manon cooper
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Foodie Finds, Study Abroad, Uncategorized
Taste of Mendoza: Sweet Nostalgia
My Spanish teacher Ángel is the most entertaining teacher I have abroad. He always comes to class wearing one of his many Yves Saint Laurent sweaters with appropriately paired slacks and leather loafers. Most of the class time is spent talking about what we did over the weekend or what we have planned for the [...]
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Taste of Mendoza: Riquezas Rellenas
Empanadas are by far the best thing that’s happened to me since arriving in Mendoza. Actually, scratch that: empanadas are one of the many awesome things that I’ve gotten to experience in Argentina. I’ve been known to exaggerate, but my enthusiasm and enamor for this most delicious, stuffed finger food is more than sincere. Whether [...]
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Taste of Mendoza: Argentine Casero
My biggest concern before arriving in Argentina was how I’d get along with my host family and the type of food I’d be eating with them. I’d heard a lot about the argentine love affair with beef (as we all have) and a bit about its rich Italian influence. What’s more, my trusty guidebook warned [...]
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Taste of Mendoza: Argentine Sugar High
These first weeks in Argentina have provided confirmation of two things: the Argentines like their sweets sweet, and they love their famous dulce de leche. Essentially a milk jam, dulce de leche is made by heating sweetened milk until it caramelizes and turns a brown color. The result is a soft, caramel-like spread that is [...]
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Importing Tamales: It runs in the family
Manon’s winter break story is filled with TSA trials and tribulations, but her good humor and amazing cooking skills leads us once again to a fantastic recipe. Every time my family and I go to France, my parents manage to bring the most outrageous things with them in the suitcases. A couple years ago for [...]
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Central Park Hotdogs
In my sophomore and junior years of high school, I went through a couple of weird–and sometimes utterly shameful–after-school snack phases. The worst one of all was my Top Ramen obsession where I would prepare myself a chicken flavored packet every single day when I came home from school. After eating all the noodles I’d [...]
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Ladurée, and Macarons in New York
I had my first macarons a couple summers ago when I was visiting my friend Diane in Paris and she took me to her favorite Ladurée pastry shop. The scooter ride over had been quite perilous: after weaving in between moving traffic, zipping in front of cars in the incredibly chaotic Place de l’Étoile round-a-bout, [...]
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Post-Thanksgiving Chicken Noodle Soup, or Some Version of It
Although I am slowly getting more and more excited about the palatable wonders of pureed or otherwise non-solid foods, soup has not always been my go-to choice of comestibles. The only time we’d ever have it at home was upon arrival back home in France after a 12 hour-long flight from California when my grandma [...]
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Home Sweet Home
My mom and I have probably been thinking about this year’s Thanksgiving dinner since the end of the summer when I began to get ready to go back to school in September. And during these past weeks especially, we’ve been narrowing down possible courses, getting ideas for unconventional versions of the Thanksgiving classics, and determining [...]
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Dueling for Dough
Making a quiche or tart dough is a dangerous endeavor to embark upon when I’m in the kitchen vicinity. Raw dough, and especially my mom’s sweet pâte sablée version, is one of those things like chocolate-chip cookies where no matter how good the finished product is, its raw counterpart is inevitably more appealing than the baked [...]
