Ok, I survived. The butter was a cinch because I just bought the kind I've always seen in our refrigerator. It took me a second to find the tomatoes, and I was a little confused because they have different weights on the can (one of just the tomatoes, one of the tomatoes in the can with the juice, and another one that I didn't understand what it was for) but in the end I got enough. They didn't have individual onions like they do in the US- only a bag of like, 50 small onions. I only needed 2, but I didn't have any other option so we have plenty of onions in the house to probably last us the rest of the year. Olives, I had a hard time finding. They weren't in an aisle; they were on a display on the back of an aisle, and I had a hard time finding a smaller can. They had a big can of black olives, but they weren't preserved in liquid and looked like they were all shriveled up. That wouldn't do. All the other olives I saw were green, though, and needed black ones for my recipe. Sigh. France can't you just help me out for once and not put up a stink about what I'm trying to make???
I eventually found a smaller can of normal black olives on the bottom shelf all the way in the back. The granny smith apples were a bit larger than we usually buy in the US... whoa, wait a minute, something from France is actually bigger than something in the US? I never saw that one coming! But anyway, Gilles had asked me to pick up a packet of dark chocolate so I got that easily enough, but then went over to try and find the powdered sugar for Yadira. They have no baking aisle. Ummmm..... come on you have to have sugar and flour in a grocery store. I finally found the sugar and flour on the wall next to the cashier. They had granulated sugar but not powdered sugar, like Yadira said. Sigh. I got on line to pay for and debated my options. I could go to Intermarché for the sugar, but the only problem was that I paid for the stuff at Leader Price with a debit card and only had 2 euros cash on me. You have to buy a certain amount to be able to use a debit card at Intermarché and just a box of powdered sugar was certainly not going to be enough. But what if the sugar cost more than 2 euros? Well I had to try at least; I couldn't return without powdered sugar. I paid for the other food, and decided that since I was on one of the main roads in Champigny, there was a good chance of there being a bank with an ATM on it. Oh wait, that's New York, not Paris. I went all up and down the street and passed 2 banks- one had no ATM, the other had the ATM covered up with plastic. Sigh. At least I did a little more exploring and got to know my neighborhood a little better, buttttttttttttt I don't the the butter I bought had quite the same adventurous spirit as I. Or at least not the same adventurous spirit in 85 degree weather. I guess I wouldn't either if I were butter. The chocolate I bought also made it clear that, if it were forced to choose, its alliance laid with the butter in the sweltering heat as well. I'm outnumbered, but I'm the one with the feet so... allons-y.
I decided just to chance it and go to Intermarché. My feet weren't too happy about this but I gave my word, and that means through rain, sleet, snow, hail (any of which would have been welcome on such a hot day) and even sub-saharian desert heat (wayyyyyyyyy sub-saharian, in fact, so sub that it's north (and a little west) of the Sahara desert instead of south =P). So on I marched, bags of groceries in hand and all. I finally get to Intermarché.... and it's closed. I didn't even bother to find out why. It wasn't for siesta because it was after 2pm. I'm not even going to ask questions anymore France. Sigh.
And so I returned, 99% triumphant, and only missing powdered sugar but I explained to Yadira that Intermarché was closed and she said it was okay- it's not like we needed it needed it. I got to work making the apple crisp, which came out PERFECT. *breathes on fingers, rubs them against shoulder*. Piece of cake (no pun intended... well, ok maybe it was). France 11, Gina 25. I started to make the sloppy tacito, even though I knew it was hours before I really needed to start to make it. But thank goodness I did. I cut the tomatoes no problem. I started to cut the olives.... and they had pits in them. So I had to de-pit 90 grams worth of olives- it took FOREVER. I ended up having to ask Yadira to cut the onions for me because I was running out of time. JC always has to go to work on Tuesday nights, so I feel like it's important that I get dinner on the table by 7h30 so he has enough time to eat before he leaves. I also nicked my fingertips about 50 times trying to cut the onions, but, c'est la vie. Everything comes with a price here in France.
