La Belle et La Bouffe

La fête des amoureux

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 10:52:00 +0000

Before leaving for the two-week vacances d'hiver, I discussed Valentine's Day with my primary school kids. This evoked a lot of giggles and excitement among the 8-10 year-olds. When I asked them how la Saint Valentin is celebrated in France, I got some cute comments, e.g. " Moi j'ai un amoureux - c'est Brice qui est dans l'autre classe" and "Le jour de la Saint Valentin, on va au cinéma et... je ne sais pas ce qu'on fait apres (impish smile)". Also some not so cute comments from the CM2s- "Qu'est-ce qu'on fait pour la Saint Valentin? On fait l'amour!"

I had them cut out little photocopied Snoopy Valentines after explaining the U.S. tradition that all elementary school students give a little Valentine's Day card to each and every one of their classmates, and asked them to fill out the blank spaces after "TO" and "FROM". This elicited a lot of confusion in the manner of "Can I give the card to two people?" "Can I send the card in the mail?" "How do you say belle-mère in English?" and my favorite, "Je suis obligé de le donner à une girl?" which was satisfying because at least one word was in English.

Valentine's Day itself was spent, rather appropriately I suppose, at the American consulate in Marseille getting the certificat de coutume and the certificat de célibat (which doesn't quite translate literally as "certificate of celibacy") which I'll need before Ahamed and I can get legally married at the mairie here in Montpellier. We arrived early in Marseille and did some sightseeing, including le vieux port, pictured above.

Bonne année 2007!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:41:00 +0000

I am writing from my sister-in-law’s dorm room – after paying for internet since October, we finally bought an ethernet cable !
We had a lovely few days during Christmas vacation when Mom and Dad came to visit. They only stayed four nights, but we were able to do a good amount of touring: Montpellier, Nîmes and Sète. Accordingly, here is a photo of each town:

Montpellier, the opéra by night:

Nîmes, la Maison Carrée (commissioned by the emperor Augustus):

Fishing boats in Sète:

I’ve been lucky in my two years of working as an English assistant to have been assigned to two beautiful towns, Nîmes and Sète. The legacies of Augustus and Georges Brassens… what more can you ask for in the way of culture?
In Montpellier we’ve got culture too – as proof, check out this example of men’s underwear displayed in Galeries Lafayette during the hols (the mannequin on your right):

Autumn update

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:08:00 +0000

I've been having some trouble getting reliable internet access. For a while I was poaching a network in the neighborhood where I live, but was afraid to use it for email or Blogger because of the possible lack of security for passwords etc. Now I am at the University using my wireless card, which is convenient but involves lugging my laptop to school with me - my shoulder muscles complain a little.

The biggest piece of news is that I have been renewed for a second year of the assistantship. I am now working in two primary schools in Sete, a fishing town on the Mediterranean about 20 minutes from Montpellier by train. The kids are cute, at least for the moment - we'll see how long that lasts! So it's a change from the brooding and the hormones from the high school experience last year.

It is Toussaint vacation so I'm not working this week, although classes at the fac are still going strong. On Sunday, Ahamed and I went to Aix-en-Provence for a night. Aix is the location for the CAOM, the Centre d'Archives d'Outre Mer, which he uses for his Master's thesis research. I took advantage of the trip for a change of scenery from Montpellier, and a day of profitable work in the Aix university library (which is a lot nicer than the one here in Montpellier!).
Here is a photo of Ahamed from our brief stopover in Marseille:

Adieu, Koko

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 13:04:00 +0000

On Wednesday afternoon, my parents took our cat Koko to the vet to be put down. He was about 16/17 years old and had been steadily declining in health over the past few months. It was a difficult decision for my parents to make, but I think it was the best one.

Koko was a Greek cat, born in Athens of a Siamese mother (we think that’s how he inherited his characteristically loud yowl) and a black and white father who lived on Athens’ streets and whose enemies had left him only a raggedy end of a tail.

