I'm back.. musings on France

Life's been a bit hectic for the last month. I was on vacation in Europe for two weeks, and for the last two weeks, I've been cooking like crazy... for my new boyfriend, Fred.
When I am single, my cooking style tends to be a bit more sparse. Little to no cheese, more grains, less fish, simpler meals, fewer side dishes. But to me, cooking is a form of creativity, of expression. So lately, I've felt inspired. By Fred, yes, but by Europe, my friends, my life.
I spent a week in France eating as a I pleased, meat included. My sister and I made a pact: Each night a great meal, wine included, with no repeats. We broke that rule once, for a second meal at the cafe Le Vrai Paris on Rue des Abbesses. The first night we went there two lesbians interrupted our dinner then paid for it. (At 70 euros, we were happy to let them!) We returned our last night because we couldn't decide where else to go, and we wanted to stay in our neighborhood.
Because the vegetarian options are sparse in French bistros and cafes, I ate meat. I wasn't really happy with the decision, but the food was delicious. I took comfort in the fact that the French care so much about what they eat. It's not just duck on the menu, it's magret au col vert.
I ate so many delicious meals:
salmon in a rich cream sauce with spinach and shallots
coq au vin
paupiettes de pecheur au provencale (thin filets of fish filled with a cheese and vegetable mixture, rolled up and served with tomato sauce)
sliced, sauteed potatoes that were so rich and sweet they had to have been cooked in duck or goose fat
perfectly creamy scalloped potatoes
a croque madame
countless crepes filled with Nutella (well, I snagged bites of Rach's)
risotto with poultry (I thought it was vegetarian, then remembered "volaille" means poultry)
duck breast seared but still practically bleeding on the inside (surprisingly delicious), with roasted chestnuts and a rich red wine sauce
After a week in Paris, I was craving vegetables and grains and yes, tofu. But there was none to be had for a few more days, for I was off to Tours, where my French "grandmother" lives.
Colette Vavasseur is one of the kindest people I know. I was randomly assigned to live with her when I studied abroad six years ago. A naive 19-year-old who'd never been overseas, I learned so much sitting around her dinner table each night. Between 7:50 and 8:00 each night, she'd open the door at the bottom of the stairs and yell up to my camarade de chambre (roommate) and me, "A la table, les filles." "Oui," we'd respond, and be down the stairs within one minute flat.
Kosuke, the 13-year-old Japanese boy attending boarding school in Tours, would usually have beaten us to the table. As Patrick Poivre d'Arvor began reading the news (or Claire Chazal with her decolletage exposed and her annoying forward leaning posture on weekends) and we'd begin eating, sometimes with an aperatif but usually just with an entree.
Often a quiche, a seafood salad, stuffed avocados, sometimes beets, carottes rapees, concombres a la creme (cucumbers with creme fraiche), often a potage, sometimes pate, rillettes (which are a specialty of Tours) or even, once, foie gras.

