The Tour de Food

Hyuu! If you've been following my blog at all, you may have noted that we eat quite a bit here in Paris, and tonight was no exception. But first... I began my day by getting to my last class for the week: economics. The class definitely has the potential for some great discussion but, in the meantime, we're still trapped in learning about economic theory and the history of the European Union (mind you, all in French). At the end of class, I found out that not only do I have a different presentation partner, but I also have a different topic to work on. This'll be an interesting couple of weeks. Outside of that class, I had nothing else to do really, except think about the exciting meal that would soon ensue. (Really, I work on more than just food on any given day. :-P) On a repetitive note, tomorrow is grève day, but I found out that line 1, which is the main line that Trevor and I take since it's the closest one to us, will be operational. We're quite excited to see what Paris will be like.

So, in any case, I left the classroom building with grandious optimism and perhaps cautious enthusiasm with the meal plan Trevor and I had cooked up last night. We had divided up the grocery list, had gone through them at least 10 times to confirm what we needed to purchase, and I somehow still ended up buying salad and dressing (at least we bought different kinds of each). A few important notes about the shopping adventure:

1) I found another supermarché chain called Ed's, which seemed like it was cheaper than Franprix. Also, they had mangoes for 0,99 € each! So excited
2) Ever since French I (freshman year of high school), I have been looking for the French card game 1 000 Borne (pronounced "meel born"). I had lowering hopes as the day went by and I happened to come across a toy store by one of my stops and asked one of the workers if they happened to have the game. She looked and me and said Oui ! My eyes opened wide and I must've been too überly excited to realise that I would be paying 28 € for this game. Oh well, in my opinion, it was worth it.
3) I love the boulangerie patisserie that's like a half-minute walk from the entrance to our apartment building. Have I ever mentioned that?

So, with everything purchased and ready to go, I was about to start making dinner and then realised that Trevor and our dinner guest, Camille, wouldn't be back for another 5-6 hours, as they still had class and a movie to see for their film class. After waiting a bit, I commenced dinner preparations and got everything finished right on time. I think I've got this dinner serving thing down to a science. Voilà :

1st course: apératif + hors d'oeuvres (grilled/crisped pain de campagne rounds with tomato sauce topped off with chèvre)
2nd course: rice with cream of mushroom chicken, with a side of brocolli
3rd course: salad, with a choice of (we ended up trying both) salad dressing
4th course: cheese plate of rocquefort, chèvre, emmental, and comté, with a serving of sweet mango and a serving of sour mango, and a fresh baguette from our favourite bakery
5th course: three-part dessert -- mousse au chocolat noir with fresh berries (raspberries and blackberries... apparently really expensive here!) and a slice of galette de rois, followed by my improved chocolat chaud, along with pain au chocolat from our favourite bakery, a marshmallow bear, and a small piece of candied orange dipped in dark chocolate

Geeze, I'm getting hungry just typing the menu out. We've finally decided to slow down on the grandiose dinners, and are slowly bringing the eating to some level of cuisinary decency. However, Lauren is coming to Paris this weekend to celebrate her birthday (Joyeux anniversaire !) and the end of our "Tour de Food" will end Friday evening. Until then, bon appetit !

ps / Congratulations goes out to Camille for getting the fève, which definitely was called "Psycho Duck."

We Officially Have a Sixth Course

Today was, more or less, perfect. I’m kind of tired, though, and want to jump ahead to the dinner portion of the day, so I’m really going to make every effort to make this a short post.

After deciding to go to the laundry place some other day (because we were still tired after working on our homework for about 5,5 hours last night), I got ready for my day and got to school on time. I had the best class with Elisabeth (Travaux Pratique) to date, as well as a great class with Odile (the immigration and citizenship in Francophone cinéma course). Throughout Odile’s class, she was able to help us all make sense of the movie we viewed last Friday, Touki-Bouki. I’m really enjoying the classes so far. Then, we had to stay for a group conférénce, this time focusing on French politics. Olivier, the political science professor gave the talk and was quite entertaining and informative, and the fact that I could understand everything he said was surely a positive sign. During the day, I was able to find a nice boulangerie near the school, and we were also told that we would be experiencing our first grève in Paris. A grève is, generally speaking, a strike; in Paris, this means an almost complete halt of all transport systems in Paris. The situation is anticipated to be bad enough that they’ve cancelled our classes for Thursday. It should be quite interesting to see how the city operates without such means of transport as the Métro not being in service.

