The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City Read Online Free PDF Page B

ready to call it quits and lock the door. So I bought a sturdy bakery-style chrome rack to store sacks of flour, big bags of nuts, massive blocks of chocolate, and kilos of sugar, which keep the ice cream, cakes, and cookies flowing at all hours.
    This absolutely stuns French guests who are only used to seeing twenty or thirty bags of sugar and flour being delivered to their local pâtisserie, not in someone’s apartment. And I’ve got one whole shelf devoted entirely to French chocolate, which I buy in enormous tablets, as well as sacks of
pistoles:
those small, round disks that are great when you need 247 grams of chocolate and don’t want to spend the time—or in my kitchen, lack the space—to lop off hunks from a jumbo slab of
chocolat noir.
The only problem is those little suckers are a little
too
convenient, and as much as I keephiding that box away in the back corner, a few hours later it seems to find its way up to the front with my arm digging around up to my elbow, like a kid rifling through a box of cereal, half-crazed, searching for the prize.
    Frustratingly, I can’t stockpile everything and have to keep other necessities, like popcorn and polenta, to a bare minimum because of space constraints. Since I have good friends who work for major cookware and appliance companies, I’m sometimes offered gifts that I simply can’t refuse. But refuse I do.
    Well, most of the time. How does one turn down a professional blender or a copper roasting pan? So add a blender, espresso maker, and ice cream freezer to my kitchen, then do the math: with 25 percent of the space devoted to an electric mixer, 10 percent to a blender, and 54 percent to my Italian espresso maker, I’m left with only 11 percent of usable counter space.
    Although I considered not replacing the dishwasher and resigning myself to the drudgery of hand washing, my painter-pushing friend Randal slapped some sense into me. One day shortly thereafter, two hunky Frenchmen showed up at my apartment, muscles bulging and a fine mist of sweat glistening on their chiseled features. Which was great, but what was even more appreciated than their presence was the new dishwasher they’d hauled up the six flights of stairs.

    The longer I’ve lived
chez
David, the more creative I’ve become with space, and my apartment is now really just one giant kitchen, closer in size to the
cuisine américaine
I had back in San Francisco, and which I miss more than shopping at Target. I’ve even co-opted the adjoining rooftop, which holds the distinction of being the most beautiful cooling rack in the world; my cookies cool with a view of the Eiffel Tower, overlooking the elegant place des Vosges. With the gentle breezes of Paris blowing, it’s actually quite a model of efficiency—provided you make sure no wildlife is lurking about. I’ve learned the hard way, deduced from a few telltale feathers embeddedin a block of barely cooled toffee, that Parisian pigeons have just as much of a sweet tooth as I do.
    And why limit the bathroom to personal grooming? My dated, but thoroughly utilitarian, marble bathroom shelves are a perfect pigeon-proof environment for cooling candy. When there are lots of pots and pans to be tackled, there’s much more room in my generously sized bathtub than in my dinky kitchen sink, which would frustrate even Barbie if it were installed in her Dream House.
    Imagine if you had to scrub clean a stockpot in one of those washbasins on an airplane and you’ll understand why my bathtub’s the best place for lathering up the Le Creusets. I fill the tub with soapy water, then get down on my hands and knees, like the
lavandières
of yesteryear doing their scrubbing in the Seine.
    My toilet, which was on its last gasps when I moved in, is a repository for mistakes, which I’m sure isn’t helping it maintain what’s left of its vigor. Like the French, it’s sometimes a bit rebellious and
fragile
, and I now know it’s a wise idea to check to make