J'ai 33 ans à Paris

Another fantastically awesome birthday!

I arrived in Paris this morning at 9:50 am (10 minutes late) which had me running the gauntlet to make my cooking course at 1pm. I was doing so well... Got through customs (seriously easiest country to get into... They didn't ask me anything, slide passport, stamp, next!) found the train, switched to subway, dropped off my luggage and I was off to find Le Ritz with plenty of time.

Yeah... After getting off the subway, I had 20 minutes to find the école, sadly, I got TOTALLY lost... Even the shop owners I asked had no idea where I was going! I've long since realized that I often don't go far enough when searching for something so although I thought it was the wrong way I went several blocks but when I found myself surrounded by sex shops... I figured Le Ritz could not be near. Wrong! It was the next block... Grr. But instead of turning right I turned left on another street that started with a "C" that started with building 1 and I was looking for 38. After several blocks I finally realized I made a wrong turn. I retraced my steps and I finally made it but (10 minutes late so I'm going with "if the plane was not late I would have been on time.")

The cooking class was amazing!!! I learned how to cook saumon avec sauce verge et roquette et épinards. Besides being delicious they showed us how to plate it Le Ritz style so it was beautiful too (as soon as I figure out how to get photos off my phone I will post them.) Out of a class of 12, I would say only 3 (including me, first language was english.) it was so fun to learn to cook from a French chef, he was nice, helpful, and spoke most of the time in French (whoo-hoo!) I learned several cool things:

• The inside of sweet peppers (i.e. green, red) is bitter you can remove it with a sharp knife.


• Pre-cooking the salmon makes it very easy to prepare. Creates a crust and only takes 8 more minute in the oven at 200C when you are ready to eat


• I don't put enough salt when I prepare food. I was making the vinaigrette and after adding the salt, the chef prompted me to add more and then he added even more after tasting it


• I'm in serious need of some chef quality cooking utensils. I'm completely in love with the whisk I used, the vinaigrette turn out amazing! That and I want the rings we used for the semolina.

After dinning on our amazing dinner and having little chocolates and café, I set out... In the direction of the Musée Rodin, roaming the Jardin des Tuileries and just enjoying being in Paris, I then realized I was exhausted! I headed back to the hotel, checked into the hotel and slept for 4 hours!

Waking up hungry and with it still being light I headed out to wander along Blvd St-Germain stepping into a few shops and lookin' for a place to eat. I didn't really find anything to my liking... They all had the tourist wranglers out front. I headed back to my hotel because I thought I saw a restaurant just across the street. It looked super cute so I figured I would go for it.

For my birthday dinner, I had la table d'hôte of salade de roquette, herbes et fromage de chèvre, boeuf bourguignon, et un salade de fruits. All in all a delicious meal.

Thats it for now... Time to plan tomorrow.