In My Kitchen : September 2026

Well well, how did we get to September already? The French love their concept of the rentrée, a return to school and regularity of life after the summer holidays. Let's have a look at my kitchen for the month of August.. 

Ever seen a honey vending machine? I saw it at the Westfield La Defense where I went to escape the heat. Only in France I would say... 

The heatwaves continued in August, often unbearably. One day we found a patient room measuring 41°! I invented my own new favourite drink, iced earl grey tea with a shot of sports drink and lots of ice cubes.  

August was tough for work. I had two "disaster" weeks in August where I worked 100 hours in one week and 187 hours total over two weeks.. There was a huge surge of deaths, 7 in one week is a lot even for ICU. Not related to the heatwave directly but one says it goes with the phases of the moon...

I even stayed in the hospital accommodation for the 100hr week to reduce the commute time. Here's one of the meals I had, ravioli, canned lentils with frozen veg made into a "stirfry" and fresh zucchini, all washed down with a cold soft drink

The flavour of this roast mushroom and ricotta ravioli is incredible - it's earthy, warm and rich 

In August, I tried super hard to go to the forest as much as possible to recuperate. Here with the hospital canteen lunch of the day - rice, fish, spinach and lentil curry. 

Another hospital lunch, couscous royale, potato salad and watermelon 

I also took a lot of joy in visiting my tomato plants that I planted next to the cemetery at work, they finally gave me some fruit in August!

One of the nurses made this amazing tiramisu, it was for everyone to share but he gave me a portion to take home 

the boys went to Italy while I was doing my disaster week and S came back with supermarket edible presents, my favourite kind of presents - peperoncino (incredibly spicy), dark chocolate spread and sundried tomato pesto 

Back at home the Sunday crêpes tradition continues, there's something about crêpes with fromage blanc and mango, so smooth and sweet. They remind me of the mango pancakes at yum cha...  

Bear with me - this was hideous but absolutely delicious, an apricot upside down cake from the influencer Ainsley Durose who kind of infuriates me with her amazing hair, beautiful dresses and seemingly effortless baking. She's always baking something gorgeous in beautiful serving ware, and I'm fascinated by her. Here we enjoyed it with our new music friends over the Haydn Op 20 No 5 and Rosamunde string quartets. Fingers crossed that we are on our way to make a real string quartet again... (I had to dust off the viola because I haven't played for so long) 

I just had the urge to braid bread one day and so we made this sourdough challah, my little monster finally has the coordination to help brush the dough with eggwash!

Here he is - isn't he a beauty? 

Two curveballs this month... 

The solar eclipse happened during my semaine de cata, and everywhere was sold out of the special glasses but I googled online and it was true that you can see the eclipse through anything with holes on it! This was the drainage part of a coffee machine, showing the croissant shaped solar eclipse. It was pretty cool. 

And we went to the aquarium which G just adored. Here he is singing and conducting as he walks alongside the fish. It's bizarre to me that he prefers Beethoven to Peppa Pig or other cartoons. He is obsessed with the 5th piano concerto and has been demanding me to play it on the piano all the time. Is it usual that a 2.5 year old can sing extracts of Beethoven works that he likes and demands that we sing or play what he likes? I tried asking ChatGPT and ChatGPT was not impressed, I am though!! 

Sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly IMK series. Have a great month everyone!  

In My Kitchen : August 2026

Welcome to summer! The heatwaves continue and we have two mini getaways to the beach. It seems like everyone is away and everything is shut, I actually don't mind this season at all. I'm even thinking we can visit Bouillon Chartier Montparnasse this month (there is always a crazy line outside every other month of the year..) will keep you all posted! 

Getaway #1 to Sable d'Olonne...

We were supposed to go to the island of Elba with the entire extended family of S, but he accepted an invitation to give a talk in China for that week so we didn't go. I went instead with my dad and G to Sable d'Olonne. This destination was picked by ChatGPT when I asked it "find a place within 3hrs direct train of Gare Montparnasse where the beach is within 15min walk of the train station" and voilà! It was an excellent choice. 

Amazing fresh mussels... 

Goodies we brought back from SdO - those cookies were from the most amazing smelling boulangerie !

Back in Paris...

Goodies from Kunming : S went to China for a week and brought back these exotic dried mushrooms, rose pastries (we gave these to the crèche) and some Yunnan coffee. 

