As some of y’all may know, my much-anticipated trip to Le Mexique was interrupted by a very nasty thing that got a hold of me (not the H1N1, which my friend Marissa caught while there), and I had to return early to the States – but I did spend nearly a week on the ground, and underground, too, in the zippy Mexico City subway, eating and drinking all ’round the city to my tummy’s delight.

Oh, sweet taco heaven! Give me some chile-dusted chicharrones, some limes and an ice-cold Negra Modelo, and I’m a happy girl.

Like the Chilangos (slang for natives who live in Mexico City), we mostly grazed, Marissa and I, snacking up and down every street that we’d find. We’d stop for a Mexican Coke (made with cane sugar, not corn syrup), and wander around a bit, and look at stuff….

We saw all sorts of tlacoyos, stuffed with frijoles and queso…

Tacos…..

Then we’d wish that we hadn’t eaten the pile of chilaquiles for breakfast, which, though yummy, filled us up way too much.

One morning, we got up early, hopped on the subway, and went to Churreria El Moro (Lazaro Cardenas 42), the city’s famous hot chocolate-and-churros place for breakfast. Light, cinnamony and still warm, these crispy Mexican donuts were oh-so-delicious and perfect dipping companions to the hot chocolate. Problem is, the churros run out before the chocolate does.

We snacked on flautas at a family-run stand in the San Juan food market that specializes in the cigar-like crispy fried snacks; ate fried quesadillas on the street (note common theme: fried), just around the corner from our hotel in the trendy Condesa neighborhood for dinner one night (at the recommendation of our cab driver), and went to Pujol (Francisco Petrarca 254 in Polanco), which is Mexican-meets-molecular cuisine – here, our chicharones came in a glass tube layered with guacamole that we sucked out, and the “quesadilla” was liquified, served in a tiny shot glass on the side.

Alllll right.

My favorite place was El Bajio (Av. Cuitlahuac 2709) which Lisa Fain (aka Homesick Texan) told me about – simple, traditional Mexican cuisine with super-fresh salsas, including this dark, sweet-hot one (on the bottom), made with dried chipotles and cane sugar (I got the recipe from Carmen “Titita” Ramirez, the owher/chef, and I’ll be sharing it with y’all here later).

We ordered up Panuchos Yucatecos (black beans, cochinita pibil, onions and habaneros) for an appetizer, and margaritas, of course. See me eyeing the last one? Mine!

And had beer-tequila soaked pork tacos for dinner, which were really amazing (recipe to come for those, too).

There was lots more…we made nearly a dozen different stuffed chiles at the Centro Culinario Ambrosia one day, moles and tamales another, and cooked up of the country’s signature desserts. I’ll be sharing it all with you, right here, as soon as I can translate these recipes from Spanish to English. Or Spanish to French to English. Three fun made-in-Mexico videos are coming, too, so stay tuned.

Right now, I’m going to go drink another Dr Pepper, and pop a Cipro. See ya later, gator.

Within two hours’ of touching down at DFW Airport, I was sitting at a booth at my favorite Mexican restaurant in Denton, Mazatlan (in an old Dairy Queen, next to a bowling alley), with a platter of beef brisket tacos in front of me, and an icy cold Negra Modelo beer. Heaven!

Mom and I had planned to share (she ordered up the chicken chimichanga, a flour tortilla stuffed with chicken and deep-fried), but in the end, she ate only half of hers, gave the rest to me, which I ate after I finished off all of mine. Then we had cinnamon ice cream for dessert; rather, I did.

Double-oink.

I usually eat here two or three times while I’m home — I also love the spinach and mushroom enchiladas, queso with poblano pepper strips, and beef enchiladas — and was so taken with the salsa roja that I asked the owner for the recipe, which he happily gave to me. It’ll be featured in the September issue of Cowboys & Indians magazine.

Mazatlan
1928 N. Ruddell St.
Denton, Texas
940-566-1718

“It’s a bit Sgt. Pepper, don’t you think?” says designer Carole Fakiel in her Marais showroom, trying on one of her signature pieces for me, a long velvet coat with embroidery on the back, down the sleeves, and up the front and around the collar, over one of her own white shirts, a pair of deep indigo jeans, and Uggs.

She twirls around to show me the front and the coat, too, pirouettes along with her.

