Jackie du Monde

I don't really have time to be writing this.  I'll be honest.  I've just moved, AGAIN.  I haven't slept normal hours for nearly three weeks now.  I have a million things to sort out, I'm a week behind at work, I've missed my cousin's birthday and I've run out of toilet paper.   My writing this post is clear and documented evidence of procrastination.  Don't tell my mom that I confessed to this.  Oh wait, she reads this...busted. But I feel compelled to.  I've started my blog a bit late into my European adventure and have not given proper credit to my host city, London.  So before I settle in, before I eat another croissant, or taste another piece of delicious cheese (sorry Kristen) and do anything else that brings me closer to being Parisian, I need to document some of my thoughts on the place I called home for over the last year. London is an incredibly diverse city.  It's a city where anything goes - it has reminded me a lot of San...

This weekend, I went to the Taste of London.  Food festivals are always so inspiring.  Some things that I taste, I know I could never make without tons of practice and likely tons of failure.  Other things are deliciously simple but people are so intimidated by the exotic ingredients, they convince themselves that to re-create something so good would be utterly impossible. Such are my thoughts about our delicious friend the truffle .  But then I thought - this is just a mushroom, dammit!  Am I going to let a mushroom defeat me?   I think not.  Jackie vs. Truffle, game on. And so there I sat, contemplating the truffle in front of me, my mouth watering at the thought of what it could taste like if done right.  But nagging little thoughts entered my mind and turned to culinary terror - what if I ruin this truffle? Does this fungus look friendly to you? The skin of the truffle is dark, bumpy and rough.  As a food, it lo...