Ah Paris

I supposed I should include Thursday in here, I used my bike for an actual errand for the first time :-) I wanted to make sure that we had our tickets into Paris in hand before Friday so I rode into town. The trip was pretty, French drivers seem to be much more accepting of cyclists than in the US, which was a nice change from Pittsburgh. After picking up our tickets, I rode home to find Michael and Manas slaving away at their Continuum Mechanics homework...yuk! Manas stayed for dinner (simple cherry tomato pasta) and even brought us some awesome Indian sweets.

Ok, now on to Paris.

We woke up bright (well not bright, more like pitch-black) and early Friday morning (4:30am) to catch our 6:25 TGV (high-speed) train out of the Metz train station. The train ride was quick and painless, although we use the train tickets for our returning trip, so we ended up in the wrong seats, in the wrong car, with our tickets stamped for the wrong day. Oh well, the man checking the tickets was very nice about it (I'm assuming it happens fairly often), he wrote a note on our tickets, signed and stamped them so that we wouldn't have any problems on the way back. We arrived at the Paris East train station at 7:52 on the dot (exactly the time quoted on our tickets) and found Harry and Camille waiting for us at the end of the platform :-) Hugs and kisses were exchanged, then Harry shuffled us towards the metro and which we caught back to the hotel (pictured on the left) where we were told that our room wasn't quite ready yet. Camille gave us a little tour of the hotel which they had stayed at many times on various trips to France. Unfortunately, she said, it had been "updated" and modernized since they had last visited in an attempt to add more rooms and had lost much of it's charm. She showed us the basement with the computer room, garden and little spa (a tiny room with an oliptical and stationary bike and a small sauna off to one side) where I stepped in dog poop; apparently there was a dog staying at the hotel but don't ask me why the dog was allowed to poop in the spa. Thankfully it was quite dry and I didn't make a mess (don't worry, this will be important later on). We threw our bags in Harry and Camille's room and went next door to Le Source to have le petit dejeuner (a little breakfast) of coffee, bread and butter, croissant, and fresh pressed orange juice. After regaining some energy we took the metro up to Galleries Laffayette and walked through some of the incredibly huge department stores; I pulled out a few dresses, they were made of the most luxurious fabric I have ever felt and had price tags larger than any clothing I've ever touched. We also got to see the old opera house which has been turned into a music academy since the new one was build (it would be redundant to say that the architecture was absolutely beautiful...that's probably understood, but you'll see for yourself when you check out the photo album that I will be attaching to this post). After wandering around that area for awhile we made our way to Le Deux Magots for lunch. Le Deux Magots, according to Camille, is one of the top two cafés in Paris and was made famous by the the people who frequented it: Earnest Hemmingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso and others. Harry and Camille both had saucisson sandwiches, Michael had a cold ham and cheese and I had a Croque-Monsieur (toasted, open-faced ham and cheese). We were pretty boring that afternoon, taking a nap at the hotel and getting coffee down the street (for a whopping 4euro = $6 each!). Next was a boat tour of the Seine river where Michael was able to capture this lovely picture of la Tour Eiffel. I couldn't honestly tell you everything that we saw, but we understood it at the time. The tour "guide" (computer) spoke first in French, then in English, for every sight, and if they had time, they tried to get to German, Italian, and Mandarin. When you see the pictures from the trip (which I will post as soon as I've finished editing all 345 that Michael took) you will get a better idea of everything that we got to see on the tour (which was wonderful, if you ever get to Paris, the boat tours are a wonderful way to see the city).
By this time, we were famished once again (Paris has a way of doing that to you), so we went slightly away from the river to eat at the Grand Corona, which proved to be a typical French bistrot. Michael had steak frites and I had Dover sole, both were delicious. Harry had a risotto, while Camille had escargot and a goat cheese salad and we all shared a crème brûlée which was garnished with a strange fruit that we had never seen (pictured below). After much confusion (it looked like a tomatillo or tomato, but was on a dessert?) we asked the waitress what it was, to which she replied "Cage d'Amour" (cage of love) which we remembered and were thankfully able to look up on wikipedia later on. Here is their definition: The typical Physalis fruit is similar to a firm tomato (in texture), and like strawberries or other fruit in flavor; they have a mild, refreshing acidity. The flavor of the Cape Gooseberry (P. peruviana) is a unique tomato/pineapple-like blend. It was an odd thing to
come across and apparently it is related both to the tomato and Japanese Lanterns (which makes me wish I had tried the berries that I found in our Japanese Lanterns when I was a kid). We walked back to the hotel and on the way, I was able to snap this picture of la Tour Eiffel and the city from the river. Alright, that's all for now, I will finish up the Paris update this weekend (sorry for the delay, editing the photos has taken longer than I imagined) and with everything that went on Saturday, I may need two separate posts. Bon Nuit everyone.

