When I traveled to France this summer, my family and I had lunch a few times at the restaurant l’écluse 16–only ten kilometers away from where my parents live. I really enjoy the place, not only because of its quiet, off-the-beaten-path location by a canal, à la campagne (in the countryside), but also because Leroux, the chef and talent in the kitchen, is a man who creates inventive eye-catching foods that showcase the best local ingredients. I wanted to write about the place. And so I did, in the Boston Globe food section last week.

If you are interested, especially if you plan a trip in this part of France, you can find the article here.

In the meantime, here are a few snapshots I took when we ate there in the summer. And oh, yes, if you wondered, we ate all the foods that you see. Vraiment délicieux ! and worth the détour.

She was holding the small apple tight between her delicate hands. It was colored with beautiful shades of red, orange and yellow blending harmoniously. It was also perfect in size for her. She was casually leaning against P.’s chest but didn’t even seem to notice as she was too engrossed in observing the apple — her new treasure. Right. Left. Up. Down. And again, turning the apple with her fingers.

Lulu seemed so happy, sitting on the grass between P.’s legs, that we simply wanted to stay quiet and watch, eager to prolong the moment. It was the first apple picked right from the tree that she was holding.

It was one of those perfect days in late September in New England, when the sky is blue, the light has a warming yellow hue and the air is crisp, and we had decided to drive to an organic farm forty minutes outside of Boston, to go apple picking. We hadn’t gone yet this year, so we were especially looking forward to the day. We wanted it special for Lulu. I wanted to bring apples home to make compote, tarts and clafoutis.

There were still late summer raspberries and plenty of apples to pick and when we arrived, the place wasn’t too busy — I liked it that way. One family was eating a picnic under a tree with their one year old baby boy toddling hesitantly, which made Lulu very amused. We sat down on a large blanket next to them and ate our lunch. I had tossed together something quick but nourishing, a quinoa salad with cherry tomatoes, avocado and ricotta salata, and we finished with a piece of goat cheese, plain sheep milk yogurt — Lulu’s favorite — and oatmeal cookies.

I carried Lulu on my back while we picked the fruit and, once our baskets were full with raspberries and apples, we sat down again in the shade of an apple tree. It’ll be peaceful, I thought. But I was far from imagining how pleasant it would be.

“Tiens, prends la pomme,” (Take the apple) I told Lulu, holding a small red apple in front of her. She looked at it and then looked at me. Then she looked at P., as if to receive more reassurance. She paused and then smiled. Her eyes were lit with a spark that seemed to be smiling too. It was something special. She knew it. She reached for the apple and took it delicately between her hands and, while P. and I each ate an apple, she kept looking at hers, playing with it in her hands, bringing it to her mouth, feeling the texture of its soft skin against her lips, learning how to bite in it. It perhaps lasted for fifteen or twenty minutes. Surely more. She never let go of the apple. And later in the afternoon, when she fell asleep as we were driving home, she was still holding the apple tight in one hand.

Back at the house, I baked apple clafoutis. And the next day, I stewed apples with spices that made the house smell like fallen leaves in the forest and September in early fall.

Note that in French, a clafoutis aux pommes (apple clafoutis) is often called a flognarde.

Moules marinières — mussels cooked in white wine, shallot and parsley — is a French classic. It’s also a dish that P. and I adore, especially if the dish is paired with thin oven baked fries on the side — our favorite are parsnips and carrots (these are yellow carrots!)

This is exactly the kind of dish I wanted to prepare for my most recent contribution to the Seasons column in the Boston Globe.

In fact, I made the recipe last week when my mother was visiting. She helped to clean the mussels — and I was glad since we bought three kilos — and gulp down the food. Because whenever there are mussels and fries for dinner, this is exactly what we end up doing! I am not sure how much each of us ate, but by looking at the pile of mussel shells on the table, I guess it was a lot. Then, I shelled the remaining mussels, kept the broth, and the next day, prepared a dish of spaghetti and sauteed julienned vegetables in which I added the reserved mussels and broth. Scrumptious!

In this mussel recipe, the flavor of the white wine-based broth is boosted with the addition of an earthy spice like saffron, orange bell pepper for a touch of color, and crème fraiche for smoothness. Make sure not to forget a loaf of crusty bread on the side, to sop up the broth.

It’s simple but delicious! The kind of honest food that tastes even better eaten with your fingers, making sure to lick them afterward.