Straight from class, Trevor and I walked to the Dupleix Métro stop, only to find it wasn’t working. So, we headed for the La Motte Picquet Grenelle stop and, en route to the stop, did some supermarché shopping. Finally back at home, I began preparing our dinner, which was yet another five-course meal. I’ve titled this entry as us having a sixth course, but we did only have five courses, with one of those courses being a possible sixth one in the future (hope that makes sense). EntouK (texting shortcut for En tout cas, i.e., In any case), our first course (i.e., the new one) was an apératif, followed by our first plat being a rather unconventional round for us: eggs. Trevor had a bunch of them, some scrambled, a few sunny-side; while I had cooked whites with sugared ham. We then finished off the leftover baked pasta, to which I melted Leerdammer and Gouda into an additional portion of pasta sauce, for round 3. Round 4 came in two parts: our cheese plate, alongside fresh mango slices. Finally, we had our dessert round, which included a special (and may I say, favoured) form of chocolat chaud: the 86% cocoa form. :)

In the Real World, People Speak ‘French’ French

I know this may be perhaps rather cliché to say, but ‘real’ French can’t be taught in the classroom. Rather, it must be learned by talking and interacting with people; certainly, picking up mannerisms of a particular culture will soon self-translate themselves into understanding the language and sociolinguistic cues of the community one is trying to be a part of. Alright, enough of such talk.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I still have a lot to learn, particularly in terms of language and cultural nuances. Ever since I left for my entretien yesterday, I have been constantly being witness to ‘that which is French.’ My ride to Fontenay-sous-Bois was quite easy from Etoile, only taking half an hour. Julie, our internship placement advisor, was nice enough to come along with me to the internship site, as this is the first time that my internship site has worked with BU. After a quick stop at a vrai café (Julie told me that, in France, we’re not supposed to show up too early; one should arrive just on time, and a little after works just as well), we walked to the internship site, which is probably only about a two minute max walk from the RER station. We approached what looked like a house and were soon greeted by staff members of AFS Vivre sans Frontières.

Julie left me to (as I would soon find out) speak with the director of the programme, while I had my interview with Elsa and Simon. They were really nice and personable, and talked to me about the different responsibilities, the application process, and so forth. By application process, I mean that I’d potentially be on the administrative side of a study abroad programme, helping to match students with host countries and families, etc., as well as to orient students leaving France for one of AFS’s 50 destinations. In essence, I get to put my study abroad experience to good use! I’d say that’s quite up my alley, yebo?

After what I thought was my actual interview, Elsa showed me around the Vivre sans Frontières building and introduced me to the staff members; there are currently 14 people working with 400 incoming and 400 outgoing students. Hyuu! Following the tour, she showed me into the same room I had spoken to her in earlier and left to continue some work. After about five minutes, Julie came down with another staff member who told me I would now be going for my interview. I didn’t quite understand, as I thought I had just spent about 30-45 minutes talking to two people. In any case, Julie said she would wait for me, and so I followed this staff member upstairs and went into a small office in the corner of the top floor. It was about 17h00 by this time, and only one lamp atop the Director’s desk. I sat down and within about a four-minute interview session in French, the Director welcomed me (in English) to the group. So long story short, I’m 99 per cent sure I have the internship. I’m just not entirely sure, as I haven’t yet signed the formal contract. But, oh well, we’ll see what happens soon enough. In any event, the experience was rather interesting, and definitely opened my eyes to the fact that in the real French world (as opposed to the one in the BU building where people are more than happy to correct our French, slow down for us, etc.), people speak ‘French,’ not American French, or collegiate French, but actual French.

I suppose to continue the French experience, I unexpectedly cooked a five-course dinner for Trevor and I. Round 1 was a simple toasted baguette with Leerdammer and Gouda, as well as ham, followed by tomato sauce to which I added Gouda on slices of pain de campagne with baked pasta crusted with Emmental. For round 3, we visited South Africa for a bit and had carrot salad (2:1:1 ratio of carrots, apples and orange juice) paired with the white wine produced from Stellenbosch. After working on some homework in order to take a breather from the food we had just eaten (plus-que-parfait anyone?), we then had our cheese plate of chèvre, emmental and comté. We finished off our meal with a two-part dessert of mousse au chocolat noir and my favourite, chocolat chaud.