Victory!

Wow, I hope none of you mind the fact that this blog is essentially turning into a food blog and should be entitled "Mastering the Art of Cooking [in France] on One Burner". Anyway...it's been a busy week and is only going to get busier, so I'd better get this out while I have a little time to spare.

Last Friday ended up being our grande voyage (great voyage -- great meaning long, not awesome). In the morning, we started off walking into town (heading essentially north) in search of Boutique Solidiarite, which we had gathered from our internet searching, was a charity thrift store (similar to Good Will but not as mainstream). Well, we got there only to find it closed with a sign on the door (which we later translated...it said something bizarre about an artist looking for men and women, fees announced), but we did not despair, because it was 1:00 and obviously, they had to shut the store down for at least an hour for lunch. So we walked around attempting to find a kebab stand to get some lunch for ourselves. Eventually we found a Steinhoff's, which is a kebab chain which we hadn't heard great things about but figured we had to try, right? Michael decided that he wanted to try something new, so I ordered a forestier frites (it obviously came with fries, but we had no clue what a forestier sandwich was). As it turns out, it was pretty gross. The picture to the left shows the sandwich after we've eaten off most of the fries but the sandwich consisted of bacon lardons (cubes of bacon), large chunks of hamburger patties, and 2 slices of mushroom with mayo and hot sauce. Ok, it wasn't really gross, quite delicious actually, but had had to consciously not think about how much fat I was ingesting. After lunch we went into a little wine store with a very nice owner who humored me by speaking very elementary french, then invited us to go to his wine bar three streets away where he has tastings; we will have to go sometime. By this time is was just after 2:30 and we assumed that if the thrift store must be open if it was going to open. Alas, it was still closed; we aren't sure if it's closed permanently, the strange sign on the door about the artist doesn't seem like a good sign to me. We started to walk back home and decided to keep going past the apartment in another attempt to find Emmaüs (the thrift store that we tried to find earlier in the week) and this time we found it. It was quite a bit farther than we had expecting and we were actually on the wrong road; we realized that google hasn't updated it's maps of Metz lately and we had been walking on the new 4 lane highway which was recently built parallel to the road we wanted to be on. We remembered the camera this time and were able to get some pictures of the landscape (more will be posted to a new facebook album). Miraculously, they were still open at 4:45 and we were able to walk around. In my muddled french I asked a clerk where the bikes were and she told me that they didn't have any then but would have some next week, on Wednesday. It was dissapointing that we weren't able to get bikes but at least we found the place, found out the hours, and had some idea of when they would have bikes. The walk back was looooong and exhausting. When we made it home, we calculated that we had walked 12.5 miles so far that day and probably ended up with an even 13 after walking to the store for groceries.

The highlight of Saturday was dinner :-) but really, what's new about that? We made Chicken Provençial and it was really an awesome meal, I'd suggest it to anyone at home (I got the recipe off of epicurious.com). We made it with chicken legs but the recipe actually called for breasts and aside from the sodium (from the olives), it is fairly healthy. We also made some parsley potatoes to go along with the chicken (pictured with the recipe on epicurious).

Michael finally got a pretty hefty assignment last week for Continuum Mechanics and has been busying himself with that a few nights each week, so I decided on Monday to go to the 1000 level French class over at GTL. It is a much smaller class (me and 3 boys), which I enjoyed, and I've had some more experience with the language than they have, but it will be good to start back where Mrs. Kennedy left off in high school. After class I made a salad niçoise for dinner which is a green salad tossed with lemon vinegarette and topped with hard boiled egg, capers, anchovies, tuna, tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, and niçoise olives. I will post a picture to the facebook album but it's not pretty enough to post here; it was 9:00 pm by the time I started plating and at that point, I just wanted to EAT!

