*This blog article was inspired by a link that Fred sent me regarding a meteorological phenomenon he had explained to me a few weeks ago when it was happening in Besançon. Since then the weather has switched to more of early summer weather (cool in the morning, but sunny and quite warm in the afternoon, clouds but not too much wind), but I thought the seasonal occurrence and its name was worth sharing. So here goes:
Les giboulées de mars
Here's the original article from the site Fred sent me (the title of the site: Understanding the Weather):
Les giboulées (souvent dites " de mars ") sont liées au passage de l'hiver au printemps. Ces brèves et brusques averses sont accompagnées par du vent, des fortes pluies, de la neige, de la grêle, du grésil ou encore de la neige fondante. Elles entraînent généralement un brusque refroidissement à leur passage. Au contraire, lors d'une éclaircie entre deux giboulées, le soleil donne l'impression d'un temps agréable et doux.
My translation for you:
The giboulées (often called "the giboulées of March") are associated with the transition from winter to spring. These sudden and brief showers are often accompanied by wind, strong rains, snow, mild or intense hail, and wet snow. During these storms, the temperature often drops suddenly and significantly. But as soon as the storm clears, the sun usually comes out and the weather becomes agreeable again, just as quickly as the storm arrived.
I am here to testify that this phenomenon definitely happens. When I was waiting to participate in a tour of the synagogue in Besançon I was suddenly pummeled with eraser-sized hail balls. I wasn't even wearing my winter coat because the weather was so pleasant when I left my apartment that morning! The good part though is that they don't last very long, and as soon as the storm stops the sun comes out, the temperature rises and it's hard to believe it even happened at all.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Life Lessons from a Walnut
Before the comments start flying, I would like to state that there was no wine consumption associated with the writing of this article... although there may have been some absinthe involved... Just kidding! I've never actually had absinthe, although I am somewhat tempted to try the absinthe-flavored cancoillotte that they sell in one of the fromageries in the centre ville, just because it sounds so absurd.
Anyway, this post is about walnuts, specifically, the walnuts I cracked this past weekend when I was making the walnut oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for Steph's birthday. I received the walnuts from the very nice couple who own the antiques shop near my host family's moulin. Are you tracking? Anyway, when we ate lunch there a few weekends ago, Sophie commented on the large selection of walnuts they had drying outside of one of the barns. They generously offered us a hefty bag, which Noëlle proceeded to split between Sophie and me. Isabella, the wife, told us that at the time they had been picked a little early and thus now that they were dry weren't quite as good as they could be. I begged to differ though, I thought they were delicious!
But the part that really amazed me: I could crack them open with my bare hands! It started to hurt after a dozen, so I switched to using a nutcracker, but then only needed the slightest amount of pressure to split the shells. And the nuts came out whole, not in tiny shards! My only other memories of cracking walnuts are from my early childhood, take place at one of my grandmothers' houses (probably Christmastime), and usually involved my father's assistance. I realize now, that they must have been under-ripe, which is why the shells were so tough and the nut inside disintegrated under the pressure of the nutcracker. Cracking the nuts always seemed so silly and fruitless to me, but after attempting with walnuts of the proper age, the process was enjoyable and quite productive. Although, I did note how long it took to yield the equivalent of two cups of chopped walnuts. Having to crack each nut open individually, even under optimal conditions, made me think about how I was going to use them.
So where's the life lesson? I think it's always a good thing to have a better understanding of "how the world works." I'm not talking about free lunches or birds and bees, but how exactly we as humans interact with the world around us. Take food, for example. I am pretty far removed from the process of cultivating, harvesting, or butchering the food I consume. I consider myself relatively healthy because I try to eat lots of fresh produce and minimize the presence of packaged or preserved foods in my diet. But do I buy walnuts pre-shelled, of course? And this means that for me, eating them is just as easy as cutting open a plastic bag. Walnuts, and other nuts, are relatively calorie-dense foods. One cup (117g) of chopped walnuts represents 765 calories and 117% of your daily fat allowance! I'm actually a bit ashamed as I type this, because I'm sure that, on more than one occasion, I've consumed that equivalent in granola in one sitting. But the point being, you're less likely to eat one cup of walnuts in one sitting if you have to crack open each individual shell first. Does this mean I'm giving up civilization and living in the woods with only a set of tools? Of course not. But my experience reminded me of why, in the past, consuming very calorie-dense foods wasn't as easy as it is today.
