Pierre Hermé goes well with tacos

Two things happen when friends and family come to visit you in a new place. You're forced to confront just how much about you has changed, and you are reminded just how much about you has not.

When my boyfriend Randy arrived last week, I spent a few days grappling with a powerful wave of homesickness. The timing was right for the breakdown, since I usually spend the first couple months in a new place delirious with the fabulousness of it all, and the next two months in a cranky fog. All of a sudden the sound of spoken French, initially lilting and breathy and romantic, became irritating and overly emotive. Waiting in a long line to buy my baguette no longer provided an occasion to smugly celebrate my dedication to the pursuit of culinary quality over convenience. It was just inconvenient. And could that woman blocking my path and moronically cooing over a window display featuring a marabou pompon bra get the hell off the sidewalk?

After Randy noticed that I kept trying to kick pigeons, we decided urgent measures should be taken. He graciously allowed me to revert to my bloated, lazy American habits for the duration of his visit: we watched The Daily Show and lots of movies, we snacked and overate, and he listened while I bitched. Then he quietly engaged in various touristic and cultural activities in the city on his own while I was at school. I am a bad, bad girlfriend.

So what do lazy, temporarily Francophobic Americans eat in Paris?

Scrambled eggs, pancakes and bacon at Breakfast in America, a place that has managed to recreate the atmosphere of a diner in the heart of the Latin Quarter. Even the scrambled eggs had that same soft, powdery texture we know and love at home - and the coffee is bottomless!

Bloated, lazy anti-French Americans also hole up at home and make a giant casserole of macaroni and cheese. Okay, so you can't exactly find Cheddar 'round these parts - but the lazy Americans make do with Cantal and Comte.

Then the downtrodden Americans make their way to Thanksgiving, a store that sells foodstuffs typically only available in their native land. There they plunk down a deposit for a turkey, but soon will grow to regret this decision when it becomes clear that they have now signed up to construct a giant Thanksgiving dinner after a long day at cooking school.

They also buy hard taco shells and taco seasoning.

Later that night, they will make tacos, substituting creme fraiche for sour cream and rocket for iceberg lettuce. They will feel warm inside and regain optimism. And then they will finish off the night with a fancy white box of Pierre Hermé's finest work: an Ispahan, a Plénitude, an Instant and a white truffle and Piemont hazelnut macaron, which glows softly silver in the fading light of day.

And the lazy, homesick Americans might just fall in love with France again.

Ispahan: "Biscuit macaron à la rose, crème aux pétales de rose, framboises entières, letchis."

Plénitude: "Macaron chocolat, éclats de chocolat noir à la fleur de sel, mousse et ganache au chocolat amer, caramel croquant."

Instant: "Gelée de thé Earl-Grey pointes blanches, ganache au thé, mousse et biscuit moelleux au chocolat."