Christmas at home with my Frenchie

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My little Cata Crew of a family (ie Robin & moi), have celebrated Christmas for the last 5 years in France. This usually shocks people and I get a pity round of “say, it ain’t so!” from everyone (including the strangely peppy customs officer). But fear not my friends, I tend to make it home every 6 months or so and a trickle of American guests shimmy across the Atlantic to bombard us with American hugs pretty regularly throughout the year.

We always end up spending Christmas in France for two reasons. The first being that flight tickets are at least 2x more expensive at Christmas than any other time during the year. It’s hard to rationalize a holiday trip in December, when I could return three times during the year for the same price as one “ho ho ho” flight at Christmas. The second reason is that I hard-core adore Robin’s family. The mythical creature that is a monster-in-law just doesn’t exist in my current reality. I genuinely like spending time with his family, which makes the pain of missing a holiday at home, easier to swallow. Especially knowing it sets me up for three ah-mazing trips full of deep-dish pizzas, milkshakes and bagels.

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Eat like A Parisian Challenge

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Download the snazy one pager HERE that has all the 5 principles I’ll be following during the Eat Like a Parisian Challenge!

ME. IN MY ELEMENT

I would never consider myself a full blown foodie. While I do enjoy eating for pleasure, I’m totally at the mercy of my insatiable hunger. As soon as “Hangry Hank” starts a rumblin’, I know that feeding him just became my #1 priority. Not to mention that refined food has never been my jam. I grew up surrounded by chain diners, cornfields and homemade sloppy joes. When I had the honor of choosing where we ate for dinner on my birthday, Olive Garden was the winner…11 years in a row. Endless breadsticks was literally “my thang.” I may have lived in France for the last 9 years, but I still beg my dad to pop Pillsbury biscuits in the oven when I’m home and I hit up Panera at least twice every trip to devour a bowl of broccoli and cheese soup. I’ve even gone so far as to try and recreate that famous recipe in Paris. #stillafail

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Bijou | 75018

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If crust is your jam when it comes to a good slice of pizza, then twerk your way on over to the pizzeria Bijou. Bijou means jewel in La French, and it’s the perfect name for this tiny, but shiny, pizzeria. The younger sister to the ever so popoular Popine, the Italian chef Gennaro Nasti installed his second crust crusade in the hills of Montmartre. Nasti uses fresh, bio ingredients flown in from his hometown in Italy to create his “contemporian pizzas.” His twist on the modern pizza puts the crust back into the spotlight making you wonder how you ever thought that the sauce was numero uno.

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New Year, Same Me

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Happy New Year Crew! I hope you had a raging time ringing in 2019! If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know I spent the holidays visiting family in the US until the 31st. Which means in the jetlag vs Kate battle, jetlag was coming out on top on New Year’s Eve. So, Robin and I decided to forgo a party for an “intimate” celebration in Paris. Intimate is the chosen word I like to use to feel less guilty about staying in together doing a whole lotta nothin’. We drank 5-dollar wine out Tervis cups. We shared a kebab from our favorite Algerian bakery around the corner. I got sucked into the black hole that is “recommended videos” on YouTube for 2 hours, while Robin started playing Assassins Creed: Odyssey. Safe to say the 100 hours of game time needed to finish Odyssey means that I won’t have a husband for the next 6 weeks. :0 But no matter which way you celebrated the New Year, trading saliva with random clubbers, dining with friends, or sleeping through the unwanted noise, a new year has announced itself whether or not you want it.

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4|Apartment Hunting like a Scot

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After two weeks on Sanna’s couch and two weeks at my new job, I officially had my first paycheck in the bank. That, plus the pity money my parents wired was enough for me to start searching for a “flat” as they called it.

I realized immediately after a preliminary research on gumtree.com, that renting a place on my own was going to be completely out of my price range. Even if I had a small taste of living the Queen life thanks to Pierre, it wasn’t going to be worth it to scrap by every month eating Cheetohs, just to have a tiny studio on my own. Plus, they say local roommates are the best way to get to know people anyways, right?

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I’ve lived in France for 3,336 days and I still didn’t know these 5 things

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Hey there crew! It feels so great to be typing these words! I took a completely unplanned hiatus from writing due to some personal reasons that I won’t go into for fear of boring you silly. But the important thing is….(drumroll please)…I’m back and better than ever! Or more realistically, at least the same as before!

I figured my comeback blog post should be something related to my time away from my comfy cyber home and give all those Frenchified followers a little glimpse into the wild world of Kate for the past 8 months. Spoiler Alert. Nothing really crazy happened. I am still conquering the planet one pizza restaurant at a time and spending my spare time attempting to cook French recipes. Of course, when the #fail happens, I order Deliveroo and call it a day.

One important milestone that you did miss was my 9th anniversary in France! I’m not yet in the double digits, but man the number 9 makes me feel like such a veteran. On some days I love it, I feel like I own this city, and other days when someone side eye glares me on the metro, I feel like a cynical old lady muttering around Pigalle about the young kids making so much dang noise. While I feel Frenchified on a pretty regular basis, I’m quickly humbled and brought back to earth when I learn something new, and I’m like “wait, stop right there.” “Say what!” “How did I live in France for the last 9 years and not know that?” This happens more times than I’d like to admit, but here goes the 5 main WTF moment’s I had in 2018!

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Pizzeria Popolare | 75002 |Paris Pizza Review

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Like every Pizza lover you meet in Paris, I’m a huge fan of the Big Mamma Group. Victor and Tigrane, 2 French men, opened their first Italian tratorria, East Mamma, in 2015. 3 years later, they have opened 6 other restaurants and are slated to open their newest one this month. Apparently more than 1,000 people can stuff themselves silly with Italian at the same time. Can. Not. Wait.

I checked out their third address Pizza Popolare with a fabulous foodie friend this weekend and I was far from disappointed.

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Those Three French Habits I’ve Picked Up

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I’ve been living in France for nine years now (cray cray), and most people I meet for the first time find it hard to believe. This could very well be due to some strong American habits still lingering within me and managing to pop out at the most inconvenient moments. I’ll save these rather special stories for a different article. What I really wanted to write about are the 3 French habits that I’ve picked up during this wild ride.

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8 Reasons Why Dating a Frenchman is the Absolute Best

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I recently wrote an article and filmed a video with my favorite Kiwi and “Not Even French” YouTube extravaganza Rosie about the things we wish we would have known before dating a Frenchie. Naturally, a lot of the things on our list were there because they create tension points in our spunky, bi-cultural relationships. So, even if it was all in good fun, I got multiple comments about what we think are the positive points of dating a Frenchman. I clearly married Robin in all his fabulous Frenchness, so while I could list hundreds of positive reasons, I’ll stick to 8 so you don’t conk out mid article :p

Oh and if you love all things Rosie like me, check out our 2nd Valentine’s Day collaboration about the top things France does better than the US and New Zealand here!

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7 Reasons You Should Move to France ASAP

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Happy Valentine’s Day! As you know if you’ve read my article “What I wish I knew before dating a Frenchie,” I won’t be doing any hardcore celebrating today with Robin! 🙂 So instead I’m spoiling my scrumptious readers with 2 special articles about things I love keeping in line with the theme of the day. Below are all the reasons I adore France with my favorite YouTube personality, Rosie. If you want to hear our thoughts about the 8 Reasons Dating a Frenchman is the Absolute Best, head over here. Wishing you all the happiest of V-day’s!

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