A delicious banana crumble to bake on week end and indulge every morning at breakfast. As usual, I altered slightly the original recipe to make it lighter in calories with 30% less butter and brown sugar. The ginger and coconut add a rewarding taste to it. It’s however a sweet treat, then do not eat it all at once! Summer (and the bikini season) is coming!

I read this in the Newsweek – 18 April 2011 at my gym club. (It was after my exercise routine, not during … ), and thought …. OMG, it’s me, I will live longer and end up still alive at 100-year-old. An old granny who cannot takes cares of herself and should rely on others to do so. I guess the Queen Mom of my host country had been living the luckiest eldery on earth. At 100, she was still taken care of and surrounded by her beloved rather than aliens in some nursery … Okay, it’s not the only thing we’ll never share … And I have bizarre thoughts on Friday mornings!

Anyway, I should find a way to get rich, otherwise I’m ahead of a painful end of life.I am off to have breakfast in Notting Hill. Should it taste good, I’ll post pics! I promise.

One of the thing I enjoy in my new life is my kitchen. My previous flat in Paris was a scam and the kitchen was just a pain. It’s as if it hadn’t been designed to cook in.

I have resumed cooking lately, and since I eat at work during the week, I try to make something different and yummy on the week ends. It’s a way to shoot pictures as well, without annoying anyone posing for me for hours but the vegs. If I want, I can even turn them upside down until I reach the perfect picture of them ha ha ha …

Salty cakes are just fun to bake and to eat, as you expect something sweet. This one is vegan, but you can add ham or bacon in.

The original recipe, which I altered slightly to make it calorie-ligther, is from a wonderful cake book I bought back in Paris (Cakes, M. Lizambard. Ed Solar), which I recommend. It’s written in French!

To avoid purposefully cream and oil, you need to season the cake with condiments like olives and spices (chili, herbs). Keep the salt amount low and serve it with proteins (ham, bacon, or poultry). The salt of the side dish is enough.

The Nowness Fantastic Food contest is opened to everyone who likes good food and taking good photos to share them thru. Pics submission is yet closed, but votes continue until Jan 6th, 2011.

The 10 favorites will be included in a nowness guide on foodspotiing.com and the winner picked up by a panel of venerable judges will a Nowness contributors … which I’d love to!

I had fun taking on the competition as I like good food, and I like photography. I shot this Pierre Hermé 2000 feuilles pastry on purpose for the contest. It’s one of my so guilty pleasures I avoid to indulge too often. It’s at least 10 000 kcal right in my buttock. Then, after having posted it, I noticed this link to post more… oh oh oh. My lightroom library is full of food pics. My friends don’t invite me anywhere anymore as I keep them from eating until I take a good pic of their plates (I’m kidding… I have no friends. ha ha ha). I browse it all to find the delicious things I wanted to share.

1000 feuilles is a common pate feuilletée based French pastry. Pierre Hermé made it its own stuffing it with grossly squashed almond butter in between brick leafs. The brick leafs tastes less butter-like than the pate feuilletée. That makes almonds taste stronger. It’s called 2000 feuilles.

Those giant pomegranates are from my November trip in Roma. It was the mushrooms I wanted to shoot at first. They were displayed in the streets of Roma at the front door of several restaurants. Eventually, after developing the pics on my monitor, it’s the red of the pomegranates that caught my eyes.

I had a slice of this delicious brioche at the 144 faubourg’s brunch, the restaurant of the Bristol resort, a few yards walking from Elysée Palace.

Yakisoba noddles from Happa Tei.

Croissants and pains au chocolat are guessed about in the foreground while focus is made on the jams behind at a Plaza Athénée breakfast. It looks even more desirable than having the pastry on focus.

A typical saturday lunch at home. I never have lunch home during the week. Then, when saturday comes, I like to keep it easy and have some meal that tastes healthy. No useless fat, no overcaloric carbohydrates, lean proteins and vegetables. This is pasta sprinkled with parmigiano, shrimps, steamed spinach and mashed carrots.

I like that the Internet gives chance to any Miss Do to enter a worldwide competition.
Come on! Vote. It’s fun!
My pics are page 11/22 of Fantastic Food.

Nespresso didn’t bother innovate new flavors this year for Xmas. They reedited the same caramel, vanilla, almond trio flavors into a Livanto grand cru.  My favorite is vanilla

May I advise a Vanilla espresso together with the Vanilla tart of Pierre Hermé? Hmmmm Yummy!

Happa Teï has became the last canteen I subscribed to in Paris. It’s a Japanese restaurant (one of the only with what sounds true Japanese people in the kitchen rather than Chineses) of Rue Sainte Anne (one of both Japanese streets of Paris, the other being Rue Monsieur le Prince). The reason why I like it is I never ate that before. Simple yep. I really need to go to Japan one day.

Basically, the menu is made of takoyakis, a kind of crepe’s dough stuffed with octopus from Osaka. You get different menus more or less big between €10 to €15 ($15 to 20). The takoyaki’s texture is surprising when it’s swallowed. The very hot ball explodes in the mouth when you swallow it, freeing a softer and liquid inner side (hmmm. It sounds like a sex stuff, but I don’t know how to explain it otherwise)

Check out this ad for Moet & Chandon, one of the Champagnes of LVMH group (M standing for Moët).

Hey, mind that! Moët picked an actress/ model to advertise an alcohol in British Vogue, a fashion magazine. It seems that goods consumption become more and more a whole big market, which frontiers get thinner as time goes. It’s not really a surprise that Moët steps up that way. LVMH is among other a fashion luxury group and Vogue may almost be considered an obvious advertiser holder pick. Furthermore champagne share that with other Vogue advertisings that it’s the luxury good. Though I find that interesting to point out that things are melting and goods are crossing each other. Hey, maybe we’re going to see Total, the oil company, in American Vogue soon. After all, L’Oréal owns some Total’s shares. Would you feel it appropriate guys?