As the oldest child in the family who was always a foodie at heart, I fared very well on Halloween. After trick-or-treating with my two younger brothers, we would dump all of our candy loot onto the coffee table and begin trading. "I’ll trade you 10 Mary Janes for 1 Snickers Bar", I’d say. My brothers, too young to understand that sometimes quality is better than quantity, would enthusiastically agree to the trade. After a half-hour of intense negotiations, they would have plastic pumpkins overflowing with lollipops, Bit O’ Honey, Mary Janes, Tootsie Rolls, Smarties and other penny candies. Meanwhile, I’d have a modest half-full bucket of what I considered "premium" chocolate bars. (They do say that childhood is a great predictor of your future career!). Of course, we also usually received some non-candy items too: a toothbrush, a miniature packs of raisins, a coupon for a free Frosty at Wendy’s, and puffy stickers.

Mom had a "one-piece-of-candy-per-day" rule that was difficult to break without breaking our necks since she set our pumpkin totes on top of the refrigerator. By the time I was done with my premium chocolates, my brothers were starting to remember that they didn’t really like most of the penny candies they had traded for. Eventually, that stale penny candy made its way to the trash. Many people have tried to come up with creative ways to use that leftover Halloween candy, but if you ask me, tricking your loved ones into eating candy corn pancakes (yuck!) and lollipop chip cookies (scary!) is the making of a true-life horror story!

So tonight, before collecting an unappetizing mound of Halloween candy with the youngsters, come on down to the Wilmington Riverfront for our free Pre-Halloween Party from 5-7 pm. With our chocolate pumpkin crepes and signature bon bons, we guarantee that there won’t be any leftovers!

P.S. Here’s some great advice from the Great Pumpkin: Instead of trying to eat that cheap leftover Halloween candy, store it in the freezer until December to use for decorating gingerbread houses.

Remember the "Where’s Waldo" craze of the early 90’s? In the spirit of that game, we’ve got a South ‘n France-inspired challenge for you.

1. Visit your local bookstore.
2. Grab a copy of Seth Godin’s newest book, Tribes.
3. Look at the inside dust jacket of the book.
4. Find this picture  of Charlene, The Bon Bon Queen, in the sea of faces that make up Seth’s Tribe.
5. Extra credit: Buy the book and read it.

This Saturday marked the first cold-weather day of the season here in Wilmington. It rained, and the temperature was chilly enough to warrant wearing a jacket. The weather proved to be the perfect backdrop for the errand Pascal and I had planned: buying Christmas presents for his family in France. If we don’t get our presents shipped to France by the first week of November, we won’t have time to send them at all; it’s just too hectic once the selling season for holiday bon bons begins. 

After a few hours of power shopping interspersed with mad dashes to and from the car in the rain, we were ready for a hot lunch. We decided to head over to Merritt’s Burger House on Carolina Beach Road. Merritt’s is an old drive-in establishment that’s been around since before I can remember. As the name suggests, they sell burgers, but they also offer fried chicken, barbeque, seafood platters, and other Southern specialties. As soon as we drove into our parking space, our waitress came out to the car to take our order. From the car, we could see the cook, a lady with a gray-haired Aqua Net-lacquered bee hive, cat eye glasses, and an apron tied around her waist. We chatted with our friendly waitress and asked a few questions about the menu, which consists of different "Specials", painted on wood plaques and tacked up to the side of the drive-in. We were interested in the fried chicken platter, but our waitress forewarned us that it takes about thirty minutes to prepare since the chicken is fried fresh when ordered. We decided we were too hungry to wait that long and opted for the barbeque platter instead. The barbeque is also homemade, but since it’s made in big batches, it would just need a little warming up. Sure enough, in less than five minutes, our waitress returned to hook our car hop tray onto our window.  It was piled high with two plates of barbeque, hush puppies, French fries, coleslaw and bottled soft drinks. The price? $5.50 per person. 

As we ate in the comfort of our cozy car, watching the rain pour down the windshield, Pascal marveled at the mysteries of our American culinary traditions. "What a crazy idea", he said, "a restaurant where people eat in their cars!" The words expressed a sense of obligatory French dismay, but his face (and the platter he licked clean) revealed his true delight.