Usually wine, often a rose from Bordeaux, or a white from the Touraine region. I didn't know whether it was good or bad, but I liked it.
After one helping, plus a no-thank you second helping, came clean plates and le plat principal, usually meat of some kind.
Often fish or chicken, sometimes roasted pork, rarely beef. At that time, mad cow fears were rampant, and beef prices were high. Some chickenlike meat made a frequent appearance, and it took me about six weeks to figure out that it was rabbit, the same rabbits that Colette kept in the backyard. (Chickens don't have large femur bones; that's how I figured it out.) Sometimes we had pasta, for my birthday Colette roasted a duck. My favorite meal was her roasted chicken, which I still crave. The skin crisp, ready to crack if flicked, the meat tender and juicy inside. The greasy, deliciously salty "sauce"/gravy spooned over multiple servings. Always accompanied by haricots verts a l'ail (with garlic). It was the one time Colette didn't have to tell us "Il faut finir." (You must finish.)
Colette was a founding member of the clean-plate club. The food was delicious, and we wanted to eat it, but one serving sufficed for American girls trying to watch their weight in the land of lanky French women. We were often allowed to eat the dinner leftovers for lunch or even dinner the next night, but the next course was salad, which we had to finish entirely each night.
The salad bowl made its appearance just when Devan (the other American in the house) and I were ready to burst. We'd drink more wine to be able to eat more. The large glass bowl, more like a punch bowl, it seemed, would appear in the center of the table, the large leaves of buttery soft lettuce dressed with the same shallot vinaigrette night after night (the secret, Colette told me this time, is cider vinegar and vegetable oil). The French don't cut lettuce but carefully fold it into neat bites using knife and fork. This prolonged the salad course, a welcome diversion during digestion. Salad at the end, I've decided is a brilliant French diet trick. Cleans out the other stuff, I think. The good-natured argument was the same every night:
Colette: "Il faut finir la salade, les filles." (You must finish the salad, girls.)
Us: "But we're so full from all your delicious food."
Colette: "OK, but the lettuce is expensive because the fields are flooded (the Loire was flooded that spring), so you have to eat it all."
One of us: "If lettuce is expensive, then could you just buy less?"
Colette: "Yes, next time I will, but tonight I've made this, so we don't want to waste it."
Us: Sigh, deep breath, silent fight to see who would finish.
One of us: "Well, I had seconds on the meat, so I think xxx should have more salad."
The other: "Ok, well I know how much you like salad, so I think you should finish it."
Round and round it went, until we'd finished.
After the salad, cheese -- Sainte Maure, Camembert, Brie, Roquefort, chevre, any number of pungent French cheeses... which I at first had to wrap inside bread and swallow almost whole to tolerate them. By the end of 10 weeks, I'd learned to love the smelly French fromage.
Finally fruit, which we'd usually refuse, followed by dessert:
Colette makes a great tarte tatin, so good in fact that I never passed it up. That upside-down French tart, with its caramelly, buttery apples and crisp, flaky crust. Classically French and perfectly done.
On my birthday, I had a chocolate cake from scratch. Other times, pear tarts, ile flottant, creme caramel, pots de creme, chocolate mousse. How could I say no?
Finally a digestif on special occasions and coffee to wake us up so we could finish our homework.
That was my introduction to French food, 10 weeks in the Loire Valley in spring 2001. I gained 10 pounds, but I didn't care.
During those meals, which sometimes lasted two hours, I learned more about French and France than I did all day in my classes. We watched the news, I asked questions, Colette explained French culture and current events. Some nights, we skipped going out to bars with friends so we could linger around the table, drinking tea or coffee and talking with Colette. As she said the day I left, with tears in her eyes, she was more than my host mother, she was my friend. She still is, and the French lessons she gave me and love she put into the food she made had made a profound impact on me.
This visit, I spent two and a half days with Colette. I had great meals, unfortunately full of meat:

Cucumber-vinaigrette salad

Roasted pork with perfectly crisp, buttery, sweet fried potatoes

Salad with her shallot vinaigrette, which I of course, finished

Cheese: a dry and a moist Sainte-Maure

A slice of chocolate cake

Coffee

For lunch the next day,

A mild white fish with Hollandaise sauce

Cherry tomatoes ready to burst with ripeness and flavor

I'm forgetting what else, but the meal was superb.

"Il faut profiter de la vie," Colette told me when I protested as she refilled my wine glass with a crisp, yet semi sweet Touraine white.

The day I left, Colette made me eat lunch though I'd eaten breakfast just two hours before. No one leaves Colette's home hungry. So, I ate more tomatoes, a whole bowl, with a dab of creamy, full-fat mayonnaise (French mayo just tastes so much better than U.S. mayo), a sprinkling of salt and pepper and some good bread. Life was good, the wine was free-flowing, and I was happy.

Sitting around her table that first night, six years older and feeling so much wiser, tears welled up at one point. My French had returned, I spoke freely and we reminisced about those 10 weeks. We watched Patrick and Claire as the election returns came in, and we fell into that same rhythm: food, conversation, seconds, questions.

I asked Colette for some of her recipes to share, but I didn't get very many of them. I'll ask her again when I send the pictures we took my last night there.

has it really been two years?

