Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes
Where to buy Lunch in Paris: A Like Tale, with Recipes books online?
- ISBN13: 9780316042796
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman–and never went home again.
Was it like at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak’spink juices puddling into the sweet pepper sauce? LUNCH IN PARIS is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate like affairs–one with her new beau, Gwendal, the additional with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world’s most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a small help from Jane Austen), pacify pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate soufflé) and develops a crush on her local butcher (who bears a arresting resemblance to Matt Dillon). Elizabeth finds that the deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, the more Paris itself starts to translate. French culture, she discovers, is not unlike a well-ripened cheese-there may be a crusty exterior, until you cut through to the melting, piquant heart.
Peppered with mouth-watering recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare and molten chocolate cakes, Lunch in Paris is a tale of falling in like, redefining success and learning what it truly means to be at home. In the tasty tradition of life tale like A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is the perfect treat for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change their life.
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I dug in keenly to “Lunch in Paris: A Like Tale, With Recipes,” and establish my mind wandering all over the place. This is a memoir but it reads like a romance novel. “When Gwendal left for work on Monday, I was on my own. I lay in bed, looking at the ceiling and listening to the weekday sounds. In the courtyard I heard a television, some high-pitched voices, and familiar theme composition. It took me a minute to place it…” etc. etc.
I guess everyone could write a book. Here’s my start: “On Wednesday morning, the clock radio went off. I lay in bed for a minute, thinking about my day. Then I got up, walked into the kitchen, and turned on the light. Nobody else was up yet. I selected up the remote and turned on the news. A car drove by…”
The recipes that are scattered through the narrative seem pointless, for things like ratatouille and fettucine alfredo that break no new ground and don’t place you “in” Paris. Not sure what I expecting, but something with more heft than this.
Recommendation: I ongoing it, place it aside on my nightstand to read “another time,” selected it up and place it down several more times, and just don’t want to end it. Sorry for the harsh review.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I read Elizabeth’s book due to “Forever in France”, a Parisian women’s group recommendation.
What is romantic about the French?
Is it that they will sleep with you half way through your first date?
Well, on this account, Elizabeth qualifies as being as French as Carla herself.
In all-purpose, as a nation, they sleep with anyone half way through anything.
This is their only “freedom”, and they feel entitled, not immoral.
After all, their day is summed up in France as “metro, bolo, dodo.”
The French are known worldwide to be depressed and worried of nearly everyone and everything. They only want certainty, and they despise risk of any kind. Is their hierarchical system to blame? It does make living in France feel like one has enlisted into a civilian military, which in fact is right. Why else do they take the most depression pills of any country in the world?
I have yet to meet a effective French women who can cook. Perhaps this is why Elizabeth can be creative in the kitchen, as she has no paid work to do in a real job in France. She has the time and the interests, but just how long can she stay out of the workforce and free lance her way into her own pension?
Lacking a job or marriage to this Frenchman, she could not even qualify to be in France lacking an accepted income from investment capital.
As for me, I attended Cordon Bleu and have been a judge at the International Fancy Food Show in New York. I know how to cook very well, but this takes time, money and skill. As far as food goes, who can one live a long, healthy life eating cheese, duck livers, meat, cream, butter and pastries? No one, not even the French. As far as food is concerned, the French rarely cook. They are ranked second in the world as faithful patrons of McDonalds and of quick, cheap food. They really don’t have the wages for excellent food, as it is too expensive here and regressively taxed.
The effective spouses have food vouchers they can use or cafeterias at work to prepare their lunch. I reflect most foreign non-effective wives like Elizabeth eat a lot of “lunches” alone at home while their spouses have them prepared for them at their work place.
The best thing about France isn’t there mediocre but high priced restaurants or rich, death inducing food, or their reputation for romance. The best thing about France is their public transportation, medical care system, quick internet, phone service, privacy, few ads, and some really excellent museums.
I am an American lawyer living in Paris for the last 3 years with my French boyfriend. He is not typically French and I am not typically American, as we has been expatriated to work in North America, Asia, North Africa, and various countries in Europe. Neither one of us want to stay in France “forever”, but then again, we still have lots of choices.
I did delight in reading Elizabeth’s book, but I establish myself oddly concerned for her future and especially for American women who will try to naively follow her example. Of course, she is writing about the beginning of her cross-cultural life, and is still at the beginning of this long, long road of 41 years of hard labor. In fact, she has really chosen socialism over capitalism.
Perhaps I know too much about where Elizabeth finds herself in this integration process. But I want to question her how will the present French rules and culture affect a foreign spouse, especially their entire effective, married, and family tree life?
Why did Elizabeth write this book?
What else could she have done?
