This is how this story ends. 

Though, I can say, this story doesn’t end badly.  No, any story that ends in clouds of white, fluffy marshmallows must, inevitably end very well. 

We decided to make marshmallows.  Ever since I saw Martha Stewart discussing marshmallows with her daughter, Alexis, I’ve wanted to see how they were made and (of course) do it myself.  Alexis claimed that they were very simple and oh, so EASY.

She wasn’t lying.  But then again, just because something is simple doesn’t mean you can’t get yourself all mixed up in it and try to mess it up, anyway. 

These are not the marshmallows we made.  Marshmallows need to setup overnight, so these ones were made by the one woman who knew what she was doing, the day before.  These marshmallows were very nice, indeed.  

Let me back up for you.  The Bee has the week off.  The Bee is my mother’s long time best friend.  The Bee’s oldest son is about the same age and childhood friends with my older brothers.  Now that they’re into their 30s, you can imagine that we’ve known The Bee and her husband for a long enough time to consider them more than just family friends.  The thing about The Bee is that she’s always, well…busy.  She’s constantly buzzing around, coming up with new ideas, working, reading, hiking…thinking.  She’s very busy, indeed.  So when The Bee took a week off of work for the holidays, you knew that there was going to be something going on. 

Since the Bee has the week off, she asked her friend, who knows a thing or two about making marshmallows, to come and make a batch with us. 

That’s how we ended up with the perfectly finished mallows in tow.

Martha and Alexis said that marshmallows are simple and they certainly are.  Sugar, corn syrup, water and flavoring are all it takes.  You have to boil them until 244*F (this is candy, after all) and then you have beat them until they get big. 

We really were doing fine up until the beating part. 

We poured in the hot, cooked mess and let the mixer roll.  We turned it up high.  The Bee said she’d never set the mixer that high before.  The recipe calls for 15 minutes at high speed, until it triples in size.  About three minutes in and the light, almost indistinguishable smell of burning begins to fill the air.  No fear.  Let’s make the mixer work.  We soldier on.  The thick white mass begins to double, then triple in size.  The twenty year old mixer which, up until this point has worked just fine, thank you, starts giving off a whining sound and the smell becomes more intensified.  We stop the beaters, discuss our options and turn it back on.

Suddenly the white begins rapidly creeping up the beaters and a giant mass forms on the underside of the mixer. We stop and scrape.  The situation is assessed.  Only two minutes left.  We persist.  Scraping and hoping, the air filling with smoke the timer finally beeps.  The glossy white fluff goes into the pans and the cooks, having survived the intensity of the moment, reward ourselves with a few tastes of the soft and fluffy mallow straight from the bowl. 

Sugar in pan, now its time to assess the damage.  The seemingly innocuous white fluff has made its way into the bowels of the machine, snaking its way through the air vents in the bottom of the handle.  Mom and The Bee clean away much of the mess which dissolves quite easily.  Some of the fluff has the tale tell signs of desiccated roasted, marshmallows.  The innards are a bit of a trick and The Bee and I find ourselves on our knees, Q-Tips in hand scraping at the last bits of marshmallow sticking to the insides of the mixer. 

Miraculously, we dislodge the last remaining bits of desiccated white.

Time to let the mixer cool down and dry.  Only time will tell if our little hero will make it through the night.  The marshmallow is cooling in the pan and the cooks are rewarded with a bite of perfectly made marshmallow.

The story doesn’t end badly.  How could it, when the ending involves white clouds of fluffy, gooey marshmallow?

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

I feel a little bit like this lemon.

I should probably back up a little bit. 

Ok, maybe I should back up way far back.

It starts with my dad.

My dad grew up in Winnipeg, a city smack dab in the middle of Canada.  The thing about Winnipeg, a fact that's pretty hard to avoid when discussing the place, is that Winnipeg is cold.  Like, months of below freezing temperatures and the lucky distinction of sharing the same geographical parallel as Siberia cold.  No joke.  Little boys who grow up in Winnipeg rarely have fruit trees in their back yard and never have snow-less winters. 

So when my dad grew up, tired of the cold, he moved to California.  He followed the dream.  He wanted the warm weather.  He wanted the change.  And he wanted the fruit trees. 

My dad is thrilled by fruit trees.  For as long as I can remember, he's planted them in the backyard to varying degrees of success.  For years, we'd have bowls and bowls of plums and nectarines from dad's haphazardly pruned trees.  No matter how much he willed it, the apple tree just never quite produced.  An entire summer was spent warding off the birds who found the cherries to be just as delicious as we did. 

Towards the end of the summer this season, citrus trees went on sale.  Unsurprisingly, a tree made it's way to our house and into the backyard. 

Even with the successes we've had with some of our trees, we've never had a tree give off fruit in the first season.  This winter, however, our lemon tree gave off fruit.  It's actually pretty amazing.  None of our other fruit trees thrived this way.  Not the nectarines, the plums or the cherries.  None of them.

