande inside one of their projects.

This time, we are talking about Nexus One, the new phone that they’ve just launched. So if you are curious about it, simply check their link here and click on the Browser icon to get the demo. You’ll see that my blog is featured in it. More particularly my post about Martha’s Vineyard. (Arstechnica.com, a technology site, talks about it here too)

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t excited. I mean. It’s Google!

That was undoubtedly a highlight of my day.

Merci Google!