Ninon and Me at the Grand Comptoir

by Katherine Watt

  I dabbled in love. First with Daniele, the drummer. Then with Philippe. I flip flopped between the two, never really making progress with either. And then at the tail end of Fall, on an uncharacteristically hot day in October, Renard fell into my life. He said it was un coup de foudre for him. For me it took a couple of weeks of texting to fall in love with him. What a cliche. An American moves to Paris. Deals with the challenges of a new country, a new language. Meets a French man. Falls in love. And they live happily ever after. Well maybe. Maybe not. Does anyone ever really live happily ever after?

  I wrote. An entire draft of a book. And I gave it to someone to read. And now, as that someone applies their first round of edits, I’m not ready to stop writing. Especially since my next book found me.

  I’ve always thought of myself as a reasonable cook. Certainly cooking in a Paris kitchen (small) with Paris ingredients (different) and French methods presented a learning curve. I’d had some successes (Thanksgiving). I’d had some failures. Renard was trained as a chef a thousand years ago. While he hasn’t worked as a chef for the last two dozen years, the habits and techniques have stayed with him. I would call the first dinner I cooked for him a failure. It wasn’t bad but my methods proved unsatisfactory to him.

  He confessed to a certain obsessive compulsive behavior the first time he cooked for me. I was probably too caught up in the passion of that night to really notice, but I certainly noticed the night I cooked for him. While I prepared the gnocchi I told him to go sit on the couch. He went to stand on the salon side of the kitchen island. “The couch!” I said, waving him to the other side of the living room. He grudgingly went. I conceded by letting him make the salad. That’s when he started to complain about the condition of my fridge.

  Finally, as we sipped our wine and he munched the cookies I presented him for dessert, I told him, “Going forward, this is your kitchen!” He was delighted. While we were lying in bed a couple of hours later he said “I will come later this week to organize my kitchen.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “But before you get carried away, this is MY bedroom!”

  “Parfait!” was his happy response.

  Renard ran out of my apartment in a rush on a Tuesday morning. “I have to get to the marche! It’s very important to get there early before the good things are gone.” Ten minutes later I get a text. “I think the clock in your kitchen may be wrong.”

  “You mean the clock in your kitchen! You didn’t change it after daylight savings time ended.”

  Renard spends only a couple of nights a week chez moi. That leaves me a lot of meals I must prepare for myself in his kitchen. Some have been pretty good. Some have tasted fine but looked less than picture perfect. And some have been inedible. None have been prepared in the fashion that would make my sweet French boyfriend happy. Fortunately he doesn’t get to see those.

  On my bookshelf are a few of my favorite Paris cookbooks. David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen may be my most favorite. As I was leafing through it one afternoon, trying to figure out what I should tackle next my new book found me. My Paris Kitchen - The Good, the Bad and Everything In Between

  So begins my second year in Paris. Happily ever after? Or the rest of the story? This is about what happens next. And the other five days of the week.