*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!
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Spring is Here and Other Good News
It's only mid-March, but spring has arrived in Besançon! This past week has been absolutely gorgeous, with cool mornings and sunny, warm afternoons. I know that the change is official because the truck outside Parc Micaud switched from selling hot waffles to selling ice cream cones again. I noted the change when it was the reverse back in November, and this time I'm considering it a harbinger of the new season. I'm not sure if it's the good weather or the two weeks of vacation, but in general my kids have been very well-behaved this week. I've noticed that some of the students who don't normally pay attention or participate willingly seem to have a newfound motivation. Let's hope it continues through for the rest of my time here.
Further good news: I have a bike! It turns out that Steph and Charly's former roommate/renter left it here when she moved out last summer and has never come back to get it (they've tried to contact her numerous times because she has continued to receive mail, in particular a couple of angry-looking bills). I had to find a bicycle tire pump and a helmet, but now I'm all set. I am, however, still missing a bike lock. Charly has one for his bike, but lost the key, so it's not much good to me. And unfortunately I can't really ride my bike to work until I find one, because Planoise is a prime area for bikes to be stolen (not that they're really safe in the centre ville either). At home it's locked in a shed attached to our building. I'm hoping to borrow one, because purchasing one for only six weeks seems a little silly. Being able to ride to school and back every day would be a good supplement to my running program, and a way to further enjoy the beautiful weather!
On the literary front, today I finished part I of Les Misérables! I finished it during the 15-minute recess this afternoon and loved every last bit. I bought part II this afternoon on my way to tutoring. I had to look in three different bookstores until I found one which sold part II, at which point I was beginning to get the impression that noone ever actually reads the second half). So now I have only 887 pages to go -- a full 26-page economy on the last part. I really hope to finish it before I leave Besançon on April 25.
Some of you may be wondering if and when I am ever coming home. The answer is yes, but the when is a little more complicated. I'm leaving here for Berlin on April 25, where I will spend five days with a friend whom I interned with two summers ago. Then on April 30 I'll leave for and hopefully arrive in Washington, D.C. (by way of New York), where I will spend a week with Claire (yay!) Then on Monday, May 7, I will fly home by way of the Dayton airport, in time for Trey's graduation from Vanderbilt which is that Friday. I am very excited to see my family and friends again so soon!
Further good news: I have a bike! It turns out that Steph and Charly's former roommate/renter left it here when she moved out last summer and has never come back to get it (they've tried to contact her numerous times because she has continued to receive mail, in particular a couple of angry-looking bills). I had to find a bicycle tire pump and a helmet, but now I'm all set. I am, however, still missing a bike lock. Charly has one for his bike, but lost the key, so it's not much good to me. And unfortunately I can't really ride my bike to work until I find one, because Planoise is a prime area for bikes to be stolen (not that they're really safe in the centre ville either). At home it's locked in a shed attached to our building. I'm hoping to borrow one, because purchasing one for only six weeks seems a little silly. Being able to ride to school and back every day would be a good supplement to my running program, and a way to further enjoy the beautiful weather!
On the literary front, today I finished part I of Les Misérables! I finished it during the 15-minute recess this afternoon and loved every last bit. I bought part II this afternoon on my way to tutoring. I had to look in three different bookstores until I found one which sold part II, at which point I was beginning to get the impression that noone ever actually reads the second half). So now I have only 887 pages to go -- a full 26-page economy on the last part. I really hope to finish it before I leave Besançon on April 25.
Some of you may be wondering if and when I am ever coming home. The answer is yes, but the when is a little more complicated. I'm leaving here for Berlin on April 25, where I will spend five days with a friend whom I interned with two summers ago. Then on April 30 I'll leave for and hopefully arrive in Washington, D.C. (by way of New York), where I will spend a week with Claire (yay!) Then on Monday, May 7, I will fly home by way of the Dayton airport, in time for Trey's graduation from Vanderbilt which is that Friday. I am very excited to see my family and friends again so soon!
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Weekend in the Country
This past weekend I went to visit my host family, who lives in Dijon. But the blog post isn't titled "Weekend in Dijon" because we actually spent most of our time at and around the moulin (mill) that they purchased last summer and where they're planning to build a home. It was a wonderful weekend -- incredibly relaxing and peaceful.
I left Saturday morning and got into Dijon around 11am. We left for the Moulin du Chêne (the name of their mill, "Oak Mill") shortly afterward with Noëlle's friend Sophie, who was also visiting for the weekend. Sophie and Noëlle have been friends since they went to university in Paris together; now Sophie works for a French company's office in Shanghai and only comes back to France once or twice a year. It was a little overcast, but warm when we left Dijon.
