Paris – And What I Ate

French Green Bean Salad

French Green Beans are one of my favorite foods in France. To be clear: these are not green beans, those chunky, crunchy, scowl-inducing veggies your mom used to make you eat as a kid. These are French Green Beans, or haricots verts, slender little delicate beans that are delicious on their own or quickly blanched and then tossed with some carrot sticks, a couple beet greens and that dijon-spiked, shallot-based classic french vinaigrette. This is not a salad. This is an event. Enjoy.

FRENCH GREEN BEAN SALAD (Serves 2 as a main or 4 as a side)

1 lb. French Green Beans
1/4 C. matchstick carrots
1/2 C. beet greens (no more – the beans are the star of this, not the greens)
Classic French Vinaigrette

1.Blanch your green beans. You do this by gently boiling some salted water in a large pot, then throwing the beans in for no more than 2 minutes, or until the beans have a little bend to them, but aren’t soggy. Test them pretty often, so you make sure you get the right texture – it’s key to the salad.

2. Have an ice bath ready, and when the beans are ready, quickly drain them in a colander and dunk them in the ice bath so they stop cooking.

3. Drain the beans and pat them dry. Toss with 3/4 of the vinaigrette, then add the carrots and beet greens, and toss with the rest of the vinaigrette.

4. Serve immediately and enjoy. J’adore les haricots verts!

Paris, Part Deux

…In which my mom and sister go to the Chanel Couture show, we meet Terry de Gunzburg, sit next to Lenny Kravitz at lunch, enjoy the Musee d’Orsay and travel to begin some serious wine-tasting in Bordeaux.

Pretty much everyone should start off their day like this. La Maison Favart has one of the best and prettiest showers I’ve ever experienced in their Carmen suite, and a breakfast worthy of the same adjectives.

And then, NBD, my mom and my sister went to the Chanel Couture Week show. Seriously unreal. The crowd was amazing, the show was completely over the top (so I hear) and my mom got to cross one of the top items off her bucket list. I hung out for almost an hour after dropping them off to people-watch (who were among the best-dressed crowd of my life) despite being dressed in neon workout gear and enduring a solid 45 minutes of papparazzi screaming at me in French, ‘GET OUT OF THE SHOT!!!” Oh, settle down, crazies.

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Paris, Part Un

I haven’t been back here since I was 21 years old, but it didn’t take long for me to remember why this is my favorite city in the world.

Angelina’s has the world’s best hot chocolate, and their salads aren’t too shabby either.

I mean, come on:

The boat pond in Tuilleries is my favorite place in the world. I could (and have) sit here for hours and just soak it all in.

My mom and my sister, to make a very long story short, were invited to the Chanel show during Couture Week. I’ve rarely seen my mom more excited than when their invitations (which, without question, I’m sure were more expensive than the cost of an entire wedding) were delivered to our hotel.

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Oooh, la la

Honestly, I don’t know why I always seem to get so lax about posting during the summer, but it’s probably because there’s so much more going on.

For example.

Late Sunday night, I got back from a 10-day trip to France with my mom and my little sister. We spent a couple days in Paris, went down to Bordeaux for wine-tasting, then back up to Paris again. I used to live there in college, and I hadn’t been back since, and honestly, I forgot about how much that city makes me feel. Everything is so vibrant and beautiful and exciting and – most importantly – grounding in a way I can’t even fully describe. Paris brings out the best in me.

This was the first girls’ trip my mom and sister and I have taken in a really long time, and we had a blast. We had experiences, dinners and wine among the best of my life, scenery that could have been out of a movie and I also got some serious quality time with two of the people I love most in the world.

This post is a two-parter, for sure. It may actually end up being a three-parter, since I just spent 40 minutes editing pictures and I’m not even to Bordeaux yet (and I’m still on Paris time, which means it’s 8.18 p.m. EST and I’m exhausted.) Happy Bastille Day, France!