Last night, I joined 5,000 revelers at Pier 26 in Tribeca for the fifth edition of New York's Dîner en Blanc. Being involved with the DC event, which this year will take place on August 29th and involve 2,500 guests, I can appreciate the sheer logistics of getting all of us, carrying our own tables, chairs, tableware, centerpieces and food, there! Our evening started at Washington Square Park, one of 24 meeting spots throughout the city. Well, really it started on a bus to New York... but let's not go there ;-) Following a quick glass of rosé on tap at Claudette (no it wasn't weird at all to show up there with 2 chairs, I swear...), my friend Caitlin and I met Katie, our very ...
J'adore
Postcard from Wisconsin: Babcock Hall Dairy Store
Did your alma mater produce its own amazing ice cream on campus? I'm gonna guess no, unless you went to UConn, Penn State or the University of Wisconsin at Madison. One of my best friends, Cecile of The Worldly Bite, comes from a long line of Badgers, so ahead of my recent trip to Wisconsin, she gave me the scoop on everything I couldn't miss while visiting her campus, starting with getting a scoop of delicious ice cream at Babcock Hall Dairy Store, bien sur. Wisconsin is known as America's dairyland so it's not that surprising that UW-Madison would offer the best Dairy Science major in the country, host the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research (CDR), and operate its own dairy plant on ...
Paris vs New York: The Striped T-Shirt Edition
Paris mon Amour or New York my Love? That's the question that JCrew's little sister Madewell is asking in its second collaboration with the French label Sézane®. After a successful first capsule collection last year, Madewell x Sézane is back with flared jeans, a very Parisian-chic little black dress, Ulysse lace-up sandals, accessories like a flirty printed scarf to wrap effortlessly around your neck, a "Féminin et Masculin” gray sweatshirt that's guaranteed to sell out as fast as the "Superbe" one did in 2014, and, my personal favourite, this set of two striped tees: J'adore New York, but Paris will always be my home so I just ordered the red-striped shirt. I can't wait to show it off ...
Cat-Ladying at Crumbs & Whiskers
This isn't my first cat café post - cue in my previous posts on New York's Meow Parlour and Paris' Café des Chats. It's not even my first post about Crumbs and Whiskers - see post on the launch of its kickstarter campaign. But it is my first post on DC's eagerly anticipated cat café since it opened. And it's my first post since actually going there!! My friend Cecile who writes The Worldly Bites has Gentlemeow Club member status so we snagged 2 weeknight spots during opening month and went to go play with the kittiens last night. Let me take you through our experience at Crumbs and Whiskers... Cat café is actually a bit of a misnomer when it comes to Crumbs and Whiskers. Yes, ...
Six Budget-Friendly French Wines for Bastille Day
From a baguette relay race at Paul to diner at Bistrot du Coin or a fancy patio fête at the Sofitel Hotel, there are plenty of options to celebrate France's national holiday, le Quatorze Juillet, in Washington, DC. If you're more of a homebody, why not stay at home and watch a great French film while sipping a good bottle of French wine! For the films, I've narrowed down 20 of the best French films available on Netflix right here. And to help you find the perfect bottle of wine to go along whichever flick you pick, I turned to Michelle Lim Warner and Michael Warner, co-owners of DCanter, for some suggestions. One of the things I love about the Capitol Hill wine boutique (other than the ...
Liberty Enlightening the World… For 130 Years
Did you know that the Statue of Liberty, this universal symbol of freedom, is technically French? Yep, one of America’s most iconic monuments was born in France to Mr. Frederic Bartholdi, a French sculptor who modeled her after his mother, and given to the people of America as a gift of friendship from the French people. 130 years ago today, she arrived in new York Harbour after a long trip across the Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces. These pieces took about a year to be reassembled and the 450,000-pound statue was officially dedicated on October 28, 1886, by President Cleveland. To celebrate the anniversary of the Statue of Liberty's arrival in the United States, google created a ...
Hermione & the Spirit of Lafayette Back in the US
Nope, I'm not talking about a Hermione Granger, the Harry Potter character, but Hermione, the Frigate of Freedom, a ship. The replica of the ship that brought the Marquis de Lafayette to the United State some 235 years ago to carry the message from King Louis XVI that France was going to aid the colonies. In 1997, a group of people came up with the idea of reconstructing the frigate using the same building methods applied in the original. Some 17 years later, on April 18, 2015, she left Rochefort in France to set sail for Virginia and retrace a journey through American history. For the past month, L'Hermione plied across the Atlantic, retracing Lafayette's journey. She's set to arrive in ...
A Taste of Burgundy: Jambon à la Chablisienne
Making Jambon à la Chablisienne is very simple and allows you to bring together two ingredients that are abundant in Burgundy: wine and ham. In this case, the wine in question is Chablis, one of the better chardonnays produced in the region. The original dish as it was created in the first half of the 20th century called for a whole ham cooked on the boned in Chablis with added flavouring and served over spinach or fresh noodles . Today, the recipe has been simplified: thick slices of ham are baked with a sauce made of tomatoes, wine and shallots and served over rice. Here's how to make it at home... INGREDIENTS PREPARATION Start by heating up the oven to 400° and preparing your ...
Happy St. Honoré to all the bakers & pastry chefs
The Catholic Church has a long tradition of assigning saints as special guardians and protectors of different trades and professions, and bakers and pastry chefs are no exception! Saint Honoré, the former Bishop of Amiens in the North of France, is revered by bakers as their patron saint, in part due to a church that was built in his honor in 1202 that became the site of the bakers' guilt. Technically, the patron saint of pastry chefs is St. Michel. But the line between boulangers (bakers) and pâtissiers (pastry chefs) is often blurred in France, with most boulangeries selling pastries in addition to bread. The St. Honoré also happens to be a delicious dessert made of cream puffs, puff ...
Pick Your Own Tulips at Burnside Farms
Tulips are a beautiful symbol of spring. In Washington, tulips typically bloom right after the cherry blossoms have come and gone, but they were a little late this year, probably because we've had such a cold spring. Over the past 2 weeks though, their vibrant colours have been on full display across the city. And just outside of the District, a quick 45 minutes drive away, a farm in Haymarket, Virginia, plays host to one of largest pick-your-own tulips festival in the United States. Nicknamed "Holland in Haymarket," the festival typically runs late April to mid-May, depending on when the flowers actually bloom. Visitors pay an entrance fee of $3.00, and then there's a cost per stem ...
