Harry's Rules & Ingrid's Crap!

Younger Next Year has 7 Rules, Harry's Rules. Although not rule #1 for Harry, I have to point out the one that immediately jumps out at me, Rule #5 - Quit Eating Crap! Many would think that you cannot eat crap in Paris; believe me, you can, it is just better, tastier crap from bakeries and crap full of butter and cream. Macaroons instead of cookies, pain au chocolat instead of bagels, the list goes on. And it is difficult to walk two blocks in Paris without coming across a boulangerie (with good crap for sale of course.) Perhaps I should call it gourmet crap, French crap, Parisian crap or je ne sais quoi crap but the bottom line is that it is all delicious, tasty, fat laden crap. And since it is far tastier than north American crap, you just want to eat more (at least I do!)



In Calgary I have to stay away from chocolate and popcorn. In Paris I have to stay away from...oh so much more!

Let's start with the bakeries. Baguette tradition, batard, flute, pain cereale, ficelle, these are all different kinds of baguettes; different flour, different seeds, different size, and of course different taste - but all very good indeed.

The Tai girls became addicted to les baguettes traditions. And we quickly learned where the best traditions were made in our neighbourhood.

Bakery #1 for us was Le Grillon d'Auteuil, 65 rue d'Auteuil, 16eme.
You can often tell how good a boulangerie is by the size of the line up out front. There was always a line up at our #1 bakery. The unofficial Tai rule was that if the tradition was still warm, we would buy at least two as one would be devoured before we could walk the three blocks home. We would be easy to follow as our Hansel & Gretel trail of crumbs easily gave away our path home.




Bakery #2, le Gouverneur, 109 Blvd Exelmans, 16eme.
Besides having excellent tradition, le Gouverneur had amazing cakes, homemade ice cream and as we discovered in January, unsurpassable galette des rois. This was melt in your mouth, flavourful, almond paste surrounded by an amazing flaky pastry. Apparently Parisians come from across the city in search of this galette des rois. How unfortunate that we lived three blocks away!

I will not get into how tasty the macaroons were at these two bakeries. I could describe their taste, texture, decadence and smoothness for paragraphs. I can still taste them now, yes especially the chocolate and coffee flavoured ones. The famous maison LaDuree in Paris, who invented the macaroon as we know it today, has nothing on our two favourite boulangeries!



This brings me back to, crap - our favourite Parisian crap. I know Parisians would be aghast with me calling their sacred baguettes and baked goods crap but these are really, Ingrid's crap.

Rule #5 - or rather, Rule #1 for Ingrid, whether in Paris, or Calgary or anywhere else, quit eating crap!

Yes this crap...









not this crap!