Life passes quickly, more so each year.
Two years ago, I was embarking on the journey of my lifetime. A year in Korea. I remember crying until I couldn't catch my breath when I left my mom at the gate. 365 days without her? How would I do it? It ended up being about 400 days sans Maman. I returned home a different person, a year older, sure, but a bit less innocent, a bit more jaded, a bit less idealistic. It wasn't Korea that changed me; it was my life choices.
That year was simutaneously the best and worst of my life. Korea is so important to me, and it was there that I learned a lot about myself... what I wanted, who I was, am and will be. I made great friends, taught intelligent children and, of course, ate delicious food.
Everything in those first few days was magical, special, unique. Soon, the grocery story would become just another errand in my daily life, but that first visit was so exciting!
Saturday, February 26, 2005 2:59 p.m.
I survived my first two trips to stores. Last night, after working a 10-hour day, stores were closed and I didn’t have the energy to try a restaurant so I was prepared to starve until morning or face another Luna bar for a meal. (Before leaving I bought a couple of dozen Luna bars, etc. for breakfast here. Thankfully, because that and coffee was the only food I had in my apartment yesterday morning. )In the few blocks after the school there are restaurants and businesses, but then it’s pretty much just apartment buildings for a solid 10 minutes. Finally I found a 7/11-type place and picked up some food. It’s strange picking out food without knowing exactly what it is. I bought some milk thinking it was soymilk. It was in a black and white and green container, just like the soymilk (duyu) I was used to seeing. Oops. I found some mushroom soup in the refrigerated section. I heated it on the stove -- no microwave -- and ate it for breakfast. It was heavenly! Maybe it’s because it was the first warm food I’d had in a day and a half. I also bought this triangular sushi with spicy tuna filling (though at the time I didn’t know what was inside.) called maeun chamchi samgakgimbap. I read about it in the guidebook. Only sold in convenience stores, it is a triangle of rice with a filling of beef (so gogi), tuna (chamchi) or chicken (dalk gogi) or even kimchi. It’s covered in dried seaweed (kim), which inevitably comes off when you unwrap the treat. I also saw some today in the grocery store, Carrefour. Seeing that familiar sign made me feel at home right away. (Carrefour is a French brand. The word means crossroads in French.) Grocery store is a bit of an understatement; it’s more like a mall. There are small boutiques, a beauty salon, a pet supply shop, restaurants – including KFC, Baskin Robbins and Burger King – and a section that has just about everything, like a Wal-mart. An accessories kiosk caught my eye. The woman and I talked a bit and I succumbed to the lure of the shiny objects. I bought a stick for my hair, one that can be used to secure a twist or bun. I paid 12,000 for it, which I suppose was worth it for the conversation. I walked around a bit before choosing my groceries and deliberately only chose a basket instead of a cart. I wanted everything, but knew I had to carry it a block home. There was a huge produce section, a sushi bar, with self-serve, prepackaged sushi pieces, various meat counters, counters with countless varieties of kimchi, namul (side dishes), tofu (dubu), seaweed (gim) and rice (bap/ssal). There was a large seafood section boasting giant blue crabs (gae)with legs spread two feet wide, for 33,000 a pound. Vendors crowded every aisle with samples of meats (gogi), kimchi and spicy (maeun) vegetables (yachae). There were coolers with meat for grilling pulgogi and galbi. Another case contained beef (so gogi) and vegetables (yachae) already seasoned and ready to be cooked. For 31,872, I bought:a case of soymilk (duyu) (it was buy one, get one free, so I had to carry two heavy cases of single-serve nuyu home!) a six-pack of diet Coke (actually Coca light, and it was 2,500 for it! I likely will not drink much of it here because it’s costly. I just wanted to buy it.) seven pieces of sushi (600 to 800 each, what a steal!) a platter of what I think is marinated tofu. It’s yummy. I’ve had it before and love it! It comes with sliced onion (yangpah) and peppers (gochu). Sugar cubes for coffee (I plan to start inviting my friends over for espresso. I love my little moka maker!) Mayonnaise (not sure why, but there was a 100 coupon!) A green tea (nok cha) that I saw on the register aisle for 50. It was in this heated cooler-looking cabinet. It was really neat! Rice. A bottle of Hite beer (mekju). An Asian pear (bae uh) (they are quite large, the size of a grapefruit, and orangeish-tan in color!)A block of tofu (dubu), which I plan to fry up for lunch tomorrow, along with some spicy soy sauce. Mmm! It’s pretty fresh. Yum!I think that was it. I saw some cheese, but completely bypassed it. It will be a treat here, not a dietary staple. I am going to eat only Korean food for the first three months, if possible. Another method that will keep me from overeating and over shopping: My freezer isn’t working. I can’t read the dials. They’re far beyond my limited vocabulary.I still feel so tired. I want to go to bed early each night, but I can’t sleep through the night. I wake after a few hours and wake feeling restless. My body doesn’t know what’s going on. For the first time in my life, I am constipated. I am happy here so far, but I just don’t have much energy. It’s a nice change to have so much free time. I know work will take up most of my time, but that’s all I have. I still have to write home to tell people that I have arrived, plus I have to send postcards. That can wait. For now, I want to rest. But first I need to go back to Carrefour. I want a curling iron, a sponge, a hairbrush and some other things. Oy, I am tired. I expected to go to the other side of the city today to explore, but I just don’t have the energy. Every time I don’t feel energetic, I get scared that I am falling into a depression. I don’t think that’s the case here; I think the jetlag is still wearing off. It’s to be expected that it will take a while to catch up. I will worry about running errands and settling in next week. No rush. I am here for a year, and I need to be well-rested for work on Monday. It’s my first day of teaching. Yesterday’s experience requires far too much energy to describe right now. Back to Carrefour.