“Tu ne peux pas partir avant d’avoir mangé des tomates farcies!” (You cannot leave before eating stuffed tomatoes) my mother exclaimed as she walked in the kitchen with a basket full of tomatoes picked in the garden. Of course not! Les tomates du jardin (tomatoes from the garden) are always delectable, making me never want to buy a tomato ever again. And her recipe for tomates farcies is a must-have-right-now.

And like my mother, whether using tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant or peppers, during the summer, I love to stuff vegetables. Don’t you? Just like in the recipe of these stuffed eggplants.

It’s a recipe that I wrote for the Seasons column of the Boston Globe. I like to vary the stuffing. Sometimes, I’ll make one using ground veal and pork, or beef. At other times, it’s going to be rice or quinoa with grated vegetables, spices and herbs in a vegetarian version.

Here, the recipe calls for Italian eggplants (I prefer them because they are smaller, tastier and easy to stuff) and a stuffing combining ricotta, ham, coriander, tomatoes, the flesh of the eggplants and a generous amount of freshly grated pecorino. It’s honest, humble food. It’s a dish simple to make, one that you can prepare ahead of time and reheat at the last minute when you want to spend more time outside.

I hope you enjoy it!

“Vous avez dû attendre pendant longtemps ?” (Did you have to wait for long?) my parents asked. We were standing at one end of terminal E in Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, hugging and kissing. My parents were as eager to see us as we were to see them. But I knew that, in fact, they were even happier to greet and hold their little grand daughter. Lulu was snuggled cozily against my stomach in her ergo. We could only see the top of her head and hair and eyes which she had wide open. She was smiling and flapping her bare legs against mine, turning her head to the right, then to the left, not to miss anything that was happening around us. We were all tired but so happy to be home in France.

The thought of traveling back home had filled me with feelings of excitement even if I had worried about our journey to Europe. It was Lulu’s first transatlantic flight. How would she handle it? Would she be fine with the many plane rides, between Boston, Paris, Dublin and Paris again? How would she do with the jet lag? But our little Lulu didn’t mind at all any of it. In fact, she adjusted extremely quickly, much faster than P. and I did.

Summer in rural eastern France, where my parents and brother live, has left me wonderful memories. I realized that it had been years since I had traveled there during summer.

It’s the soft morning light cast on the countryside early in the morning, the colorful wild flowers illuminating the fields, the rich smell of freshly cut grass, the butterflies dancing from flower to flower and the clacking sound of the crickets late at night that I love. It’s the time of year when, I remember, as a young girl, we used to harvest hay at my grandparents’. Sometimes, I was allowed to drive the tractor back from the fields, and proudly did so. Later in the afternoon, my brother and cousins would sneak in the barn to play, jumping on bales of hay neatly stacked high.

Days in the countryside are spent at a slower pace even if summer means it’s a busy time for many who live there. In my family, we like to pick all sorts of fruit to make jams and preserves and bake tarts; we preserve French beans and beets, and make ratatouille. We walk in the grass bare foot and nap under the cherry trees, if we feel like it. We did that very well, I must say, the day after we arrived, then the next, and the day after the next too — and we never seemed to find the activity boring. Would you?

Lulu, too, made the place her own. She and I loved the daily routine we established. There were the usual morning and afternoon naps, the walks to the village to buy baguettes for lunch, and the many hours spent playing on a large blanket spread under the trees, in my parents’ garden. It was delightful to see her enjoy herself so much. She was fascinated by trees and loved to watch the wind move their leaves. She played with the flickering shadows created by the rays of sun filtering through the branches.

I told her about where our food comes from. When I took her to the village, I showed her the cows and sheep and chicken and rooster and rabbits. I pointed at eggs nested at one corner of the hen house. I made her smell red currants and apples and strawberries and plums that my parents grow.

She ate the vegetables — carrots, beans, zucchini, beets and tomatoes — we prepared from my mother’s and brother’s gardens. Every day, it seemed that she was learning something new — her new discovery is to clap her hands (she does that so joyfully, really, it’s cute!) while blowing raspberries at the same time. It’s amazing, actually, how quickly she has changed over the course of these last three weeks away.

Our life is so much richer with her at the center of it.

“Tu veux que je la prenne ? “(Do you want me to take her?) my mum asked me one morning after I had just finished to nurse Lulu. She was wide awake, laughing, talking and kicking her legs above her head. It was also 6 am, the time of day when my mother gets up — it’s brave! I didn’t need to answer. She knew. I felt relieved. Si tu veux! (Sure!)

