Atkins Is Not For Me

My sister and I went to the annual sale at A Southern Season today. We aren't really people who shop for fun, especially me, but we do love us a good gourmet food store. We both got excited about the silicon pastry brush on sale for $5.99 (regularly $15.99). Have you seen these things? So cool, especially if you like working with filo pastry like I do.

They also had cheese on sale, so I bought some brie and a nice baguette, and lunch was baguette, brie, and a crisp organic Granny Smith apple. I love the crusty bread and cream combination, and the tartness of the apple. I remember when meals like that were the height of exotic for me; I associated them with some of my first trips to England where brie and bread were easily obtained, and with my just-after-college move to D.C. where a deli was strategically positioned close to our nearest metro station. For dinner we'd get brie, bread, and some of their wonderful marinated mushrooms. I also think of a scene in one of my favorite movies, Diva, where a character slowly, sensuously, smears butter across the full length of a baguette and discusses "zen and the art of buttering bread." When I was travelling Europe after graduate school I met some other backpackers and we found we were all carrying long loaves of bread and containers of butter. We took a picture. We haven't seen each other since, but I still have the picture.