But even this isn't the point of my post. The part of this experience which really struck me was how much easier it was to crack the walnuts when they were "ripe." My previous experiences with them as cocktail fare were so removed from the original setting of the food that I didn't realize it should have been easier to open them. I just thought walnuts were like that! Here's to learning more about the world around me, in a very concrete way.
Such a Shame
Well I guess things can't be sunshine and daisies all the time, and Tuesday morning was a rude reminder of that. At some point during the night on Monday, Ecole Champagne, the elementary school where I do most of my teaching, was broken into and vandalized. The police believe there were four teenagers involved, although only two of them have been apprehended (they were caught trying to break into a nearby library later that night). They broke a window to get into the school cafeteria and proceeded to break all of the plates and bowls, then emptied the refrigerators and threw them on the ground. They ransacked three of the nearby classrooms (upended chairs and tables, in general just made a mess) and stole three computers from one of them. But they really went to town in the teachers' lounge, spraying ink all over the floor and walls and pulling down the teachers' mailboxes with their papers inside (see picture from local newspaper on the right). I didn't have to go into school until 1:30pm on Tuesday, because my morning class was canceled, and when I arrived there was a cleaning crew stll trying to remove the ink from the teachers' lounge. It took pretty much the whole day, but classes were able to function normally and even the lunch service in the cafeteria took place as usual.
There was another sober moment in the day as well: at 11am all of the schools in the country had a moment of silence in honor of the 3 Jewish children and their teacher who were gunned down in Toulouse on Monday. So in all it's been sort of a serious week. But the minor dammage inflicted upon École Champagne was nothing compared to the atrocity which took place in Toulouse, and two days later all that remains of the hoodlum activity are some ink stains on the floor and an empty space where the 3 computers once sat.
UPDATE: The three computers were recovered and are currently being cleaned. They should be back in the classroom soon!
Monday, March 19, 2012
A Perfectly Blissful Weekend (and Macarons)
This past weekend was exactly the kind of relaxing, peaceful and thoroughly enjoyable weekend about which Taylor Swift would write some kind of cheesy, sappy song. Luckily for you, I'm no good at singing or writing lyrics, so I'm going to do this blog entry instead.
The fun started Friday afternoon, with my weekly riding lesson. Friday's was a continuation of the gloriously summer-like weather we had been enjoying all week, and my spirits were further boosted when I discovered we would be doing obstacle (jumping) rather than dressage. I rode Quadrille as usual and she was particularly well-behaved.
She can be a little spooky around jumps and also if someone approaches the arean, but in general she's pretty honest, and as long as I'm no-nonsense with her when she starts to spook, she straightens up right away. Unfortunately we didn't get to jump very high (and for me not very mant times, because some of the others riders had some trouble and thus took many attempts to get it right). For the exercise, Béa (the isntructor) set up a very narrow obstacle with the usual posts on each side, and then two bars on each side of the jump, creating a little tunnel. She then proceeded to remove first the side bars, then the jump posts, leaving only a 3-foot wide box as the jump. The goal of the exercise of course was to work on our precision and on jumping the center of the obstacle.
After my lesson and some serious spring cleaning of my room, I headed to Candice and Laurie's for some sangria and quesadillas! Normally I wouldn't eat or drink any alcohol before practice, but I knew that Friday night's practice was actually... a surprise birthday party for Gaëtan! His family arranged it and asked us to help with the surprise. We arrived 9pm as usual and were throwing around while Gaëtan explained he would be leading the warm-up before the drills and scrimmage. At 9:15, right as he was about to start the warm-up, his family and more friends burst through the doors, bearing a considerable spread of food and drink. He was thoroughly surpsied! We sang Happy Birthday, chatted, chowed down on the delicious food and eventually played a short scrimmage, with Gaëtan's grandfather pulling the disc for the first point (pretty adorable). The surprise was a great success!
