NYC gourmet shopping

Note: French version is on my other food blog La cuisine de Babeth
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The wait is over! Here's the story of my finds in New York. And thank God my luggage didn't cross into French without a custom officer in sight. They were cousins of the Invisible man and nobody was here to cheer me with a "Welcome home" sign.
Here, just for you, a recap with pictures.

As a tourist with Euros in my pocket, I contributed to US retail sales more than usual but I didn't go extra crazy on shopping, my banker is still polite with me, but I was in a way smart: I didn't keep any of my recipes with me: no proof for the customs CSI ;-)
We started our shopping spree at Century21, not the real estate one but the discounter department store facing Ground zero. We bought the first safety kit for my brother: a pillow, linens, bathroom rug and a nice kitchen cloth for me.
For the weekend we hit the road to visit Cape Cod. We stopped at 2 outlets, always on the look out for great finds. To me, Woodbury's outlets are the best in the US, with brands available at most outlets (RL, Coach, CK, Gap to name a few) and luxury ones (Chanel, Bottega Veneta, Jimmy Choo and much more). Finding Chanel in an outlet is a little disconcerting for a French woman, but I got used to it ;-)


Back in New York after an important visit to the delicate glass cube on 5th avenue, direction Whole Foods: it's the US organic supermarket chain. My brother is very lucky to have one in his neighborhood (East Village), it wasn't my case when I was a Californian. The closest one was in Cupertino far away with way too much traffic. My favorite stores were Trader Joe's and the Milk Pail market with its huge cheese selection, real European yogurts and fresh and seasonal products. Whole Foods is like a toy store for foodies, I wanted to bring back everything home! I picked only 2 items: dried cranberries and dried Goji berries. They may end up in muffins.

I also was nice enough to bring back some gifts: peanut butters for Mathieu (you know, French-Canadian an all) and M&Ms peanut butter for my friends E and C. Those gifts were safe with me: I hate peanut butter.


I also finally got my hands on Angel food cake pan to make cakes for Mathieu (apparently they also make this cake in Quebec), but for some reason this is mostly unknown in France.

And marshmallow fluff: it's a liquid marshmallow loaded with sugar. It's a bit like beaten egg whites with kilos of sugar or like BBQ melted marshmallows. Hmmmm... Just...one...more...spoon....


We as well find great stuffs at flea markets. Unfortunately we asked UPS to ship and pack our treasures to France and the food chopper arrived smashed :-(

After some recipes, more to come about NY, stay tuned!