As winter was drawing to an end, I have to admit I was getting a bit bored with cooking the same tubers and roots and greens that I had for months. But now it’s Spring! And we’re getting the bright, fresh spring fruits and vegetables back in the markets. Yayyy!

Now this may sound weird, but I am not a great lover of strawberries. I want to like them, and sometimes I do, but I tend to shy away. Maybe it’s because of the always very disappointingly hard and flavorless ones I’m used to in American markets.

But a few years ago I was here in Paris with my friend Kyle, and we passed by a produce market, and the strawberries caught his eye. I was dubious, but how could I deny him on his first trip to Paris? They turned out to be delicious — succulent, flavorful, tender, juicy. Exactly the way you want a strawberry to taste.

A few weeks ago, I was at the produce market just up with street and noticed that they had beautiful strawberries in little wooden baskets, so I picked one up, remembering the lovely ones I’d had with Kyle. These turned out to be just as luscious! I just cut them up and mixed them with a bit of sugar and a drizzle of herbal liqueur from Italy. So good!

The other thing I picked up that day at the produce market was two bundles of asparagus. Asparagus is everywhere in Paris this season. I’d had some lovely ones, roasted but served cold with a chive vinaigrette, when I was at a little wine bar with my friend Jessica. And since then I’ve become a little obsessed. I’ve made them that way two times since. Also so amazingly delicious!

At the beginning of the year, I decided I really needed to buckle up and work on my French. Like actually take classes. I’d been in a bit of denial — I mean I have a piece of paper, from Berkeley no less, that says I speak French. Surely that should be enough!

Not surprisingly, the French I learned in school tends to be more academic or literary — to the point that French friends have said I can sound a bit like a professor (but I like to tell myself that maybe it’s just the glasses). So my main goal has been to learn “oral” French, the version that people use in more casual settings. Or in other words, to “worsen” my French.

So I started taking an advanced class with a local expat organization and I’ve also started working with a private tutor. I particularly love working with my tutor, Antoine, because I can delve into the intricacies of meaning and usage. I’ll often present him with a series of more-or-less synonymous words — while I can get good definitions and examples of usage from my online dictionary, what I can’t get is how formal or informal they are and whether people actually use those words or whether they’re primarily literary or old-fashioned or on the other hand something that the twenty-somethings say but I really should not.

And now after weeks and weeks of rain and clouds and chilliness, this week in Paris it swiftly turned into a heat wave. Not horrible — the highs are right around 90 degrees F — but still warm enough that I’m quite content to stay at home in my cool apartment.

Maybe next week I’ll venture out again!