While falling asleep, I could hear them *converse* with each other in the kitchen at the breakfast table — Lulu sitting in her high chair while my mother was eating her bowl of muesli and yogurt.

It didn’t matter that we did not travel long distances or do much. We did what we had been craving for weeks: we rested.

The food was gorgeous, and I ate a ton. I even wonder where I put it all! Between the fresh vegetables and fruit from the garden, I also indulged in dairy products hungrily, eating yogurts, petits-suisses and fromage blanc as if I was discovering them for the first time again. I devoured cheese greedily, at all times of the day. Oh yes! Everything felt more tasteful and flavorful. My mother cooked — isn’t this the nicest? — and I helped, baking and making fruit tarts.

Every day, Lulu came with me to the garden where I picked more berries and seasonal fruit, carrots, salad and tomatoes for lunch. The mirabelles, prunes de cochon and quetsches were so ripe that we stewed them and made tarts.

One day, my mum and I took Lulu to the local market.

In my brother’s garden, I collected fresh herbs, different types of basil, sage, thyme, chervil, livèche (lovage) — my sister-in-law’s favorite — and mint to make a herb risotto. I’ll have to tell you about it. We enjoyed it so much that I cooked it twice.

We had family lunches and dinners at home that we ate outside and a few times, we drove the scenic winding road, just a few kilometers away, to l’Ecluse 16 — a lovely restaurant nested in the Bonne Fontaine forest, by the canal de la Sarre — where we ate scrumptious modern food.

I thought I wouldn’t find red currants, as suggested by my dad, but I was excited to discover that the bush in my parents’ back garden was still heavy with bright red berries, fully ripe. Every day, my mum used them in fruit salads while I baked them in muffins.

I also made a red currant and almond tart.

Red currants are a delicacy in the US, which always surprises me when they are so abundant and easily found where I am from in France. In the city of Bar-le-Duc near by, locals use the fruit to make a special jam. The tradition consists in removing the seeds with a goose feather and dates back to 1344. The jam is extremely delicate.

If you’ve eaten the berries before, you know that the fruit is rather acidic, and has small seeds inside. The berries are delicious in tarts when they are prepared with a sugary almond batter, which balances the tartness of the fruit.

“I told you it would be worth it,” I told my dad, with a victorious look on my face, when we all sat down at the table again to have dessert. He had jokingly asked that I stopped stealing the last red currants on the tree. It was hard to! One of his favorite thing is to pick and snack on the fruit while working outside.

“Oui, elle est très bonne ta tarte,” (Your tart is really good) he said, helping himself to a second slice.

What I didn’t tell him is that, a few days later, I grabbed another handful of the red berries to bake muffins. I just couldn’t resist.

Everyone commented on how delicious the muffins were.

And the missing red currants went unnoticed.

It’s wonderful how that works.

Not long ago, P. asked me whether the verb clafoutir existed in French. I smiled. I found the question so sweet that just for a day, or two, I pretended that it did indeed.

It would have read like this:

“je clafoutis, tu clafoutis, il clafoutis, nous clafoutissons, vous clafoutissez , ils clafoutissent.”

Imagine that, so funny!

Wouldn’t it make sense, though? English as a language always seems to be much more flexible than stubborn old French? Words come and go so much more easily.

Anyway, I know what you’re going to say. Yet another clafoutis!

Well, I’ll have to apologize. But then, it’s really all we’re having for dessert at the moment. It serves the purpose just fine. And we are quite all right with it. In fact, it’s pretty good this way. In view of our life right now, that we’re still able to enjoy a dessert that brings the sweet touch, you know, what we want after dinner, what we need after dinner after too many hours hunched over the computer, busy finishing up the cookbook. I am getting there!

I made this clafoutis a few times over the last few weeks, varying the fruit. In this one, I liked to combine fresh strawberries and rhubarb stewed with orange zest. It’s seasonal, and always a winning association. Then, I mixed eggs with sugar, milk and coconut milk, almond flour and cornstarch. Baked for 25 minutes and ate them lukewarm dusted with confectioner’s sugar.

A lovely every day dessert, simple and straightforward.

Lulu will have to love clafoutis as much as her papa and her maman. Sinon! (or else) But right now, she’s only all about carrots and sweet potatoes. It has to start somewhere!

On another note, I’ll be speaking this coming Sunday, at the Food Styling and Photography Conference happening at Boston University. I hope that I’ll be able to meet some of you, and that I’ll be all right! Oh boy! Wish me luck!

My friend Y. loves chocolate. Well in fact, more than anything else, she loves dessert.

