French fried me. Frenchified me.

I'm American. I'm (kind of) French. I'm a mother. I'm a wife.  And above everything, I'm a foodie. I like to eat. I like to cook.

Cooking has always been a sort of therapeutic and emotional experience for me. I cook therefore I am. My mother, although she claims not to be a good cook, makes good food. I guess I learned from her. When I was in high school, my friends and I would bake on Friday nights because we were kind of uncool and were never invited to the parties.
When I came to France in 1996 and I wanted to share with people, I discovered cooking. The first dish I made on a regular basis was apple crumble, which I've changed, tweaked and experimented with over the years. Since then, I've acquired many many cookbooks in both French and English and countless amounts of random grease splattered pieces of  papers. But I'm always faced with the same problems: how do I make food like back home when the base products are either not the same or unavailable?

If you are an American expat in France trying to make the perfect chocolate chip cookie but just can't get it right, or if you can't figure out where the heck to buy buttermilk for those pancakes or how to make chili without pinto beans...or if you're French and have a love of American cuisine (yes it does exist!) or if you're just looking for some good eats and a bottomless cup of coffee...Welcome to my blog.