December 16, 2014 Savannah, Georgia For our final week in Languedoc we rented an apartment in the city center of Carcassonne, the medieval city that is fairy-tale evocative, perhaps the greatest fortified city in all of Europe. The town of a mere 50,000 people is visited by millions each year. Guide books warn you that it “is overrun with hordes of visitors and tacky gift shops.” Those same books also warn that of the two-tiered city, only...

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AUTUMN IN THE LANGUEDOC REGION IN SOUTHERN FRANCE December 10, 2014 Savannah, Georgia For years, Mikel, my husband, and I have considered buying our retirement home somewhere in southern Europe. We’ve looked in Provence (too expensive), Liguria (ditto), and Puglia (too hot and crowded in summer). I speak both French and Italian reasonably well, hence our searches in those countries. We prefer the food in Italy, but France is  gay-friendlier,...

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  Tom Sum, or Green Papaya Salad This tangy salad made with shredded unripe papaya is served throughout Southeast Asia. In the 90s there was an award-winning French/Vietnamese film called The Scent of Green Papaya; by then, the dish was known the world over. There are dozens of variations. Nok’s version included carrots, tomato, garlic, hot chilies, a yard long bean (cut into pieces), limes, palm sugar, prawns (per my request), fish...

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With limited time between lunch and dinner, Nok had asked me to let her know in advance what I wanted her to cook for me so that she was sure to have on hand any ingredients we couldn’t find at the market. I really wanted to go with what inspired me at the market, but I understood her limitations. Her kitchen is not a teaching kitchen. It’s very basic. So as well as the Tung Thang* (see previous blog entry and below), I thought perhaps I...

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Mikel and I rented a house on sandy Klong Nin Beach on the island of Koh Lanta in southern Thailand for the first two weeks of the year. I asked the homeowner if he knew of someone who might cook for us – or someone who might at least accompany me to a market. Though I wasn’t really interested in taking a formal cooking class, I was keen on watching a real Thai in the kitchen. He suggested I contact Nok Noi (“Litte Bird”), who...

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January 17, 2014 Beijing Yes, smoggy Beijing! It has been so long since I’ve posted on my blog. My life the past 6 months has been a little crazy: in July we left Bulgaria to go to the States to get our visas straightened out for the next episode in our lives: 3 to 5 years in Chengdu, China! While in the States, I went to see an orthopedic surgeon about some problems I had been having with my knee, only to have him not only suggest knee...

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