Maison Tranquille Blog

  I bought a jar of Juan Valdez freeze-dried coffee at Walmart yesterday. It all began with a simple question.  What is the best quality of instant coffee?   I’ve always assumed instant coffee was something you drank when there was no other option.  It was convenient, but convenience at the expense of flavor.  I remembered bitter granules, flat taste, and the knowledge that certainly this was settling for less than the best. But yesterday, I discovered that instant coffee has undergone a transformation. It’s important to know that the difference between traditional spray-dried coffee and the newer freeze-dried varieties is enormous. Freeze-drying preserves much more of the coffee's aroma and flavor.  What I brewed yesterday was smooth, full-bodied, and genuinely pleasant.  The freeze-drying process, which removes water through sublimation rather than heat, preserves the coffee's aromatics in a way the old spray-dried methods couldn't. Who knew tha...

  For many years, I searched for good books. I read bestseller lists. I looked at award winners. I followed book club recommendations. If a book was widely praised, I felt it might resonate with me, too. I trusted the algorithm to recommend titles suited to my reading preferences. Yet the results puzzled me. Many books that were supposed to be perfect for me left me unmoved, while a handful of others stayed with me for years. The same pattern appeared in television. Some highly acclaimed series failed to capture my interest, while others spoke directly to my heart. Only recently have I begun to pay attention not to the categories of stories I loved, but to the qualities they shared. At first it seemed I must like historical fiction. Then perhaps it was mysteries. Then literary fiction. But none of those labels quite fit. What I have realized is that I am drawn to stories about people learning what matters. My favorite characters are not necessarily brilliant, powerful, or successfu...

  For years I tried to find the perfect way to eat. These days I'm more interested in ways of eating that are simple enough to do every day. My current Maison Tranquille meal plan is uncomplicated: Breakfast: Avocado toast with sprouts plus a rotating side of eggs, sardines, apple and walnuts, tomato and cucumber, or oatmeal. Lunch: A big smoothie made with coleslaw mix, spinach, bananas, frozen mixed berries, flax seeds, apple juice and water Dinner: A house salad topped with whatever proteins, veggies, or grains sound good that night The salad dressing is mixed right in the bottom of the bowl: • 1 tablespoon olive oil • 1 tablespoon lemon juice or red wine vinegar • 1 teaspoon Maille French mustard (or any dijon mustard) • 1 teaspoon of Season-All Whisk, add the greens, and toss. I've been growing broccoli, radish, kale, and sulforaphane sprouts again and adding them wherever I can. It's amazing how much nutrition can come from a few simple habits repeated day after da...