THURSDAY THE LONG WAY: HUIS CLOS, OUVERT

Thursday highlights food from out of the way places, food memories that have formed the way I view food, both cooking it and eating it. These memories may be inspired by recent meals, the food-media, or anything at all.

Two weeks ago while documenting my ice cream history I was taken back to my elementary school days in Hong Kong attending the French International School. It reminded me of another food strong food memory from childhood, one involving pastry.

On certain mornings, Mondays and Thursdays come to mind for some reason, if you ignored Katie Byrnes, the cute, blond British girl you had a crush on and, ran up the some 10 or twelve stairwells in your EFI uniforum to the playground on the top of the building before class for roll call and dashed over to the blue fence near the stairwell you might be able to buy a tasty treat for a few Hong Kong dollars.

There was a mad rush for them and often you'd have to fend for yourself in a scrum of older, and much larger French kids to get to the front of the line before they ran out. I didn't always have the money for it but when I could put a few dollars together I was certainly ready for the pastry dash.

I don't know which bakery made the pastries or who brought them in, but I don't feel as though it was a school sponsored affair. Whether the prefects were making a quick buck or it was some "Future Business Leader," whoever brought in those three or four white, rectangular, grease-spotted boxes of pain au chocolat deserves my nine-year old eternal gratititude. Like the picture to the left, the buttery pastry you'd hold your hands if you were successful in braving the line was always flat, greasy and the flakes, still moist. Unlike the picture, there were never chocolate stripes on the outside (unnecessary, like confectioner's sugar most of the time). But most important of all was the chocolate inside-- warm and gooey.

What meaning does it have? What relevance in forming my love of food to this day? No philosophy today, it was just a way early in the morning before heading off with greasy hands and a quieted stomache-grumble, to be slightly more prepared for the seemingly un-ending existentialism of Latin, graphs, the differences between American and British spelling, and "Au Claire de la Lune," or "Oh-bla-di, oh-bla-da," played on the recorder in music class.