I planted some tomatoes in this little forgotten corner next to the cemetery at work.. apparently there was a massive epidemic of tuberculosis a century ago and many patients were buried in the small cemetery just to the side of the hospital, overgrown and very atmospheric plce 

It's probably the soil or something, not the most productive tomatoes but they are good for admiring and visiting each day. It brought a lot of pleasure to my colleagues to go and water them in my absence. They even joke that ça fait partie de la garde maintenant.. (it's part of the on-call duty)

Do you like my ChatGPT sign? (it says - goodbye to cigarette butts, green space is coming!) I decided to clean up the balcony of the on call room, which is this disgusting desiccated cesspit of cigarette butts. I'm going to do a little garden project in August... 

There's been a lot of mulberry eating from the two giant trees in the carpark. 

I celebrated my birthday with the family traditional noodles (pea & prawn) that my dad made - the first time in my life that my dad, husband and son were all in the same place for my birthday!

Beautiful bouquet of flowers from S, from this cute little flower shop nearby elflore

Getaway #2 to Elba... 

We headed to Elba with the grandparents (my dad and S' mother) in tow. What a journey! We counted 11 hours and 6 stops on the way back, and S' mother has started looking for a nearby place for next year. It was marvellous though, a pebbly beach on the Mediterranean sea, incredibly clear waters, lots of fish visible just metres from the beach. 

We visited this cute shop selling all kinds of fancy food items. I love these giant pasta shapes!

Specialty kind of cake in Elba schiaccia briaca - infused with the local aleatico wine

Our routine was simple, morning = beach, afternoon = gelato / coffee, evening = dinner together on the terrasse and walk to the beach afterwards. The closest gelateria Gelateria da Massimo was amazing. Here the flavours are forest berries, strawberries and dark chocolate 

Simple vegetarian dinner on the terrace - I finally made the vegetable tian from Recipetineats - it was super soothing arranging all the slices! here also with cannellini beans and orzo with tomatoes. 

I saw this in the supermarket and I had to try it - a mix of pickled vegetables "for rice" 

Here it is, delicious! also with mash of peas, fresh green beans, tomatoes with mozzarella 

Nothing like a bit of local beer and chips... 

Our favourite café was next to the gelateria, the man was incredibly friendly. Here was a giant biscuit with almond chocolate filling to go with our (excellent) coffee 

Here's the sign on the wall from this café, it reads something like:  Offer of the day - coffee, glass of water, sugar without limit, toilets, little spoons, newspaper of the day, chat with psychological support, jokes, weather info, info about the closure of the bus, and added on people wrote - niceness, family ambiance, favourite radio, stories, I added on AC! 

Curveball time... 

I was doing the garde one day when this massive truck arrived with a refridgerated cabinet - did someone order a billion prawns? Actually it was a portable morgue to deal with the excess of heatwave associated deaths that no longer fitted in APHP's existing mortuaries. Nurses told me that this was the way to go during COVID, but I've never seen anything like it! It's still parked outside the basketball court a month later... 

I could have ended with any of the thousand photos I have of my monster this month, but I particularly loved this one, he's just chilling at the beach side bar, in his lobster shirt... 

Sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings who hosts the monthly IMK get together. Have a great month everyone!

In My Kitchen : July 2026

Hello fellow IMK friends!  I'm late to the party this month as I finally got to take a break and go to the beach last week.. June was a bit better than previous months, but the heatwave hit super early, let's say June was a Jungle June.. I'm afraid there's zero sense or order in my post today, let's just take a wild ramble through Jungle June!

Ritz le Comptoir opened near us recently and we finally got to try it. This picture does not do justice to how amazing this "chocolate biscuit" was. It's a full tablet of chocolate with a creamy white chocolate filling, a speculoos crumb and a hazelnut border. Yum yum

We went to the countryside for a quick weekend and enjoyed our dinner outside, just a simple gnocchi with tomato sauce

A beer to wash down the end of the day 

We bought these incredible strawberries fresh from the farmer at the tiny market in Compiègne 

I know, I know, tomatoes aren't made for pots but when all you have is a railing this is all I can manage and the growth of these tomato plants have brought me so much joy 

I went to the Réanimation conference for the third year in a row and visited their super fancy Monoprix (in the Palais des Congrès building)... look at this amazing display of soup! 

It was a bit emotional for me because the first time I was there in 2024, G was 0.5 and I was just about to do the specialist exams, S even brought him at lunch so I could feed him. The second time in 2025, he was 1.5 and I just went back to work. This time he is 2.5 and I've been at work for a year, and actually saw colleagues I can catch up with. The story of my reconstructed life in France... 

My dad arrived from Australia and brought these beautiful macadamias

I visited my favourite tofu shop for breakfast..

My dear friend visited us in Paris one weekend and it was so hot we ended up hiding in cafés with air conditioning. For some reason I just love this water jug in the Finnish institute..