Unfortunately we were missing a significant chunk of the team for the liuttle party on Friday night because they were still on the road back from the national championship of university Ultimate. Alex (team coach), Gaël, Lucie, Clémentine, Colin, TéTé, Alex and Réné finished second out of 16 teams at the two-day tournament in Nantes. Nantes is in the west of France and so the drive back took them between 8 and 9 hours (they arrived at around 2:30am on Friday night/Saturday morning).
The glorious weather continued through Saturday, and Colin and I decided to take advantage of it by having a late picnic lunch at the parc de la Gare d'eau by the bank of the Doubs river. We expected there to be a huge crowd, but there weren't very many people at all. It was probably the hefty wind that deterred them, although in the sunshine it wasn't cold or unpleasant at all. Although we both had slept-in quite late, we couldn't resist an afternoon nap in the sun...
Afterward Colin went to get his hair cut and I did a little window shopping for spring shoes (currently I've been switching between two pairs of boots, but with the warm weather this week I realized exactly how impractical they will be once it gets just a little warmer). Then Colin drove me to my macaron workshop! It was held at a culinary institute located in École Valentin, a suburb of Besançon. There were 8 of us (all women, mostly in their 30s I would guess) with the chef and his two assistants. We made passion fruit-chocolate ganache macarons. The class was scheduled to last only an hour and 15 minutes, but ended up taking nearly 2 hours.
We first made the passion fruit-chocolate ganache filling, then put it in the refrigerator to set while we made the meringue cookies. This was one of the parts of the lesson which surprised me most : Parisian macarons (the type most people are familiar with) are always an almond-flavored cookie with a flavored filling. The cookies are colored to correspond with the flavor of the filling, but there isn't actually any flavoring in the cookie itself. For example, with ours, you would guess that the cookie is passion fruit-flavored and the ganache is chocolate. But in fact the ganache is chocolate and passion fruit-flavored, and the cookie is just almond. The rest is just in your head!
Unfortunately I wasn't able to take pictures during the class, but they did give each of us a copy of the recipe and I took detailed notes. I'm pretty confident I'll be able to reproduce it once I get home, but I don't think I will attempt them until then because it would take forever to bake the cookies in the tiny oven in our apartment, plus it would be easier to make the meringue with a Cuisinart rather than my hand-mixer). For me, the most complicated part seemed to be getting the egg whites "peaked" to just the right level at the same time the sugar mixture reaches 118 degrees Celsius. I can imagine lots of egg whites being sacrificed in my first few attempts... But it was really neat to have everything demonstrated for us... hopefully that will make it easier when I try to make my own macarons without a master chef and his professional-grade tools to help me!
Saturday night was another social one: I went out with big group from the Ultimate team for Saint Patrick's Day! Lots of the bars in Besançon were giving out these ridiculous hats if you bought 2 or more pints of Guinnes and our group managed to acquire a couple:
Then Sunday (I know this entry is getting long, I promise I'm almost finished), the heavy wind which started Saturday afternoon and worsened that night turned into rain. I did some shopping for dinner (more on that in a second) at the few markets which are open on Sunday, then proceeded to bake cookies to give Steph for her birthday. I was so proud of myself, baking them Sunday afternoon so they would be ready when she and Charly got back from visiting their families that night, and before her birthday on Monday. Except it turns out that her birthday was last Tuesday! I had put the wrong date in my Google Calendar and was entirely convinced her birthday was the 19th! She was still happy to get the cookies though. After a quick run (quick because I felt really good and did the loop which usually takes me 55 minutes in 47), I got to work on dinner. Blanquette de veau à la vanille et nouilles (lamb in a white vanilla sauce over noodles) was the recipe I picked out to attempt this weekend, and Colin was brave enough to accept my invitation to dinner.
