What Really Matters

 

Vacation is all about spending time with those you love.

  

And eating chocolate twists.  Buttery pastry filled with endless super rich chocolate chips - better than Tollhouse, let me tell ya. 

And I say "twists" instead of "twist" because on the last day I had two chocolate twists.  And two croissants.  And two mini doughnuts.  My last hurrah if you will.

The chocolate twists were my favorite things...of life ever.  Okay, not that dramatic.  But they are really that amazing.  Apparently in french they are called "torsade chocolat."

 

It appears everyone else loved reading above chocolate twists, but to each his own. 

  

Sarafina's was the delicious bakery where we got the pastries.  Half of the island is French and the other half is Dutch.  Naturally, Sarafina's is on the French side.  A bakery this amazing could only be French. 

  

Croissants are a classic choice, and these were utterly amazing.

  

Meringues.  Who the heck is going to eat these when you could eat a chocolate twist?  :) 

Not sure I've ever had a birthday cake covered in actual ribbons before.  Must be a European thing.  Also apparently they love being able to see through to all the layers. 

 

Check out that middle layer.  Are those fruit salads beautiful or what?

  

The French baguettes were a staple at our villa.  Every day.  I ate almost a baguette ever 2.3 hours or so.  I thought the bread in San Fran was great - sourdough and all, but really it pales in comparison to these authentically French baguettes. 

  

These cakes are almost too pretty to eat.  Almost. 

  

I can't imagine the amount of work and effort goes into each of these beautiful creations. 

  

Quiche!  Is the plural of quiche, quiche?  Or is it quichi? 

  

There was one bit of food that escaped me...this time.  We had a rooster roaming the villa that strutted around every day taunting me.  

 

The last night we ate at John's dad's favorite restaurant, Mario's Bistro.  It did not disappoint.  The food was kind of French fusion.  It claims to be French-Carribean fare, but it's actually much closer to French-Asian fusion.  Fried tuna rolls, caramelized duck, and pad thai (which is what I had).  I had one of the best salads I've ever had - arugula with Parmesan, red onion, croutons, cherry tomatoes, and pecans.   

 

Naturally we had to buy the Mario's Bistro cookbook, and it's great.  It's really involved - like the above picture that shows some of the special ingredients you need for the recipes.  It also tells you how long the food will keep in the fridge, which is helpful.  Not that it would last long around my house.

 

Just the fact that it has this pad thai recipe makes the cookbook worth it for me.  As John would say, I'm a bit of a pad thai snob.  I love some good pad thai, and for some reason I find that most restaurants' versions don't really do it for me.  Well this version with fresh fetucchini, delicious shrimp and caramelized duck was out of this world.  

 

And so the sun sets on an amazing vacation.  Hopefully we'll be back.  Until then I will grow paler by the second, search high and low for chocolate twists, and work on making my own frenchified pad thai.