May Fraise Balloon 🎈 Letter

  

I started thinking about dancing ballerina 🩰 strawberries at the Opera Garnier…which quickly turned into flying Balloon 🎈strawberries 🍓 over the Eiffel Tower bien sur. Where would I be without the Eiffel tower🤔

How many obsessions can a girl have? Shiny teapots, blue cups, pastry…one loses count. But flying balloons 🎈 has been a returning theme from way back

J-3 avant le Pari Fermier de Rambouillet !

“De nos fermes à vos paniers“  From our farms to your baskets”

One of the great joys of living in France 🇫🇷 is going to farmers markets held in and  outside Paris. 

June = Fraises in Paris Letter

 

Les Fraises are in🍓 Even on the last day of June. The Paris Fraise map 💌 went out 📮Tuesday🤸‍♂️🍓I know I’ve been missing in action😳but there are worse things than 2 weeks of total strawberry immersion. 

The strawb producteurs at Ferm du Mont de Cuy at Marché Mutualité know me well. 

They top up my box with extra Cléry strawberries since I’ve been showing up 2X a week. The best berries 🍓 don’t last long. Eat immediately or same day. Supermarché berries hang around longer and look nicer, but are consistently tasteless.

If you run🏃‍♂️ to Samaritaine right now you can catch their Summer 🍓 berry beaded jewelry collection. 

I caught it yesterday after a strawberry gelato at Tea Salon Cova, next door.

Hope springs eternal. I bought a strawberry plant for map research at the Marché des Fleurs, after my visa rendezvous at the Prefecteur last week. Then I promptly forgot it on the bus. Either the heat or post-visa angst made me forget it. I am not a plant 🪴 person.

Speaking of plants, the rarest of the rare is fraise de bois or the tiny wild strawberries you can’t find anywhere except at Paris’ top glacier Berthillon in their famous ice cream (+.50 extra for the wild ones). 

Their ‘piece de resistance’ is the double coupe loaded with Chantilly whipped creme, tiny berries and their fraise de bois ice cream. I’ve imagined getting this coupe many times…it’s only in their tea salon, not for take-away. Some day…🍓🍓🍓

Next up the Charlotte d’Alsace berry varietié. 

To say I’ve devoted many hours of research to the confiture/ jams of Christine Ferber would be an understatement. 

Time spent simply browsing C.Ferber jam names could equal watching whole streaming series like The Queen. Without question, her strawberry confiture is the best on the planet. La Figaro agrees. More like strawberry soup, best eaten straight from the jar. Never to be shared or wasted on toast. 

Last but never least, a Paris ‘must-eat’ each Spring is the classic 🍓Fraisier. 

Fou de Patisserie 3 boutiques make it easy to taste many top chef’s creations. A one-stop shop for the créme de la créme of Parisian desserts. 

The vendeuse explains in detail the various layers of Maison Angelina’s fraisier (they recently added the ‘Maison’ title to stop confusion with the actress👏). 

FYI, Fou de Patisserie now has adorable antique, engraved silver spoons available if you buy a pricy (€25) jar of their jam.

🥂💋🎉 Please take a look in my shop so you can receive real Paris Letters💌 and watercolors in your mailbox📮 🇫🇷 Subscribe to ParisBreakfasts newsletter here.✏️✏️✏️❤️💋🍓

Fraise Knock Out!

I hope you didn't spend your weekend arm wrestling a jar of strawberry jam like I did... I wasn't thrilled with last Friday's watercolor - the reds were...just too red

Off I marched to Union Square Farmers Market

Ringside the Day-neutral berries were just waiting for me to show up

Across the aisle the strawberry jams were aiming to hit hard

Mon dieu! But at $8 bucks a jar I hesitated

To the left the $8 dollar ready-to-eat lobsters were yelling out,

"Take us home and paint us!"

 

I asked Beth's Farm Kitchen,

Do you have something for a little less?

Beth's:Not really, unless you want the jar that didn't jell for $4?

Me:I'll take it! Do you always have something on sale every week?

Beth's:Never! We've been making jam for 30 years!

Me:Oh...

I grabed the strawbs, jam AND the lobster and headed home

Time to duke it out with some pencil 'thumbnails'

Then a slugfest with the red pigments.

Second entree into the ring wasn't so bad, but the berries got the upper hand...

Parisian pastry chefs always keep the upper hand with their strawberries. You can't walk a block without bumping into one or two strawberry tartes in Paris.

I found out from Relais Desserts that strawberries are not even a fruit. Who knew? It's those little yellow seeds, the 'achenes' that are the actual fruit. Louis XIV sent Amedee Francois Frezier (is that where le fraisier got it's name?) off to South America. He brought back many new varieties. There are at least 600 kinds of berries to put in your tarte, though the Plougastel, gariguette and mara des bois are the most popular. I was chastised in Monoprix for buying berries from Spain - mechante/naughty

Et voila

Have a BERRY Good Day PBers!