In France, it's easy to go overboard with grocery shopping. You just never know if the delicacy in front of you is still going to be there the following week. And I don't mean pale brown loaves of chocolate torrone imported from Italy or styrofoamy stacks of organic rice cakes. I'm talking dental floss. Tissues. The basics. So I've started stocking up. Unfortunately, my Paris apartment hasn't budged a centimeter to accomadate my growing stashes of toiletries--or my vertically-expanding pantry of cornmeal (farine de maïs), brown sugar (sucre saveur vergeoise), and baking soda (bicarbonate). But a fire in a grande surface over the weekend got me thinking. As we waited for the firemen to survey the scene and tell us that we would not be allowed back in the store, I realized that I couldn't remember half of the items in our abandoned cart. I had gone in there with a list of maybe 10 staples I was running low on but had loaded up instead on things like Kleenex anti-viral tissues and backup cranberries. Of course, there were also the fixings for that night's dinner, but pas de drame. What could be more fitting for a French supper than day-old baguette and a dusty bottle of red?Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz. [Online image] 1995.