She is quite happy that I know this distinctive trait of personality of hers. In the hope, I know well, that whenever she stops by at our house, there will be something sweet to please her taste buds.

It’s a good thing that chances of this happening are high.

Y. is also one of the sweetest and kindest persons that I know: she is funny, smart, sporty, caring, gourmande, full of energy, and a woman who absolutely loves babies. She really does!

Smart me, I remembered that characteristics of hers too.

It’s not that I was actually craving to go out since Lulu’s birth. In fact, as odd as it might sound to many, I don’t miss going out at the moment at all. Far from it. Instead, I prefer quiet nights at home, between P. Lulu and I. Our small family gathered.

“My friend K. asked if we wanted to go to a ballet next Saturday,” P. asked one evening, a few weeks ago.

“We can’t!”

“Why not?”

“What about Lulu?”

“We can sort that out.”

And so, with two ballet tickets purchased and a dinner plan with our friends made, I really could only say yes. Thus the issue of a baby sitter arose, for the first time.

Of course, it had to start gently for me.

Since I could not imagine have a stranger take care of our precious princess, I immediately thought about Y., and my other dear friend E. They would be able to dine together, watch TV5 if they wanted to. And I would make sure that the fridge was full so that they would be well fed too.

Essentiel !

“What are you making?” P. asked when he saw that I was wearing an apron, obviously busy baking. He looked puzzled, which showed he had no idea why I was cooking something on a night we were dining out.

“Chocolate mousse. For Y. and E.,” I responded. I was holding a pot in one hand and was licking the chocolate-covered spoon I had in the other.

I went on: “I know they’ll like that.”

“I bet!”

Y. and E. cooked beefsteaks and made a medley of sauteed vegetables with a salad on the side. They teased me too, and sent a picture of their meal with their Iphone, after I texted them to make sure that everything was going well.

“Uneventful, the princess is asleep, and the chefs are in the kitchen making dinner.”

And they enjoyed the chocolate mousse. Especially Y.

“Oh my goodness, these are so lovely,” Y. had exclaimed after seeing the chocolate mousse glasses lined up on the higher shelf of the fridge.”But they are tiny!”

“I know,” I answered, smiling. “But I am sure you’ll be eating more than one!”

She did.

And we ate the rest the next day.

We love soft fresh goat cheese.

Everyone in my family, in fact, except my dad. One of the best memories I keep from the yearly summer trips my family took to southwest France was the weekly expédition to the marché where, invariably, we would return with a few fromages de chèvre frais (soft fresh goat cheese) in our basket. These types of goat cheese were made by local artisans and had me dream of owning goats, so that one day, I would too be able to make that delicious type of goat cheese. I really loved the idea.

But of course, that never happened.

I don’t own goats — although I am still in the love with the idea — but I am a huge fan of fromage de chèvre frais.

Much to my regret, that type of cheese is hard to find where I live. Or at least this is what I thought before I recently visited Formaggio, in the hope of buying goat cheese for a recipe I was writing for the Boston Globe.

“What fresh goat cheese would you recommend?” I asked the young girl at the cheese section of the small Cantabrigian delicacy store. Lulu was staring at the glass window behind which various attractive goat cheese were on display.

“You’ll love this one,” she answered without hesitation. She was pointing at a small table hidden in a corner, where two types of cheese were arranged for sampling. “It’s Belgian and really tasty. Would you like to try some?”

She was right.

The cheese was perhaps not looking like those I remembered from my vacations, but it was still excellent: extremely light and balanced, and with great texture.

“It’s a St Maure? I’ve never heard about this one,” I said, feeling content to have discovered something new.

“You know what Lulu? We’ll come back soon to buy more,” I told her as we returned to the car.

I used the cheese for the Herb and Red Peppercorn Goat cheese recipe I wrote this week for the Seasons Column of the Boston Globe.

It’s always nice to have this kind of recipe handy, should you feel like enjoying an easy-to-make, yet dressed-up snack. We ate ours with crusty baguette and red wine a few weekends ago, when our friend J. came to visit.

The whole thing disappeared within minutes.

It happens that quickly, with tasty fromage de chèvre.

“Can I have two pounds of veal stew?” I asked the stocky man standing behind the counter at the meat department. He did not seem to be in a rush, but I had to be quick to order since Lulu was starting to feel impatient in her stroller. Well, I thought, I would need to cut my shopping trip short. “Encore quelques minutes Lulu, j’ai juste quelques bricoles à acheter ! (Please, a few more minutes Lulu! I only have a few more things to buy,)” I whispered as I drew my head closer to hers.

