I’m sorry; there’s no audio for this piece because I simply cannot. I’ve had a sinus infection and now chest infection and, in the middle, a vomiting bug, and neither my voice nor my will to live are at full strength. Forgive me.
I buy myself flowers, every now and then, from Trader Joe’s. I’m rarely there for the flowers; I go in for the butternut squash ravioli, or the bake-at-home croissants, or the macaroni cheese balls, which aren’t even that good, but sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants.
The flower display is on the left, just inside the doors, with blooms piled into black buckets, a cascade of colour and scent and foliage. It’s hard, honestly, to walk past.
A fortnight ago, I treated myself to four bunches of white ranunculus, one of my favourite flowers, which I accented with sea lavender (from which I was expected more of a perfume, I won’t lie) and divided into two vases. Two weeks later, the odd bloom has needed to be plucked and dispensed with but, by and large, they’ve survived admirably.
Ranunculus remind me a lot of mille-feuille, the kind of light, crispy French puff pastry that drives the bakers to distraction in GBBO, and which should be found in a decent coffee slice, one of the things I miss most about Dublin.
A decade ago, I ate a selection of mille-feuille pastries in the Ladurée cafe on the Champs-Élysées, where we did what all tourists are warned not to do, and allowed ourselves to get hungry on one of Paris’ busiest tourist thoroughfares, and ended up spending €17.50 on one of the most delicious plates of chips (frites-chips, not crisps-chips) I’ve ever eaten.
The pastries came on a little tiered cake stand, each layer more decadent than the last, but no less crisp. When we emerged, blinking, into the light of the Parisian afternoon, we were covered in salt and crumbs. I’ve never been so happy.
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