Side Trip

As I was planning to write in my blog this weekend, I was lured into the grasp of the World Wide Web. No matter how much I struggled to break free from the millions and millions of temptations on the web, I was nevertheless stuck online. Anyways, as I was scramming for a way out, I came across another interesting and entertaining food blog that I thought I might share with you all.

David Lebovitz brings to his blog, Living the Sweet Life in Paris, years of expertise in the culinary (especially in the pastry) world. He is the author of many best-selling books that provide guides to desserts and tell his food-related traveling experiences in Paris.

I really enjoy the easygoing tone he carries in all of his posts. The variety of post topics, blogging from interesting highlights from his travel to introducing wonderful shops and restaurants in Paris and cooking up delicious desserts, is full of surprises. Just like this cookie for example.

Although Mr. Lebovitz reveals his personality through his personal traveling experiences and thoughts, he still maintains a more commercial and business side by dedicating sections of the blog to promote his books and events. It is interesting that in these sections, Mr. Lebovitz is referred to in third person.

As I was reading his blog, I noticed that Mr. Lebovitz comes off as humorous without appearing like he intentionally pretended to be funny in order to get laughs from the audience in his writing. Unlike other bloggers who fill their posts with adjectives and different figures of speech to sound funny, Mr. Lebovitz straightforwardly—in a non-straightforward kind of way—retells his adventures in Paris, subtly causing a few chuckles (it worked for me at least!). Mr. Lebovitz also has a tendency to write long sentences (starting with dependent clauses too) and interrupt his sentences with side thoughts. He also likes to digress into other stories and somehow manages to connect back with the main topic of the post. I guess his style of loose paragraph structure and lengthy sentences illustrate more of his thought process and his personality.

It is fairly impressive how he can slowly move the audience away from the topic of the post without the audience even being aware of it. Like in the Stop the Stuffing! post, Mr. Lebovitz starts off by telling his face à face experience with a affiche advocating a stop to le gavage to make foie gras (by the way, my French improved remarkably after reading this post and his blog in general). Eventually, the topic of French ads pleading people not to eat certain foods gradually digresses into the discussion of who’s more adventurous in eating: French or Americans? Then Mr. Lebovitz reveals unexpected information about horse meat:

Only because it's part of the French culinary heritage and vocabulary, and since I'm trying to fit in, I once thought about trying horse meat, just to give it a go. That is, until one of my commenters with horses in North America (where the horse meat in France is imported from), warned me not to, saying the meat was pumped full of chemicals and other icky stuff because the animals weren't being bred for consumption. Not that I needed much prodding, but I decided that I didn't really need to try horse meat after all. But it was close there for a while, folks...whew!

There’s a lot that can be said about Mr. Lebovitz’s style and passion just by looking at this short passage about horse meat. His use of long sentences not only illustrate his spontaneous nature, but also his excitement about sharing this information with everyone that he tries to squeeze as much information as he possibly can with a sentence instead of easily splitting the sentence into two. His insertions of side thoughts in the form of clauses further support the spontaneous nature in his writing. The italicized “really” also reveal his thought process, how he tries to convince himself out of eating horse meat. As for his word choice, the use of “icky” and the onomatopoeia, “whew,” surely brings a child-like side to him, don’t you think?

Enough about horse meat, how about Salted Butter Caramels? In this particular post, Mr. Lebovitz introduces a problem and a solution:

I had a wee bit of a dilemma recently. In my refrigerator was a half-jar of crème fraîche, that I had to use up before I left for a recent vacation on the beach. I'd been thinking about making caramels with it, but I also knew that I would be slipping on a swimsuit within a few weeks. And being alone in my apartment with an open jar of ultra-rich crème fraîche was probably not a good idea.

So what did I do? I hemmed and hawed about it, until I channeled my mother, who would have flipped out if I tossed away the rest of the crème fraîche. (Or anything, for that matter.)

So I made caramels.

Like most of his posts, the use of adjectives and other figures of speech is nearly zero. His use of longer sentences (rarely any short choppy ones) is also prevalent here. I think this posts illustrate a little of the humor I was talking about. He likes to tell his audience a lot of random things (like wearing a swimsuit soon), but seems like he doesn’t really care if he gets a response from the audience. He also likes to, as I mentioned before, straightforwardly tell you something without directly telling you. For example, instead of saying that he’ll get fat from making and eating caramels, he implies that by illustrating a visual image of him in a swimsuit at the beach. His thought process is also clear here: he thinks of making caramels, decides not too because it will cause him to gain weight, decides to make them again because of what his mother might say about wasted food. A child-like image is also painted through his word choice (the words “wee,” “hemmed,” and “hawed”) of him contemplating about what to do until he thinks about his mother, who indirectly helps him make his decision.

I think the tone he carries throughout his blog is very fitting for a person blogging about traveling and food. Leisure stories should be told with a relaxed tone filled with excitement. Anyways, I hope you found him as interesting and entertaining as I did.