Way back in August, I took a trip to Scotland with my friend, the Shoe Fiend. For whatever reason, I never got the chance to talk about it on here, but the publication of an article about the trip reminded me of the pictures I’ve had hanging out on my hard drive ever since. So here we go: Part 1 (of two) of my and the Shoe Fiend’s trip through Scotland!
First stop: Stirling.
The whole point of our trip was the Shoe Fiend’s conference at the university in this small city, so we spent most of our two days there at the University itself.
The park inside was absolutely gorgeous.
We were also extremely impressed with the fact that we could get Magner’s delivered to our door.
As you may know, if you read the article, we didn’t have much of a plan when we set out in our rental car, but we were pleasantly surprised to stumble upon two cute towns on our first day.
Falkirk, home of the Falkirk wheel. Maybe it’s because we’re girls, but we were less impressed with this apparent engineering marvel than the pretty canal that ran past it.
After Falkirk, we drove towards Loch Lomond, arriving in Balloch way past lunchtime. The boat tour we took was a fortuitous discovery that let us discover the lake itself.
We spent the night at the very charming Norwood Guest House, where we were treated to a free full Scottish breakfast. The Shoe Fiend and I discovered potato scones; I think I’ll have to rediscover these in my Parisian kitchen.
Also, I miss breakfast sausage.
Another discovery was lemon marmalade. Perhaps I’ll try making this at home too… I don’t think the Country Boy would be too pleased though.
That’s all for today! Part two tomorrow. In the meantime, check out the article for the full story.
When the Shoe Fiend and I left our cute little Bed and Breakfast in Balloch, it was raining. We soldiered on, though, and got an early start, driving around the coast of Loch Lomond.
I was driving, but both of us signaled last-minute stops. I would pull the car to the side of the road, and both of us would clamber out and take pictures of the incredible views. No matter how many times we stopped along the side of the lake, we never got tired of it.
Sometimes we stopped and went for little walks in the hill. Even the Shoe Fiend who, true to form, was wearing some great shoes, wasn’t afraid to take a walk in the mud if it meant more incredible views of hills, flowers, and the silver lake.
This particular walk made me feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland.
We stumbled upon the Falls of Dochart quite innocently, but we were blown away by the beautiful, diminutive falls.
Our last stop — before seeking out a place to sleep — was Balquhidder. I had seen on the map that it wasn’t too far, and I had wanted to see it ever since, about three years ago, my brother got me obsessed with this song, which I listened to non-stop as I waited to be called for Jury Duty. (I never was.) The experience far from ruined the song for me, and the Shoe Fiend and I were both pleasantly surprised by what we found.
From the ancient burial ground was a path leading up, and so up we went.
I didn’t used to like watching television in France. The choices generally range from poorly dubbed American sitcoms and even poorer French versions; I watch the evening news and American shows in English. And a lot of Doctor Who.
But the Country Boy likes watching television, and so I’ve gotten used to having it on. I actually found some French shows I like — most of them on Arte and pertaining to the culinary habits of people in remote villages in Europe. TCB likes the American sitcoms that I find so strange to listen to in French; he grew up on the same shows as I did — 7th Heaven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friends.
He laughs when he watches them, though it’s not for the same reasons I do. Joey Potter cries in the hallways of her Capeside high school, jilted by the popular football player, and Tom laughs.
“It’s not like that in France. We’re all the same.”
At first, I believed him… but soon after, I realized the proper response. “That’s what the popular kids say.”
Maybe the division of jocks and geeks and beauty queens in high school doesn’t exist in the same way as France; I certainly didn’t see it in my three months spent in a French ninth grade, but then again, I understood very little back then. What I do know is that there is definitely a clear division in this egalitarian state: Foreigners and French.