It is the question Sherlock would question. “Why did the dog not bark?”
What kind of job can Elizabeth get when she must compete with persons who can really speak French?
She is taking all the risks of integrating into another culture and its destination which route and speed has already been chose for her, as socialism chose everything for you. Can she twist herself into their formula? Her dear spouse is taking no risk at all, and his French parents would agree.
The French, after getting an ear full of their personal problems, are “married to France for life”.
The women don’t need the men, and the men don’t need the women.
France has designed it this way in the name of socialsim, but really France need the taxes from labor and more citizens to work so they will continue to pay for all the benefits agreed.
France is their real spouse, and they take orders only from France. They follow French orders out of dread and lacking thinking, which is their history, like it or not. They procreate due to French pro-natal policies which pay them 10% more in their pensions if they have 3 or more children. At the same time, they outsource their jobs to Eastern Europe or Morocco to cut labor costs. How long can they continue to pay for babies who will have no decent jobs but need more benefits?
France is the only one who can “potentially” provide the “certainty” of their desired “benefits”, not the mortal, foreign spouse. This is not American capitalism, where spouses are their real partners, have devised their own life plot and change it as circumstances determine.
Here the thinking and gears of the French “assembly line plot for your life” must be dealt with at every turn. The thinking and values of oneself or ones spouse does not matter. It is winning the game of “French socialism” that only counts.
French law and rules have already chose your destination and direction, and the route you will take to get there. You are just to live it out with your life. This “assembly line” is a type of estimate of a life span and all the things socialism wants you to do. It alone determines how French men and women live in order to receive state guaranteed benefits and pensions. CONFORMITY is the name of the game here. Average is the result.
There are “points” for going to college and it all must be concluded by a timetable, that is before you are 27 years ancient. Their are “points” for effective 41 years, and points for having 3 or more children. If a French marriage with a foreigner doesn’t work out, the risk is only on the foreigner. The foreign spouse must perfect the “points game” or end up with small to nothing.
The financial risks of socialism must really be accepted if an American women has her work and procreating life yet to be of her. Could it be that Elizabeth is already too “ancient” to make the French point system work out for herself? Hasn’t she already missed the predetermined timetable that is imposed on all the French?
This like tale would be all together different if Elizabeth does not need to work due to inherited or accumulated wealth. Then a women can look forwards to the yearly French income tax bill. In addition, the wealth tax bill will arrive, after 5 years in France, with no benefits at all in site. This will become her charitable contribution to the French.
France is the country international divorce lawyers advise clients to bring their spouses when they plot on dumping them. When a spouse wants to divorce, if they can, they question for a transfer to France so they can do their divorce plans. A spouse in France means “isn’t it fantastic that small property, if any, will need to be split”! Normally, what is split is the sell of their mortgaged house, and that is it.
Of course, this doesn’t matter to the French, as money is a taboo. It will matter to any foreign women who wants to return to her homeland. This is why it is the favorite jurisdiction of persons who know the spouse will end up with nothing except some depreciating euros in her future and “French memories”.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
I really looked forwards to this book coming out and I rushed out to buy it straight away. I delight in a excellent memoir mixed with recipes a la A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenburg. I anticipated this book would be even better, I mean it is set in France! and we all know how yummy French food is!
Therein lies the problem. We all know about the boulangeries, the pain aux chocolat, the framboises, and on and on and on. SO cliche! If I had a dollar for every book about France that mentions these things I’d be a millionaire. Come on, we get it already! tell us something new!!
What I did like about this book is the leader’s ability to show us a hidden Paris. She obviously has a like for art and antiquity so she seeks out the unusual and describes it well. That I loved. The tale of meeting and falling in like with her spouse was okay.
The politics- is there any possible way this leader could have resisted inserting her wacky liberal politics into this book? What is the point of talking about the politics of 2001-2005 in a book that is supposed to be about like and food? When will the entertainment industry realize we do not care? The public just wants to be entertained! And for a name who lived in France on 9-11 to be lecturing about US politics and war is beyond hubris.
If I could remove certain tired and parts of the book this would be much more entertaining. The recipes are average but there are many ‘expected’ French recipes too. A small more creativity would go a long way with this book.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
This book was full of adventure, excellent food, fantastic thoughts, and humor. I sat and read it all in one weekend because I didn’t want to place it down! From the romance to the discovery of a new world there was so much offered in this book it was an awesome read!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This book has inspired me to pack up my saucepans and go to Paris where I am sure to find a cute guy and live and dine happily ever after. Just kidding! But if I weren’t already happily married…. I devoured this book in one sitting and loved every crumb of detail. The recipes are a wonderful bonus to a fun fascinating read for francophiles. Highly recommended!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5