I Will Now Forever Think « Sceaux What ? »

I must first excuse myself for writing what feels like extremely long blog entries, even though I sort of vowed to write shorter ones more frequently. Unfortunately?, Saturday was yet another full day in France for Trevor and I. I’ll try and keep this one short.

As I mentioned in my pre-departure to Sceaux a post ago, Trevor and I chose to go to Sceaux (pronounced « so »… get ready for the jokes). We basically chose a random city and found out that a reggae concert was scheduled to take place in the evening. Of course, I was über-excited for the concert, not necessarily because it was reggae, but because I finally had a reason to wear the Bob Marley shirt I bought before arriving in France.

Before our departure to Sceaux, which ended up being rather « Sceaux-Sceaux » (get it?)—but I’ll get to that bit later—I prepared breakfast (which was why I couldn’t write more in the pre-departure post) [wow, I love strange sentence constructions] Noisy-le-Roi style, M.A. form. Recipe: heat up the milk until it starts to volumise (don’t let it burn or spill over) and pour into a drinking bowl; add an ounce of dark chocolate and as much chocolate milk powder comme tu veux (as you want). It’s great for dipping your daily bread (Wow. Didn’t even try there; let me know if you get it.), and that’s exactly what we did. Despite our natural desire to not move after consuming that much food at one time, we headed for the Métro.

The ride to Sceaux took us about half an hour by RER, and when we got out, I immediately saw it as Noisy-le-Roi, only a bit bigger. The city’s quite charmante but because we’re still in the winter season, it was rather cold and dreary. En route to who-knows-where-we-were-going-or-what-we-were-looking-for, we found the pétanque court (I was really hoping some people would be playing that day), a church (the Church of St. Jean the Baptist), and the Sceaux château. Apparently, we entered the château grounds from the back (ps/ this backyard is amazing!); however, the château was quite small and was actually converted into a museum in the 1930’s-ish era. We walked through the château in perhaps half an hour and particularly after having visited in the Louvre the day prior, we weren’t exactly impressed. We did find perhaps the coolest thing in the whole museum: a toy tree house encased in a glass box. What’s more, Trevor was extremely fascinated by a hanging model lamp hung by a piece of string. It really could have been a rod for all we knew. But seriously, a piece of string that potentially hasn’t moved in perhaps more than half a century? Kinda cool, nê?

Right outside of the museum was an exhibit titled Images et Magies d’Architecture (pretty sure you can figure that one out on your own). This was perhaps my favourite part of Sceaux and it wasn’t even a permanent exhibit. In any case, it killed the most time for us so that was great as well. There were quite a few interesting photos, and I’ll have to upload them to facebook soon so that I can link them to this blog. Here’s an interesting one, though, taken by Trevor: http://trevorkt.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/whatevs/img_0378/. I asked him what the first thing he thought of was when he saw this. He immediately replied to volume meters (music playing); I immediately responded with genetics (DNA results and such). On our way off the château grounds, we came across a cat that Trevor wrote as follows in his blog: « Also, there was a cat at the chateau. Just chillin. A bof cat. »

We were getting hungry at this point and settled for a café called Félibres. I’m pretty sure we only wanted something warm to drink, but as soon as we entered, the waiter spoke in a quick, almost guttural form French that blended all of the words together. Within less than a minute, he showed us to our seats and somehow ordered lunch for us. I was rather surprised with the quality of the meal (for only 10 €), followed by another great, voluminous (is that the word?) chocolate mousse.

So, while we were at the château, I thought that in Paris we usually say « Dude, we’re in Paris ! » or « Pourquoi pas ?! ». Well, we thought we had some wonderful revelation when we came up with saying « Sceaux what ? » in Sceaux, to be said when something doesn’t make sense or seems to go awry. However, it seems that Sceaux got to that long before we ever did and when we visited the Animathèque (a sort of headquarters) for the MJC (Maison des Jeunes Culturelles... or something like that), found a poster that listed Sceaux What as the site for the evening’s reggae concert.

