The Mystery Fowl

T’was the night before Christmas, and all through the flat,

Three creatures were giggling and chewing the fat.

I looked in our oven, hot steam pouring out,

“Still don’t know what it is,” I said in a shout.

“Be it chicken or goose or a fancy French bird

As long as it doesn’t come out tasting like turd!”

In the shop that morning, birds were piled together.

Hard to tell bird from bird, or feather from feather

The labels, no help, all said the same things

“Volaille,” or “fowl,” or “I dunno; it’s got wings.”

By feast time, all agreed: it was of no matter.

All that we wanted was food on a platter.

Veggies and taters and a bird we all chewed,

With grins on our faces, we devoured our food.

The coup de grace came next, our dear dinner ended

A pumpkin pie so scrumptious, I’ll call it splendid.

Lifting a glass of impromptu punch,

“Merry Christmas, you guys, I love you a bunch.”

And so ends the story, the odd bird I leave,

To live on in infamy on the best Christmas Eve.

Eating Rich Foods

I've been feeling a bit inadequate recently. I think Paris is looking down on my Christmas. Christmas to me is so humble, so home-made and so warm. It means cookies and cheap decorations. It means potatoes and roast beast.
Paris has other plans.

Salmon
Lobster
Caviar
Foie Gras
Cheeses
Exotic Fruits
Buche de Noel

"So, you basically eat everything that's expensive?" I asked a class of middle schoolers. They heartily agreed, as if eating cheaper foods would cheapen the character of the holiday itself.

Well, fine, France. Sarah, Jordan and I are going to eat chicken, pumpkin pie and forget the world outside where they're busy eating caviar and foie gras.

Snow stroll

Sarah and I were out for a walk one day, and just WHO do you think we saw?!

I don't know either.
But how great is it that we caught the filming of a music video?

Way to take advantage of a beautiful snowfall.

Jess scones

Thanks, Jessica, for the scone recipe. I finally made it past snowy Sunday morning!

It took a while to figure out that the French keep their baking soda in tiny packets instead of a can.

Note to anyone who wants to know:
One packet of baking soda = 1 tbsp

Awwww...

Voici les valentines en forme de potatoes. Qu'elles sont mignons.*

* Look at the wittle bitty potato valentines. They're so cute.

Dancing like a foo'

It was 6:00 am, and we were on our way home. I could feel my muscles going lax in rebellion, and my contacts were jumping out of my dry eye sockets. And I was so happy.

The evening started when Sarah and I rang the wrong doorbell. Inside the wrong apartment in the wrong building, two quite handsome young gentlemen helped us find the party we were looking for. Did I mention it was a costume party?

It was. To get into the party later that night, you had to be wearing an American stereotype! So, at Mary-Lou's birthday and pre-dance party, I made the acquaintance of many thugs, cheerleaders, american flags, a pregnant teen, and some people even wore a painted box-- a locker. There were delicious, savory tartes, some Brittany Spears booty-shakin', and a little boozin'.

We ate, drank, made merry, sang happy birthday and filed out to the metro on our way to the party. We were the obnoxious bunch of ass holes talking loudly and, hopefully, spreading some joy. Right. Oh well, when you're an ass on the metro, you'll probably neeeever see those people again. They're probably pretty glad for it.

Take a good hard look. The party was on a boat, mother****er.




There it was, a boat on the Seine, ready to party.
It was your average dance party with a little less self-conscious dancing than you'd see at American parties. They were there to have a good time with friends, not just impress everyone there.

Another difference caught my attention. At home, college students want to drink hard, fast, get drunk and go sleep it off. They can't do that here. If a party starts at midnight and the last metro leaves at 1:00 am, then of course you simply wait for the first metro to arrive at 5:00 am. Duh. Can anyone drink that hard until 5 am? Not without throwing up on the boat. So, here they like to pace it out. It was a refreshing take on partying, more fun in mah humble opinion.

So, at 5:00 am, the DJs turned on more low lights, played some Justice, and ushered us out into the freezing night air. There was only one drunk girl throwing up on the stairs, one broken shoe, and lots of sore bodies happily stumbling toward the closest metro.

Staring

She was screaming in foaming French. She had a phone in her right hand, hovering over her ear, and the other was waving and pointing frantically at a building. Her eyes were slits staring at some man with his tail tucked between his legs. Seems like he forgot something important, something very important.