I remember picking Koko particularly from the litter of three cats, because he seemed to be the most playful and energetic. When we brought him home to our apartment, he skittered across the wood floor and put down his feet tentatively on the bedspread, having never before felt the touch of cotton fabric.

We brought Koko back in the plane to the U.S. with us in the summer of 1997. He had to spend the night in London to be checked by the veterinary authorities, but arrived safe and sound a day after we did. Koko became an American cat, watching rabbits eat green beans in the garden and staining his fur with the red North Carolina earth.

Koko, I'm sorry I wasn't there to say goodbye. I know sometimes as a little girl I annoyed you, but it was only because I wanted to pet you and be with you. I hope you enjoyed our games as much as I did.

Koko, we loved you very much and we will miss you ; you were a part of the family and we’ll never forget you. You traveled a long way in your life ; good luck on this last journey - kalo taksidi.

De retour à Montpellier

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 09:22:00 +0000

I've been back in Montpellier for two weeks now, and have been running around most of that time. My soutenance went well - at least, I got a 18, but then my two profs critiqued my paper for approximately two and a half hours, 95% of which was negative critique. So that, combined with the high grade, leaves me a little unsure as to the overall quality of the work! But it's a new year and a new thesis paper around the corner, so I'll try to improve this time around.

Another piece of good news is that Ahamed and I had our Muslim marriage ceremony. So we can now live together without those nagging moral doubts - yay! We will be going to the mairie at some point in the future for the official papers, but that will probably be at least some months dozn the road.

It is Ramadan and Ahamed's sister, Ahamed and I have been taking turns cooking the evening meal. Yesterday I did a Mexican night with Spanish rice, spiced red beans, and quesadillas with salsa and sour cream.

I hope to be able to write more fully and more regularly soon, but internet is a bit hard to come by right now - I hope that'll change soon.

Caution: Menses at Work

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 15:19:00 +0000

This post is about feminine hygiene and gives away too much information about my personal cycle. You’re forewarned.

I noticed that Always has a new uplifting message for women as they open their sanitary napkins :

What’s funny is how it’s been translated into French. Unless in Canada, “semaine” is the word of choice when referring to menstruation, something’s missing in the version française. I suppose “bonnes règles” would have been going into too much detail for the francophone ladies ?

A provençale friend told me that entre copines she says “j’ai mes ran-yan-ya” instead of “j’ai mes règles”, so perhaps French women simply shy away from discussing their periods in a direct way. My friend’s version, although a bit little-girlish, is certainly a lot more tasteful than “I’m on the rag,” a phrase I’ve never been able to warm up to here in the States.

Absence and the Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 19:10:00 +0000

In a little over a week, I will see Ahamed again after being apart since June 20th. We both left Montpellier the same day, and said goodbye at the airport. My plane to Paris was before his, but it didn’t feel like one of us was leaving the other – we were both going home for the summer.

When I had to say goodbye to Ahamed for the first time, in July 2004, I was the one leaving. He came up to Paris with me and we spent two nights there. It was Bastille Day and we could see the fighter jets doing their air show in the strip of sky above our hotel, although we didn’t make it to the Champs Elysées that morning for the parade and a glimpse of Chirac. The night before our respective flights (his back to Montpellier and a stifling summer in a university dorm room, mine back to North Carolina and a summer full of family and activity), we walked back from the Arc de Triomphe along the Champs Elysées. I’d seen both of these sites before, but it was Ahamed’s, the native Frenchman’s, first time in Paris. One of the worst humiliations must be to cry in public, but I couldn’t help it – I was just so frightened of being away from him. That’s what it was – absolute terror. I was terrified that I would get home after those eight hours of flight and need Ahamed when there would be no way for him to come to me.

