Today marks the fifth anniversary of Chocolate & Zucchini — and, I might add, the first anniversary of its French version. My first impulse was to comment on the fact that time flies, it seems like only yesterday, or something to that effect, but the truth is, I find it so extraordinarily difficult to remember what my life was like before I started C&Z, it’s almost embarrassing.

Creating this blog five years ago has undoubtedly been among the most life-altering decisions I’ve ever made — up there with giving up thumb sucking when I was eight, and switching to contacts when I was fourteen. Chocolate & Zucchini has since done so much for me, it has become so familiar and indispensable a part of my life, I think of it practically as a family member.

And I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to you, readers of C&Z. If it weren’t for you, your visits, your comments, your emails, your participation in forum discussions, and, in general, what you bring to this not-so-virtual table, I don’t think I would have come this far, learned this much, or had this much fun. So, thank you, your support means the world to me, it truly does.

As has become the tradition, Maxence and I will host a get-together in Paris in mid-October; I am still ironing out the details — organizational skills? what organizational skills? — but they will be announced v. soon.

Perhaps you’d like to hear about a few things that have happened since we last celebrated C&Z’s anniversary? Here goes: my first cookbook, Chocolate & Zucchini, was published in France under the title Chocolat & Zucchini; my second book, Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, came out in the US; I was offered a column in ELLE à table, the food edition of the French ELLE (I accepted); and I started working on an idea for a television show — the project is still in its early infancy, but I should have more on this in a few months.

And on a more personal level, I embraced the lifelong, glorious role of being somebody’s aunt: my nephew is now 6 1/2 months old, and I am happy to announce that he has just started eating puréed zucchini with great enthusiasm.

And before we part, please accept this little anniversary gift: I have created online maps of the restaurants and shops featured in Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris — I hope you find them useful in your explorations of the city.

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The celebratory macarons pictured above (pistachio, raspberry, dark chocolate) come from Grégory Renard‘s shop, located at 120 rue Saint-Dominique, Paris 7ème (01 47 05 19 17).

Note: For more Paris recommendations, see this follow-up edition.

My friend Adam has just had what I think is a brilliant idea of a meme, named Twelve Hours in Dot Dot Dot: if you had only twelve hours left to spend in your home city/town/village/oasis, what would you do with them?

Because I lived abroad for a while, I have, on several occasions, spent twelve semi-final hours in Paris, and I admit they usually involved a combination of the following activities: 1) buying several months’ worth of my then-favorite face cream, 2) trying to locate my passport, 3) spending time with people I knew I was going to miss, simply enjoying the normalcy of being in the same time zone.

But I posit cosmetics, traveling documents, and companionable silences weren’t what Adam had in mind for this meme, so I came up with a more suitable — and food-oriented — timetable for my hypothetical last twelve hours in Paris.

It goes without saying that difficult choices were made, and that for every item I included, there were about ten more looking at me with a crestfallen expression. Most of these places are included in my Paris book, Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, in which you’ll find many more options to fill however many hours you get to spend in Paris (more info here).

I should also note that I chose to assume these weren’t the last twelve hours before I die, first of all because that would be a little depressing, and also because I worked in a few opportunities to buy things I would want to take with me wherever I was supposed to travel next, and who knows what customs policy they have in the afterlife.

Without further ado, I give you my Twelve Hours in Paris, which I’ve decided would take place on a Thursday, from 12:30pm to 12:30am. And of course, if you want to chime in with your own Twelve Hours in Dot Dot Dot, in the comments section or as a post on your blog, I’ll be curious to read your take!

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My body has been back from our Croatian getaway for a few days, but my spirit is still very much there, on a deserted pebble beach, reading in the late afternoon light, twiddling my toes, and examining the possibility of going back in for one last dip.

My mind refuses to believe that, in the morning, we will not be feeding part of our breakfast to the wild kittens that roam everywhere; that our toughest decision today will not be whether to watch the sun set from the balcony of our hotel room or from a seaside terrace; and that, unfair as it may be, figs do not grow on trees around here.

So, in an effort to come to terms with the fact that our paradisal vacation is officially over, I have listed a few highlights below. Allow me to take this opportunity to thank the readers who generously responded to my call for Croatia recommendations — the list, collated and slipped into our guidebook, proved immensely helpful, as always.

And now, for the highlights, also illustrated by this set of photo from our trip:

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An alleyway in the old city of Korčula, photographed by Tona & Yo

Maxence and I are about to leave for a vacation in Croatia; the plan is to drive down the Dalmatian coast from Split to Dubrovnik, and chill for a few days on the island of Korčula.

If you’ve been to Croatia before and have food or drink recommendations to share — specialties we should try, restaurants we must visit, ingredients we can bring back — I would very much like to hear them!