Gourmande Abroad
After a tough battle that’s the name that stuck. It’s not so witty or catchy but it’s me.

Gourmande (wannabe gourmet), as I pretty much devour anything do to with food, whether that’s what you put in your mouth, or what feeds your eyes and ears. Restaurants, cooking classes, events, memoires, cookbooks, the occasional TV show.

Well nearly. That doesn’t include anything with four legs. And no, that doesn’t mean snails and frogs legs either, as the usual reaction goes. I’m not a vegan, although I eat vegan. I’m not quite vegetarian, although I eat vegetarian. A lot. And sometimes there’s the occasional bit of poultry or fish. You might call me a reverse flexitarian as I don’t eat chicken, unless I’ve bought and cooked it myself, and so long as it’s free range, organic or Label Rouge as they say here in France.

And that’s where the Abroad part comes in, as that’s where I unintentionally landed back in ’97. Well, got the Eurostar to Paris, thanks to Pierre.
But also because I’ve had fabulous opportunities to travel abroad and meet a host of wonderful people. That I’ve usually pestered about the typical food they eat!
Even Britain is now technically abroad.

More than a decade on I’m fully bilingual, and correcting other people’s mistakes for a living. Which doesn’t mean I can correct my own…

It’s taken me almost as long to get this blog out there. Ok not quite, but it’s certainly had a gestation period longer than an elephant’s. Mainly because I’ve been spending my time outside the Metro, Boulot, Dodo (Metro, Work, Sleep) wheel gorging myself on anything I can find to do with food. Like hunting for new ingredients at food fairs and epiceries. Or taking cookery courses at the Palais de Tokyo. Or for molecular gastronomy. Or being in cookbook heaven at the International Cookbook fair, or feasting my eyes (and mouth) on chocolates at the Chocolate Show. Or feeding the brain at conferences on food topics.
And of course dreaming up new food combinations to stop my tastebuds getting bored. Which doesn’t help with getting the nuts and bolts sorted out. Actually, the nuts are definitely there but I’m not sure the bolts are in place yet so I’ll just have to wing it.

It should have been out there the night before my 40th in February 2011. But a couple of cocktails knocked that on the head (and on mine – you can read about it in the first post). So yep, I’ve fully adopted the French laid back, no hurry way, even in the city!

But now it’s out of my head and out there, what can you expect to find? Probably a mix of the above, recipes to make dishes that make up menus, where to find ingredients in Paris, restaurants if you don’t have a kitchen in Paris, with a smattering of the bits and pieces I get up to and have found on my travels. And an occasional trip down memory lane.

Oh and look out for “40 for 40”, my niece’s idea just before her 18th birthday: to do 40 things in my 40th year that I’ve never done, but I’m not one for making my life easy so that has to be 40 food things and 40 non-food things.

I just hope there’s a little piece of the blogosphere left for me.

Zoe h.