But it was getting too long for her. So yes. I would not leisurely browse through the aisles of the store in search of new ingredients as I like to do, but instead, I would go to the point. I remembered my dad pointing out to how efficient my grocery shopping trip with him had been when they came to visit in February.

“Ah ben toi, tu ne perds pas de temps !” (you are not wasting time!) he said after we returned to the car. My shopping cart was full and paid for after only a twenty-minute trip.

“Je savais ce que je voulais ! (I knew what I wanted!),” I answered, laughing.

But I must admit that indeed, my shopping trips are following that pattern these days: well timed, so that I can get in and out quickly, and efficiently. It can be a juggle at times.

“Maman va préparer un ragoût de veau au citron et aux légumes printaniers,” (mummy will prepare a veal stew with lemon and spring vegetables) I told Lulu while buckling her tight into her car seat. She stared at me, then at her new Sophie the giraffe toy, and resumed munching on it greedily, like a hungry lioness.

“C’est bon la viande de girafe ?” I said with a smile, before giving her a large kiss on her chubby right cheek.

It was a nice spring day with generous sun and pleasant walking temperatures, and I was looking forward to the casual dinner I was going to cook for two of our friends that night. We would enjoy the veal stew, a side salad and then, to finish our meal, a refreshing verrine as dessert.

But things did not turn out the way I had imagined.

“Guess what!” I told P. when I called him at five pm, ready to start my cooking preps while Lulu was napping.

“They totally screwed up! I went on, quite annoyed.

“Who?”

“This guy at Whole Foods. He did not sell me veal but beef!”

“Oh no,” he exclaimed. “What are you going to do then?”

I did not have much time to rethink the whole menu. In fact, I literally had five minutes.

But surprisingly, a spontaneous idea came to my mind, and I thought about a dish my mum prepared often when I was young, one that made me think differently about beef.

“Well, I think we’ll eat a boeuf aux carottes.”

I remember how I became infatuated with this dish and how at the same time, I never really cared much for the dish itself. In truth, what I was always looking forward to was what my mum would invariably prepare with the leftovers – no surprise since she is also the queen of how to use leftovers. My dad likes to remind us often that “chez nous, on ne jette rien.” (Nothing is wasted at home!)

I’ve learned from them.

A hachis parmentier is the perfect way to accommodate leftovers. Recipes abound but the principle remains the same: use leftovers of any beef stew such as a boeuf aux carottes or a pot-au-feu, and top the meat layer with one of mashed potatoes. Simple and straightforward, it’s a dish that makes a full meal when it is served with a side salad. We love it.

Over the years, I’ve prepared many variations. Sometimes I use beef and at other times, I prefer meats like duck or chicken; sometimes I use potatoes, and at other times sunchokes, sweet potatoes or a blend of different root vegetables.

Both recipes worked like wonders.

We enjoyed dinner with our friends, and the following day, a hachis parmentier between the two of us.

“Do you think it’s my accent that played a trick on me?” I asked P., feeling still somewhat upset about the messed up meat order. I was still having cravings for a veal stew with lemon.

“I don’t care. I would have hachis parmentier any day!” he said, smiling.

I would too, in fact.

Invariably, we ask for more.

The expression does not make sense when translated into English, but I love it: Poisson d’avril, which literally means April’s Fish.

Well, I guess I know what we are eating tonight. And that is no joke.

Or perhaps I just wanted to post a picture of a colorful fish since I cannot imagine hanging this one on anyone’s back — we really do those things en France.

Sérieusement. I cannot remember when was the last time I played an April fools’ day trick on anyone. Lulu will have to learn the tradition. She will love it. And the fish too.

Well, it’s April.

Wow. Incroyable !

And there’s so much activity in our house. A daughter who is growing like une mauvaise herbe (a weed), says le papa. She is happy and *so* curious about everything. About every single detail of life. That’s what babies do.

And there is my cookbook that requires so much of my energy. It will be another full month. Hopefully less fast. But as full.

Well, I hope that you are also starting April on the right foot.

Well fed. Happy and jolly.

I just needed to stop by, to wish you a happy April Fools’ Day. And share with you a simple fish recipe.

Take a whole fish of your liking, thyme and sea salt, add a splash of olive oil, a few steamed potatoes on the side, and a tossed salad, and turn dinner into a simple fare.

You’ve had something like this before, haven’t you?