I’ve only seen my boyfriend cry once. It was the night before we left for those two days in Paris, before going to sleep in his narrow dorm bed in Montpellier. I was crying about leaving, not for the first time, and all of a sudden the tears were running down his face too. It only lasted about 15 seconds, but it was enough of a shock to get me to stop weeping and try to comfort him instead of the other way around. It was the first time I’d seen him cry, and he hasn’t since.

We were apart for about five months, that first time, while I finished my last semester of college. At a certain point, sitting alone in my little apartment in Chapel Hill, I just couldn’t face another semester. The next day I went to see my advisor and put in a request for early graduation – and bought a ticket from expedia.com. I left for Montpellier the day after my last exam in December.

Although it seems unbelievable as I write it now, we talked on the phone almost every day of those five months. Sometimes twice a day. I’ve never calculated the combined cost of his phone cards and my 10-10-987 use, but I’m ashamed to admit to so much money spent. I used to cry sometimes on the phone to him, which I regret – it must feel awful to be too far away from someone to be able to comfort her the way you want to.
This summer I’ve gotten teary-eyed while talking to Ahamed (we’re now down to talking every other day), but not from missing him. They’ve been tears of PMS-induced rage and frustration, or tears about something as idiotic as him not complimenting me on a photo I sent over the internet.

I don’t miss him the way I used to. The first night back in my parents’ house, that summer of 2004, I lay in my bed and couldn’t adjust to the feeling of him not lying next to me. While I’m looking forward to lying beside him again, I don’t have that amputated feeling anymore.

I don’t know whether I should feel reassured or worried about this change in our relationship. I love him and I want to be with him, but I can bear to be away from him too. It will be three years soon that we’ve been together – I heard somewhere that three years is the average lifespan for love. I told Ahamed this, and he laughed. But somehow I want to miss him in that raw, terrifying way when we're apart– and I want him to miss me like that again too.

Squirrels and Lobsters

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 23:57:00 +0000

Squirrels and (Red) Lobster : two things I don’t get in France.

The only squirrel I have seen in France to date was a little red fellow I spotted on the Paul Valéry campus in Montpellier. I seem to track these creatures at universities : when visiting colleges up North with Mom late in high school, I spied the rare black squirrels on the Haverford campus and have yet to see that variety anywhere else ; at Harvard I was more mesmerized by a squirrel who squatted peeling a small citrus fruit than by the university surroundings. (I guess even the squirrels at Harvard are geniuses.) At Bryn Mawr, the squirrels were decidedly on the plump side. I’m sure they thrive on the pizza crusts and apple cores of college women.

I passed up the chance to live side-by-side with such exotic varieties of squirrels however, and settled for the (more economical, closer-to-home) squirrels at UNC who’re pretty much identical to this good old gray guy you see splayed on his belly on our roof here at home. I took this picture the other day when I noticed a squirrel behaving oddly on the roof outside – he’s flattened himself out and is peering down, probably to the birdfeeder below.

Today was Dad’s birthday, and he and Mom and I went out to Red Lobster for dinner. This is a photo of Mom’s shrimp platter.
We must have had about 4 different people waiting on us and asking if everything was all right – a great change from France. I can't tell which system I prefer - that in which you're ignored by a surly waiter or the one where your server comes by every five minutes and gives you the bill before you've ordered dessert. There must be a happy medium neither culture attains, but I do think "service compris" is a great idea.

Youpi!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 23:05:00 +0000

My mémoire is done. Fini. Bound at Kinko's last night and sent off this a.m. for a tidy little sum that will get it to my prof and the other jury member in 3-5 days (USPS time).

I misspelled my prof's name in the bibliography and had to correct it by hand with black ink minutes before mailing. There are probably myriad other mistakes, but I'm happy and proud.
Now I won't think about it until the night of September 12th, before my defense the next day.

I'm optimistic that someday soon my braincells will rejuvenate and I will be able to write a mildly interesting post. Until then, bonnes vacances - I'm really on holiday!!

