Christmas à la française
by shoshanna
Today's menu at Libby's host family's house (lunch served from 12-4:30 pm):
Crispy pastry shells filled with mussels and Roquefort cheese (strong, blue, sheep), respectively, champagne
Live oysters
Homemade foie gras (duck liver), toast, fig and onion jams, sweet white wine
Coq (demasculated rooster), wild mushrooms, chestnuts, celery puree, Bordeaux
Solid and runny goat cheeses, Roquefort, bread, salad, Borgogne
Buches de Noël (log-shaped roll cakes): one chocolate cakey, one raspberry moussey with red currants and white chocolate
Coffee
Déjeuner de Noël
Entremets (?) de moules et de Roquefort, champagne
Huitres vivantes
Foie gras à la maison, pains grillés, confitures d'oignon et de figue, vin blanc
Coq, champignons sauvages, marrons, purée de celeri, Bordeaux
Chèvres fondant et ordinaire, Roquefort, pain, salade, Borgogne
Buches de Noël au chocolat et au mousse de framboise
Café
Posted on December 25, 2005 | Comments (1)
My Home Town
by shoshanna
Saw this on the Yahoo front page. Some things never change.
Posted on December 24, 2005 | Comments (0)
France and/or this blog entry: Not convenient for vegans
by shoshanna
I can't afford to go out, so instead I made the party come to me. Stergios the Greek and Eva the American came to the ole' dorm and I whipped up an "it's all that was left in the house" specialty: garbanzo beans and canned shrimp with pepper, garlic, and tomato sauce over rice. Amazingly enough, it turned out not that bad, unlike the fish at the cafeteria today, which seemed much closer to fin than filet. Stergios and Eva both being shameless francophiles, they both coincidentally brought red wine and chocolate - hey, who's complaining? (You would think that you would have to be a francophile just to be here... but no! You would think differently after seeing the English kids who absolutely refuse to speak French!) Am now totally cracked out thanks to said chocolate. There was store-brand "onctuex" caramel milk chocolate, which kicked Caramello's butt a thousand times over, and Lindt orange-almond dark chocolate, with little bits of orange and of almond, which rendered us dumb of happiness. Stergios also introduced us to mousse de canard, basically duck frosting with a layer of pork fat on top. YUM!! It's funny because you can also get the inverse, pork products flavored with duck fat. Or for that manner, just about anything flavored with duck fat. Oh, he also brought shredded carrots and celery, which was nice of him but for me seemed unnecessary, since I'd already had a vegetable at lunch.
WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE SHREDDED CARROTS?
In the USA, or at least in Portland, or at least between Kevin and I, "shredded carrots" is a sort of updated version of "crunchy granola" and basically refers to the kind of sandwiches you get at Whole Foods or People's and the people who eat them. Here in France, "shredded carrots" is one of very few opportunities for "fresh vegetables." It is a salad all by itself, which may or may not be gussied up with lemon juice, mustard vinaigrette, raisins, and/or corn kernels. It is often paired with something with the exact same shape and consistency but that is ghostly white. I learned that it was something called "celeri," which confused me because it seemed nothing like celery. I later realized that when the French talk about celery, half the time they mean the giant, round, crazy-looking root of the plant, which they shred like carrots and dress with mayonnaise. It's not as scary once you know where it comes from. The worst part about the salads here is that most of the time I have no idea what they are or if they even come from vegetables. The and/or clause in the cafeteria kind of freaks me the heck out. As in, "volaille": chicken, turkey, and/or duck. "Merguez": sausage of lamb and/or beef. Etc. Well, whatever, it usually does the job and/or tastes pretty good regardless, not counting today's fin of whale.
Posted on December 23, 2005 | Comments (1)
Vacation in a College Town/Les Vacances dans une ville universitaire
by shoshanna
I just remembered that a few months ago I was all jazzed on the idea of doing a bilingual blog. Now it's the last thing I want to do because I have to try to express myself in French all the time and it's frustrating, and when I update my blog I want to relax and not work too hard. Being here, I always have to work in that department - I end up using a dictionary just to write a text message. On the other hand, as soon as I don't speak or write in French for two hours, it becomes even more difficult, to say nothing of what will happen when I return to the States. In any case, now that I'm on vacation the idea of writing in French isn't too horrible so I guess I'll try.
I'm having bank issues so I have no cash to speak of right now (it's getting taken care of, don't worry Mom!), plus it's too freakin' cold to go outside, and anyway all of my friends have either left on vacation or gone back to the States permanently, so I'm basically stuck in my dorm for the time being. The residence is deserted save for a few stragglers, among whom are naturally my noisy, chatty, incestuous, highly irritating neighbors, who are apparently too attached to eachother to be able to bear the thought of parting ways for a couple weeks to see their families. Me, as soon as my money gets worked out, I am out of here on the first train to Paris. Tomorrow I might go on a bike ride with Mathilde if it isn't too cold, and maybe to the Mediathèque with Stergios the Greek to chip away at a mountain of books I was supposed to read before the break but didn't. Sometimes life is just kind of slow like that. Even in France.
Je viens de me souvenir que j'ai voulu écrire un blog bilingue il y a quelques mois. Maintenant cette idée ne m'intéresse pas beaucoup parce que je dois toujours essayer à m'exprimer en français et c'est frustrant, et quand je veux écrire mon blog je veux me décontracter et pas trop travailler. Etre ici, je travaille toujours: je me serve du dictionnaire même pour écrire un texte. Mais de l'autre côté, dès que je n'ai pas écrit ou parlé en français pendant 2 heures, ça devient difficile. De rien dire de ce qui va se passer quand je retournerai aux E-U. En tout cas, maintenant que je suis en vacances l'idée d'écrire en français ne me gêne pas trop donc je me débrouillerai.