At about 17h10, we thought of seeing a movie in the only movie theatre in Sceaux (Le Trianon), but they only had one screening room and were playing American films for the rest of the night. It seems like there are at least 250 seats in the theatre, so perhaps all of Sceaux shows up for these showings. With that option crossed off, we went back into the centre of the city and did quite a bit of window shopping. Throughout the day, we bought quite a bit of food from the boulangerie-patisserie, and I finally found mangoes (3 for 5 €… YES!). We went into a toy store and would have finally bought 1 000 Borne, but they were out of stock. Thankfully, I was able to buy my French notebooks, as well as some pocket guide French books at a bookstore, and found more chocolate stores than I could have imagined would ever been in Sceaux. The pièce de la résistance of the chocolate excursion was definitely a giant bear made completely of chocolate.

Due to us still needing to wait for about 1,5-hours for the reggae concert, the fact that it was getting quite cold and we were running out of places to visit at night, and the thought that perhaps the entrance fee wouldn’t quite fulfil our expectations of a reggae concert, we decided to head back to Paris. We went home and cooked croque-monsieurs for dinner which definitely got better each round we cooked them, enjoyed our first cheese plate (4 out of the recommended 5, but beuf!), and ended with even more chocolat chaud (i.e., the NLR-MA form hot chocolate).

So much for keeping this one short, too!

Mercredi et Jeudi, 2/5 a Bag of Pasta Goes a Long Way!

The next two days were (more or less) repeats of the first two days. I can't believe it, but I was doing the math one day and with 15 hours of class every week, we really will be completing a whole semester's worth of work in half a semester. A mon avis, that is both exciting and very scary.

My follow-up econ class on Wednesday was great, though it seems like we've dug deeper into basic economics for now, but entirely in French. We also completed a similar activity to Monday's, but had more time to go through it. My follow-up Travaux Pratique course brought both level-2 French students together and I eventually was surprised by having to go up in front of the class and do a practice entretien (interview). I can't remember if I mentioned this already, but my internship interview is this upcoming Monday. Things are beginning to get rather hectic here quite fast! For Odile's course, we had to read an article and a short story. I got through the article just fine (though, it was in English), but the short story was a bit of a challenge. However, we ended up watching the movie (which was based on the short story), so things fell into place quite nicely. The film was in French, but had English subtitles in white which, as Odile mentioned, was probably not the best idea. In any case, I think I knew enough French to understand what was going on. I quite liked it and if you get the chance, you should look it up. In English, it's called Black Girl. As a bit of a preface, following up Wednesday's courses was a meeting with Julie about our internships.

Wednesday was our planned dinner night and I aimed to go rather all out for this one. After my econ class, I went to an open air market, where I bought two much-needed scarves (only 10 €!!!) and some not-so-great cherries (I was a bit baffled as I had aimed to buy mangoes that apparently were imported from Peru). I had wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower to check and see if these old guys Trevor and I had seen the week before were playing pétanque. However, I decided I needed to get a move on prepping for dinner, if I had any chance of finishing on time to get to our meeting with Julie. I still didn't quite get around to explain what bread crumbs are to someone at the supermarché and so I decided to make the bread crumbs myself. I checked the method again on-line and realised what I had done wrong when I tried grating the bread with a grater... it was both stale and not dry enough to be broken up into pieces. So, I decided to toast the bread in the toaster oven, as I began to cook some pasta. Then, I butterflied the chicken breasts and folded ham and Leerdammer cheese into it, coating the folded chicken with the freshly toasted and crumbed breadcrumbs. I didn't quite know at the time whether the toaster oven was in Centigrade or Farenheit, so I chose to set it to 260 degrees. As it was cooking, I realised the toaster oven was in Centigrade (donc, I cooked the chicken at about 500 degrees Farenheit!). It was all good, as I had cooked it in a heavy, ceramic dish. In the end, I cooked the chicken for about 40 minutes, and the pasta for about 30 minutes, if not more. Surprisingly, it wasn't completely non-aldente, but it was definitely melt-in-your-mouth pasta. With the chicken and pasta all done, I had to rush off to the internship meeting. However, when I was on the second Métro stop, I wasn't too confident that I had shut off the stove and so had to therefore rush back upstairs to check up on it. Luckily, it hadn't been left on, but I was definitely going to run late to the meeting. Thankfully, I didn't miss much nor was I quite late; I was honestly quite relieved that others, including one of the professors, got in after I did. The meeting was yet another orientation session to the internship, particularly in preparation for our interviews. At one point, Julie kind of announced to everyone that my internship company will be paying for my lunch. (How cool is that deal?!) Speaking of food, I was getting rather hungry, so Trevor and I split from the group and made our way back home.