The sloppy tacito ended up being a hit. My family really liked it because it was like, latino food and they haven't had it in a while. JC says he needs to watch out because now he has real competition in the kitchen. I think he has nothing to worry about, but it is flattering. It's true though, that what we make is quite different- he makes everything on the stovetop, and I make almost everything in the oven. It's quite nice.
Somewhere during the course of dinner we got on the subject of holidays, and how Christmas is so much more of a big deal in the United States than in France. Christmas for us is a whole season (which, in recent years, has been starting earlier and earlier... even forsaking Thanksgiving and starting right after Halloween), whereas in France, the put up like, a 2 foot tall tree on Christmas eve and then take it down the day after Christmas. I started telling them about how the lights decorate so many of the houses, and then started to tell them about the houses who have their lights choreographed to radio stations. They didn't believe me, so I whipped out Youtube and showed them one of the videos of the house lights to trans-siberian orchestra music. JC couldn't believe it. He was like, "Oh la la what must the neighbors think?" and was blown away that something like that was even possible. Then he announced that he's always wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving, and he thinks we should this year. I literally jumped out of my chair I was so excited. I already planned out a menu of Turkey (duh... although I don't really know how we're going to make do without an oven), cranberry apple stuffing (always a big hit when I make it), homemade gravy, cranberry sauce, cornbread and butter, green beans, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, deviled eggs and mincemeat pie. And for dessert: pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple crisp, plum pudding, and oatmeal cranberry cookies. Can you tell how adventurous I am? I'm starting all this planning really early because I know without a doubt I am going to run into problems trying to obtain the ingredients for half these things. But I'll have plenty of time to solve everything, so I'll be one step ahead of the enemy and can claim my American red white and blue victory in the midst of this *ahem* clearly-not-as-grateful-as-Americans-because-we-have-an-actual-holiday-to-celebrate-it *and insert eyes rolling here* country. I'm also going to make really cute crafts to decorate the house like turkeys made from pinecones and feathers, make my own cornucopia, pumpkin scarecrows, and maybe even hang little pilgrims on the wall. And maybe I'll even have some old videotapes of the Macy's Parade and football games and "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!" sent over here so it's REALLY like an American Thanksgiving. It's going to be so much fun I can't wait! French people have no idea what they're missing out on; even though they never got fed food from Indians, I'm going to make sure Thanksgiving is a holiday they never forget. I should have been a preschool teacher. We also decided that we were going to celebrate not only July 14th (Bastille Day, France's Independence Day) but also July 4th AND July 5th because that's Venezuela's Independence Day, and we'll have traditional venezuelan food and dance salsa and bachata. OOOOOOOOO I love this family!!!!! Except, I just realized that the 4th of July is the day after tomorrow. Guess I should hop on that then.....
Wednesday morning I awoke to Gilles telling me there was someone on the phone for me. I immediately fell into a panic- who in the world (literally) could possibly be calling me? No one (to my knowledge) knows to reach me at their number. It clearly had to be a french person. Which meant when I answered the phone they would speak back to me in french through a telephone which would probably make their voice sound muffled and indecipherable to me and then I'd have to keep asking what they were saying and embarrass myself and what if it was some important government official or a potential employer and then there goes my chance at actually making it in this country and i'd be lucky if they dont deport me right that very second for my incompetence. Plus, I just woke up, my brain hasn't switched to it's partially functioning french mode yet! *Breathe Gina, breathe*. I got out of bed, legs wobbly, stomach full of butterflies, hands so sweaty I was afraid the phone would slip right out of my hand. Turns out, it was the mailman telling me to open the gate so I could sign for a package. WHEW. My mother sent us a package with double stuf oreo, pop tarts, kraft macaroni and cheese, granola bars, etc... Finally- some normal food around here! JC almost cried when i showed him the oreos because he loves them and they dont exist in France and he had actually asked if I could bring some back the next time I visited the states.
