Little treats from Paris, and my inedible stash

Although I live only an hour away from Paris by train, or 3 hours by car, I only go there when I have a reason to, and not when I have an excuse. I do have a very dear friend - a fellow Singaporean and the only Sindhi I've ever known - living in Paris, meeting up with whom can only cheer me up, but we'd been living all our lives apart, and have gone on very well with life without having to meet regularly, so as callous as this sounds, she's an excuse to go to Paris. The last time I made it to Paris, it was in October last year, and I needed Sonu Nigam's concert to coax me there. No offence to my friend, but Sonu Nigam is a reason. :)

Fortunately, my hubby goes there once a month on average, and it so happens that Paris' "Little Jaffna" is just behind the station where he boards the train back to Lille, so almost invariably, that would be his last stop, be it to catch a bite or to run an errand for me. Whenever my stock of Hindi films runs low, I'll give him a wish list. He then turns it over to the DVD-wala, who scurries off to look for my films. I'm seldom disappointed, but in general, I prefer browsing personally.

When he went there on Wednesday, I didn't even draft a list, as I had been behind on my films and my stash was still bountiful. Nonetheless, he came back with these, awwww.. : (click on photo to see titles)


He also brought back these macarons from Ladurée despite my protests, and my unabashed claims of "Why pay people when I can make these at home for nut-Hing!". :) Well, as a matter of fact, I had a macaron phase about 3 years ago and managed to make assorted macarons that my mother-in-law more than approved of (that means a lot to me, seeing what a good cook she is!), but a phase is a phase, and after I realised how easy they were to accomplish, I got bored. I guess I used to make them often not because I liked how they tasted, but merely for their reputation of being difficult to make, which is unjustified. :-P

The ones in black are liquorice-flavoured, and so far, the only ones I've tried. I don't know what the other flavours are as yet. I will of course make macarons one of these days for this blog, but I'll need to decide on a flavour! I don't normally like liquorice candy, but I find liquorice in desserts highly fascinating. I have made liquorice crèmes brûlées a couple of times in the past, but again, that was a phase, and grating liquorice bark can be a noisy affair!

The following photo is not in the right chronological order, but shows some of my other treats from Little Jaffna:

Not surprisingly, when it's my hubby who buys them, he gets fleeced of chutney or chilli!

I don't usually blog about stuff that I didn't make myself, so this post will be relatively short. However, I thought it necessary to showcase my entire Bollywood DVD collection and conduct a poll while I'm at it!


Again, if you click on the photo, you will see the titles very clearly. (Krrish, Dhoom 2, Umrao Jaan 1981 and Malamaal Weekly are not pictured, and "La Famille Indienne" is the French title for Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham). The stack on the left holds the DVDs I have yet to watch.

Poll: What are some of the worst movies you've watched so far? They don't necessarily have to be Desi films, so I'd like to know! For me, from this stack, the TOP 5 films I really shouldn't have bought are:

Taal
Biwi No.1
Dulhan Hum Le Jayenge
Shabd
Fiza