1) Manx kippers. I'm hoping to buy a lot more food locally once we are living in rural England but as a treat (and it is a fantastic treat) we will occasionally be ordering a box of smoked fish from the Isle of Man.

2) Local beer.

3) Local organic meat and vegetables.

4) Pubs. Gastropubs. Independently-owned-pubs-with-local-ales. Pubs with outdoor play areas where you can keep an eye on the kids while you enjoy a warm, flat beer. (Okay, the latter is going to take some getting used to - I might have to stick to cold cider initially.)

5) Great Cheddar and Stilton.

6) The Borough Market (which I have not yet visited, by the way).

7) Cheap beanz.

8) Clotted cream, cottage cheese and cream cheese.

9) The space to grow my own vegetables.

10) Sausages and bacon.

What have I missed? Those of you who love England and its much maligned cuisine: what do you love about eating in England?

In no particular order:

1) M. Allart's amazing sunflower honey.

2) The Batignolles organic market.

3) 365 cheeses and the wonderful, knowledgeable people who sell them to me.

4) Fellow food bloggers in Paris.

5) Moules frites.

6) Raclette (what will I do with my old battered machine now that I have no access to the right cheese?)

7) Baguettes.

8) Our favourite restaurants.

9) The best fries in Paris. (Note to anyone else who would like to experience them: the Mozart has sadly changed owners this summer and so I cannot guarantee the continued quality of the fries. It's still a great place for an after-work beer, though.)

10) My kitchen. The first new kitchen I've ever cooked in, the first I've ever designed. It had a few problems and I'm sure I could have done better. But it was my first kitchen of my own making and I shall miss it. Especially the six gas rings.

What would you miss most if you had to move to a new country?

As our moving date looms over us, I've been playing a culinary game. It's the "how many meals can I make without going to the grocery store?" game. I have a freezer full of duck stock, gyozas, frozen artichoke hearts and frozen beans, bits of gravy, frozen herbs...oh yes and a few pounds of English sausages. I also have cupboards full of those gourmet items you can't resist when you are on holiday or that kind friends and family members can't resist giving you at Christmas: flavored mustards and 37 varieties of hot pepper sauce (the Critic's love of spicy foods is well known) and grains that you think you should eat more often. So on the day that the Critic left for two weeks in Singapore* I started rummaging through the cupboards and freezer looking for ingredients for a sweet treat to cheer us all up. Banana cake: Big Brother loves it when I make them into cupcakes and I had a couple of bananas in the freezer. However, the recipe I use calls for butter and we had none. Then I thought of the yogurt cake I've made, which calls for oil instead. And I wondered: if I add bananas to the yogurt cake, what will that do to the consistency? Now an intelligent cook would, at this point, realize that you could probably substitute oil for butter in the banana cake recipe and everything would be just fine. But I have always disliked the idea of using a cup full of oil in anything and so instead I wondered...what if we replaced the oil with banana? Would it work?

The answer is a qualified yes. The cakes came out a little chewier than usual, but definitely tasty and definitely healthier. The only mistake I made, really, was in throwing some dried blueberries in the mix too. They were delicious - don't get me wrong - but not a hit with a suspicious three year old. But at least I now won't be packing blueberries...

*Yes, that's right: I've been left alone with the two monsters to battle the forces of Evil French Bureaucracy and organize a move in less than four weeks' time. Feel free to pity me - or better yet, send gin...

[Little Brother at 12 months, the first time I let him play with the remains of his dinner on his own.]

When my first son started solid foods, I dreamt of creating the perfect food lover. He was going to eat a variety of foods, all organic, nothing processed. I was going to prove that it was ALL about raising, nothing to do with those pesky hard-wired genes. But as we all know, the road to a very hot place is paved with good intentions. And sometimes I feel like I have arrived in Hell, because despite my good intentions I have a fairly picky 3 year old. He likes: apples, carrots, cucumber, hot dogs, chicken (sometimes), pasta, bread, cereal (not the sugary kind), watermelon, ham, eggs, peas, pizza, peanut butter crackers. Which may sound like a lot, but really it's not when you consider the millions of other exciting foods out there. I should also point out that he likes these things more or less unsullied by any spices or exotic cooking methods. Steamed or boiled carrots only, not raw ones. Pasta with butter and cheese only. Plain bread or if it's toasted it has butter and cinnamon sugar. Where did I go wrong?

Well, the more I consider my boys and watch them grow, the more I have to admit that a lot of who they are is just there, from birth. My eldest loved cars and balls from the moment he could clutch them in his tiny baby hands. His brother? Not so you would notice. The youngest likes music, and even at eight months would start swaying and clapping when he heard a jingle on the TV that he liked. Unlike his older brother (who just bangs away), when given access to the piano, little brother carefully plays with individual notes.

