"Non Pensare, Fare"

I have been writing content for this blog for several months, have told scores of friends about this endeavor, have been cooking and baking and trying to take pictures of my experiments, but have put off actually "going live." I'm not sure what I've been waiting for.

I made the decision to pull together all of my recipes and cooking adventures and travel after meeting Clotilde Dusoulier in Paris last November for a book reading and signing. If you don't know who she is, you should. She writes Chocolate & Zucchini (she's at the top of my list of favorite blogs...check out her French "edible idioms" if you love the French language as much as I do), and everything I have ever made from her site and cookbooks has turned out well. Coming from me, that's saying a lot. At the signing, she suggested using a blog, at the very least, as a way to keep track of your recipes and maybe to eventually share them with the world. She signed one of her books to me: "Pour Gayle - le bonheur est dans la cuisine! Clotilde" -- "happiness is in cooking/the kitchen." More on Clotilde later, but suffice it to say that my time in France has led to many memorable experiences.

A year and a half ago, I spent about a month taking dance classes in Paris and Nice. At a later time, I'm sure I'll write about the amazing food I ate, the (mostly positive) reactions I got to wearing a Jewish star the whole time, but right now, I'm going to focus on the issue at hand and some words of wisdom I received from one of my dance teachers in Nice. I was taking a jazz and tap dance atelier (workshop) at OffJazz that taught me so much more than dance. Given the world renown of the the school as well at its amazing location, students came from all over Europe and the world to train with Gianin Loringett and other teachers. (I hung out with people from London, Paris, Cannes, Prague, the Hague, Denmark, Brazil, and Cuba, and have gone back to visit a few dancers in their home cities.) What I found amazing, besides the instruction, was Gianin's ability to switch seamlessly from one language to another. I consider myself lucky to speak passable French, but this guy is amazing. Our last week, we had several Italian students in one of our classes and as Gianin was demonstrating some steps, he stopped and stared at one dancer standing back and watching rather than practicing and yelled out, "Non pensare, fare." For the rest of us whose common language was English, he translated as only he could: "If you sit around and think and wait, the train will leave you at the station."

So there we go. I've started my blog. I'm on the train. And since this is about food, I guess I need to post at least one yummy picture. So, here is an authentic salade nicoise from, yup...you guessed it, Nice.