Laduree Macarons

Finally, my dream came true.  I waited years for this moment....the ultimate name in French macarons, the creator of the French macarons.  I finally got to taste macarons from Laduree.

I honest can't believe they don't have a shop in NYC.  They have two shops in Japan.  What, those snooty French don't think NYkers appreciate macarons more than Japanese? =P

On my recent trip to French Riviera, visiting Laduree shop in Monaco was on my top 10 list of things to do...but stupid me, when I actually went to Monaco, I was so mesmerized by all the beautiful people and cars that I totally forgot about visiting Laduree.  So the next day, I urged my husband that we must visit Monaco again( we were already back in Cannes and going to Monaco again means we will have to waste at least a half day of sight seeing in Cannes).  So we drove all the way back to Monaco(man, those highway tolls are super expensive in France) and finally got the macarons from Laduree.  I bought 8 pieces of different flavors.  

To be honest, they were ok.  I didn't think they were 200% greater in taste and texture than other macarons from local pastry shops.  Actually, I thought they were a bit too sweet and each piece was kind of overwhelming with too much flavor.   I honest prefer pistachio macarons from a chain shop called Paul which can be found almost everywhere in France.  Can you believe even truckers eat macarons in France because I saw the store at a truck stop??  

Markets in Provence II

Don't these birds just look so fresh...chicken, quail...

Sausages made with olives and garlic. 
These are the most beautiful looking artichokes I've ever seen.
Sausages..so many kinds, so hard to pick.  Luckly, they were all equally tasty.
Different foie gras products.
Fish market
Gambas were pretty popular on the restaurants menu , I guess they are king prawns.
I tasted langoustine for the first time at a restaurant.  They were indeed very tasty.
If there is one food I didn't really care for is this nougets.  They were so so but super expensive, which I will never understand why.

Markets in Provence

Just look at these cheeses..all at great prices.  Sheep cheeses were mild and tasty but most of vendors carried a lot of goat cheeses.

Different types of teas

Olives and nuts
Soaps made with olive oil and lavender
Nice Leg
Olive oils

Different  types of wild mushrooms
Beautiful tomatoes
Can you guess how many kinds of spices are here?Some kind of head cheese...meat product..looks good to me.  Yum.....  

Paintings on the wall.

Here are some of my husband's paintings that are hung in our house.

My favorite is the last one, a cowboy on a horse.  Apparently, this is one of his earlier works.

I don't know too much about art, but I told him that the cowboy picture looks the most original and most distinctive out of all his paintings.  I also like the second still life painting just because I usually prefer still life over landscapes which my husband seems to prefer.

One thing for sure, it would be pretty expensive to fill up all the wall spaces but thanks to him, we have saved a lot of money. ha.

Can anyone tell me why custom framing is so expensive even at the usual half price???

Silhouette framed pictures

About 5 years ago, I was browsing one of the antique/vintage stores in Vermont and found a small wooden frame with linen cloth that had a black picture of a man.  I thought it was really cute and purchased it.  I didn't think much of it until I saw Martha Stewart's magazine a few years ago with a picture of a beautiful Christmas tree decorated with small framed art of black and white prints.  Since then, I kind of fell in love with these little framed prints.  These are some of the silhouette prints I purchased from Ebay.com.  They look good on every wall.  These should be decorators' favorite items because you can't go wrong with them.  They look good in both traditional house and modern house.

Pasta and Crepe w/ Nutella

Farfalle aka bow-tie pasta with everything in it and crepe with Nutella.  I have a Russian friend and apparently, crepe(or called Blinkchiki in Russain) is one of their popular breakfast items in Russia.  Along with cured pork fat, she brought these wonderful egg crepes from her local Russian market.  These were wonderful in both texture and flavor.  My husband smeared some blackberry jam on it but I wasn't going to waste my beautiful crepe with some plain old jam.  I brought out a jar of Nutella from my pantry and put a big spoonful of it on each crepe and ate all them up!  Heaven.

Hot night

It's 90 degrees out and I really don't feel like making anything for dinner.  What the best solution?  I simply go to a local gourmet shop and splurge on goodies like imported cheeses, pate, bread, wine, chocolate and pork jowl....yeah, pork jowl.  My husband spotted it and he immediately put it into the shopping basket.  So the dinner is ready.  Oh, we also bought some store made rice pudding and buffalo butter.  It's amazing what we can find at this specialty shop called Jerry's in a town called Englewood, NJ.  

We opened up all the goodies in our deck.  Pork jowl was very chewy and tough with lots of fat as you can see it in the picture.  We had a hard time cutting it but my husband thought it was worth the labor.   Well, it was salty so it went well with cold prosecco, a relatively cheap Italian sparkling wine.

We finished off the meal with big chunks of dark chocolate and rice pudding.  Can't ask for better dinner.