Tuesday was fun! GTL held a game night on Tuesday night and Manas, the student body president and one of Michael's Mechanical Engineering classmates, asked me if I would make crêpes to feed the crowd. We had gone to Cora the night before and bought all of the ingredients, so I got up early on Tuesday and started the crêpe makin'. On one burner, it ended up taking 6 hours (with a break in the middle for lunch and French class) and 6 batches of batter to make the 140 crêpes that we ended up taking over at 7. I am really sad that I didn't take any pics of the endeavor, but I had a good time and was really happy to have something to do for the day. When we took the crêpes and our saute pan (to re-heat) over to GTL I got pretty intimidated at the sight of all the French students who came out for the game night, since they actually had the experience to scrutinize my crêpe making skills; I'm taking it as a compliment though that the French students seemed to enjoy the crêpes, some coming back for fourths, fifths, and in one case, sixths! We also met the "other" married couple, he is not at GTL at the moment but studying at Supélec (getting his duel degree), which didn't start classes until last week. Leah, the wife, managed to get a job as an english assistant in two elementary schools (she was able to start looking for a job last November), so she will not be quite as bored as I will. They were a very sweet couple (and got married only 4 days after us!), we will have to spend some time with them.

Today has been another crazy day, it was laundry day, and the kitchen was still a mess from yesterday's explosion of crépes. We also met up with Josyanne (academic director) so we could re-do our housing subsidy application and she informed me that she may have a job possibility for me (which I'm not going to explain in detail, lest I jinx it). We also decided to walk down to Emmhaüs again, since it is Wednesday and I would really like a bike now but will really need a bike if I get a job (fingers crossed). The whole three and a half miles down the road we grumbled about how horrible it was going to be if they didn't have any bikes and we had to walk all the way back home but thankfully, they had bikes and we both found one that suited us. The one in front is the one Michael picked out (although the eventual owner is yet to be determined since they are exactly the same size), it is a Peugeot. For those of you not famlilar with Peugeot, in the states, you can buy their salt and pepper grinders, in fact, Michael and I have a set; here in France, however, they make all kinds of things, you can still buy pepper grinders, but they also make bikes and cars and I'm sure much more. The bike in back is mine (for now), the brand is MBK and the seat needs desperately to be lowered and the front tire needs air, but it is a nice bike. Both bikes are 10 speeds and together cost us 50euro; they made the trip back home much more bearable. Dinner when we got home consisted of another sausage, this one a white sausage (I'm guessing chicken) with cheese, mashed potatoes, and brocolli. And for those of you currently concerned with the state of my liver, please take note of the glass of milk behind the plate :-P

Have a lovely night everyone. Tomorrow will be busy getting ready for our trip to Paris on Friday, it will be so nice to see Harry and Camille!

Long Time Coming...

Sorry for the long hiatus between blog posts. To be honest, we have been really lazy and boring the past week, which would be a good reason to post I suppose, lots of free time. Really though, I just didn't want to bore you all with the mundane...went to class, walked to the store, made dinner, watched a movie, etc. I'm not sure when the picture above was taken but it was a really beautiful day with alternating rain clouds and blinding sunshine.

When I left off last week, we were in the process of making Friday night pizzas, which were excellent; by the time we return to the states we will have mastered stovetop pizzas. Saturday we attempted to get into town for the open market, but apparently you must get there in the morning because when we arrived at 2pm, everyone was gone and the three street sweepers were making it look like no one was ever there. We did go into the covered market and bought some Sausage a Rotir de Vosges and lots of veggies. While walking back home the long way, we passed a wine store and decided to check it out. The main room (or what we thought was the main room) of the shop was fairly small and only had about 10 kinds of wine but multiple liquors...which seemed strange for a wine store. The man working (I'll assume he is the owner) was talking on the phone when we walked in but as soon he hung up he said something to us in French, at which time I explained (in French) that I only speak a little French. After a little more conversation he asked if we wanted to see the wine and when we said yes, he led us down the stairs (which we should have noticed when we first walked in) to the wine cellar. Obviously, there was a much greater selection in the part of the store and after he went through describing the different sections of wine (based on region of origin) and giving us some suggestions (thankfully, keeping it in the under 10 euro range for our sakes), we spent a bit of time deciding on a bottle of 2007 Saint-Bris Sauvignon from the Burgundy region. For dinner that night we cooked up our Sausage de Roti and turned all of those lovely veggies into the ratatouille pictured below. I hadn't made ratatouill since culinary class in school and had forgotten just how delicious it is. Essentially, it is a casserole of eggplant, zucchini, tomato, pepper, and onion which is cooked with garlic, parsley, and lots of olive oil until all the veggies are creamy and infused with their combined flavors. It was an excellent dinner and the wine turned out to be an excellent and very flavorful companion. The sausage, I should mention, tasted just like jimmy dean breakfast sausage links.