Normally I would awkwardly choose another route around the incident with my head down and my mouth wincing a little at the harsh words. But as it happens, I’m in Paris. I was one of about five people who had stopped in their tracks to stare at the scene playing outside the bakery.

She finished, calmed down a little, and we all went about our business. Exeunt.

Coming from a country where personal freedom goes so far as to say firearms are a right, I think of personal space as just that: personal!

However, being in a country where there’s practically a dress code everywhere you go, everything that is in the public eye is just that: public!

One consequence is, apparently, the right to stare at anything.

In Paris, men are allowed to stare at women, women stare at fat people, and I stare at the man on the metro picking his nose with TWO fingers. Two.

At first, I was unsettled by this glaring (pun!) social allowance. “Who is staring at me? What if someone doesn’t want to be stared at?” I worried. It hasn’t taken long for me to get past those things. It’s been less than a month, and I already

a) don’t care who sees me

b) know others expect to be seen if in public

After some consideration, it became obvious: staring is a necessity. What are you supposed to do with your eyes and mind while on a long metro ride? What about sipping a terrible coffee at a café? Easy, you stare at those around and those passing. You take note, you observe and eventually these observations weave their way into your life. This is simply part of the intimate feeling of Paris. It is not the hustle and bustle of New York or the anonymity of Vegas.

You aren’t alone in Paris; you’re with millions of Parisians!

PS—This street performer was taking full advantage of the Parisian staring problem. Check out the kid in the Levi shirt. That’s staring.

While his colleague painted his almost bare body in the French Republic colors bleu blanc et rouge, he spoke eloquently of his Algerian heritage and his longing for all French to be seen as French.

“We don’t need to wear our colors or get tattoos,” he held, “We are French, and our pride shows through our love for La France.”

Gallic Dress Code

Every song of Paris is about her beauty. Every tourist talks about perfection in Parisian buildings, dogs and women. Every ex-pat turned Parisian has a story of suddenly being embarrassed at their own sloppiness in public. Before they arrived, sweatpants would have been a fine fashion choice, they sigh, eventually succumbing to the mandated splendor of Paris.

It’s more than scoffing at pjs in public, and it’s more than just a point of self-pride to look your best when you’re out. It feels like a common courtesy. If you aren’t looking your best, others will still see you. Even if no one is staring at you, it’s still your duty to dress the part of a Parisian. Paris is a stage, and the show is always on.

I’d never before considered sloppy dressing a guilty pleasure to be enjoyed, it was simply a personal right to be exercised. Losing that personal freedom isn’t all bad. I’ll now be relishing all the time I spend in my Spiderman t-shirt and ripped pj pants while lounging in the privacy of my own Parisian flat.

Taking my sweet-ass time.

Starting off living in Paris is going to be tough.
For example, Sarah (colocataire et amie) and I spent almost 20 minutes walking around beautiful streets looking for a restaurant. Took. For. ever.

Once we were at le Twickham, I took the liberty of ordering, not one, but two shelled menu items. Les escargots were my gastropodial entrée and mussels were my mouthwatering meal.

Eating escargots is a little like going to the dentist. You see the tools about to be used in some mysterious way, and you pray it won't hurt. One is first presented with a pair of alien eyelash curlers and a two pronged fork made for a Lilliputian. Finally a plate of garden snails with butter boiling inside their poor shells gets placed before you.

Forty minutes later, I had eaten the insides of 4/6 delicious escargots. Oui, I gave up. However, somewhere around the second snail's release, I remembered it was a luxury to take so long to eat. I could spend my time and money simply enjoying one solid meal. It was liberating to feel like no matter how long I took to pry out the little bastards, no one was waiting for my table, the waitress didn't need to clear us out, and I could fiddle with my tiny fork for however long I needed!

The mussels, however, were not time consuming (eating pun intended) due to their shelled existence but due to the sheer poundage of the dish! After my snail defeat, I was presented with a mountain of wine sauce steamed shells! The server placed a dish next to our table for my discarded shells and left assuming I knew what I was doing. You know what happens when you assume, right? I eat mussels like an American, that's what.

