Honeymoon Souvenirs
A lot of excitement in our household tonight. We got the rest of the souvenirs we had shipped from our honeymoon.
What kind of souvenirs do Melissa and Derrick buy on their honeymoon? (The wine all got smuggled in with us on the flight)
From E. Dehillerin, my favorite restaurant supply store, which happens to be in Paris, a bunch of items that are either hard to find here in the U.S., or that you can only buy for at least twice the cost here. A copper champagne bucket is the nicest thing we got, real Mauviel copper no less. A Le Creuset casserole for half the price we'd find it here (when we asked if they had different colors, they responded with "This is not Williams-Sonoma. We have orange. We have black." I love this store). Various other cooking utensils that are tough to find here (teeny-tiny melon ballers for doing Parisienne "cuts" of vegetables, three tamis, and some pretty chocolate molds, as well as a tiny pain de mie pan and a cylindrical pain de mie pan).
And the other big score? A copy of the El Bulli cookbook, which is difficult to find here in the U.S., to say the least. Melissa discovered that they will soon have an English version, which hadn't yet been revealed when I bought my copy. My copy is in Catalan, which is tough to read, but a lot of the food terms make sense. This guy does wacko stuff. I also found these adorable pamphlets, each of which offers ten preparations focused on a single ingredient. I would've bought one of each if they weren't 6,50 euros each, but I ended up with one for artichokes, one for lavender, one for balsamic vinegar (given the quantities in the recipe, they want you to use nothing but the real stuff), and one for honey. I'm looking forward to trying things from all these new cookbooks.
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