Living "A Moveable Feast" in Paris

My husband and I arrived from Paris late last night. It is early afternoon in San Francisco and the fog bank has not lifted at all in the Inner Richmond. The sun barely penetrates the slate grey sky. A cold wind dances in the tree tops just outside my window. A perfect day to stay indoors listening to Billie Holiday, sipping ginger peach tea and writing. It is late evening in Paris and I wonder if it remains as sultry as it had the been the past few nights we had spent there roaming around the Left Bank and Montmartre.

Autumn started to creep in yesterday on our last morning. It was finally cool enough for a trench coat and scarf as we made our way to a patisserie in Saint Germain des Pres for freshly baked croissants, past the cafes that were just starting to open and little shops with beautiful merchandise displayed in the windows. Down by the Seine we found ourselves alone on that little ship shaped island jutting out from under the Pont Neuf. The leaves of the horse chestnut trees and elms by the river have started to turn. A few golden and orange leaves were on the path leading down to the water. We sat at the concrete prow under the lamp post and the still lush weeping willow tree, watching barges and passenger boats cruise by. Hemingway wrote about this part of the river as being a popular fishing spot in "A Moveable Feast". I picked up a copy at Shakespeare and Company and wanted to pay homage to Papa Hemingway by having breakfast in that very same spot before we catch a plane home to San Francisco, quietly watching the city wake up, very much feeling how he felt when he wrote "I've seen you, Beauty.. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil."

This trip to Paris to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary has not only brought me closer to my husband and cement our shared passion for Art, Beauty and of course, good food and wine, but also to myself as a writer. Reading Hemingway is instructive because he chronicles in particular his process, how he knows that past a certain point in writing he has captured that elusive thing and that he can stop, feel good about having done good work, confident that the next day he can continue again. The people he surrounds himself with and are shaped by, the meals and wines he consumes to fuel his writing, and the role of hunger as a way to see Art more clearly. I love how he writes about going to see a Cezanne painting after skipping a meal and how much more connected he felt to the work on an empty stomach. But when he writes about food later on, it is in the vein of one who really does enjoy the simple pleasures of mopping up olive oil in his potato dish with bread, loving the dish so much that he orders a second serving.

I cannot write about Paris without writing about what we ate. This really is the heart of my food blog. But I will not do this all at once. Like one who has harvested the fruits of autumn for a cold winter ahead, I will be frugal and hold out on writing about them. Like Hemingway I will remain just a little bit hungry to sharpen the memory of those meals and what they meant as an experience shared with my husband who has brought me to Paris a second time. This amazing man who proposed to me at Pont Neuf two years ago and this year went out his way to give us the gift of our favorite city to mark the passing of our one year as married couple. Paris belongs to us, and we belong to each other.

Fruits in season

Is it only in Paris along the Seine in early autumn, a few hours before your longtime boyfriend proposes to you on Pont Neuf, that an apricot tart can be truly enjoyed? The glistening golden half globes with a thin veneer of syrup, that very first bite a juicy explosion in your mouth. The buttery, perfectly crumbly crust with a hint of salt to offset the sweetness of the fruit. The rich creamy custard that marries fruit to crumb, the glue that keeps the two elements united as one.

Is it only at the height of mango season in the Philippines that one can truly savor the fruit, as a child who goes for a swim in the ocean in the rain, carrying a mango tucked under her shirt, hanging on to the side of a boat before biting into the thin skin and slurping down the smooth flesh, juice running down her chin, salt from the ocean offsetting the impossible sweetness? It is only in the Philippines that a mango is a mango as I know it. Nothing you find in American stores comes even close, from the banal supermarkets to overpriced gourmet ghetto shops at Ferry Building, those sad imported mangoes from Mexico devoid of the floral smell and true taste, its essential mango-ness lost in translation.

But here in America local stone fruits are now coming into season that rival apricots in Paris or mangoes in Alaminos, Philippines. This morning for breakfast I had currant pumpernickel bread from Acme, a ripe soft cheese from Cowgirl Creamery called Mt. Tam, and the most melt in your mouth sweet miniature white peaches. A perfect way to begin my morning in the cubicle world.

Embracing Multiplicity of Selves

This is where I thrive: somewhere in the grey area, in airport lounges when flights get delayed and time itself is suspended, when international datelines are crossed and the sun rises just as you fall asleep, where margins become centers and you find yourself subverting the dominant paradigm even as you partake in its pleasures. In a bistro in Saint Germain de Pres where the well-heeled prototypical French women delighted by andouillette on the menu reminds you of your Ilocana aunties reminiscing about pinapaitan (both made of the same ingredients, tripe as haute cusine in one culture and as evidence of poverty in another), but as the Berkeley educated Ethnic Studies savvy neo-indigena intellectual I can sit in that cafe and know: these are foodways that have more in common than meets the eye, nasty bits become sublime when made with love, both come from humble beginnings and must be equally elevated, and one day I will open my French Ilokana cafe on Clement Street and have Anthony Bourdain and Hubert Keller salivate over my pinapaitan, which literally means, that which is bitter.

Bitter. A taste profile that offends the Western palate. How to subvert the dominant paradigm of taste and memory? How about something bittersweet? I love the word. Also how water tastes after eating bitter greens like ampalaya. Water in contrast becomes something other than bland. It become sweet. Or sweetish. Another word I love, one my father uses to describe close to indescribable tastes: forbidden foods like taclobo, an endangered clam. Or fresh sea urchin before the acid of kalamansi makes it quiver and turn sour. Or red rice steaming, brought to the table by a servant who has been in the family since I was a child, whose real name has been forgotten and who still calls me by my baby nickname, and I sit at my grandmother's table in La Paz, Iloilo and swallow something else: the pang of guilt, a bitter taste replacing sweetishness in my mouth.