Whenever I attempt a new French recipe, it always takes much longer than I anticipate, and this time was no exception. It wasn't the hour and 30 minutes that the meat cooked slowly with vegetables and herbs, but the preparation of the sauce after which took a long time. But Colin was really patient, and helped me juggle the 5 pots and pans I was using to simultaneously cook part of the meal and at the same time and keep the rest hot. The sauce wasn't quite as thick as it was supposed to be (or at least as thick as I would have wanted) but despite that the dish was delicious! We used a stalk of vanilla which Colin's friend David brought back from Madagascar (and Colin gave me to use) and I'm sure that was part of the reason the vanilla flavor was so strong and so good. Definitely saving this recipe!
So blanquette de veau over tagliatelles, sautéed fresh peas in the pod, some 18-month aged comté and a Saint-Félicien for the cheese course, and chocolate oatmeal cookies for dessert... a successful Sunday evening meal. I crashed pretty hard that night, which I'm sure was in no small part due to the intense run that afternoon. I was thoroughly pleased though -- I couldn't have asked for a better weekend!
The fun started Friday afternoon, with my weekly riding lesson. Friday's was a continuation of the gloriously summer-like weather we had been enjoying all week, and my spirits were further boosted when I discovered we would be doing obstacle (jumping) rather than dressage. I rode Quadrille as usual and she was particularly well-behaved.
She can be a little spooky around jumps and also if someone approaches the arean, but in general she's pretty honest, and as long as I'm no-nonsense with her when she starts to spook, she straightens up right away. Unfortunately we didn't get to jump very high (and for me not very mant times, because some of the others riders had some trouble and thus took many attempts to get it right). For the exercise, Béa (the isntructor) set up a very narrow obstacle with the usual posts on each side, and then two bars on each side of the jump, creating a little tunnel. She then proceeded to remove first the side bars, then the jump posts, leaving only a 3-foot wide box as the jump. The goal of the exercise of course was to work on our precision and on jumping the center of the obstacle.
After my lesson and some serious spring cleaning of my room, I headed to Candice and Laurie's for some sangria and quesadillas! Normally I wouldn't eat or drink any alcohol before practice, but I knew that Friday night's practice was actually... a surprise birthday party for Gaëtan! His family arranged it and asked us to help with the surprise. We arrived 9pm as usual and were throwing around while Gaëtan explained he would be leading the warm-up before the drills and scrimmage. At 9:15, right as he was about to start the warm-up, his family and more friends burst through the doors, bearing a considerable spread of food and drink. He was thoroughly surpsied! We sang Happy Birthday, chatted, chowed down on the delicious food and eventually played a short scrimmage, with Gaëtan's grandfather pulling the disc for the first point (pretty adorable). The surprise was a great success!
Birthday toast!
Marion, Gaëtan, and Franzi
Unfortunately we were missing a significant chunk of the team for the liuttle party on Friday night because they were still on the road back from the national championship of university Ultimate. Alex (team coach), Gaël, Lucie, Clémentine, Colin, TéTé, Alex and Réné finished second out of 16 teams at the two-day tournament in Nantes. Nantes is in the west of France and so the drive back took them between 8 and 9 hours (they arrived at around 2:30am on Friday night/Saturday morning).
The glorious weather continued through Saturday, and Colin and I decided to take advantage of it by having a late picnic lunch at the parc de la Gare d'eau by the bank of the Doubs river. We expected there to be a huge crowd, but there weren't very many people at all. It was probably the hefty wind that deterred them, although in the sunshine it wasn't cold or unpleasant at all. Although we both had slept-in quite late, we couldn't resist an afternoon nap in the sun...