Being a foreigner in France is like growing up as a nerd: at this point in our lives, the teasing and the staring is usually over, but you’re still not one of them, and being back in school draws even more attention to this fact. I didn’t feel so Not-French until I started going to a French school, and even then, I hardly noticed it until I realized that none of them ever speak to me. It’s not as though they go out of their way to ignore me, but I don’t go up to them, and they certainly don’t go up to me. By the end of the semester, I had made a handful of school-friends, people I sit with in class and never see outside of school. One is a Liberian, the other is an Iranian-American. We gravitate towards one another, as nerds often do.
What I find interesting about the division, though, is that there must be something about me, something about my appearance, that signals my foreignness to others. Maybe it’s my lack of perfect accessories, the way that I sit or the way that I write. Whatever the small tic they’ve picked up on, the proof is in the pudding: the French people in my classes stick with other French people, and the other foreigners sense my foreignness and gravitate towards me, and I to them.
I don’t think it bothers me, not really. It’s just interesting is all. It’s one of those small cultural things that I never notice until my attention is drawn to it, and then I can’t stop noticing, kind of like the way that the French cook. When I’m scrolling through food blogs, TCB will sometimes look over and frown.
“Yes,” I answer, before he asks a question. “She’s French.” Even bloggers who have been in America for years show something of their origins in their food pictures, something that he can see and I can’t. Anyone who wants to shed more light on the subject, I’m interested. Until then, no one, not even the Frenchman, appears to be complaining about the American food that keeps coming out of this Parisian kitchen.
Goat Cheese, Bacon and Pumpkin Pasta
400 g. pumpkin or other winter squash (I like potimarron), cut into chunks
2 tsp. olive oil 1 tsp. salt 1 onion, thinly sliced
100 g. lardons or bacon 1 sprig fresh thyme 60 g. soft goat’s cheese
100 g. pasta
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Toss the pumpkin with the olive oil and salt, and roast for about 30 minutes, stirring after 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the onion and lardons in a large skillet with a lid, over medium heat. Stir frequently, adding small amounts of water to deglaze the pan as needed, until the onions are soft and lightly caramel-colored, about 20 minutes.
Add the pumpkin, thyme, and 1/2 cup water to the pan. Stir to combine and cover. Allow to cook while you cook the pasta according to package directions. When straining the water, keep 1/2 cup of the cooking water to the side.
Remove the skillet from the heat, and remove the branch of thyme from the skillet. Toss the pasta and goat cheese with the pumpkin mixture, adding cooking water as needed to thin out the sauce.
I’m afraid that I may not have been entirely frank with you, friends. You see, as I reread past posts about my life here in France, you get all of the good stories. The funny encounters. The moments that have people writing me, telling me that they wish they could just move here, too. And while those moments exist — I may be a fiction writer, but I don’t lie — there are a whole bunch of other moments buried underneath, moments that I definitely don’t evoke when people ask me, “So… you love it here?” I just stand there, nodding and grinning, extolling France’s virtues.
The thing is, most days, I do think about France’s virtues. I don’t spend a lot of time mulling over the parts of my life here that are difficult, and I especially don’t spend all that much time thinking about my first months here, back in 2001. There was no way I would ever have admitted it to my fourteen-year-old self, but I’ve come a long way since then. I can be honest now: I was pretty miserable.
I don’t think it’s really possible to go through the sort of challenge I faced when I first came here and not have a small amount of misery… at least not if you want the outcome I so dearly wanted. When I came here, I was convinced that three months would be enough time to make me fluent. I was also convinced that being the best student in my middle school French class would make becoming fluent a piece of cake. I was wrong on two counts. It’s not that my French didn’t get better; it did. It’s just that there’s a whole lot of space between knowing a handful of vocabulary words and some verb tenses and actually being fluent in a language. Even today, I find myself staring at Facebook statuses (the universal equalizer), trying to come up with a witty response in French that will actually make sense. I generally answer, instead, in English, which has the joint result of making me look intelligent and a little bit like an ass. There’s speaking a language, and then there’s speaking a language; the second level is the one that’s always just a little bit better than what you actually speak.