We stopped and had lunch at a little restaurant in one of the nearby villages. I anticipated light café fair, but it ended up being a 5-course meal with amuse-bouche, appetizer, entrée, cheese course, dessert and coffee. All delicious! Then we made a quick stop to say hello to Belby, the little baby donkey who will eventually live at the Moulin du Chêne, who Orane named after one of the characters in Harry Potter (if you don't remember who he is, all the info is here). Belby the donkey is still quite timid and won't take apple pieces from our hands. She is so adorable when she prances around on her tiny hooves!
Then we walked down the dirt road to the moulin and spent about an hour wandering around the site and just enjoying the sunshine and the tranquility. I took lots and lots of pictures, but here are just a few:
Then around 6pm we headed back to Dijon, by way of an antiques shop that Noëlle and Joseph stumbled upon a few months ago and from which they bought an armoire. The shop is run out of one of the little barns of an old (think 17th or 18th century) farm owned by a couple. The "barn" which houses the antiques is stone and not much bigger than a single room, but just one of many buildings on the sprawling property. The couple and their two kids don't even live in the main part of the house, but rather in what used to be the wool-spinning workshop. The main house is technically inhabitable, but Isabelle, the wife, explained that the renovations necessary to make it truly livable are too expensive . She actually explained this on Sunday, when we went back to pick up the lamp that Sophie bought when we went to look on Saturday. Sunday we ended up staying for lunch and spending a good chunk of the afternoon there! But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Dinner on Saturday night was a simple affair, after the feast that was lunch. Noëlle doesn't like to eat the biggest meal of the day in the evening anyway, so this wasn't a big change. We had a simple but delicious salad and some cheese. By some, I mean 10 different kinds. To be fair, one of them was the Parmesean Reggiano slivers to go on the salad and another was the cancoillotte au vin d'Arbois which I brought along as a gift. So really, they had only planned on 8 cheeses. When we realized just how numerous our selection was, I decided to take a photo:
My favorites were the Saint Félicien (middle right in the picture, with the green label sticking out from under the top right corner of the cheese wheel), which apparently comes from a region down near Grenoble, and the fromage fort (literally "strong cheese," center of the picture in the cylindrical container with red on the label) which was sort of like a tangy and dense greek yogurt. I asked if it's ever called anything else, but apparently that's it.
Then on Sunday morning I went for a run before breakfast. For those of you who heard, I was injured for pretty much all of last week; I strained a muscle in my right thigh and, although I had no pain while walking normally, absolutely could not run. So I had to take nearly a full 7 days off, which was a little discouraging because I had planned to really get in shape during the vacation. As of Friday it was feeling much better, and I ran that afteroon without a problem. The run on Sunday morning was both part of my routine and a chance to explore Dijon for the first time since I lived there in 2009. As far as I can tell everything is exactly the same, except for all of the construction barricades for the tram. I ran by my host family's old house, the restaurants where I used to eat with the other Wake kids, the maison diocésaine where we had our French art class (not that I expected that to have changed), the hotel where we stayed when we first arrived before we met our host families, etc. Then after breakfast we headed out toward the moulin, with the plan to first stop and pick up Sophie's lamp.
It turns out we never made it to the moulin. We ended up sharing our lunch with the couple who owns the antiques shop (although it was mostly them sharing with us, since Noëlle had brought among other things a meat pie, and everyone in the family is a vegetarian). One of the things they shared with us was a delicious homemade cassis nectar, a very thick juice made from blackcurrants.
By the time we finished lunch it was nearly 3pm and still overcast, so we decided to skip the moulin and instead check out the Château de Bussy-Rabutin, a castle not far from the moulin. Although in the present day the area around the moulin is sort of the middle-of-nowhere, in the 17th century that was not the case. There were many château and estates in the area, and the economic activity required to sustain a château meant that there were plenty of workers living in the villages around them.
Château de Bussy-Rabutin is particularly interesting because of its interior decoration. Its most notable proprietor, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, was exiled from the court of Louis XIV, for, among other things, writing a book called Histoire amoureuse des Gaules which exposed all of the illict court romances, including those of the king's favorites. 17 years of exile makes for a lonely count, so he decided to bring the court to his château and commissioned portraits of all of the important people at court, especially those he didn't like. Then he amused himself by writing humorous or biting captions about their reputations underneath each of the portraits. These take up not just the salon, but the bedroom, a long hallway, and a tower. There are possibly more, but those were the only ones I saw in the part of the château we were allowed to visit. And even though they're written in an Old French, we could still understand them and most of them were really funny!
Other parts of the château I found interesting: the pigonnier, a tower specially-built to house the count's pigeons. Apparently they were a sign of wealth in this era, and based on this picture you can tell Roger de Bussy-Rabutin was a pretty wealthy guy:
Also, the fruitier. In French, the place where they fabricate cheese is called a fruitier, and I've never understood why. Apparently, a fruitier was originally a place specially-designated to ripen fruit. The word is used in the context of cheese because it serves the same purpose: a place for cheese to ripen! I love it when linguisitic puzzles suddenly come together like that.