“This lifts up your look,” she says. “It’s a bit…” she says, looking for the word, “fantastic.”

I’m in love. Do I want this one, in the soft baby blue, or the black? Or the faded ballet slipper pink, leafy green, or the one that’s the color of a mushroom that’s just been cooked in butter? I feel myself getting dizzy, the way that I do when I go into Patrick Roger to pick out a selection of my favorite chocolates. (Chocolates are easier. I just get two of each.)

I know what you’re thinking. What does this have to do with food?

Nothing, but it has everything to do with cowgirls. From the first time that I saw one of her slouchy boho bags, slung over the shoulder of her cousin, Veronique, who walks her dog LouLou at the same time that I walk Rose, and along the same street, not far from the Champs – I could tell that there was something very spirited about her designs, and an indie vibe is something that all cowgirls share.

So off on the metro I went to meet her.

Fakiel looks like she should be on the back of a horse, bareback, or walking along the beach somewhere. She lets her long blonde hair fall wherever it may – to one side or another, or straight down the back – and wears chic round-framed tortoiseshell glasses, a clue that she’s Parisian, after all.

She tells me that she’s been designing all of her life (her last venture was a shirt line with her mother and brother, who also live in Paris), but this three-year-old line, simply called Carole Fakiel, is all hers.

“I’m not into fashion,” she says, trying on another jacket for me. “I make what I like to wear.”

What she likes is what she can pair with jeans – blazers and knee-skimming jackets in velvets and silks, all embellished with embroidery and details down the front, up the sleeves, and always along the back; and romantic, crisp, white cotton blouses. There are tie-dye silk tops, a collection of purses, summer-worthy long flowy dresses, and tunics to be worn alone or over jeans.

I keep thinking about how great it’ll all look with my cowboy boots and jeans. Don’t you think?

It’s a bit 70’s and kind of hippie, but not in an unstructured way – you’ll never look like an Olsen twin in one of Fakiel’s blouses or jackets because her pieces are gently fitted to the body –there’s a also a strong tribal element in her pieces, which I really love.

These are pieces from the Winter ’09 collection, recently shown at fashion week in Paris.

Not surprisingly, Fakiel draws inspiration from textiles and designs from Native Americans and tribal cultures around the world. Her computer holds a scrapbook of images that spark her creativity – photographs from books of ancient tribal ceremonies become wrappable, wearable jackets in her collection.

This sheepskin coat (also from the Winter ’09 collection) makes me think of tromping through the snow in Colorado somewhere.

I’m ready to start my own collection.

In Paris, Carole Fakiel sells at her showroom (listed below), or you can buy online, www.carolefakiel.com. You can also find her in St. Tropez at BlaBla (Place de la Garonne, +33 4 94 97 45 09) and Mission Accomplie (11 av Foch, +33 4 94 97 48 46), and in Milan at Biffi (Corso Genova 6, +39 02 83 11 60 39).

Carole Fakiel
Hotel de Retz
9 rue Charlot
+33 1 42 71 95 77

A couple of weeks ago, when we had the big snow, after sipping chocolat chaud at a little patisserie and salon de tea in Versailles, Xavier and I saw this boulangerie that everyone in town seemed to know about. The lines were out the door, and there was a special booth set up outside, too, to handle the overflow of the crowds.

Seemed like a good sign to me. So I shoved my way inside (which is what you do here, or you’ll never get anything), and got in line for a baguette, bien cuit (well-cooked), like I like them.

I ordered my baguette easily enough, and the woman behind the counter asked me if I wanted anything else.

Pain de campagne? I asked her. I wanted something brown, or something grainy. Or both.

She shook her head no. It was 11 a.m., after all. They’d already sold out.

Then I saw a round loaf of bread behind her with what appeared to be a thick, nearly burned crust. It was the size of a truck tire.

I asked her what it was.

Pain de noisette, she said.

Hazelnut bread?! Oh my lord. I had to have some of that.

So she sliced off a slab, and I left.

When I got home, and Xavier and I tasted the bread, neither of us could believe it — Xavier said that it reminded him of the bread that he used to have when he was a boy. I, naturally, had nothing more than Wonder Bread as a childhood marker, so this was a first for me.

Cooked in a wood-burning oven, this bread had a crunchy and caramelly crust, and a dark brown, nearly burned color. The inside was light, moist, and nutty, and had the tiniest bits of hazelnuts throughout. I’d never had anything like it.