When I first got to France, I thought I understood a lot of French. I watched movies every evening with my host family, sat around the dinner table with them and told them about my day. I tried to relay stories of American culture to my friends at school, but mostly I just stayed silent and nodded a lot. I surrounded myself with people all the time, something that isn’t natural for me; I’ve always liked being alone. But I knew that none of this would be worth it if I didn’t learn something, and I could feel my French getting stronger every day the more I spoke. Still, I relished my time alone, which came once a day, during foreign language classes: French students learn two foreign languages, English and either Spanish or German, and while I attended English, I was exempted from the second. Instead, I found myself in the school’s CDI — kind of like a library and computer center rolled into one — with the entirety of the Astérix and Obélix comic book collection.
I could get completely lost in the books, devouring one and sometimes two every hour. I loved learning about the cultural stereotypes the French had for other European nationalities, and I loved, finally, being able to read something aside from thefournovelsI had brought with me from the States (the fact that, ten years later, I still remember which novels they were is a testament to how frequently they were read.) To discover stories that, I would later learn, were firmly rooted in the childhoods of my French peers, was something that would allow me to become closer to these same peers later in life; it’s strange, the day you realize that most French people have never heard of Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street.
Astérix and Obélix taught me a certain amount of useful French, but mostly I just got a feel for reading in a foreign language and accumulated a pile of words I would probably never need, words like Roman legionaries, druid, magic potion and menhir. Still, there’s something to be said for knowledge that, if I had moved back to the States, I might have never used: this summer, when I visited Dol de Bretagne and saw this, I knew immediately what it was.
The more time I spend with French people, the more I realize how not-French I am. Still, I’m learning every day, and there’s something to be said for still finding delight in things that are commonplace to others. I have been wanting to try sanglier for ten years, ever since I saw it in Astérix et Obélix. While my version may not be roasted, at least it’s not boiled, like that of the Bretons.
Oh, and another fun and slightly unrelated tidbit: this sanglier was actually purchased at Picard, the frozen food store that sells everything from macarons to sushi. Plainly on the label, it says that it comes from Australia. The Country Boy remembered this and told his family; they all had a chuckle, because you see, while wild boar may be foreign for this American girl, in France, you’re more likely to hit a sanglier than a deer on the autoroute.
Civet de Sanglier
1 kilo frozen or fresh wild boar, cut into 2 inch cubes
1/2 bottle red wine
a few sprigs of thyme
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 small onion
1 Tbsp. flour
salt and pepper to taste
Place the boar, frozen or fresh, in a plastic container. Cover with the red wine. Add the thyme and garlic. Mix and cover the container. Refrigerate overnight.
In a large Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over high heat. Drain the sanglier, reserving the marinade. Add the cubes of sanglier, a few at a time, to the pot. Brown on all sides and remove to a plate. Cover to keep warm.
Mince the onion and add to the pot. Sauté until translucent and slightly browned. Sprinkle the flour over the onion and stir for about a minute. Slowly add about a half-cup of the wine and stir to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Add the rest of the wine and bring to a simmer. Cook about 10-15 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Add the sanglier.
Cover the pot and cook over low heat for about an hour and a half (this can also be done in the oven at about 250 degrees F). Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve with mashed potatoes.
It’s not uncommon for people, during university or right after, to end up in Paris. It may not seem so to the unassuming tourist, but the truth is, Paris, is teeming with people in their early twenties, many of whom decide that they’re going to be here for the rest of their lives. Then, one by one, they go back, in search of jobs, a day-to-day routine that doesn’t involve carte de séjour stress or dating in a foreign language, and those of us who remain are constantly faced with the same question: “Why do you like it better here than in the States?”
