A (rather minor) culmination of events this week marked by gyozas

Okay, yes, I will be staying in Paris for a while. Before I wasn’t too sure because to be perfectly honest, I think there are other cities that have more to offer me personally and the ugly truth is that as much as I like Paris, I don’t love it.

It’s probably just that, almost a year in, I have yet to completely adapt to this city. When I moved back to LA after a year teaching in France, I was devastated. I grew up there and so to me, moving back home felt like I was taking a step backwards. I promised myself that if I was going to stay, I would have to find reasons to love this place. I decided to approach it with new eyes and realized that when you love you a city, it loves you back. I stayed for four years.

For now, I’m okay not loving Paris and I still want to live here.

Okay, so what happened this week?

 

Potato salad season

Whenever there was a barbecue, I remember both my mother and grandmother making their very 1950s-style potato salad in the ’80s. It usually consisted of potatoes, apples, cherry tomatoes and ham. My sister loved it. Whenever I saw it, I wanted to gag. There would be globs of Miracle Whip folded in, triggering the mayonnaise equivalent of uncanny valley for me.

I never touched the stuff, knowing from a very young age that Miracle Whip was pure evil. It completely turned me off to potato salad for years and years until way later when I discovered that their unfortunate recipe was just a variation on a theme. There are better ways to a good potato salad.

May 1 is France’s Labor Day holiday, so there was an occasion to picnic. I made a warm pesto potato salad: