Food in Our 2nd Moon

France:  While in France we really didn’t eat out much due to the astronomical cost of French bistros and restaurants; unless you count the hundreds and hundreds of pastries we had on the go.  Well that’s not really true, we also had a shwarma, which according to Lonely Planet and Lenny Kravitz (we know… pretty random), is the best in the world.  Our opinion is that it’s just ok and the one we had in NY was much better.  However we did have classic French fast food in a form of Gyros or merguez  sausage and fries stuffed in a wrap.  Now that is some yummy stuff! 

We also had a meal in a very posh French bistro which only served sandwiches,  cheese platters, wine and coffee.  Nothing special at all. We later discovered that this bistro was not for eating but for being seen in (if you are a writer or a wanna be writer). 

What we can comment on is the pounds and pounds of cheese, wine, bread and dried sausage that we did have.  So we had cheese in various shapes, sizes and forms,  all of which were very delicious and didn’t stand a chance with either one of us.  To give you guys an example,  you can get about 350g of double cream brie cheese for about 2 Euros.  We spent close to 20 Euro on this cheese alone during our 12 days there.  The scary thing is that this is not the only cheese we managed to inhale J.  Moving on to the amazing dry sausage that we had for breakfast, lunch and in most cases dinner.  You can get it plain, you can get it encrusted with cracked pepper; there are skinny ones, fat ones, short ones, long ones…. Perverts we know what you are thinking!!! 

Now we move on to the dessert portion of this post, or at least we will pretend that we only ate this for dessert.  Pastries are as French as waiving a white flag J  (totally kidding here but come on we couldn’t resist).   But seriously, the French have mastered the art of pastries and they are definitely not afraid to share it with anyone willing to try some.  There are pastry shops on every corner in Paris and our favourite, “Paul”, was right around the corner from us (how convenient, we know).  The apple flan cake, the brioche, the beignet avec chocolat, and of course the crepes.  After trying all these very tasty treats repeatedly we have come to a conclusion: that Nutella is the most used and sold France.  It might originate from Italy but the French are definitely its highest consumer (we mentioned in our previous post about the 25kg jar that is used in most creperies).  To continue the obsession that the French have with chocolate we have to mention the rows and rows of chocolate cereal found in their supermarkets.  You can have your Cornflakes, Cheerios, Bunches of Oats, Muesli and Quinoa and any other cereal with chocolate.  But not just chocolate, you can have it with double chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate chunks, chocolate chips, chocolate swirls or all in one!  Crazy but amazing.  Add some strawberries and you are in heaven. 

A very special thanks goes to Kim and her family for making us a phenomenal meal at their home.  When you have great people and great food it’s amazing how much booze you can go through J.  Once again thank you guys for being amazing hosts and give lost of kisses to the beautiful princess.

Spain:  We had some great and inexpensive dinners out here.  But after France it’s hard not be inexpensive.  The Spanish are known for their tapas and paella.  They definitely delivered on both and then some.   What we would like to give a special mention to is their pastries.  Ok do you notice a pattern forming here? J  On our first night in Girona we tried a churro con crema and panellets de pinyo.  WOW.  As it was our duty to report on the best of the best we kept sampling these as we walked through Barcelona.  And it’s a good thing we did as we came across the God of all churros con crema.  Please see pictures NOW. 

 The best way to describe the churro con crema is to picture a hybrid between a donut and a croissant stuffed with cream.  Or just look at the pictures above.  Another thing that the Spanish taught us was that you can mix wine with lemonade (tinto de verano) and not puke.  It is very tasty and very refreshing.  Since our parents are reading this we didn’t only stuff ourselves with sweets and alcohol, we had a lot of fruit and greens along with them ;)



panellets de pinyo



tinto de verano y una cerveza

One of our spreads at home