Most of the day Wednesday was spent in preparation for my first visitor here in France! My friend Rachel from Muhlenberg is studying in Spain for the summer, and she's on a weeklong break in Paris. I happened to see that she wrote on someone else's wall on facebook that she was in paris, so I commented on it and told her I was living here now, and she asked if we could meet up. As soon as I mentioned out loud, "Oh I just found out a friend from the States is in Paris" Gilles said, "Invite her over for dinner!!!" Seriously, this family is too awesome. And they were like, we're going to give her the "real French experience" and Gilles made an absolutely delicious appetizer (ratatouille) , entree (Veal with some kind of cream sauce), accompanied by wine, baguettes, cheese, the whole 9 yards. We never eat like that on a day to day basis- it's just so that visitors will think we're really french, after all, there's an image to uphold you know. The only thing that wasn't perfect was my dessert, chocolate chip cookies. Grrrrrrr I was so close to conquering all things French baking. Cakes are fine, cupcakes are fine, pies are fine, but cookies? Spread out like melted butter on a piece of bread. I was going to try and make something a little more "french" for dessert (although I had no clue what), but Gilles asked me if I could make chocolate chip cookies. He was going to the supermarket anyway and said he would pick up the ingredients I needed, which was only butter and chocolate chips. He comes back with butter but says he couldn't find any chocolate chips. Sigh. Well, France, how do you expect me to bake chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips? Gilles just bought a bunch of chocolate bars for me to cut up into pieces, but it's not exactly the same. And I think the butter was partially the problem too- the butter here is a lot softer but also a lot heavier than butter in the US, and I noticed that when I was creaming the butter and the sugars that it just wasn't quite the same consistency as in the US. After my first batch came out as flat as crepes, I decided to add more flour, but that made the cookies a lot more dry and tough and crispy instead of moist and chewy. Silvia teased me and said, "Oh don't worry it's a good thing, it's good for my teeth," with a chuckle. JC also pointed out that I had the oven too hot. The (American) recipe said 375 degrees F, which is 190 degrees C, but apparently you can't just do that. Most French "cookie" (ahem, cookie wanna be, in my ever so humble opinion) recipes call for the oven to be around 130 degrees C. So I turned the temperature down and that plus the added flour seemed to help a bit but the edges still spread out too much. Nevertheless, Gilles and JC said they tasted fine, and said I was welcome to make them anytime I wanted, even if they weren't right, because they would eat them. Thanks guys.
As much as I hate to, I have to give France another point for the cookie defeat. 12, 25.
Unfortunately Rachel's train got delayed coming back from Giverny, but it all worked out. I walked to the RER station to fetch her and got to meet her friend Alan, who goes to Lehigh but is part of the same study abroad program and turned out to be a really cool guy. Although neither Rachel nor Alan speak French, they both speak spanish, hence why they are studying in Spain. My family is from Venezuela; voila, a perfect match. Once again we had a quite interesting spafrenglish conversation throughout dinner, but I found that they were speaking slow enough that I could understand a lot more than I expected to of what was being said in spanish, or at least get the gist of what was being said, like that they were talking about people wearing the same outfits at one point. It was really cool, actually, and I'm so glad we had the opportunity to make it work out! And I also began to think, hey, maybe this learning spanish thing wont be so hard after all.
HAH. Slow down there, partner, don't get too overconfident now. The next day, Silvia had 4 friends from Venezuela come over for lunch. This time, they might as well been speaking Hungarian or Bostwanian because I couldn't make out anything in the conversation aside from the occasional, "Si". Oh well. The ladies all seemed really nice though, although JC and Yadira were laughing because they said, "It's literally like having 5 of your mother in the same room talking with each other. 5 of the same latina (as in loud) mother in the same room talking with each other." No offense to any mothers out there, but NOBODY wants to have their mother multiplied 5 times. But again, the meal was really good. JC made a corn based cream and then arranged a hard boiled egg, diced tomatoes, and sausage as the appetizer, and then our entrée was veal cassoulet. Once again, there was lots of cheese and wine and baguettes offered as well. So you see, my dear friends, what kind of grand party could also be thrown for YOU when YOU come to visit me (hint hint nudge nudge wink wink). Yes indeed, all this (and more) can be yours for only $1000 worth of a roundtrip plane ticket (plus shipping and handling). Comment by pressing the button on screen below and reserve your place today! ;-)
Just a $1000 round trip? Your mother (from your New Jersey family) is packing as we speak....
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