For breakfast the next day, I toasted a piece of the bread (OK, two), and the hazelnut flavor really popped. With a little salty butter and strawberry-apricot jam, it was perfect.

So the next weekend, naturally, we went back again. But we didn’t arrive until noon, and they were sold out.

Last Sunday, Xavier and I set our alarm and got up early, so we could walk Rose at the Parc St. Cloud, and then drive ten minutes more and go to Versailles for bread.

Lucky for us, the bread was available. This time, I also tried their fougasse, a typically Provencal bread that’s the French version of foccacia, and often shaped like wheat. This one was packed with lardons (Frenchy for bacon); Xavier and I also shared one with Roquefort.

I remember when I first arrived, I’d get so frustrated that I couldn’t go to the grocery store because they’re closed on Sundays. Silly me. Why worry about going to the grocery store when there is bread to discovered?

Maison Guinon
60 Rue de la Paroisse
Versailles
01-39-50-01-84

Two days ago, I boarded the jam-packed Easy Jet plane at Charles de Gaulle hopeful, with nothing more than t-shirts and a couple of cotton scarves in my little black Samsonite. The weather report promised sun and 60-degree temperatures. That, along with the familiar Spanish, would be almost like going to Texas, I told myself.

Except we don’t have tapas bars.

Once I arrived in Madrid, I went straight to the flea market, El Rastro, but got so caught up in the crowds – it was nearly 1 p.m., after all – that I quickly gave up on shopping and decided to tuck into one of the dozens of tapas bars in the same neighborhood.

Lucky for me, I stumbled up on the city’s best tapas street, Cava Baja, where Madrillenos had already started nibbling tortillas and croquettas and drinking little beers called canas.

I decided to join them. I walked down the street and tried to size up the crowds, and the places themselves – not so easy when they’re all standing-room-only at the bar, which is where the grub’s handed out – but I wanted my first tapas experience of this trip to be a good one. With its red-and-black painted façade, and what appeared to be a small gathering of locals inside and out – the menu was in Spanish only — Taberna Salamanca looked perfect.

I stepped inside, walked down the steps, and smooshed myself up to the bar, between a snuggly young couple on my right and a trio of 30-something women on my left. It was also dark, but the bartender was pouring beers two at a time, and smiling and laughing as he did so. I liked this place. I ordered a beer, which came with these kind of greasy — and yummy — bits of fried ham.

I stabbed my ham with a toothpick and nibbled along with the rest, and I drank my little Mahou beer, too.

Then my tortilla came – I’d forgotten that it wasn’t the potato-version, but a zucchini tortilla – and it was light, perfect and delicious.

It was also so big that I couldn’t eat it all. So I paid the 5.50 euros (!), and strolled towards Plaza Major, the main square.

After two blocks of walking Madrid’s streets, though, I found myself in front of Freddo Freddo, a little ice cream shop that had the word on the sign that I always look for, “artesanal.”

I’ll just go inside and look, I told myself. I asked her if they had a specialty, and she let me taste the homemade vanilla with chocolate chips – and cinnamon and rum – and I couldn’t resist.

It was just a tiny little cone, after all, I convinced myself, and I wouldn’t have dinner for hours and hours…

Taberna Salamanca
Cava Baja 31
Madrid
+34 91 366 31 10

Freddo Freddo
Calle Major, 53
Madrid
+34 91 458 20 56

Metro: La Latina

Truth be told, I don’t mind living in small spaces; in fact, I prefer them over cavernous loft-like spaces, because for one thing, there’s less area to clean and fewer places for lost things to hide. My new Paris apartment, at just 50 square metres, or 538 square feet, is probably tiny to some, but with large windows in every room and very high ceilings, it seems much grander than it is.

My kitchen is long and narrow and more V-shaped than what one might expect, but I’ve learned not to expect right angles or anything that might be steady or reliable — just last week, I had to pay 100 euros to a locksmith to open my closet door, its skeleton key stubbornly lodged in its nearly century old case.

There isn’t much room in my kitchen, and I try to keep my back to the cabinetry, which if awards were given for the ugliest kitchen on earth, this one would certainly win a prize. Who designs a kitchen with red and gray alternating cabinet doors? I’m not even going to show your photos right now because it would surely make your eyes ache.