Chocolate Chip Cookies = Success

Can I just say the chocolate here is amazing. The supermarket has a whole aisle dedicated to chocolate and other candies. And I am in love. Kyle and I have decided to buy different varieties of chocolate during our stay here, try them, and then rate them. I will post our findings. I am super excited. The first bar we bought is coeur crème brulée craquante. It is the crème brulée dessert robed in a fine milk chocolate. My mouth is watering as I write...


So cookies. They aren't really made here. The bakeries are filled with pastries, cakes and tarts--but not cookies. Since chocolate chip cookies are a standard in every American home I decided to share them at a ward activity. They don't have chocolate chips here so I used some fancy French cooking chocolate (which is very tasty). I was very surprised when everyone kept asking who made the cookies and then telling me how delicious they were: "C'est qui qui a fait ces cookies?  C'est trop bon!  Tres delicieux!  Il faut qu'elle fasse au moins un kilo pour Noel!  Non, pas un kilo, au moins DEUX kilos!" ("Who made the cookies? It's just too good! Very delicious! She's got to make at least a kilo for our Christmas party! No make that two kilos!") And then I made some ginger snaps for a relief society Christmas meeting and everyone wanted la recette (the recipe). It made me feel good to hear these comments. I told Kyle later that night "if I can't talk to people very well in French, I might as well win their hearts through my cookies!" 


My French cooking is coming along. I tried a soup recipe from a blog I found (latartinegourmande, which I have fallen in love with) called "white lentil soup with chorizo and paprika cream". It was very satisfying. An ingredient they add to a lot of food here in France is an egg. They simply crack an egg in a pot of boiling water, cook it until the egg white is done and the yolk is runny, then place into a hot bowl of soup. Or they crack an egg in the middle of the pizza you ordered with the yolk still runny. I wasn't sure if we would like it in our soup but I tried it anyway just to get the full effect. We were pleasantly surprised! I sadly forgot to take a picture to share.


Tonight we are going to see the third Narnia movie with a young couple in our branch. Ca c'est mon premier film en francais sans sous-titres ( My first full length movie in French WITHOUT subtitles). *Sigh* I hope I will be able to understand what's going on...