The cookie jar meets darwin

One of the biggest frustrations for me as a cook/foodie in France is all the work that goes into converting, adapting, finding ingredients, and then having to figure out how to make my American recipe anyway with what I can find in France. After 15+ years in France, I've got a good handle on it all.

I call it darwinism for recipes...

Here, my chérs readers (if there are actually any besides my friend L in NJ and my parents...), is my first public and published darwinized American recipe. I am proud to share the article I wrote for My American Market on my blog. The article originally appeared here. So with no further ado, my first published darwinized recipe...

"My mother used to make these amazing teddy bear breads that she would give to my teachers for the holidays. But now that I’m a parent, I’m amazed that she found the time, patience and energy to bake bread, any kind of bread, for my teachers.

Giving a holiday gift to your teacher in France (or at least in Lille) is just as important as it was back in New Jersey. But after 2 years of baking cookies for 2 people at school plus the 10 people at my son’s crêche (about 4 dozen each of chocolate chip and spice crinkles), I needed to find an easier and less time consuming gift that still retained the personal, American touch.

(this is the actual jar I gave to my daughter's teacher)

Enter “the cookie jar”: the perfect homemade, easy, very American gift for teachers. You need only a few minutes, no major materials and it’s inexpensive. But, there are two problems with the recipes you find on the internet:

1) they are in English with American measurements and 2) they don’t take into account the differences in American French products like creamier butter or the difference in flour which can cause flat cookies. (I usually do a mix of T110 and 65T) .

All you need is a 1 liter glass Mason jar (like these from Ikea for a couple of euros), some pretty ribbon, recipe cards printed from the internet and the ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup (270g) all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon (3 g) baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon (3g) salt
• 9 oz (250g) chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup (150g) packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (95g) granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 1 ½ cup (160g) butter
• 1 large egg
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ¼ cup oatmeal

I’ve done all the extra work for you as well as added my own touch (the cinnamon and oatmeal can be omitted). If you do use the original recipe (original Tollhouse recipe or chocolate chip oatmeal cookies), remember to add 2 extra tablespoons of flour to the mix to balance out the fat content of the French butter.
To make the cookie mix in a jar, layer the ingredients in the following order. Use the back of a spoon to flatten the layers out as much as possible before adding a new one.

1. flour, baking soda, salt, vanilla sugar and cinnamon mixed well
2. chocolate chips (or equal amount of chocolate pieces)
3. brown sugar
4. white sugar

You can use my recipe card (below) to attach to your jar or create your own with these instructions:

 

And remember that in French, the plural cookies is always used even for a single cookie, attesting to the fact that you can’t eat just one.

The cookies-in-a-jar concept can be used with almost any kind of cookies, here are a few pictures ideas for you:

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Lille Halloween 2012: the sequal

Following up on last year's very successful Halloween endeavor, I'm coming back for more...

Last year, I managed to organize trick-or-treating in my quiet neighborhood and the gaggle of kids (all 8 of them!) really felt like, well, Halloween! So this year, I've decided to expand to the next street! Yes, dear readers, Halloween will take over two Lille streets! (and then the world...).

As with last year, I will distribute flyers with basic information about Halloween like how it's celebrated in the US, what time and what to give and will ask my neighbors to stick the imagine of the pumpkin from the flyer on their window if they are a Halloween friendly house. I found that by inviting the neighbor's to participate, the kids avoided much disappointment and the neighbors avoided much annoyance.

But that's not all!

Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year which also happens to be the day the next bilingual storytime is planned! So the librarians at the Wazemmes library are busy planning a special Halloween storytime full of scary books and songs (does anyone know any?).

I also plan on organizing a pre-trick-or-treat party for the little kids followed of course by a post-trick-or-treat party for the big kids. I was surprised to find jack-o-lantern lights at the big Carrefour supermarket as well as spider webs and spider rings! But, I haven't been able to find costumes...

A couple of years ago, I took on the task of making a pumpkin costume for Suzanne. I followed Martha Stewart's instructions and made it out of an orange pillow case. That costume was used by both kids. Helas, the kids now want to be a cowgirl-vampire and Super Why. I've already started pulling together the pieces of the Super Why costume but not quite sure how to attack the cowgirl-vampire thing.

I am also planning the menu which will be full of skeleton cookies, ghoulish drinks and spider cupcakes. We plan on going to the local farm this weekend to pick apples and to pick up some pumpkins for carving.

And last but not least, I have yet to ask my kids' teachers if I can do something Halloween-y in class. I'm not sure how it will go over now that Suzanne's in "big school".  You can be in French school but still have some fun...right?

Le King et Suzanne

It seems like I'm already expecting so much out of my kids. But what is the good of being bilingual if you don't know where you come from?

So how silly (not stupid because I am not allowed to say that anymore since I caught Suzanne hitting her babydoll on the head while saying stupid) did I feel when my sister asked me in jest what the kids and I did for MLK day. I am completely and utterly ashamed to say that I completely forgot about this most important American day.

After reading Suzanne her normal 3 books at night, I began a discussion about MLK. I told her that a long time ago (even though it wasn't so long and indeed is still the case in some places), only white people could go to school, go to restaurants, etc. I told her that black children couldn't go to school and couldn't use the same toilets as white kids. She pointed to her face proudly and said she was white. I asked her if she knew any black children (which of course she does at school) and then told her that thanks to Martin Luther King and lots of other people, black kids could go to school. I figured that by focusing on school, which is something she loves, she'd get the idea better than if I talked about, say, the voting rights movement or Rosa Parks riding the bus.

I asked her if she wanted to see Martin Luther King speak. So of course she said yes and then told me to type his name into the computer (yes, she understands how youtube works) and we began watching Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. After a couple of minutes of watching the grainy black and white video, she said, "Mommy, I can't see that he's black". So we put on a color video of MLK which she thought was ok until she saw the Obama girl/Obama duet image appear in the youtube sidebar.

By that point, I think I'd made my point. Or at least I hope so. And I've sworn to myself that we will be reading about Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad, Rosa Parks, MLK, and other very important dead Americans more frequently.

I do wonder though if she said anything in school. I can only imagine what could have come out of her mouth like, "avant le King, les blacks n'avaient pas de school. Et après, beaucoup d'hommes sont allés à Washington devant le giant Lincoln."