I used to have a handful of reasons, though none of them felt true. I realized the truth, oddly enough, when I left France nearly two years ago now, when I had the job, the easier life, the dating in my native language. What I realized was that it wasn’t that I preferred France; it was that I wanted both. Both countries, both lives. I wanted to perpetually straddle the Atlantic, to feel that I firmly had one foot in both my native and adopted lands. With my parents and siblings living in America, my past, my childhood, my passport, my nationality, America wasn’t leaving me any time soon. But as I fell into my life there, I realized that the reality of my life in France was much more fleeting. I chose France, not because I wanted to abandon America, but because I didn’t want France to abandon me.
For the last two years, I’ve been comfortable with my decision. Sure, there have been moments, mainly with regards to French bureaucracy, where I’d rather staple my hand to my forehead than be here, but if given the chance, I would never jump on a plane and go back, even if it is easier.
But I can’t straddle two countries forever. I’m realizing this now. I haven’t been to America since June; my annual Christmas trip, as I’ve already told you, was cancelled this year due to technical difficulties and the French administration having a large stick up their derrières. For the first time, America feels far… too far for comfort. And then there are the little things… the fact that I’m more comfortable answering pop culture questions about France, or the fact that my version of America is less actual America and more the strange nostalgia that we expats feel. It’s a removed version, something that existed once, maybe, or that we’ve created in memory of the place we all once called home.
My plans for Christmas have rapidly changed; I’m spending it at the Country Boy’s, my first French Christmas. I’m excited, and yet there’s a huge part of me that misses the Christmas I’ve always known that I know will still be going on without me. All of my siblings will be home for Christmas; this is the baby’s first year of college, her first homecoming. I didn’t expect not to be there for it.
As for the pictures, they’re the last of my America shots. I remember coming to this point sometime in the spring of 2010, as I was settling into my job and life in New York. Paris was fading from my Flickr photostream, and while I’m very aware that it’s not the most romantic way for something to fade, it’s true, and that has to count for something. These are the last pieces of New York I have, for the moment: spring shots of Long Island I took at the same time that France was fading, nearly two years ago. Funny how things like that happen.
I’ve posted countless varieties of pasta with tomato sauce: the ultimate in comfort food, especially in my family. I’ve changed my version again and again: this one was made with a whole pan of fresh summer tomatoes, roasted with salt, olive oil and a tiny bit of sugar, with three unwrapped garlic cloves tucked in for good luck. My trusty immersion blender and a handful of fresh basil finished the deal, and I topped it, not with parmesan, but with freshly grated comté, TCB’s favorite.
Tomorrow, things will feel better. But I was supposed to fly today, and so I am allowing myself a few moments of wallowing. I hope you don’t mind.
Fresh Roasted Tomato Sauce 10-12 fresh tomatoes, roma or on the vine
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 cup basil leaves, rinsed.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Chop the tomatoes into chunks. (You can peel them first if you like, but I’m very lazy.) Toss with salt, sugar and olive oil, and place in a glass baking dish. Tuck the cloves of garlic into the pile of tomatoes so that they are not exposed to the air but don’t touch the bottom of the glass.
Roast for about an hour to an hour and a half, tossing as the tomatoes brown and caramelize on the top, about every 15 to 20 minutes. When the tomatoes have reduced by nearly half, remove from the oven and allow to cool about 10-15 minutes on the countertop.
Blend the tomatoes and basil with an immersion blender. Serve atop pasta; I like spaghetti.
When I was first learning to cook, I worshipped cookbooks and cooking magazines. I clipped recipes, bookmarked them on blogs, constantly referred to my Giada di Laurentiis book for the exact way to do something. My food turned out fine, but it wasn’t exceptional. I distinctly remember a spinach lasagna that I made over and over again; I don’t think I would enjoy it today, but at the time, it was exactly what I needed: reminiscent of home, and not poisonous.
Those recipes came from a time when my father was obsessed with his Italian roots, and so was I. My father and I both operate in phases, and when our phases coincide — baseball, mafia movies, the Beatles, Italianness — we’re a monster machine of destruction together. When we were both living in New York and obsessed with being from Italy, I would spend way too much of his money buying specialty meat and cheese on Arthur Avenue. When I was living alone, it just made me make strange desserts out of wheatberries and try to feel nostalgic for something I had never known.