Vertigo

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 19:24:00 +0000

I’ve been out of commission for a few days. My problems started Wednesday night when I awoke around 2 a.m. with my head spinning out of control. I couldn’t even walk to the bathroom so I crawled there, where I proceeded to be sick at frequent and regular intervals for the rest of the night. Thursday, Mom made me an appointment with the doctor, so I managed to get up from the sleeping bag she’d laid out for me beside the toilet, get dressed and get into the car (throwing up a few more times in the process).
The doctor diagnosed me with “benign positional vertigo” and gave me an anti-nausea shot, a lot of pills to buy and some special “exercises” to do which involve placing my head in various dizzying positions in groups of 12-15 repetitions.

I’m feeling better than I did that first day – my eyes aren’t spinning around in my head at quite the same speed. I can say that if trying to write a Master’s thesis in French on the literary portrait of Themistocles is tedious on the best of days, it’s somewhat more daunting when the computer screen is swirling around French and Ancient Greek in an incoherent blend of letters and accents. So I don’t know if the end result will be comprehensible or not, but I just want to get this thing printed and in the mail to France as soon as possible. The amount of time I’ve spent being sick this summer (first with a cold caught on the plane, then with the adeno virus caught from my aunt, and now with this vertigo, evidently a result of the virus), along with the amount of time I’ve spent stressing about this thesis, has prevented me from fully enjoying being with my family. In a way I’m glad to have gotten sick here instead of in Montpellier, because my mother has been taking such wonderful care of me ; but I see my family so seldom now that I live in France, and I’d have liked to get in a little more “quality time” with them this summer.

And I know I’ve made this out to be primarily a food blog, but for the past few days I’ve been ingesting nothing but prescription drugs, dry Rice Chex, saltine crackers, plain basmati and fruit juice popsicles. Nothing too worthy of note.

Krispy Kreme Kapers (of the linguistic variety)

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 13:24:00 +0000

Yesterday Mom and I went out to run a few errands. Her main motivation was to get me out of the house and get my mind off Ahamed, with whom I’ve been having long-distance yelling-matches about the Israel-Lebanon conflict for the past few days. I’m not going to get into this here, but it’s enough to say that we both have the same basic opinion, but he has the nerve to make false statements and that really frustrates me.

Anyway, Mom was sweet enough to distract me with an outing, at the end of which we stopped by the Krispy Kreme drive-thru to pick up some coffee and doughnuts (the cure for all psychological ills). Well, Mom was driving, and as we inched toward the ordering microphone, idling our engine in the rain, she realized her automatic window wouldn’t open. So I hopped around to the back seat and made the order from there (getting a little rained-on in the process). At the window, I paid and the guy handed over the little bag with the doughnuts. Now Mom didn’t realize I was still waiting for the coffee, and started pulling away from the window. All I could say was “Don’t advance, don’t advance!” in a very frantic way. I guess this isn’t a normal way to get someone to bring a car to a halt, because Mom began laughing. I can’t chalk this strange way of speaking up to thinking in French too much, because I’m sure any French person would have said “STOP” and have had done with it. I think instead that my brain has been fried by too much Themistocles. I’m surprised I didn’t yell “The battle of Salamis!” or “Aristide le Juste!” Thank goodness I only have a week left to finish this thesis paper ; I plan to send it off to Montpellier a week from tomorrow. “Plan” isn’t really the right word – I don’t have any choice really, I’ll have to send it off in whatever state it’s in to meet the deadline.

My favorite Krispy Kreme variety is currently the sour cream doughnut. I used to like the devil’s food doughnut – and I’ve noticed they’ve changed the name of that one to “chocolate cake doughnut”. I’m sure it used to be called devil’s food… maybe people taking doughnuts to church on Sundays felt uncomfortable with the original name and lobbied for the change ?

Bring on the beignets!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:09:00 +0000

Above: Crepe myrtle in NC. Could the reason I’m having so much trouble concentrating on this thesis paper be the fact that the view from my window is hot pink ?

