Au revoir, Costco

Anyone who is looking for haute cuisine in this blog is to be pitied. The way I cook now is definitely not haute, except when I’ve got the cookbook open to someone else’s recipes. But if you’re looking for something quick, cheap and better tasting than a McDonald’s burger, you’ve found the spot!

Preparations for Le Grand Voyage – which should result in my cooking rising at least to the level of Middle Cuisine (Moyenne Cuisine?) are perking along. I’m reading travel books, novels, essays, newspaper articles --- you name it, and compiling the master list of Things I Can’t Do Without. It’s amazing and a bit humbling to peruse the list; here I thought I was a high-minded soul whose list would start with Camus and end with Zeffirelli but instead, I’m finding that the items that set my soul grieving are embarrassingly ordinary. At the top of the list are Costco paper towels. I lie awake at nights and wonder if I can persuade my friends to send me mega-packs of Costco paper towels, so blessedly cheap, to Paris. Of course, they have paper towels in Paris. But I will have to think twice before I pick up a towel to drain the Truite Colbert (deep-fried trout) or to wipe the cast-iron cookware.

Oh, that’s right. No cast-iron cookware is coming to France, for obvious reasons. And I certainly won’t have time to buy some and cure the surface to that lovely, dead-of-night black that my 20-or-30-year old pans have now. So forget bringing that cornbread recipe that has to be made in a cast-iron pan.

Oh, that’s right. They don’t eat corn, or cornmeal, in France. As for the sole, I’ve heard that fish costs a fortune – rarely less than $50 a pound at supermarkets on the Cote d’Azur, according to one French friend.

Over-the-counter pharmacy products cost of fortune in the land of liver ailments. In my Let’s Go guide, the authors darkly warn tourists to bring all the contact lens solution they will need for their entire trip with them. And, in my meeting the other day with the lovely and helpful Kat Flinn, author of the book on her experiences at Le Cordon Bleu, “The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry”, she told me and another chef- hopeful to buy our Tupperware in the U.S. Apparently, French Tupperware does not make the grade.

It’s these kind of warnings that, when you’re getting carried away crooning La Vie en Rose in the shower, plop you right back down to earth. And what about those mundane services we take for granted? My hairdresser has thoughtfully offered to come to Paris and cut my hair – providing I have a bed for her and her husband in my apartment. Believe me, given the years it took to find someone who could skillfully cut half-Japanese hair, I’m looking very hard for a place with an extra bed.