As I got more comfortable with cooking, I started to learn a different way: I learned from people who knew what they were doing, by watching, by experimenting, by trying. I’ve stopped trying to make classics of a cuisine that, in all truthfulness, is far from my reality, and am instead trying to replicate classics of one that is.
I suppose it all started in Paziols, when I was asked to replicate French classic dishes for the campers to taste and try. I searched for recipes for coq au vin, gratin and quiche Lorraine online and doubled and tripled them to feed 20. When I came back to Paris, it was back to my regular repertoire of vegetarian dishes made of légumes that could maybe kind of be called stews, with an occasional pasta or rice dish, my brushes with classic roast chicken and pot au feu forgotten.
I’m not exactly sure what made me want to start making the classics again — I think it was the simple fact of having the ingredients so close to me. One week, beef for boeuf bourguignonwas on sale, so I bought it on a whim. The next, my favorite cheese man at the market was selling half-rounds of Reblochon for 2 euros. I bought one, walked a couple of steps to the butcher and asked for lardons.
“J’ai du lard. Je vous coupe des lardons ?” He asked, and when I said yes, he whipped out a giant knife and cut thick strips of fatty bacon into tiny little pieces to use in this dish.
The Country Boy is fairly impressed with my versions of his favorites, the nostalgic cuisine of his childhood. I change things, adding carrots to my boeuf bourguignon and removing the mushrooms and tiny onions, or baking my tartiflette a bit less so that the cream remains liquidy and leaving the skins on the potatoes. He doesn’t seem to mind.
Tartiflette
600 grams potatoes
1 onion
100 grams lardons or bacon cut into thin strips
6 Tbsp. crème fraiche or heavy cream
250 g. Reblochon cheese (1/2 cheese)
Fill a pot with cold water and place the potatoes in it. Bring the water to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes, until the potatoes are just fork-tender.
Meanwhile, slice the onion into thin slices. If using bacon, cut into short, narrow strips, about 1 centimeter wide and 1 inch long. Cook together over medium heat in a frying pan, stirring occasionally.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
When the potatoes are cooked, run cold water over them until they are just cool enough to handle. Slice into thick discs.
Spread about 1 Tbsp. of cream into the bottom of a small baking dish (9in x 9in or similar size). Arrange a layer of potatoes over the layer of cream. Pour the bacon and onion mixture over this layer, then cover with most of the cream, reserving about a tablespoon. Cover with the rest of the potatoes and the rest of the cream.
Slice the cheese in half to open like a book, and place each of the halves, cut side down, over the potatoes. (Real Reblochon will have a small wax circle embedded in the cheese. This should be removed.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until the cheese is melted and slightly browned on the top. Serve with green salad.
Sunday lunchtime is a serious affair in France. Around noon, the stairwell in my seven-story building starts to smell like garlic, onions, roasting chicken skin. The line from the bakery goes out the door and along the glass wall as people pick up assortments of pastries and tarts for dessert. I learned today that one can call the police if anyone is doing building construction between noon and two on a Sunday, lest it hinder one’s enjoyment of Sunday lunch. It’s serious business.
Around here, Sunday lunch is really more like Sunday breakfast, and since Sunday is pancake day, there is very little room for anything akin to roast chicken, even if that is what I smell when I walk in the front door after church. By the time I get off on the sixth floor, I could kill for a roast garlic clove… but it’s panake day, and so pancakes I make. They’re actually quite delicious. I usually forget about the chicken.
Still, there’s something very satisfying about cooking a whole bird, a whole roast, something large and meaty that has to be carved. I can do it, but I prefer to ask the nearest gentleman, which has the dual purpose of making said gentleman feel useful and allowing me to do other more interesting things like pour glasses of wine.