Almost eight years ago, when we married and Pascal first moved to the States, he spoke only a little bit of basic English. His training had consisted of elementary school lessons and a six-week introductory course during a vacation in Fort Lauderdale (poor, Pascal – long gone are the years when he got more than six weeks vacation per year!). While Pascal waited for his work authorization and green card, he enrolled in a language program in New York. In Fort Lauderdale, his classmates were primarily Haitians and Cubans, but in Manhattan, the population at his English-as-a-second-language school was mostly Japanese and Chinese. Pascal has a great sense of humor, and he loves to joke around. He was frustrated in the beginning because without the vocabulary, his English jokes were pretty rudimentary. Still, he couldn’t help trying to inject his exchanges with humor. Perhaps because of his classmates’ influence his early jokes had a strong Asian flair:

Pascal out in public, trying to excuse his lack of vocabulary:

Pascal (deadpan):  "That’s nothing. You should hear my Japanese."

Sometimes people understood that he was trying to be funny, and sometimes Pascal’s jokes were completely lost in translation (or a lack thereof). Regardless, he always had me laughing.

Now that Pascal’s command of the language is so strong, just about everyone is familiar with his unique brand of humor. These days, he makes everybody laugh, not just me. Sometimes, I’m astonished by the words and phrases he knows:

The other day, while joking with a male friend, he said:  "Stop being such a sissy!"
Later, I asked him where he learned the word ’sissy’. 
He deadpanned: "From your father."
That’s Pascal and that’s his humor.

Since we’re both fluent in two languages, we know what a victory it is to make a successful joke in your second language, and often, we can’t help but laugh at our own funnies. There’s so much cultural and linguistic nuance involved. To give you an idea of how difficult this skill is, here is a Garfield comic strip translated from English into Chinese and back into English again by the Google translation program.

Visit Blogscoped for more "Garfield Lost in Translation"…

This coming weekend, we’re holding open reservations for our Grapes & Crepes Parties. At our parties, we teach you the art of making (and eating) crepes. We’ve yet to meet a person who didn’t think that making crepes is fun.  And whether you’re naturally great at cooking or naturally great at ordering take-out, we promise that this is one culinary skill you’ll be able to master! In fact, we make three guarantees about our crepe-party experience: 1) you will enjoy a delicious meal, 2) you will have a really great time, and 3) you will leave with all of the secrets of a master crepe-maker. To prove our point, we’d like to share Willis Russell’s story.  

Will is a young teen who lives in Maryland. His super-cool aunt lives here in Wilmington. How lucky are Willis and his sisters that their aunt is always spoiling them with unique and fun experiences? When the family came down to visit our area several months ago, his aunt organized a Grapes and Crepes Party. Will and his younger siblings all fully participated in the party (the youngest was so little she cooked at our worktable while kneeling on a stool). In fact, the kids made crepes with as much (and sometimes more!) skill than the adults. Will was a natural, instantly picking up the techniques that we teach. He enjoys cooking and watches The Food Network regularly, so when he returned home, Will made extra-sure that our crepe batter recipe was in his suitcase! The following weekend, he made crepes at home, following our instructions and refining the skills we taught him at the party.

Will now has quite a reputation for his crepe-making prowess, and this fun, inclusive activity is quickly becoming a tradition at family gatherings. So, when his Aunt drove up the coast to Maryland for a recent visit, Willis declared that Sunday morning’s breakfast menu would be crepes. Here he is at home, crepe master in his kitchen! Will’s raspberry-filled crepes with powdered sugar were so delicious, and his aunt was so impressed, that she called South ‘n France from the breakfast table to share her delight! When she got home, she sent over these great photos. This, of course, delighted us too!

So, what are you waiting for? Come on over. Every family needs a "Will": where there’s a "Will", there is also a great way to have fun with your family! And, with Thanksgiving right around the corner, we’ll give you this helpful hint: making crepes is the perfect post-Thanksgiving meal. You can use that leftover turkey and ham to fill the crepes while keeping the whole family engaged in a fantastic bonding activity!