Well that was my weekend, I got back around 7pm on Sunday and Monday was my first day back to classes. I hope all of you are having a great week!
I left Saturday morning and got into Dijon around 11am. We left for the Moulin du Chêne (the name of their mill, "Oak Mill") shortly afterward with Noëlle's friend Sophie, who was also visiting for the weekend. Sophie and Noëlle have been friends since they went to university in Paris together; now Sophie works for a French company's office in Shanghai and only comes back to France once or twice a year. It was a little overcast, but warm when we left Dijon.
We stopped and had lunch at a little restaurant in one of the nearby villages. I anticipated light café fair, but it ended up being a 5-course meal with amuse-bouche, appetizer, entrée, cheese course, dessert and coffee. All delicious! Then we made a quick stop to say hello to Belby, the little baby donkey who will eventually live at the Moulin du Chêne, who Orane named after one of the characters in Harry Potter (if you don't remember who he is, all the info is here). Belby the donkey is still quite timid and won't take apple pieces from our hands. She is so adorable when she prances around on her tiny hooves!
Then we walked down the dirt road to the moulin and spent about an hour wandering around the site and just enjoying the sunshine and the tranquility. I took lots and lots of pictures, but here are just a few:
Then around 6pm we headed back to Dijon, by way of an antiques shop that Noëlle and Joseph stumbled upon a few months ago and from which they bought an armoire. The shop is run out of one of the little barns of an old (think 17th or 18th century) farm owned by a couple. The "barn" which houses the antiques is stone and not much bigger than a single room, but just one of many buildings on the sprawling property. The couple and their two kids don't even live in the main part of the house, but rather in what used to be the wool-spinning workshop. The main house is technically inhabitable, but Isabelle, the wife, explained that the renovations necessary to make it truly livable are too expensive . She actually explained this on Sunday, when we went back to pick up the lamp that Sophie bought when we went to look on Saturday. Sunday we ended up staying for lunch and spending a good chunk of the afternoon there! But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Dinner on Saturday night was a simple affair, after the feast that was lunch. Noëlle doesn't like to eat the biggest meal of the day in the evening anyway, so this wasn't a big change. We had a simple but delicious salad and some cheese. By some, I mean 10 different kinds. To be fair, one of them was the Parmesean Reggiano slivers to go on the salad and another was the cancoillotte au vin d'Arbois which I brought along as a gift. So really, they had only planned on 8 cheeses. When we realized just how numerous our selection was, I decided to take a photo:
My favorites were the Saint Félicien (middle right in the picture, with the green label sticking out from under the top right corner of the cheese wheel), which apparently comes from a region down near Grenoble, and the fromage fort (literally "strong cheese," center of the picture in the cylindrical container with red on the label) which was sort of like a tangy and dense greek yogurt. I asked if it's ever called anything else, but apparently that's it.
Then on Sunday morning I went for a run before breakfast. For those of you who heard, I was injured for pretty much all of last week; I strained a muscle in my right thigh and, although I had no pain while walking normally, absolutely could not run. So I had to take nearly a full 7 days off, which was a little discouraging because I had planned to really get in shape during the vacation. As of Friday it was feeling much better, and I ran that afteroon without a problem. The run on Sunday morning was both part of my routine and a chance to explore Dijon for the first time since I lived there in 2009. As far as I can tell everything is exactly the same, except for all of the construction barricades for the tram. I ran by my host family's old house, the restaurants where I used to eat with the other Wake kids, the maison diocésaine where we had our French art class (not that I expected that to have changed), the hotel where we stayed when we first arrived before we met our host families, etc. Then after breakfast we headed out toward the moulin, with the plan to first stop and pick up Sophie's lamp.
It turns out we never made it to the moulin. We ended up sharing our lunch with the couple who owns the antiques shop (although it was mostly them sharing with us, since Noëlle had brought among other things a meat pie, and everyone in the family is a vegetarian). One of the things they shared with us was a delicious homemade cassis nectar, a very thick juice made from blackcurrants.
By the time we finished lunch it was nearly 3pm and still overcast, so we decided to skip the moulin and instead check out the Château de Bussy-Rabutin, a castle not far from the moulin. Although in the present day the area around the moulin is sort of the middle-of-nowhere, in the 17th century that was not the case. There were many château and estates in the area, and the economic activity required to sustain a château meant that there were plenty of workers living in the villages around them.