I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of “I wonder if I can find that in France”-ing in anticipation of the year to come. I’d like to try out a bunch of new recipes here in the US so I can get them under my belt and feel confident I can make them reasonably quickly once the year starts and everything is so frantic all over again. I asked Ahamed to do the same and try making some new dishes while he’s at home on l’Ile de la Réunion ; since his mother and sisters have left for Mayotte and he’s alone to cook for himself and his little brother for a month, I thought he’d have some good opportunities to try new things. That and the fact that he keeps saying how bored he is this summer and how little there is to do on the island… so why not cook ? I’d love to try some exotic island food. He doesn’t seem quite as keen on that idea as I am, though : So far he’s mentioned a dish with chicken, potatoes and macaroni in a tomato-based sauce, which sounds edible except for the fact that he eats it over rice. Now I love carbohydrates as much as the next girl, but that is a bit of a starch-overload even for me. Maybe I will cleverly conceal the rice (although in 18 m2, hiding places are scarce) and then ask him to cook his dish.

Also, although he keeps talking about these beignets he’s made (how he’s eating them for breakfast, etc., making my mouth water as I imagine little puffs of golden dough gritty with sugar), he says he won’t make them once we’re in France. “My sister can make them in Montpellier,” he says (the oldest of his sisters will be coming to do her first year of university in France this fall). Still, I continue to say how much I want to try his doughnuts, in the hopes of convincing him to cook some for us (and give his sister a little break). He’s told me how good a cook his sister is, so I can look forward to tasting some good food this year. But at the same time, I hope she’ll be able to relax and not have too many responsibilities of that kind – I think she does a lot of the domestic chores in La Réunion (for her mother and the five other siblings who are still at home) and it might be time for her to have a year to herself and take it easy a bit.

Chez lui

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:01:00 +0000

Today is about the third time this summer Ahamed has told me over the phone that he feels better at home in La Réunion than he does in Montpellier. The way he phrases it goes something like this : “You know, my body feels different here. I feel lighter. The first day I arrived, I got home and took off my shoes and I noticed a physical change : I feel better.”

I really do want him to feel good about being home and with his family, and I want him to share those feelings with me. But these remarks of his feel like a punch in the chest : he suddenly feels so good after getting off the plane in La Réunion. It almost seems magical, doesn’t it ? He feels lighter – maybe he’s about to lift off. Is the food I prepare in France too heavy ?

What I take his statements to mean (though he denies it) is that something’s wrong with his life in Montpellier. And if there’s something wrong with his life in Montpellier, there’s something wrong with our relationship, because most of our time in Montpellier is spent together ( I think I’ve made a point to mention the 18 m2 studio apartment).

So when we were talking today and he said this again, I suddenly felt very exhausted. All I wanted was for the conversation to end. I listened to him talk on for a while, saying things like “you always take things badly” and “can’t I tell you I’m happy to be home” and that kind of thing. I just told him I wanted to say goodbye and talk again on Tuesday. So we did hang up, without saying “I love you”. I really hate that.

Cream cheese brownies

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 16:55:00 +0000

Last night I baked some cream cheese brownies for a Tripoley party my mother, grandmother and I are going to hold tonight with two friends. I'm not going to post the recipe as I think it still needs some tinkering: the cream cheese part was very eggy, resulting in a kind of flan-like rubbery consistency. What I'd like is a cream-cheese batter that has the same moist, crumb-y texture as the brownie batter. Perhaps adding more flour and some butter, and cutting down on the eggs, would accomplish that - I'll have to experiment some more.

I wonder about what I could subsitute for cream cheese in France - I know cheescakes can be made with fromage blanc, so perhaps that would do here too. Actually in this recipe I used Neufchatel cheese, which is marketed as a low-fat alternative to cream cheese. I wonder how this cheese is sold in France - we put it in cardboard packages here in the U.S. so people will associate it with the Philadelphia brand cream cheese we're so familiar with. But it France it might be presented in a different and unrecognizable way...