But here's the difference.  This tree, this Meyer lemon tree, loves California.  Though it's not a native, the Meyer lemon tree thrives in the California climate.  Sure, the lemons will grow elsewhere.  It's possible.  But when the little lemon tree comes to California, it doesn't just survive, it grows and thrives.  It wants to be here.  All the things that make it its best are here and the lemon tree grows.  It doesn't take the tree years to feel just right.  It doesn't take so much time until it can muster up the will to survive.  The lemon tree is home right away.

I feel a little bit like this lemon.

I can survive elsewhere.  But in my bones, I'm made for California.  Maybe the lemon tree isn't a native, but I am and coming home feels just right.  I like the sunshine here.  I like friendly smiles and yoga-practicing hippies.  I like the beautiful fresh vegetable salads and the friends with an insatiable desire to try something new - to grow and learn.  I love the people biking and running and talking sports. 

I feel like the lemon.  I feel like here, it's easy to thrive.  I feel it in my heart.  I feel home.

Here are some of the thigns I've been eating since coming home.  They're simple and - let's face it - nothing special.  But they're tough and almost impossible to get while in France.  The nachos in  particular.  They're delicious and taste like home.

I'm back in California for the holidays, but before I start in about all of that, I had to update you on a few things that happened before my triumphant return.

First, The Roomie and I made a quick trip to Metz to see the Christmas market.  I'd been dying to go, as Europe (and particularly this part of Europe) is known for its Christmas markets. 

I love hustle and bustle and to be delighted by something new - even after all of the incredible things I've seen - is always a treat.  The Market was nothing short of charming.  The streets were packed with people buying, eating, drinking and some (like me) simply gawking.  Hanging meats, giant pots of hot oil for churros (or maybe the French equivalent of what I call a churro?) and the most enormous pot of tartiflette I've ever seen.  It was Christmas on steroids and something I thoroughly enjoyed.

You can count on it.  ;)

The rain is pelting here; it has been for days.  I can hear it, morning noon and night, though the gray cloudy sky obscures any and all sense of time. 

Pitter patter. Pitter patter. Thrap thrap thrap.

The rain keeps coming.

And then the wind.

Whooooo.  Whooooo  whooooo hooooo.

Through our thin walls. 

The Roomie’s room bears the brunt of the howling wind.  Insidiously, it leaks through invisible cracks and seeps into her room.  At night the thrap thrap thrapping and the whoo hooo whoooing make sleep fitful.

Restless sleep.  Not awakened by the commotion, but constantly tapping at our quiet minds. 

What to do in a storm like this?  The inevitable moment of marvel at the giant pieces of hail, piled like snow on our window pane.  The gusting clouds, wooshing through the sky.  For a moment, a hint of blue just peeking through the clouds.  But it’s gone in an instant and the pelting starts again.

What to do?

Bundle.  Huddle.  Keep warm.

Now’s the time for comfort food.  Now’s the time for stewed lentils for lunch and glasses of red wine with pizza for dinner.  Now’s the time for overpriced jars of salsa and corn tortilla chips from the international section to satiate a palate starved for home. 

Now’s the time to wait it out.  ‘Cause vacation is almost here.  And so is California.

I kind of did something embarrassing, guys.  

You know how you’ll do something embarrassing, but by some sort of miracle no one sees it?  You know how it is – you’ll be walking down the street, catch your toe on something and completely face plant on the sidewalk.  You survive - no scratches, no obvious marking to indicate the shockingly high level of your innate clumsiness – and no one even saw.  You could, technically ride it out and never let anyone know what happened.  The universe is totally allowing you this one, amazing out.  But then you see your friend a half an hour later and the overwhelming desire to relate your story completely overtakes you and you find yourself describing, in detail, just exactly how you feel and just exactly how embarrassing the embarrassing thing was. 

Soo, I’m kind of going to do that right now.  Check it.

You know I like cookies, right?  ‘Cause I really like a cookies.  Let’s face it.  I write a blog about cookies.  (ok, and some other stuff, too)

Making cookies in my kitchen is hard.  Cookies are such fickle little fiends anyway.  The ratios have to be right.  The temperature has to be right.  There’s really not much leeway with ingredient modification.  You can’t over mix. 

Like I said, fickle.

I’d say very confidently that I am not a perfectionist in life.  I don’t really mind if my hair isn’t falling just right.  Don’t really care if my outfit is perfectly matched.  Definitely don’t mind going a couple of days with a messy apartment.  I can spend the day in my pajamas without feeling guilty about my extreme laziness. 

But when it comes to baking, all of that goes completely out the window.  Not the pajama thing.  I’m totally cool with baking in my PJs.  But, when I’m baking, I find myself completely committed to perfect results.  I don’t want to make something that’s simply yummy.  I mean, when you combine flour, sugar, butter and chocolate, you can’t really make it taste all that bad.  No, I want my stuff to be excellent.  And beautiful.  I want it to be the kind of thing you’d pay money for. (even though I’m not charging… yet ;))

Point being, I’m a total, freaky baking perfectionist.

Which, essentially means that, here in France, I’m going a little bit crazy.

Here are a few reasons why:

All Purpose flour is not All Purpose flour.  The level of gluten and proteins are not the same.  Everyday flour here in France is closer to say, cake flour.  Therefore the results are unpredictable.