I spent the next hour plus of our lovely meal trying so hard to be delicate about scraping the meaty bit out of the shell with a fork. Halfway through, a kind gentleman server delicately motioned toward my giant spoon, seeming to indicate I use it instead. I switched, bien sûr, and continued into the night.

It was only with our check that I officially asked and was 'orrified to find out that I had, still done it wrong! After many gestures and "you know, like zis," he finally just went to go GET two mussels to demonstrate the correct measures.
Apparently, one uses the spoon to eat the first mussel. Then, using the empty first mussel shell, pinch out the insides of the following mussels and slip them into your waiting mouth.
Mais-oui-But-of-COURSE. Le sigh.

It will be a while before I order any more shelled delicacies; I'll at least need a nap from the last one.

bis

Ignoring tourism

I saw the Eiffel Tower today. It was okay.

Two days ago, I arrived in France to start a teaching job at a middle school sooner than I can believe. The whole trip is and always will be a big ordeal. Catching planes, lugging suitcases (meant for a year-- that's why they're huge! I swear!). Winding up in Paris is a great reward for all of that hard work and dripping cash.
It's still there, it's still huge and visually appealing. No one doesn't like looking at angles organized into something hundreds of times taller than their own person. We humans tend to like that.

As a traveler and a woman of the world, I have the full right to ignore Parisian monuments. I've seen them a few times, they'll be there when friends visit from out of town and are DYING to go see the famous features. I claimed this right today by eating a sandwich while admiring the tower, tossing the wrapper (in the bin, I ain't no litter bug), and walking away.

It's not going anywhere, and neither am I.

Chicken Grease is probably good for your skin.

Roasting a chicken may seem like waste of TV time and lots of effort that could be better used scratching one's bum, but I'd like to make a case for chicken roasting and simple cooking in general.

Exhibit A: It's delicious and I get to eat it. Case closed. I think that's sufficient evidence to convince any jury.

Why does it feel like I need to shout it from a mountain top? "I love my own cooking!" It's a little talked about silver lining every chef gets to take advantage of. If you have to be the one cooking dinner, then damn if it isn't going to taste exactly the way you want it to.

As the media tell me, there are two basic different camps on the idea of cooking:

"How can I get around it?" This demographic wants desperately to have food soon, with little effort and it seems they don't mind if it's a bit icky.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you-- RamennoodlesCannedspaghettiTacobellMcdonalds [deep breath] LeancuisineHungrymanApplebeesandlet'snotforgetLuby's.

Don't get me wrong! There are days when I don't feel like doing any cooking past a pop tart, and I sincerely sympathize with anyone who is burnt-out (cooking pun totally intended) on cooking, especially if there are picky children involved. Or babies. Or if you work a lot. Or if you play a lot. In other words, this is a very shifty group. We're all in this mood now and then to not cook or simply to eat trashy food. I always feel like having to defend myself when I want these foods, especially to the folks who fall in the next group.

"How sloooooowly can I savor it?" This is the demographic that yearns to be the one in the yogurt add relishing every spoonful of delicious bacteria cream. Even more so, they dream of one day owning an Italian villa with goats in the yard so they can make their own bacteria cream. They consider cooking for an entire day a steadfast virtue, brag on their fresh herbs, kvetch over the perfect ingredients. Gadgets upon gadgets are marketed to this lot. Do you really need a lime squeezer? Won't it's bastard cousin squeezer for lemons do just fine? They talk about cooking, dream about cooking, read books, magazines, and, yes, blogs centered around cooking as a universe. It's the act of cooking, in this case, that is more important than both convenience and the outcome of the food. It does frequently yield tasty foods, and it's always good to take time doing anything you love -- I'll give it that.

I'd like to propose a third, more moderate group, that could use some TV time and gadgets, thankyouverymuch.

"I like eating my own food dammit"

We shall be like a new people on the earth, those who cook for the pleasure of eating. We shall appreciate that others want to make boysenberry mint surprise sorbet with bits of certified organic ambrosia carmelized bits, but we will also have the sense to say "to hell with it" when the recipe says to stir by hand for 3 1/2 hours! We can also be hearty enough to resist the temptations slung at us by fast or frozen foods. Instead, we will take the foods we like, prepare them in ways that allow us lives outside the kitchen, and be proud and satiated by what we have wraught!

I'm pumped.

And I have leftovers for tonight.