Pardon My French

Food for Baby

Thanks to all of you who have been lending support to me in my time of need! Yesterday I met a person in my town who is also having a baby in April (through my mover and shaker friend) AND who has lived in -- and liked -- Virginia. AND I slept through the night, for the most part, which is a first since I don't know how long. AND today was a day off and I went into Paris. It's good for me to do this every now and then as it helps remind me that my life is good despite the fact I'm in a teeny apartment without a yard or room for the baby.

I went to a Japanese supermarket since I've been thinking about Japanese curry for quite a while. My appetite was back in force today. I took my husband's backpack since I took the train...and was able to restrain myself to buy only the things I can carry around. Man, I loaded up! I bought several packs of Japanese curry, miso, okonomiyaki flour and sauce, and 2 packs of buckwheat soba and sauce. I noticed that lots of the sauces do contain sugar, but since they're not on the official 'banned' list and I'll be eating them with lots of starchy foods I figure it will be okay. It's just a dipping sauce, not a big bowl of ice cream. (Right? Or am I directly on the path to hell?) Anyway, I was sorely tempted to buy real Japanese rice and a rice cooker, but will be saving centimes for that another day. It's been a while since I've had real sticky rice. I've noticed that where I live, a lot of the Japanese restaurants aren't really Japanese. They're sort of Japanese but the food is different, down to the rice. It's hard to explain, but it's not as good. The more I think about it, though, the more I want that rice cooker so I can make cucumber and radish pickle sushi.

Then, I took the metro across town to an udon shop (Kunitoraya) that was supposed to be really good. I now know where the noodle section of Paris is: Rue Ste Anne in the first arrondissement. I passed "Restaurant Noodle #1" as well as something like "Yi Ming's Japanese Ramen." This amused me a little since in Japan, ramen is known as Chinese food. There was even the French (I guess) equivalent of Engrish: "Tokyo Lanen Paris." Despite all the oodles of noodle shops, my one target was clearly the best. People were lined up outside waiting to get a table, and it was clearly an authentic Japanese restaurant since all the staff were speaking fluent Japanese. I ordered the tenpura udon which comes with batter-dipped giant shrimp and I ate it all. I can't tell you the last time I had real udon...maybe when I was still living in Japan...so I was pretty happy. Towards the end I realized that I was the only person around slurping noodles, but I just got carried away at the counter and wasn't paying attention. Here is a link to a cute film clip on the correct way to eat udon, but it's worth noting that I didn't exactly achieve the same noise level, unfortunately. He makes it look so easy. When I left the restaurant, people were still lined up to get in. I will definitely be going back.

In even more awesome news, I found a yakiniku restaurant just a few meters down the road. I have no idea if the quality is good, but I took a business card and will be stopping back by during the cold winter months. Oh, man, I am so happy. In Japan we'd get together during the freezing times and meet at a yakiniku restaurant for the all-you-can-eat-and-drink buffet, thus combining two of my loves: limitless amounts of barbecued meat and beer. I'm not so tickled about the winter weather, but I am digging the thought of eating fondue, raclette, homemade soup and yakiniku.

I'm hungry again. Going to go eat an apple.