I had to complete some finishing touches to the dinner. After heating up the sauce and mixing it with the pasta, I poured the lot over the chicken, sprinkled quite a bit of mozarella on top and melted it all together, baking it until the cheese melted. While that was going, I had sweetened carrots boiling away. I was able to time everything together and eventually got the courses out on time. Now, I think I'm ready for my turn on "Hell's Kitchen" or something. In any case, I also made a first course of toasted bread, slices with a different cheese on it, and following that, we dug into the pasta and chicken... twice. Following that course, we had our cheese and cherries, and then somehow made room for cookies and dark chocolate covered marshmallows for dessert. OMG, was it délicieux! Perhaps unsurprisingly, we had quite a bit of pasta left over, and decided to save it for our next meal.

Thursday evening after classes, Trevor and Camille were off on take two of their movie theatre hunting adventure. They invited me to come along and we eventually found the theatre they were looking for. We briefly stopped in at a boulangerie patisserie that was nearby the theatre and then made our way back for the film. We thought it was going to be only in French, but it turned out to be in both Ukranian and German, with French subtitles. That aspect in it of itself was an academic and mindblowing challenge to get through. After the movie (which Camille had to leave early in order to make it to her host family dinner in time), Trevor and I made our way back to the house and realised that everything was pretty much closed. As we had gotten there straight from school, we hadn't eaten any dinner and thus took the opportunity to go on a food hunt. We chose to check out the Champs-Elysées, figuring it'd probably be the area that was still up around 22h00. Thankfully, we figured correctly and happened upon a great boulangerie shop place, and which was quite cheap (given the otherwise expensive nature of the CE). I bought a Caesar baguette with Orangina and a pain au chocolat for less than 7€. We then hopped back on the Métro and got back to Argentine. When we got back, I got a rather brilliant idea of eating the leftovers from Wednesday night and (I think) outdid myself again. I took the leftover pasta, and topped it off with the rest of the mozarella (that's most likely what made it taste great) and baked the lot while we ate our meal from the boulangerie shop place. When the pasta came out, the cheese had melted perfectly and had a bit of a baked crust to it. We surprised ourselves and finished the pasta; can you believe it...? The pasta, in total, was only 2/5 of the bag of pasta I bought. I have the feeling pasta in various forms will be quite the staple for us. To end off the meal, we had our usual cheese course and then got to our dessert (the pain au chocolat). Fortunately, Trevor hadn't yet tried chocolat chaud the way I had it in Noisy-le-Roi (which perhaps one reason why he responded with Pourquoi pas? to trying it), so I heated up some milk, added an ounce of dark chocolate and mixed the lot together with chocolate milk powder. Combined with the pain au chocolat, it was a great way to end yet another four-course meal.

Let's Play Catch-Up! (Part III)

To continue with the brief points of the day, our first weekend flew by and was definitely action-packed:

SATURDAY
Only two things were listed on our schedule: a voyage to an assigned part of Paris and a comedy show. My group was assigned Le Marais. It’s a pretty eclectic part of this wonderful city, marked in general terms as the home to gay, Chinese, and Jewish communities. We finished our self-guided tour of the area and, having finished early, we took a break from the cold and found a café in close proximity to the comedy site. En route to the meeting site, we came across two demonstrations in the streets. At the Comédie République, we saw a comédie française about the cross-cultural clash and rent between a French Catholic woman and a French Muslim man. It was completely in French and after a long time walking around Paris in the cold, it was a bit difficult to pay attention or to just even understand the play completely. Afterwards, Trevor and I had our first prepared meal that ended up only being a pseudo-dinner (which consisted of a baguette, some cheese (of which Trevor found emmental to be his new favourite), and red wine), as a result of a rendez-vous with Gerald, Jill, and Sam. With little difficulty, Trevor and I made it to our meeting place with them; Jill spoke with a woman at a jazz club (Chez Papa), who told us to come back later that evening, as they were still serving dinner. Having about 2,5 hours to get through before we could get back to Chez Papa, the five of us were basically lassoed into a restaurant. After eating another croque monsieur, alongside my carafe of water, I ended the dinner with a very rich and dark chocolate mousse. As I ate it, I had to keep pushing myself to finish it and eventually triumphed. It was that chocolate-y. Following dinner, we returned to Chez Papa, with Trevor being extremely giddy, particularly through the first part of our stay there. Gerald, Jill, and Sam got a bottle of rosé, while Trevor and I had a 2005 red of some kind, alongside a cheese plate and baguette. The music was amazing and Trevor and I especially were enthralled by "the guy with the dreads." During the break, our waiter moved us closer to the jazz trio and we ended our stay there perfectly satisfied with the evening. As I type, Trevor is still looking for his perfect jazz trio of stand-up bass, drums, and clarinet.