So perhaps my first son was destined to be a picky eater. Then again, I think I made some classic first time parent mistakes when I started him on solid food. I worried far too much about whether he would have an allergic reaction, whether the food was organic, whether he would choke to death on a tiny piece of unprocessed food. The baby books and Internet told me that adding salt and butter to his food was a grave sin and I believed them. They told me that I should never give him more than one new ingredient at a time and I believed that too. As a result, I couldn't follow the common sense advice of my mother to just purée a bit of our own dinners for him: when was the last time you cooked using no salt, no butter or fat and no more than one spice? So now he likes plain food.

His brother, on the other hand, is an omnivore. He's an eating machine and I have yet to find a food he doesn't like. In the last five months, he has eaten curried rice, Hungarian goulash, fish and chips, English breakfast sausages, pork and lemon meatballs, Cranberry and Quinoa Salad with Coriander and Chili Dusted Chicken, roast potatoes with roasted chicken meat, and a load of other adult dishes. In addition, I have been so much more relaxed about the baby food I create just for him, using salt, pepper, butter, olive oil, mint, basil, paprika and even garlic to make them more tasty and interesting. I don't know if it's due to this early training, but he tends to eat very little of a dish if it's missing one of these elements. So I thought I would put together a list of some of the baby food combinations I have made for him recently. There aren't actually 101 of them, but still there are quite a few. And some of them have led to interesting dinners for the rest of the family when I tasted his and decided it was good. (For example, the zucchini, mint and yogurt combination, which makes a lovely cold soup!)

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a dietician, just an opinionated mother. Do discuss with your doctor what your baby can eat before you blindly trust my example. Some children are more likely to have allergies and I would hate to be the cause of a trip to the emergency room.

As some of you may have noticed, things have been rather quiet on Too Many Chefs lately. We apologize for the lack of material; it's not because we suddenly stopped eating or cooking or coming up with exciting new ideas. We have been busy. Barrett and the Redhead are busy learning how to survive on very little sleep. And for myself - well, I've been panicking to tell the truth. The Critic has landed a Great New Job. An exciting job. One that he can really get his teeth into. I am so happy for him and so proud. The catch? Well, it's in London. That's okay, we knew that when he applied. What we didn't know was how quickly they would want us to move: they have "compromised" and agreed that the Critic can start the first week of August, rather than the last week of July. Between now and then, I need to write a dozen letters to cancel gas, electricity, phone, etc. (with accusé de réception, i.e. registered mail), sell our apartment, find a new house in the UK, meet with movers, pack, give away or sell the things we don't want to move, sell the car...so I'm panicking a bit and I think it's justified. I'm also a bit sad.

Some 16 years ago, my mother drove me to the airport to catch a one-way flight to Munich. "So...how long do you think you'll stay?" she asked cautiously. I hadn't really considered the question. I was young and confident and excited about joining my then-boyfriend in a new country. More than a year, but less than five, I guessed. Well I was wrong by a bit. Paris was always the ultimate destination and we moved there a year later. I've been here 15 years. Over the years, I've acquired a lot of furniture and books, a cat, a husband and two children. This is my home. The city sometimes drives me speechless with fury and frustration, but it's my home. I love it like you love the sibling who drives you up the wall. And now I am having to face the fact that where our family is will always be my home. Have children, will travel.

England, here we come.

Last week, I was walking past the greengrocers and got sucked in by a gorgeous bushy basil plant. I have planted herb seeds in several pots on my terrace, but as all the seedlings looks suspiciously the same, I have a feeling I have a healthy crop of weeds and not basil, coriander, chives and mint. So I needed a basil plant. Of course, once I was there I found many reasons to stay: watermelon, new noirmoutier potatoes, spring onions (which I have never seen in Paris before and now I know what they are called: cebettes). And there was a big basket of dark ripe cherries. Because I was in a greengrocer's, where one is served, instead of a supermarket where I could help myself, I couldn't check whether the cherries were in good condition. I asked for a pound and took them home. And I found, to my great disappointment, that they were mushy and very over-ripe. As our regular readers will know, I am a huge fan of cherries and so it was a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

I was tempted to just toss them, but actually although they were disappointing on their own they weren't spoiled. Just disappointingly soft and sweet. And so I had one of those timely good ideas: I had promised to bake something for the snack table at a local Bring and Buy sale and these would turn chocolate cupcakes into something special. I was right: on their own, the cherries were a bit bland and too soft. Cooked in dark chocolate, they gave a wonderful sweet pocket of fruit in each bite. When topped with a cream cheese frosting, the combination was perfect - a little dark chocolate, a little sharp cheese and a sweet soft cherry flavor. I am really glad I had a place to get rid of the cupcakes or I am sure I would have eaten them all with the Critic's help. (Big brother found the flavours a little too grown up - or maybe he didn't like the texture of the cooked cherries?)

Via Paul at Locussolus (and formerly of Too Many Chefs) - Mark Bittman makes the case at the amazing TED conference for a more plant-heavy, meat-light diet. This explains for me why he produced the (mostly) vegetarian version of his How to Cook Everything book.

While you're there, check out the rest of the talks at TED. It's a remarkable conference that brings together some of the most dynamic minds around in all fields.