The heatwave was pretty bad. My dad tried to combat it with traditional Chinese green bean soup to cool down (it's surprisingly effective)...

And I tried to cool down with cold beer.. here you can just see my window planter herb garden too. I don't drink much and I had brought this beer back from Deauville a long time ago. It was time though when it was so hot... one day it was 35 degrees at 10pm, how is one supposed to sleep?

Which brings me to the curveball. This is how the public hospitals in Paris function - this is not even the tiny hospital in whoopti-doo that I work in, this is La Pitié-Salpétrière, the largest hospital in France (I was there for a couple of days for a conference). Without AC, the temperatures are dangerous indoors. We have a limited number of portable AC units, last year we had 5 for 22 patients and had to ration which patients were the most severe. This year they seem to be arriving every week and most rooms now have them, although we had to take one severely dehydrated patient out of a room that measured 41 degrees. INDOORS in an ICU!!! It's one of those "you won't believe that it's true" kind of things... 

I'm breaking all the rules this month and sharing another curveball from the stupendous Matisse exhibition at the Grand Palais, focusing on his later years. Here he is painting with Chinese ink! 

I leave you all with my monster who discovered fairy floss (in French, barbe à papa or papa's beard) for the first time at the Fête de la musique...

Sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly IMK series. Have a great July everyone!

In My Kitchen: June 2026

May continued to be difficult following on from Awful April, let's call it Mediocre May, shall we? anyway, things are looking up with the arrival of the warm weather? Let's take a look in the kitchen...  

A few days in Italy... 

We missed Easter in Italy so went for a super long weekend over one of the many long weekends of May (there are 4 in one month!) 

This is my favourite pasta shop in the world (Artusi) in Padova.. the selection is amazing and everything is so tempting there. You can order your pasta to be cut just the way you want, pick up a mindboggling array of stuffed pastas, and amazing sauces to go with by the gram! The bigoli there is unrivalled... 

We have a real tradition to go to Pizzeria iDon when we are in Padova. Here the pistachio pesto was incredible combined with the buffalo mozzarella. Look at that blistery crust!

And to complete the holy trinity of pizza-pasta-gelato that is the quintessential Italian diet, my favourite gelato from Galateia. Where else do you get flavours like raspberry with fior di sambuco liquor, and wild blueberry with gin? 

Back in France, the fruit has arrived.. 

Every patisserie worth its butter is making beautiful tarts... here's one from the one next to the childcare

And one from downstairs.. imagine just being able to walk out the front door and grab something like that everywhere! 

Just some random cherries and raspberries for one of our many spring picnics 

Some home made jam from the seasonal fruit, thickened with chia 

Also in the kitchen... 

Pasta Wednesday continues, here with artisan sausages from the fancy butcher up the road. 

I've been obsessed with putting walnuts in my sourdough..

I bought these "antique" Chinese bowls from the antique shop near the childcare. the inscription on them says 19th c Qing dynasty but who knows if they are real. Pretty for eating icecream anyway  

I chanced upon a café (Good News in the 15th) that must be run by an Aussie because they had all these Aussie cookbooks that made me so incredibly nostalgic... 

This month at work... 

I looked after an old couple in their 90s who both passed away within a week of each other, 67 years married they were. Their lovely children brought in this lovely tea for the staff with a nice note and their obituaries. It was a touching moment.. `

This was an exceptionally unhealthy dinner they delivered one night when I was on call - chicken nuggets, pasta with tomato sauce and custard! I added the cucumber for some freshness. The French diet is not necessarily fancy... 

We had a heatwave for a week where the temp reached 32 degrees indoors in the ICU (no air conditioning). Can you imagine that in a service of 22 beds, we have 5 portable AC units that we must decide which patients are in the most desperate need for AC? I thought it was hilarious that they delivered frozen radishes to cool down instead of ice blocks...  

My piece de resistance this month was this strawberry cheesecake with a vegemite infused crust for my 1 year anniversary at work. I melted the vegemite into the butter and made the crust savoury, not telling any French people (in case it evokes dégoulasse! reactions) until they had already declared it delicious.  It's been bloody hard but I made it to 1 year! 

Curveball time... 

I got a care package from a dear friend in Australia who knew that I'm going through a really hard time. Can you believe she painted that picture of the beachgoers just to remind me of home? How talented she is! Also got some pyjamas for me and for G, some bluey stuff and other bits and bobs. 

I leave you with my monster contemplating the most perfect strawberry possible... 

Sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly IMK series. Thanks for visiting and have a great month everyone!