My oven runs hot.  And is not very accurate.

My oven isn’t really an oven at all.  It’s a toaster oven.  The heat circulates inappropriately and sporadically.  Things cook unevenly.

There is no brown sugar in France.  Ok, apparently someone saw a bag once at some store, but for me, let’s face it, there’s no brown sugar.  No lovely caramelization.  No subtlety and depth of flavor.  Every cookie is a sugar cookie. 

Now, if I were a normal person, I’d certainly be able to let these things go.  I’d bake something else.  I’d just eat the non-perfect (but still yummy) cookies.  I’d, you know, buy some disgustingly beautiful and delicious French pastry and call it a day. 

But we all know I’m not that normal. 

So, in my attempts (there’s been more than one) to make perfect cookies, I’ve gone through a few recipes.

This time around, I decided to stop fighting the chocolate chip cookie battle.  Let’s face it, good chocolate chip cookies need brown sugar, and by golly, that just isn’t happening any time soon.  I decided instead to go for an interesting looking lemon cookie recipe that required minimal ingredients and one lemon.  Easy peasy. 

I whipped up the dough (I don’t have a mixer, so I do it by hand).  Popped those lemony babies in the oven and waited.

Like you might expect, they weren’t perfect.  The texture, although chewy and lemony, wasn’t quite what I expected, though I shouldn’t have been surprised, what with all the elements working against me.  But still, they tasted pretty good.

And here’s the embarrassing part of the story. 

I kind of maybe ate more cookies than I should have.

I kind of maybe ate a lot of cookies.

I kind of maybe made myself sick from eating too many lemon cookies.

At first, the logical adult part of me thought that it was food poisoning.  Because surely, I couldn’t have eaten so many cookies as to have made myself unable to move and writhing in pain – could I?  But alas, as the sugar coma set in, I realized that yes, indeed, my pain was the direct result of my own personal gluttony.  Fat Kid to the extreme.  Childish behaviors galore.  Totally embarrassing.

Now I could have suffered in silence and never spoken of it, but I figured it’s more exciting to share.

Like I said, the cookie recipe was just ok.  Maybe I’ll try it when I’m back in California next week (!!!) for the holidays.  Or maybe I’ll just let this whole cookie thing go.

Nah, probably not.

I got this recipe here.  I can't really say how I feel about this recipe in terms of measuring up to my standards, though I can imagine that under better conditions, it's pretty darn good.  I won't even tell you how annoying I find the rest of this website.  Just letting. it. go.

Lemon Crinkle Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen

Ingredients:
½ cups butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoons baking soda
1-½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cups powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte {not melty or shiny}. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

*If using a non-stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

Sometimes I eat weird stuff. 

You know how there are classic combinations of foods that go together?   The kinds of foods that you just see togther because they just taste so darn good?  You know,  like... pears and roquefort or turkey and cranberries or green eggs and ham.  Those kinds of foods.  Well, I totally throw those ideas out the window sometimes.  Oh yes, I do.  It's because I'm kind of a rebel.  Don't doubt it.

It's also because I tend to buy vegetables without a strong plan.  So I just need to eat them.  Like this.  I don't know what's going on here, but it's good.  Oh yes it is.

 
Sauteed Zucchini and Tomatoes

(Again, I just eye ball this recipe.  Cook it how you like.)

1 tsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, medium dice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 medium zucchini, diced
1 medium tomato (or a handful of cherry tomatoes), diced
1 tsp. dried oregano

In a pan, heat the oil.  Add onion and sautee on medium heat until translucent, about 5 minutes.  Add garlic and cook for 1 minute.  Add zucchini, about a tablespoon of water, cover and cook until the zucchini gets tender.  When the zucchini has reached the consistency you like, remove the lid and allow water to cook off.   Add the tomato and oregano and cook until heated through and soft, about 3 minutes.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s Christmas.  Totally official.  Completely Santa Claus time.  And while I don’t have a Christmas tree or lights this year and I’ll have to wait a couple more weeks for A Very California Christmas, there is one thing that is gonna get me through this holiday season.

Vin Chaud.  That's French for hot wine, kids.  Oh yes.

While I’m not a huge fan of the red (traditional) variety, I did get to taste this mulled white wine and found it to be pretty darn good, actually. 

The Christmas markets are up in full force here and although our local Thionville market (just a short car ride away) is small, it was nice to stop by the other day and have a drink with a few friends.  And also, since I’m talking about it, and you’re already picturing the holly jolly scene, I have to tell you something cool that happened.

We ran into some friends while we were there.  

French friends, no less. 

Now I know I come from a larger city (where randomly running into people rarely happens), and maybe this kind of thing happens all the time when you live in the middle of nowhere, but running into French friends while in town totally made me stoked.  Because it means I actually live here.  And I know people.  And I have friends that live here, too.  How cool is that?

I kind of didn't take many pictures of the Christmas market.  Probably because it was raining and I was too wimpy to stand out in the rain to take a photo.  But here are couple shots of some desserts, because I'm me, and couldn't possibly say no to a picture of a giant cookie.