Summer gardens in North Carolina

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 13:02:00 +0000

Scrumptious summer veggies! Last night Mom prepared a tofu dish we call “Tofu Daddio” after the man who invented it, an old family friend : tofu baked in a tahini-soy-ginger sauce. As an accompaniment I made spinach couscous (a product I’d never seen before : couscous colored green with spinach juice, like green pasta) with garlic, fresh basil and mint, and a mix of sautéed vegetables : onions, green peppers, yellow tomatoes and red cherry tomatoes.

It’s wonderful to have access to all of these fresh vegetables (in my mother’s garden and in the gardens of friends who drop by with baskets of tender summer squash and green beans). The fresh basil is what I’ll miss particularly, because in France I have no garden. I’ll have to make do with the dried stuff for pasta sauce… it’s just not the same. I have visions of making pasta salad with roasted red peppers, goat cheese and walnuts – with shredded fresh basil scattered all over. Oh well, this won’t happen anytime soon, and we’ll be on our way towards winter anyway, once in France.

Fresh mint is, on the other hand, incredibly easy to come by in Montpellier, thanks to the large North African population for whom it is such a staple. In the quartier arabe young boys sell it in big bunches. Parsley is usually in the markets alongside mint, so there’s no difficulty in finding that, either. The bundles of mint I buy in France are usually so big they go bad before I’ve finished with them - I’ll have to get into the habit of preparing thé à la menthe more regularly.

Bouffe Tip : Keep fresh herbs in shallowly-filled glasses of water in the door of your fridge, covered in a plastic bag held against the glass with a rubber band. Change the water when it starts to become discolored.

Quelle romance!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 20:16:00 +0000

I got a letter in the mail today from Ahamed. In the envelope there were several postcards with lovely images from l’Ile de la Réunion for most of my family members, and a special separate envelope for me. Inside was my own postcard and a letter.

Above: the evidence

It was a love letter, complete with lots of flowery turns-of-phrase (he is so much more soppily romantic than I am), and even doodles of flowers he had colored in (himself! with colored pencils!) on the page. At the end of the letter was the usual “love Ahamed” you’d expect, and one more sentence tacked on at the end that struck me as a little funny : “Don’t send me any mail.” No lovey-doveyness there, no “ma puce, ne t’inquiète pas si tu trouves pas le temps de m’écrire, je sais dans mon cœur que tu penses très fort à moi ma chérie”, just “Ne m’envoie pas de courrier.” Point.

Now as a female, I can’t help but read into this that he is hurt or angry that I haven’t written him all summer, and is trying to express this in that one curt phrase. But then I realize : he is a man, and therefore this is probably not an attempt to make me realize how cruel I’ve been, but rather a suggestion I should take at face value and just not send him any mail. So I do believe I won’t.

Vin gai...?

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 16:52:00 +0000

There is an expression in French about drinking wine – it can either make you vin gai or vin triste. Some people get very happy and boisterous after a little drink, but others will become depressed and weepy.

I think Plutarch looks a little vin triste in this shot.

The book in the photo is by my professor’s professor – I thought it’d be wise to check it out. I’ve been drinking Diet Cheerwine to fuel my work on my mémoire (first-year Master’s thesis), which involves Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles. My soutenance (defense) is set for September 13th in Montpellier, but I need to send the final copy of the paper off to my prof and the other jury member around the third week of August.

No Cheerwine in France, as far as I know – no Dr. Pepper either. There’s vanilla Coke though. I think my favorite sodas in France must be Fanta citron and Orangina Light. I drink so much more soda now, after my time in France, than I ever did living in the U.S. This must be due to the Company I Keep, but since I don’t drink alcohol anymore for the same reason perhaps the negative effects cancel each other out.

The shelf-life of Tabasco®

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 00:10:00 +0000

My life in Montpellier is reduced for the moment to telephone conversations with Ahamed about our respective arrivals in September.

