“HOME” AGAIN
Dear Caroline
Wedding is over! It was so wonderful to see the family and see you walk the aisle with the other brides maids. You all looked beautiful. I hope you had a great time. I will admit I almost didn’t recognize you, you’ve grown up so much! It feels like just yesterday that we were staying up all night on Christmas Eve watching Elf and other movies in the living room by the Christmas tree in 2021.
When we arrived at the airport my checkin desk wasn’t ready yet… that what I get for travelling British Airways and not Delta. I had to hangout in a rinky-dink cafe for 3 hours waiting for my desk to open. I watched so much Netflix and ate some cake, Europe doesn’t really do cake like the US and Canada, it can be too fancy. Sometimes you just want a cheap basic grocery store cake with thick buttercream icing. Once my check in desk was open, I decided to treat myself, and I bought a business class upgrade. It was so worth it. I was in the lounge for another couple hours before my flight, enjoyed more treats. I got on the plane and relaxed into my “suite” it was amazing. Dinner was super tasty too. Totally worth the extra expense, especially since I am at the end of my trip, so a little extravagance here and there won’t break my budget. I had hopped that having a lie flat bed I would have escaped the jet lag, but alas I didn’t. It took a whole week to get back in the Paris groove, it didn’t help that I was very homesick as well. I spent a lot of time in bed. Not my finest moment but I made it through.
With all the popularity that my bedbug video got, I was invited to a sales mixer by the school director. I got to meet sales teams from all over the world. I think I was offered a job in Dubai… should I take it? Before the mixer I spent the afternoon at the Louvre. This pass makes going to the Louvre so much easier, separate entrance and everything you feel very VIP. This time I did the Denon Wing, which is famous for the Mona Lisa. I saw her but I didn’t want to fight the crowd so I’ll come back during the special night sessions for those who has passes and take a photo then. I did get to see the crown jewels though and those were magnificent!
I finally got access to the kitchen to bake some Canadian things. I never would have through that ingredients we would think normal and easy to find would be so rare here in France. For one, they don’t have Bird’s Eye custard powder here, they have “poudre de creme anglaise” but not custard powder, and Janine said that for her Nanaimo bars it has to be Bird’s. Also grocery stores aren’t organized like I am used to. I needed cocoa powder, which I though I would find in the baking aisle… nope. Here in France cocoa powder is used as a beverage in coffee and milk, so it was located in the coffee aisle and I had to read all the ingredients to make sure it was only cocoa powder and not hot cocoa mix. One thing I didn’t expect to be so complicated was sugar, especially brown sugar. In canada brown sugar in french is “cassonade” but here in France depending on where you are cassonade can mean different things. In the north like in Normandy and Brittany the brown sugar we know and use for all kinds of baking is called cassonade, but here in Paris cassonade refers to sugar in the raw, so really just white sugar that hasn’t been whitened yet. To make butter tarts I need brown sugar, the kind with molasses in them, the sticky caramel tasting stuff. After some research I had two options, find muscovado sugar (which is imported from latin America) or use vergoise a sugar with a syrup added to give it that sticky texture that our brown sugar has. Thankfully I found muscovado, expensive but worth it.
After all the running around I got everything I needed and made butter tarts and Nanaimo bars. They were a hit! I brought some home for my host mom too and she loved them. I had made her an apple crumble too this week. Soon I’m going to show her how to make pecan pie.
I’m really excited.