Afterward Colin went to get his hair cut and I did a little window shopping for spring shoes (currently I've been switching between two pairs of boots, but with the warm weather this week I realized exactly how impractical they will be once it gets just a little warmer). Then Colin drove me to my macaron workshop! It was held at a culinary institute located in École Valentin, a suburb of Besançon. There were 8 of us (all women, mostly in their 30s I would guess) with the chef and his two assistants. We made passion fruit-chocolate ganache macarons. The class was scheduled to last only an hour and 15 minutes, but ended up taking nearly 2 hours.
We first made the passion fruit-chocolate ganache filling, then put it in the refrigerator to set while we made the meringue cookies. This was one of the parts of the lesson which surprised me most : Parisian macarons (the type most people are familiar with) are always an almond-flavored cookie with a flavored filling. The cookies are colored to correspond with the flavor of the filling, but there isn't actually any flavoring in the cookie itself. For example, with ours, you would guess that the cookie is passion fruit-flavored and the ganache is chocolate. But in fact the ganache is chocolate and passion fruit-flavored, and the cookie is just almond. The rest is just in your head!
Unfortunately I wasn't able to take pictures during the class, but they did give each of us a copy of the recipe and I took detailed notes. I'm pretty confident I'll be able to reproduce it once I get home, but I don't think I will attempt them until then because it would take forever to bake the cookies in the tiny oven in our apartment, plus it would be easier to make the meringue with a Cuisinart rather than my hand-mixer). For me, the most complicated part seemed to be getting the egg whites "peaked" to just the right level at the same time the sugar mixture reaches 118 degrees Celsius. I can imagine lots of egg whites being sacrificed in my first few attempts... But it was really neat to have everything demonstrated for us... hopefully that will make it easier when I try to make my own macarons without a master chef and his professional-grade tools to help me!
Saturday night was another social one: I went out with big group from the Ultimate team for Saint Patrick's Day! Lots of the bars in Besançon were giving out these ridiculous hats if you bought 2 or more pints of Guinnes and our group managed to acquire a couple:
Then Sunday (I know this entry is getting long, I promise I'm almost finished), the heavy wind which started Saturday afternoon and worsened that night turned into rain. I did some shopping for dinner (more on that in a second) at the few markets which are open on Sunday, then proceeded to bake cookies to give Steph for her birthday. I was so proud of myself, baking them Sunday afternoon so they would be ready when she and Charly got back from visiting their families that night, and before her birthday on Monday. Except it turns out that her birthday was last Tuesday! I had put the wrong date in my Google Calendar and was entirely convinced her birthday was the 19th! She was still happy to get the cookies though. After a quick run (quick because I felt really good and did the loop which usually takes me 55 minutes in 47), I got to work on dinner. Blanquette de veau à la vanille et nouilles (lamb in a white vanilla sauce over noodles) was the recipe I picked out to attempt this weekend, and Colin was brave enough to accept my invitation to dinner.
Whenever I attempt a new French recipe, it always takes much longer than I anticipate, and this time was no exception. It wasn't the hour and 30 minutes that the meat cooked slowly with vegetables and herbs, but the preparation of the sauce after which took a long time. But Colin was really patient, and helped me juggle the 5 pots and pans I was using to simultaneously cook part of the meal and at the same time and keep the rest hot. The sauce wasn't quite as thick as it was supposed to be (or at least as thick as I would have wanted) but despite that the dish was delicious! We used a stalk of vanilla which Colin's friend David brought back from Madagascar (and Colin gave me to use) and I'm sure that was part of the reason the vanilla flavor was so strong and so good. Definitely saving this recipe!
This picture is of Colin's seconds - I forgot to take a picture the first time around!
So blanquette de veau over tagliatelles, sautéed fresh peas in the pod, some 18-month aged comté and a Saint-Félicien for the cheese course, and chocolate oatmeal cookies for dessert... a successful Sunday evening meal. I crashed pretty hard that night, which I'm sure was in no small part due to the intense run that afternoon. I was thoroughly pleased though -- I couldn't have asked for a better weekend!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)