On Monday we attempted to find the rumored thrift store and ended up walking roughly 3 miles down the freeway (they do have walkways but I understand why they don't allow it in the US, it was frightening) to find nothing but fields of vegetables and what looked like an old estate or vineyard that is being turned into a hospital. Despite not finding our destination, it was really nice to be out in the country with rolling hills and fields (and a highway, but we'll ignore that). Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the camera along so you'll just have to go by my explanation. The landscape reminded me of driving through the farms back in Wellsboro only flatter (not flat as in mid-west flat, but the hills are much smaller and less severe than the Appalachians).

Wednesday night (sorry I'm skipping some days but really, they aren't even worth mentioning) we made some delicious pork chops, carrots glazed with Orangina (an orange juice drink that is about 1/10 orange juice and 9/10 sparkling water for those who don't know) and some of our local honey from the market, and potato pancakes. Needless to say, with only one burner, the carrots and pork chops were a bit cold by the time the potato pancakes were done, but wonderful nonetheless. I had never made potato pancakes by myself before but had watched my dad do it a million times. Unfortunately, I forgot to drain any of the liquid out of the grated potato before adding in the seasoning and egg, so we ended up having to drain a bunch of liquid off which included some of the egg before we fried them up. The resulting product didn't hold together quite as well as I remembered but tasted just like my dad's and they reminded me of home :-)
We had to find something to serve with them in place of the sour cream that we usually used at home. We ended up caramelizing some onions (well...they went a little past caramelizes), seasoning them with salt and pepper, and mixing in some fromage frais; it was something I had remembered our French teacher mentioning as dip and it went very well smeared over the pancakes (and is much less fattening than sour cream). To go along with this meal, we watched The English Patient, which was enjoyable but the story was full of holes that we spent a good bit of time trying to fill ourselves after the movie was over.

Thursday night, at Aunt Susie's suggestion, we made hamburgers (well, cheeseburgers) and french fries, ate them while watching the Pink Panther, and attempted to not spit out our food while Steve Martin struggled with the word "hamburger".

And Today!!
We went to a meeting at GTL in the afternoon to sign up online for our housing subsidy which will make our rent pretty much dirt-cheap. After the meeting we talked with Moses for a few minutes about possibly finding the illusive thrift store this weekend...let's hope. Michael then had to drop off a couple of papers in Josyane's office (the Academic Director), she asked how I was doing and wondered if there was anything I would like to do....she is now on the hunt and might be able to help me find something to keep me occupied :-) Then on the way downstairs we ran into Albert who suggested that, if we can find a way there, we might go out to some Abbey (about 15km away) for a bread festival this weekend, which sounded awesome to us! All-in-all, a very productive afternoon; Michael and I might just have to hang out at GTL on Thursday afternoons to see what opportunities come our way. I hit a milestone today: I made my first successful spaghetti and meatball dinner; I had attempted once before while still in Pittsburgh but the meatballs didn't have enough binding (egg, breadcrumbs) and we just ended up with yummy meat sauce. Today however, the meatballs stayed balls and were very yummy. Apparently no one uses bread crumbs here, or everyone has too much left over bread to bother buying it in a can, because I ended up chopping up stale bread to make mine. We're thinking that the ground meat, with a label that translated literally into flesh of pork and beef, was some sort of seasoned sausage blend because it was very flavorful. We watched From Hell with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham, then came out of our room (where the blinds were down) to realize that is was only 7:30 and still broad daylight. It was then that we realized just how boring we are; but this should be changing soon. Next week we head to Paris for a long weekend and sometime soon after that we should be recieving our EURail passes which will give us 2 months to travel for 10 days anywhere within France, Germany or BeNeLux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). Have a good afternoon/evening everyone, I going to spend mine trying to figure out how to watch the Steelers game tomorrow.