Ok, not quite, but I bet you did not even know I was in Switzerland this last week – I hope you enjoyed the numerous California recaps of my time in San Francisco and San Diego a few weeks ago. In the meantime, while my blog was still in California, I was actually 9 time zones away in Switzerland. I am just so glad I was in DC for a few weeks in between my second trip to California and going to Switzerland to visit my parents.
Unlike past visits, where I made this grain-free tart or this shake, I actually did not create any new recipes. I spent time with my parents and, since I was majorly jet-lagged, was very grateful for the ability to buy books at 2am via Kindle 3G so that there was something to do when wide awake because of the time difference. I read the following books:
- Luisa, aka the Wednesday Chef, has long been one of my favorite bloggers – little did I realize just quite how much we have in common. I could relate to so much of My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story – that feeling of being suspended between Europe and the U.S. culturally, and of course Luisa’s love for New York. I was wickedly homesick for New York when Luisa was moving from New York to Berlin (just a few months after I myself had moved from New York to Washington) and she captured why New York is wonderful so much better than I was able to at the time. The book fills in a lot of background that is not on her blog.
- I loved Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child may be my favorite Julia Child biography to date – it had more details than other Julia Child books I have read and generally felt more complete.
- To complement it, I also read Judith Jones’ The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, a memoir that gives insight into Julia Child’s editor and why she was willing to support the mammoth project of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
- My father is Hungarian, so I generally find Kati Marton’s books fascinating. During jet-lagged night #2 I read Enemies of the People, which is about Kati Marton’s parents working as news correspondents for Western media while still living in Hungary in the 1950s, their imprisonment and subsequent departure. It is a fascinating and also profoundly sad story.
General Disclosures & Disclaimers
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