Mapping the metro

There will soon be new Paris Metro maps floating around thanks to the efforts of Benjamin Suchar and copyright laws.  Suchar designed an app called CheckMyMetro, which is like Twitter specifically for events on or around the metro.  You can post about incidents (slow traffic, accidents, etc), coups de coeur (likes), coups de gueule (rantings/dislikes), or even musicians playing at the metro stations.  Although, as expected from Parisians, I've seen mostly coups de gueule.  But after being banned from using the well-known metro map from RATP, the public transit authority in Paris, he decided to hold a competition for designing a new metro map.  (I hope they are okay with me posting it here!)

The official RATP Paris Metro map.  You can get the full brochure at their website www.RATP.fr

There were over 80 submissions which were narrowed down to 10 finalists for final voting on Facebook.  The winning map (see below) designed by Antoine Raby was announced in December.

The winning Metro map for CheckMyMetro.

Overall, I like the new map.  It is both tourist- and resident-friendly because it indicates locations of major monuments, have scaled distances between stops, and include the arrondissement (districts) where each stop is located.  My favorite part is that the colors stay true to their respective lines.  Each line (on maps and in the metro) have a unique color associated with them (line 1 is yellow, line 9 is yellowish-gold, line 3 is brownish-gold etc...)  My friend had a metro map where the colors were different than the "official colors" and it was very confusing because I would follow the wrong lines.  And unlike RATP, Suchar is okay with this map being distributed since he is a supporter of open data, something I can definitely get behind.

Sources:

The Local, CheckMyLabs, RATP

The Paris-Movie-Quest

I'm on a quest to watch every movie set in Paris.  My "Movies in Paris" page lists the ones I've already seen in order of preference, and will be updated accordingly.  

Now it's time to tackle the rest... Wikipedia lists ~ 630 movies set in Paris, with new movies coming out every year (11 in 2011).  Also I found the Wikipedia list to be incomplete.  So I estimate about 1.5 lifetimes for me to watch them all.  It's a good thing I have lots of vacation time!

If you have a favorite movie, or movie suggestions, please let me know!

Baking an American Cake in Paris

Unlike in America where I usually expect my friends to shower me with gifts (such as a Gators Snuggie) and funfetti cupcakes, it is typical custom in Paris to bake (or buy) your own cake to share with your friends.  So for my birthday yesterday, I decided to treat my labmates and friends with an American cake.  What is an American cake?  Well, I'm American and I made it.  Also, yellow cake with chocolate frosting... which I have not seen in any Parisian pâtisseries.  But I was confident that my French friends would like it... it contains lots of butter.

Well, I am usually the eater of the group, and never been the baker (that role was for Megan!)  And I quickly came upon the first hurdles which many Americans trying to bake in France encounter: flour (la farine).  Indeed I never realized how diverse the flour market was.  I was only aware of all purpose flour and cake flour.  And to make matters worse... French flour is different in gluten and protein content.

A sampling of the different types of flour in France, and Maizena (corn starch).

The farine type is written on the side of the bag.

It seems like all these flours might be the same (see image), maybe with the difference of "BIO" farine de blé being the organic flour (bio, pronounced B.O. ... hehehe, which is what the French stereotypically have!... generally means organic).  But upon closer inspection, we find some differences.  The white bag in the middle gives our biggest clue, with the label "T55" (or type 55).  It turns out that French flour is classified by the residual mineral content is left in the flour, as explained in this Cooksinfo.com page.  The BIO flour is actually type 65, which is written on small print on the side of the bag.  The Moulin d'Or flour is described as "pour gâteaux cuisine et pâtisserie fine" (for cakes and pastries), indicating that it is type 45 (also written in small print on the side).  The different types and their American equivalents was charted by this article at Chow.com.

So I grabbed my eggs (les oeufs), butter (la beurre), granulated sugar (le sucre en poudre... which literally means powdered sugar!  American powdered sugar is French sucre glace), milk (le lait),  baking powder (la levure... watch out! there are different ones for cake and bread) and my farine and got to work.  My second hurdle was that I didn't have a mixer.  But this was nothing I couldn't tackle with the help of a hand-held food processor, a whisk, and le boyfriend with a strong arm (insert joke here?).  Luckily for me, I also stumbled upon this blogpost which suggest that I mix half farine with half cornstarch (Maizena) to get that American fluffy cake.  Great tip!  I used type 45 farine and Maizena and got a great fluffy yellow cake which then I smothered with Scharffen berger chocolate icing.  I served it with coffee, tea, and French cider (5% alcohol).  It was a hit!

PS  Apparently a big difference for them between French cakes and the American cake was the icing... which they loved!