SUNDAY
I joined Christine and Elisabeth in their walk over to the church for Mass. The church pamphlets list the names of two saints, but I think the chapel we had the service in was devoted to Saint Thérèse of the Infant Jesus. Christine dropped of Elisabeth with the other Sunday school children in another part of the church, and soon joined me. I couldn’t quite understand all of the scripture readings, but was able to get through most of the priest’s homily with little difficulty. I was able to pray the Notre Père with everyone, but soon realised that I haven’t committed the Creed to memory just yet. Afterwards, Trevor and I ate dinner with Antoine, Christine, Elisabeth and Stanislas. Christine told us that she was up until about 3 or 4am preparing our lunch. She made pintade, a cooked guinea fowl in an amazing sauce, as well as a galette de rois. Literally, a galette de rois would be translated as a kings’ cake. On the Epiphany (La Fête des Rois which, this year, was on the 7th of January), a little bean (la fève, usually in the shape of a shepherd) is cooked within the cake. The cooked version is then cut into slices and (usually) the youngest child goes under the table and randomly calls out people’s names to whom a slice of the cake is delivered. Whomever has the fève is crowned king or queen. As Christine made the cake, she said that she put two fèves inside. Stanislas got the first one, while I got the second. Stanislas chose Elisabeth as his queen and, as I couldn’t possibly let Trevor escape from the experience, made him court jester (though, I don’t know if I ever told him that) and said he had to wear a crown, too. At the end of the meal, Elisabeth gave me a drawing for her skiing in the mountains.

Then, I FINALLY got to see my host family from Noisy-le-Roi! Just on time, Marie-Léone and Paul drove up in front of the building; for some reason or another, I didn’t quite seem to recognise them at first, but as soon as I got in the car with them, it was as if I had never really left (one difference being that Paul’s voice has definitely gotten deeper). At the house, I gave them some gifts from the States (Marie-Léone loved the Target bags), and soon found out that Paul received a Mac and basically converted the rest of the family to it. (Errghh…) It’s quite brilliant, though, for the work he does with music. After I pretty much had enough of Paul’s showing off of what his computer can do, we went downstairs and had some wonderful hot chocolate. I took mine with some baguette, just as I had done about two and a half years ago in that very kitchen. Wow, time certainly has flown by! Following this wonderful return to memory lane, Marie-Léone brought me to a few of the host families that hosted students when my seminar class stayed in Noisy-le-Roi. To my pleasant surprise, they all remembered me, especially my faux hawk. For some reason or another, they speak much quicker French there than in Paris; yet, I understood them a bit more easily and was quite able to carry on a conversation with them. Following a couple exchanges (of which Marie-Léone pointed out that telling the same stories, particularly of my time in South Africa, was giving me good practice), we returned back to the house where I had dinner with Marie-Léone, Paul and France (who has also grown up since I last saw her). It was then time to leave and after being reminded and encouraged to come back to visit for a longer period of time, made my way back to Paris. En route to the building, I got a text from Trevor saying that he was at yet another jazz club. I soon made my way to a jazz club called Sunrise Sunside. It was a bit more cramped than Chez Papa, but it definitely felt more like a jazz club. Apparently, Trevor, Jill, and Sam had been there all day, and were back for the jam session. People from the audience joined in and people swapped places every now and again. It was rather hectic but great to see how everyone gelled together once they started playing.