J'ai un problème avec la banque donc je n'ai pas du tout d'argent pour le moment, et de plus il fait trop froid pour aller au-dehors, et d'ailleurs tous mes amis sont partis, alors je suis restée dans la résidence toute la journée. Apparemment presque tout Poitiers est parti en vacances sauf mes voisins qui sont bruyants, bavardants et vachement énervants. Génial. Demain je ferai un promenade à vélo avec Mathilde s'il ne fait pas trop froid, et peut-être j'irai à la Médiathèque avec Stergios le grecque pour commencer à rattraper le gros retard. Mince alors, j'ai si beaucoup de lecture à faire.
Parfois la vie c'est comme ça, c'est lente. Même en France.
Posted on December 19, 2005 | Comments (0)
The cold fingers of December
by shoshanna
Woo! I am on vacation. Except, I really wouldn't mind another few weeks of intensive French classes, to tell you the truth. I hit my stride about three-quarters into the semester, and now all I want to do is study and read instead of traveling to stupid Paris. No, just kidding, I am excited to travel again.
I rode my bike to Centre Ville this afternoon to meet up with Mathilde, a friend from the college. She kind of looks like my friend Christian except female and French: tall and skinny with long, poofy, crazy hair and odd style. But while Christian wears paint-splattered jeans and cute kitten teeshirts, Mathilde dresses crazy French kid style: today she was wearing weird puffy clown pants, a big red coat, and a floppy pompom hat, and looked like some sort of old-fashioned European village doll you might find at a Waldorf school. OK, that probably made no sense to anybody but me, but whatever.
We wandered through the chaotic swarms of children with warm sugary treats and their respective shopping bag-laden parents in the town center. The carousel was playing a disco version of "Viens boire un petit coup à la maison." Our plans for an afternoon bike ride degenerated into 10 minutes of picking our way through crowded sidewalks of one-way streets followed by a 30-second descent down the hill that reminds me of San Francisco, ending in a tiny corner of a park on the edge of the hill overlooking the other side of the city.
Poitiers is like Portland, with two facing slopes rising out of a river, except much smaller. Sitting on the wall that hemmed in the park, we could see somebody's futon in the house across the street, my residence on the hill across the river, and two little white clouds which may or may not have risen from our vicinity's nuclear plant. We talked about asbestos and maybe going to Nantes in January. When we parted ways the sun went down and it felt like the temperature dropped 10 degrees in as many minutes. Too cold to bike in 99 cent magic stretch gloves, even with an insulating layer of dried snot. Crap, it was so cold. I walked stiffly back to the dorm and vowed to never leave the house again.
Posted on December 18, 2005 | Comments (0)
New blog alert!
by shoshanna
My favorite kind of science (narwhals and weird fish) plus my favorite kind of writing (conversational magazine journalism meets academic exposition) equals Universe, "The Blog of Everything." This is what might happen if Slashdot, JSTOR, and Cosmopolitan got together and had a little blog baby. It's pretty much blowing my mind, I'm not gonna lie. Oh and PS, since it is on Urbanhonking.com, it has sweet design. I am so loving the internet right now.
Posted on December 16, 2005 | Comments (1)
Oral exams: Not so bad after all
by shoshanna
Going by the results of the practice exam today, I am probably going to do quite well on my oral expression final. That is hella reassuring, and surprising, since speaking has never been my strong point, although it is kind of cheating because we have 15 minutes to prepare notes, which we can then use during the exam. Still though, it's nice to know I can come up with a coherent, structured argument on a random subject in 15 minutes. And if I can do it in French, I should be able to do it in English as well. Hooray for skills! Maybe I will get a job someday after all!
Something that is very good: vin chaud, or hot wine. It is basically like mulled wine in the States, except that it is delicious. It makes you feel all warm and happy.
Something that is very bad: naming a perfume "Very Irresistable." It seems like you're adding a qualifier to a superlative, and that's just wrong. Plus, I smelled it in a magazine, and it was not irresistable.
Posted on December 16, 2005 | Comments (0)
Christmas
by shoshanna
My grocery haul today consisted of farmer (i.e. "artisan") yoghurt, cheese, breakfast biscuits, some more cheese, and some fountain pen cartridges. I felt "très française." It is going to be weird to return to the US and find that goat cheese is expensive, hard to find, and tastes like dish sponge. Good thing there will be Whole Foods and its fantastic cheese department to salve the pain.
I went Christmas shopping today. It was funny. I was a walking cliché with hands full of shopping bags and gingerbread cookies. Being an American Jew gives you a weird relationship with Christmas. When I was a kid I thought it was cool that I got to celebrate Chanukkah AND Christmas because my kinda-stepdad celebrated Christmas. Then when I got older I didn't want to celebrate Christmas because I equated it with cultural assimilation and resented having other people impose their religion on me. Plus, it was great to be exempt from all the shopping anxiety and holiday depression stuff. But I secretly kind of liked Christmas because, you know, it's just kind of festive and attractive and smells good. I think my mom felt the same way because she would sometimes make a roast chicken or we would decorate cookies and drink kalhua and milk, instead of being good Jews and going out for Chinese food and a movie. Now I have a non-Jewish boyfriend and we celebrate Christmas, no waffling. I am free to enjoy the fruitcake and twinkly lights. I am subjected to the horror of Christmas shopping.
In France, apparently everyone celebrates Christmas no matter what their religion is, because it's a secular country and it's a secular holiday. Simple. However, just being in France doesn't mean you can escape from endless repetitions of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree."
Posted on December 12, 2005 | Comments (0)