Roasting large cuts of meat used to fall into my food fears, the things I would never do with the worry that I would kill someone with undercooked chicken or create a tough, chewy, gray roast beef. I’m not sure how I started to feel so normal about pork roasts… it didn’t happen until after I had a toaster oven, which is not the best environment for roasting large cuts of meat, but it gets the job done, and I can do it perfectly every time now.
While my Sunday lunches are, and probably will remain, of the pancake variety, this is something I would make for a Sunday lunch, should my French boyfriend ever decide he wants to stop being so American. The smells are the kind I’d like someone to smell coming up the stairs on Sunday afternoon, hoping that they’re coming from the doorway they plan to stop at. It’s the kind of meal that begs for a walk around the neighborhood afterwards; the Country Boy and I have taken to weekend wandering… late fall in Paris is pretty much begging for it.
I take pictures, an d when we get back, we have Sunday dinner instead. It doesn’t have the same traditional quality, but then again, there’s something to be said for creating one’s own traditions.
Mustard Pork Roast
1 onion 5 new potatoes, sliced into discs 1 tsp. salt 1 pork roast (~700 g.) 2-3 Tbsp. spicy French mustard (you can also use whole grain mustard, if you have it)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Slice the onions into thin half-moons, about 1/8 inch thick. Toss with the potatoes and salt, and spread over the bottom of a baking dish.
Coat the pork roast in mustard, using a pastry brush if you have one. Place the roast over the potatoes and onions and roast for 30 minutes.
At the 30 minute point, remove the roast and turn it upside down. Add 2-3 tbsp. of very hot water to the bottom of the baking dish and toss the onions and potatoes. Return to the oven and continue roasting for another 30 minutes. Serve with applesauce, cucumber salad and cornbread.
Cucumber Salad 1 English cucumber
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. cider vinegar
fresh black pepper
Using a box grater or a mandoline, slice the cucumber into paper-thin slices. Place in a strainer and add the salt. Toss to coat. Allow to drain for about 2 hours in the sink. (You can also drain over a bowl overnight in the fridge.)
Add the sugar, cider vinegar and black pepper. Marinate about an hour in the fridge.
Cornbread 1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 can (250 g.) corn, drained and puréed
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup melted butter, cooled
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Combine the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. In a medium bowl, combine the corn, eggs, milk and melted butter. Add the qet ingredients to the dry, stirring just enough to combine. Pour into a buttered loaf pan and bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
The past year has felt a bit like the start of a new chapter in my life, which is a strange feeling to have when you’re right in the middle of it. I usually notice things like this in a fit of nostalgia, as I look back on a part of my life and say to myself, “Oh, that was the time when I was…” and then finish the sentence with one of many adjectives. Dressing like a boy. Drinking too much coffee. Drinking too much. Sleeping too much. Happy. Sad. Oblivious.
I’ve always felt like myself, like I’m existing on a continuum, and only in looking back can I cut the continuum into pieces. But this part of my life, the moving back to France part and the starting my Masters part, has felt like a break, a change, one that I notice on a daily basis… and it’s scary.
I pull a book that I used to love off my bookcase and quickly reshelve it when I realize that I don’t identify with teenage characters in the same way I used to; I’d rather keep the memory alive than reread The Catcher in the Rye and be disappointed. Movies that I used to love, like Garden State, don’t feel the way they once did. Bars that were home to dozens of fun nights feel tired and dirty. I’m not sure how I feel about all of these sudden changes, but I can’t do anything to stop them.
My father loves the story of when I was maybe eight or nine, walking through the aisles of a toy store and telling him, very seriously, “I think I’ve grown up… because I don’t want anything here.” It makes him laugh; it makes me think. Maybe this is growing up?
I went back to my boarding school a year after I graduated and, in a bout of nostalgia, made my old favorite dinner standby: a bowl of pasta covered in shredded cheese from the salad bar and microwaved for exactly a minute. The cheese tasted like plastic; the pasta was both overcooked and crunchy. The memory was ruined.
