We lived in France when I was little, and it shaped a lot of things about me. I haven't been back, although I often wish we had the means to go. There was a fair amount of pidgin French spoken in my house when I was growing up, and we ate a lot of French food, watched French movies, and read French books.
I think my dad has never quite gotten over having to leave behind the pâtisseries of Paris. He'll occasionally go out early in the morning and pick up croissants or pains au chocolat and bring them home to have for breakfast with a strong cup of coffee.
I woke up this morning with a sudden urge for pain au chocolat (often just called chocolate croissants in America). Now, I've tried to make croissants before, and never done particularly well at it. Puff pastry is a finicky, time-consuming, demanding thing to make, and I didn't feel like putting in all that effort for a breakfast that would be, as a result, way after breakfast time. But there was a roll of puff pastry in my freezer left over from some brie en croute that my mother-in-law made for a Christmas party we threw, so I pulled it out and started improvising. They aren't real, as I said to Mr. Scrimp while we gobbled them up, but they're delicious.
