The French Series: Religieuse

Bonjoooouuuuurrr!!! And greetings from southern France, land of ma peuple, home of a cusine that is built on a block of butter - did I mention that these are my people? So in a little smashandsniff blog-sperament, I am going to attempt an entry a day, a little fraaaaaansch food diary, non? Mai ouuuuiiii. So check back daily (though I might take the weekends off) through the end of this month for daily posts!

And to start things off.....Mmmm, religieuse. Two balls of pastry infused with chocolate or coffee cream.

Last year after the kids were born we moved down here, a small village near Grasse, and camped out for two months. I haven’t read up on this so I don’t know if it is a common phenomenon but while I was nursing, I craaaaaved sugar in a way that I never had before. Everyone who knows me knows I am a salty person – I will take a pretzel over a chocolate bar any day. When I was a kid, I would sneak into my mother’s kitchen cupboard and into a jar of bouillon cubes, unwrap one, lick it until I had rounded all of the corners, rewrap it and stick it back in the jar, believing the disfigured die would go unnoticed.

But while I was nursing – everything changed. I had HAD to have at least a few pieces of cake, a couple of cookies, a half bar of chocolate every day. I was simply following my body’s orders and it demanded that I increase my sugar intake. Perhaps due to this biological craving, sweets tasted better to me than ever before. I once famously ate three fondant au chocolat – with ice cream – IN ONE SITTING. And when I had finally satisfied the craving, I made Ingo promise to stock the fridge so that I could eat one EVERY DAY. Who eats fondant everyday? Absolutely NO ONE.

The religieuse was something my sister Sarah discovered while she was here visiting. Her natural sweet tooth led her tooth them and my temporary rewiring encouraged her. We ate them for breakfast. Religiously (ahem). So this morning, we headed to our local dealer, Le Plaisir du Pain, which we affectionately call (and would actually be more aptly named), the Pleasure of Pain – pain due to overtaxed stomach muscles, pain of no longer fitting into your jeans, but oh! the pleasure!

Very sadly but perhaps fortunately, these delicious balls of puffy creamy goodness just did not taste as good as they did while I was breastfeeding. No sweet has tasted as good to me as it did then. After weening, some women mourn the intimate time they spent with their infant while breastfeeding; I mourn the intimate encounters with chocolate desserts. E voilá.