Luckily, there are some things that never change: while I find Campbell’s Tomato Soup metallic and too sweet, the boxed soups that Emese stocks up on when she comes to Paris every couple of months are delicious veloutés, perfect for dunking a buttery grilled cheese with American singles. I introduced the Country Boy to this classic American combo a few weeks ago; he quickly fell in love and asked for one for his packed lunch on Monday. I didn’t know how to explain to him that bringing cold grilled cheese in a sack lunch would quickly destroy any good memories he had of them, so I just refused, outright… but I’m sure I’ll be making them a few more times before the end of the winter.
Classic Grilled Cheese (makes two sandwiches)
Don’t mess with classics: I have an aversion to plastic cheese and white sliced bread under most circumstances, but not when it comes to grilled cheese.
30 g (a bit more than two tablespoons) butter, softened
4 slices white bread
4 slices American cheese
Heat a skillet over medium high heat. Butter each slice of bread on both sides. Put the cheese slices between the slices of bread, two slices per sandwich.
Place the sandwiches in the skillet. Heat for about 1-2 minutes per side, until browned. Serve with tomato soup.
When I was growing up, I was never the one who was all that into romance movies. Most of my best friends were guys or girls who were also mostly friends with guys; I spent a lot of time making fun of my sisters for watching silly chick flicks and going to four-dollar Tuesday showings of movies where a lot of things exploded.
That being said, there were a few romances that I had a soft spot for; I was convinced it was because they were the ones that seemed realistic. Imperfect, but perfect in their imperfection. Then again, I’ve always been more interested in scars.
Through a series of unfortunate events that those of you who live in France may empathize with and those of you who don’t will not believe, I can’t go home for Christmas this year. It will be the first Christmas I’m spending away from my family, which is slightly daunting, considering that, even now, when my youngest sister is eighteen, our Christmas traditions — sleeping in the same room on Christmas Eve, watching Christmas movies and creeping down the stairs early on Christmas morning — have held strong.
At first, it made me feel powerless. Then sad. Then angry. Now I think I’m resigned to it, and I’m making plans for my own Christmas here in Paris… but that’s not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is love, but perhaps not in the way you might imagine; now, more than ever, I’m in love with France.
It might seem a strange way to react, but it makes sense, at least to me. In the face of the problems I’ve had with a slew of government agencies and paperwork, most people’s first reaction when I tell them about the change in plans is to blame it on France. The Country Boy feels personally guilty; American friends want to know why I still want to live here. But what they don’t realize is the fact that the more they enumerate all of France’s faults, the more I’m blind to them. The more I realize I’m supposed to feel fed up and ready to go back to America, where things like getting a job or going to the Post Office are easy and don’t require stacks of paperwork proving who I am, what I do, how much I’m worth and the fact that I can speak French… I don’t want to.
My father asked me time and time again when I was young why I deliberately make things difficult for myself. I argued it at first, but I realize now that maybe it’s true. After spending so much time learning that taking the easy way out was for the weak, I can never bring myself to do it, even when it makes sense… as it may seem to here. In America, I could have a job making twice as much as I make here, in a country that doesn’t frown at me every time I cross the border into it. I could wake up, live my life and go to bed in the language I’ve been speaking since I was born, instead of making faux pas in one that I learned less than ten years ago. I could… if I wanted to.
Maybe it’s not a bad thing that people keep trash-talking the country I’ve come to love… because with every bad thing they say, I think of two more qualities to replace it. The bank is closed for an hour at lunch? Yes… but everyone else gets an hour off at lunch as well. The SNCF is on strike for the entire month of December? Yes… but have you ever ridden Amtrak? The people at the préfecture are jerks?
Yes, they are. And no, I don’t have a counter.
But I do have Paris.
And beef bourguignon.
Beef Bourguignon
Note: This is not quite traditional, but I don’t really mind. It’s delicious, and that’s what counts.)
