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Shakespeare and Company, Paris. Quite possibly, the best bookstore in the world.

After leaving Saint Michel, I walked through some truly horrendous back streets turned Disney-fied tourist trap version of Paris over to Shakespeare and Company bookstore.

On the ground floor (no photos allowed), it’s bursting with English-language books, filled to the rafters. American and French bibliophiles who are used to cookie cutter, sterile, impersonal Barnes and Nobles or Fnac, respectively, will, I believe, find Shakespeare and Company refreshingly full of personality and with a definite point of view.

And not to confuse you more than necessary, bookstores in French are les libraries and libraries in French are les bibliothèques. Actually Shakespeare and Company is both, and more than that.  Continue reading “Shakespeare and Company, Paris. Quite possibly, the best bookstore in the world.”

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How to Cook Ginataan Bilo-bilo, a Filipino sweet soup snack

Beyond the brown sugar and coconut milk, my aunt said, any available fruit or vegetable may be used for the Filipino ginataan recipe below, like taro root (gabi), corn (mais), even mongo beans or guava (this last one she said was especially good). The important things are that, like the work of a farm, everyone pitches in – peeling, chopping, dough-ball rolling – to do a little something to make the dish a sweet success and that the ingredients are local, seasonally available, excess crops.

Eating seasonally and locally makes sense, right? In much of the world, this is the only way to eat. In fact, in America, we are used to eating out-of-season, faraway and/or foreign.  Continue reading “How to Cook Ginataan Bilo-bilo, a Filipino sweet soup snack”

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Yes, Chicago, we really do sound like the Superfans.

Certain people from a certain Midwest town have a certain way of saying their words – different from other folks around the country. (Reference to comic genius Bill Swerski’s Super Fans of Saturday Night Live fame, circa early 1990s.)

Chicagoans, we kinda really, actually, totally sound like these guys. Let me use myself as an example. [Press play, please!]

  Continue reading “Yes, Chicago, we really do sound like the Superfans.”