Ahamed told me on the phone the other day that when he got to Montpellier he would throw away old food because the apartment had probably gotten too hot. It’s been up to 40 degrees Celsius there, and since the studio we live in is on the second and top floor, it gets very hot from the sun (which hits it directly).

He always seems to be throwing stuff away… He threw away the pyjama pants I bought him (kind of a unisex style – well, okay, they might have actually been women’s, but you really can’t tell – a red flannel pair) because he lost the drawstring somewhere. He also threw away a pair of my pyjama pants (from Gap Body, if I remember correctly) I’d left behind in Montpellier a year ago (no drawstring either, but still usable! That’s what the elastic is for). He threw away my bottle of Tabasco too. What keeps longer than Tabasco (except perhaps honey, as my grandmother tells me) ? He did have to move his stuff out of his room at the Cité for the summer, but he kept herbs and spices and I just don’t see why he couldn’t have kept the Tabasco too. I mean, it’s a small bottle – nobody buys pints of hot sauce that I know of.

Koko sniffs out the expiration date of the largest bottle of Tabasco I've ever seen.

Anyway, when I reproached Ahamed for this throwing away business, he said he wouldn’t pitch the olive oil or the rice, but might get rid of the sugar. What can happen to sugar anyway ? As long as it doesn’t melt or caramelize, I think it should be fine.

I think this is a problem of conflicting mentalities, because in my family no one ever (I mean it) throws anything away. Even if it has a layer of mold on it, it’s still salvageable (what’s under the mold is fine!) Old clothes can certainly be used as dust rags.

I asked him not to throw anything away before I arrive, but am afraid I’m going to get to the studio and everything will already have been tossed. I’ve already got my pantry going and I don’t want to have to stock up on bouillon cubes and hot sauce again!

La Coupe du monde 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah) — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 16:15:00 +0000

I’m back home in North Carolina for the summer, but that didn’t stop me from holding a World Cup party for my family when Les Bleus made it to the final!
A little late, here are some pictures from the event :

I apologize for Materazzi in the background, but we were ready to eat and I didn’t have time to wait for the French players to get on the screen!

Our starting line-up (of dishes) was as follows (clockwise from cupcakes in the photo above):
World Cupcakes (buttermilk cupcakes with tricolor cream cheese frosting from the Gourmet cookbook ; my cousin decorated two in Brazil’s colors, because even though they weren’t playing he considers them the best team)
Peanut Barthez (plain peanut butter to spread on apple slices and baby carrots for my 10 year old cousin)
Veggies Vieira-ra (celery, carrots and cucumber)
with Ribery good dip (anchovy dip)
Brie à la Henry with Do a little dance, Makalele loaf…of bread (Brie and baguette slices)
Snap, Abidal and Pop (Cheese Crisps made with Rice Krispies)
Champignons au pistou, pour Zizou (Hot mushroom caps stuffed with pesto)
Not pictured : Cheddar Sagnol-ives (Hot baked cheddar olives from the Gourmet cookbook

Lilianopites (my mother’s miniature spanakopites, or Greek spinach pies)

A note on ingredients : I have looked for anchovies (les anchois) in France and have not yet found them. They do not seem to be kept in the tinned fish section where you might expect to find them next to tuna, sardines, and mackerel. After asking an employee at the Carrefour in Lattes and being told to look in the fresh/frozen seafood section halfway across the store, Ahamed and I were too tired to continue the search.
I have also recently had trouble finding Rice Krispies in France. I know I bought them two years ago when I made Rice Krispies Treats for my host family, two of whose daughters are allergic to wheat. Now I can no longer find them anywhere, and only see Cocoa Krispies, which I don’t recommend as a substitute in the Cheese Crisp recipe.
And as far as the cheddar – I have heard rumors it can be found in France but will only believe it when I see it for myself. I don’t know if Emmenthal can be substituted. The French seem to use Emmenthal in everything – from savory “cakes” to quiches to topping pasta.