Post- the twelfth: In which she finds Philadelphia

Chers amis! J'ai trouvé Philadelphia! Yes, I found Philadelphia...the cheese, not the city of brotherly love. Well, cream cheese is pretty lovely, too! I am now convinced that for the lovely price of 4.60 euro for a mere 200 grams-- thank you Kraft distrubtors in Belgium-- that ANYTHING can be found at Galleries Lafayette (http://www.galerieslafayette.com/).


Normally, I have little interest in cream cheese, but it is a central ingredient, which I have long taken for granted, in rugelach (yummy New York/Jewish baked pastries)-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugelach. This is one of the specialties I love to bake, and seeing as it is impossible to find rugelach in Paris, I have indeed decided to bake.


I did search for these delicious treats in the several open Jewish bakeries in the Marais this past Saturday, when I got together with my friend Mira from Brandeis (http://www.brandeis.edu/-- I feel like they should be forgiving some of my undergrad loans when I do such advertising for them). She does a better job writing about the nice little restaurant we visited, so check out her blog, especially the February 15 post, here-- http://ausoleillevant.blogspot.com/. We also found a yummy little tart with quetsche (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetsche) but alas, no rugelach!


Naturally it was Shabbat so many Jewish bakeries were not open, but even so, I don't think I can find rugelach in a pâtisserie here. Cream cheese is not exactly abundant here, either, despite the myriad other cheeses. So, I was quite thrilled to find Philadelphia on the way back from my Antitrust Course this morning. A course that this morning, interestingly, was all about franchising in France!


Now, there is a rugelach dough chilling in the fridge downstairs. Tomorrow I'll probably bake them up and pray that the joys of metric conversions and fahrenheit-centigrade changes don't destroy my culinary endeavors. Sweet. Hopefully literally.


Well, next week is vacation here, and I will head to Rome to meet up with Ethan, my friend from back in Portland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Maine). Thus, my other exciting purchase this morning was a little tourbook for Rome and a French-Italian phrasebook. Lol. For 2 euro I treated myself...because you know...in case my limited English, Spanish, and extremely limited French are insufficient.... On that note, it looks like the battery life of my laptop is going to be insufficient for anything more. Ciaomiao. ;-)


-A


p.s.-- Any suggestions on what one ought to do with approximately 90 remaining grams of cream cheese?