100 g. (a scant quarter pound) lardons or bacon cut into dice
1 tbsp. vegetable oil 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp. salt 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) uncooked beef chuck, cubed
1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 large carrots, halved and cut into inch-long pieces
500 cl. red wine
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce (What TCB doesn’t know won’t kill him…)
Heat a large, heavy-bottomed Dutch oven over high heat. Cook the lardons or bacon, stirring occasionally, until crisped. Remove to a separate dish, leaving whatever grease runs off in the bottom of the pot. Add the vegetable oil.
Combine the flour and salt in a wide bowl or plate. Toss the chunks of beef in the flour mixture just to lightly coat, and then add to the stock pot. Brown on all sides in batches; be sure not to crowd the pan. Keep the beef warm in a dish until all of the beef pieces have been browned.
Add the onion to the pan and cook, stirring frequently, until softened and browned in places. Add the carrots and red wine.
Bring the wine to a light simmer, then add the beef to the pot, along with the Worcestershire sauce. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Cook for several hours (at least 2), stirring occasionally.
When ready to serve, add the lardons to the stew. Serve over mashed potatoes. This is best served the next day and will keep a week in the fridge.
Living as an American in Paris — and I assume in most international, cosmopolitan cities — gives you automatic admission into a special club of other people trying to do the same thing. You might not see one another right away; it’s easy to mistake fellow Americans-in-Paris for tourists, and while I’m as happy as the next girl to show someone how to get somewhere on a map or explain that the curmudgeony teller in the métro stop wants exact change, I usually don’t spark up conversations with fellow anglophones on the bus.
But we find one another, without even looking. We accumulate names and numbers — through work, through school, through friends. It’s an endless revolving door of people who come, stay for awhile, and with little ceremony, return to the real world. Or don’t.
The truth of the matter is, this has finally started to become the real world for some of us. French significant others, “real” jobs, degrees that leave us bilingual and qualified for work in the country that, for many of us, might have been a whim… for whatever reason, some of us are starting to find our footing here… and for that, we need one another.
Sometimes, you just need someone to complain to about your visa appointment or the impossible task of finding an employer who will sponsor you. Sometimes you need to stop speaking French for an afternoon. Sometimes you want someone who is just as OK as you are with wearing pants with an elastic waistband and eating ice cream straight out of the container. Sometimes you need a hug, not a bise. Sometimes… sometimes you need someone who will come watch Breaking Dawn on the Champs-Elysées… or better yet, someone who plans the whole adventure for you.
Spicy food is not a very French thing. It’s hard for the Country Boy, though he tries, to keep up with the endless array of curries and chilis I want to make, and I generally try to succumb to his wishes, making things mild and topping them with Tabasco or Sriracha. But sometimes, you just need another American to come along for the ride.
Fajita Chicken This chicken recipe is actually one of TCB’s favorites. I top mine with Tabasco; he throws on some extra crème fraîche soured with lime for a homemade version of sour cream. In the end, we’re both happy.
For the marinade:
1 cup plain yogurt (whatever fat content you have/prefer)
1 Tbsp. cumin
2 tsp. ground coriander
adobo sauce from a can of chipotle chiles (anywhere from 1/2 tsp. to 2 tsp., depending on your tastes)
1 crushed clove garlic 3 chicken breast halves, sliced into thin strips
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 red bell peppers, sliced into thin strips
1 onion, sliced into thin half-moons
salt, to taste
Combine the marinade ingredients in a plastic container with a lid. Toss the chicken to coat. Refrigerate for at least two hours, preferably overnight.
When ready to prepare, heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan over high heat. Add the peppers and onion and the salt. Sauté about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are browned and the peppers are charred in places.
Add the chicken to the pan, shaking the excess yogurt mixture from the pieces before adding them to the pan. Brown about 2-3 minutes per side. Reduce heat to medium-low, and cover the pan. Cook for an additional 5 minutes, ~10 minutes total. Serve with tortillas, guacamole, pico de gallo and sour cream… and hot sauce.