Château de Bussy-Rabutin is particularly interesting because of its interior decoration. Its most notable proprietor, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, was exiled from the court of Louis XIV, for, among other things, writing a book called Histoire amoureuse des Gaules which exposed all of the illict court romances, including those of the king's favorites. 17 years of exile makes for a lonely count, so he decided to bring the court to his château and commissioned portraits of all of the important people at court, especially those he didn't like. Then he amused himself by writing humorous or biting captions about their reputations underneath each of the portraits. These take up not just the salon, but the bedroom, a long hallway, and a tower. There are possibly more, but those were the only ones I saw in the part of the château we were allowed to visit. And even though they're written in an Old French, we could still understand them and most of them were really funny!
Other parts of the château I found interesting: the pigonnier, a tower specially-built to house the count's pigeons. Apparently they were a sign of wealth in this era, and based on this picture you can tell Roger de Bussy-Rabutin was a pretty wealthy guy:
Also, the fruitier. In French, the place where they fabricate cheese is called a fruitier, and I've never understood why. Apparently, a fruitier was originally a place specially-designated to ripen fruit. The word is used in the context of cheese because it serves the same purpose: a place for cheese to ripen! I love it when linguisitic puzzles suddenly come together like that.
Sophie, Joseph, and Noëlle!
Well that was my weekend, I got back around 7pm on Sunday and Monday was my first day back to classes. I hope all of you are having a great week!
Friday, March 9, 2012
Five Ways to Tip Off French People That You're American (or at least not French)
This morning I had breakfast out at a little café (long story) and was inspired to write this blog entry. I hope you like it -- and Besançon friends, feel free to leave your opinion in the comment box.
1. Smile with top AND bottom teeth
This is probably the single biggest tip-off, because smiling with only the top set of teeth is more of a European thing in general than just French. Also, if you're from the Midwest or the South, more likely than not you smile at everyone whom you make eye contact with on the street -- here a dead give-away that you're not a native.
This came up at the Friz'Bistonins Christmas party before winter break, and here Colin and I are demonstrating the difference. Notice how I look awkward in the first and he looks downright pained in the second:
Then TéTé and Alex decided they would demonstrate the difference too:
<-- Natural smiles
"American" smiles -->
2. Leave a tip after buying only a single beverage
Leaving a tip is certainly expected at a nice restaurant for dinner, where the service is presumably more involved, or at a bar if you've been there for a while. But servers are paid proportionally more here, and their livelihood is less dependent on tips, so not leaving a tip, especially for something very small, isn't rude like it would be in the States. So leaving a 50-cent tip on a 3.50 coffee and pastry will certainly be appreciated, but don't be surprised if as you're leaving, the server asks you casually, "So, where are you from?"
3. Ask for coffee WITH your meal
3. Ask for coffee WITH your meal
Big, big no-no. Coffee is an acceptable order at pretty much any time or morning, day, or night, except during a meal. This is probably because when you order a regular coffee here, what you get is much smaller and much stronger than the typical cup o' joe served in restaurants in the US. The flavor is intense enough to mask most other flavors, so it's sort of like dumping salt and pepper on the plate you are served; you're saying the flavor of their food is so lacking or unpleasant that you don't mind masking it with the super-strong flavor of coffee.
4. Say "I'm sorry"
This one is a bit more complicated, but certainly the one I commit the most out of the list. "I'm sorry" would be translated into French a couple of different ways: "Je suis désolé(e)" (as in, "I'm sorry I'm late), or "Excusez-moi" (as in, I'm sorry I stepped on your foot), or "Je suis navré(e) d'apprendre que..." (as in, I'm sorry to hear you broke your leg). Just plain "désolé" is probably the one I use the most, and tend to use in the context of when I would say "sorry" in the U.S. : sorry about that uncatchable pass I just threw you on the Frisbee field, sorry you missed your bus, sorry you have a lot of work tonight... But either French as a language is less sympathetic or I use sorry too much, because I frequently get funny looks. When I ask what I said wrong, people often reply with the question "Why did you say sorry, it's not your fault?" It's not that I was necessarily claiming fault with my initial sorry, just expressing my sympathy for whatever unpleasant situation arose. But apparently this is a huge tip-off.
5. Ask for butter to go with your bread (unless it's breakfast), or, god forbid, your croissant
No no no no! First of all, butter is probably the foundational element of French cuisine. Asking for more in almost any context is like saying, "Please oh please, my arteries have a death wish!" And if you've ever attempt any French recipes, you'll learn Paula Dean's homeland could just as easily be Franche-Comté as the good ol' South. But I think this aversion to butter on bread is because bread usually serves another role in the meal. For instance, in the morning, it goes with coffee or tea, and the flaky crustiness is a nice contrast with the strong coffee. At lunch or dinner, it's used to mop up the rest of the delicious sauce which covered your main dish, and as a conduit for cheese. This isn't to say that French bread isn't perfectly delicious on its own, but usually it's eaten in conjunction with something else, and unless it's breakfast and you're out of jam or Nutella, that something else is almost never butter.
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