In defense of les bises

One of the things I was most nervous about before going to France was les bises, the custom of kissing a person on both cheeks by way of greeting. It seemed way too intimate for moi, someone who doesn't enjoy being hugged by anyone but sig oths and family members. Getting up in someone's grill and nuzzling their cheek, becoming intimate with whatever scent they'd dabbed behind their ears? Non merci; I'll take a handshake.

Everything I'd read before going over led me to believe I wouldn't really have to worry about les bises; they were reserved for close acquaintances-- not awkward American visitors such as myself. But I was soon proved wrong. Within my first week a new friend picking me up for a dinner date leaned over in the car to get up close and personal. Oh hey there.

I was never quite sure who was bises-appropriate, so I always let the Frenchies lead. My fellow teachers never went there, except if we were leaving or coming back from a vacation or if we were together outside of school. My students might bise me, but never in class (except for right before I left). When my adopted family took me to clan gatherings we would engage in what I called the bises parade--upon entering, you had to bise everyone else before sitting down. The process repeated upon leaving. I kind of liked it. It was a protocol that dictated you HAD to acknowledge everyone in the room.

Women would always kiss other women and men would kiss women, but men would only kiss other men if they were family or particularly close friends. One would never kiss a stranger, unless that stranger was a close friend of one of your close friends, and then it was OK. You got that?

There was apparently no wrong time to bise, as witnessed in the Digoin gym when a sweaty women paused her trek on the elliptical to bend down and give a friend some moist cheek love.

After awhile I grew accustomed to les bises, and began to prefer it to other forms of greeting. It's actually far less intimate than a hug, during which one must press one's body against another's, or, barring that, opt for the awkward Seventh Grade Slow Dance tent hug. There's way more going on-- you have to gauge body proximity and grip strength, make sure you aren't going to knock heads, and figure out how soon you can safely pull away.

None of that comes into play with les bises. You just grasp the person's right shoulder for balance, touch your left cheeks, touch the right cheeks, wham bam merci madame.

Small note: les bises always means kisses, but when you use bise as a verb it can also mean, "to have carnal relations." So if you want to use a verb that you're sure won't get misinterpreted, go for transitive s'embrasser.

The NEW New Nutella

You guys. OMD, you guys. O.M.D. I have an announcement to make.

THERE IS SOMETHING BETTER THAN SPECULOOS.  IT IS CALLED CRUNCHY SPECULOOS. IT IS AMBROSIA MIXED WITH UMAMI MIXED WITH MANNA FROM HEAVEN WITH A HEAPING HELPING OF NOMNOM.

Since I first made my everlasting love for Speculoos known to the world, everyone I know who has been to Holland has been all, "Dude. Just you wait." I waited, dear readers. And this morning was the fated moment. It is everything I had dreamed of and more. The best way to describe it a paste made of graham crackers with little crunchy bits of graham cracker inside.

Crunchy Speculoos, Hagel Slag and Echte Luikse Siroop: all part of a balanced Dutch breakfast.

My major plan for this, my last day in Amsterdam, includes buying two, maybe three jars to take home. If you're lucky I'll give you a very small spoonful. 

My ghost had to write this post because I actually died of happy eating this.

Try this; it's disgusting

I ride the bus to Charolles a few times a week to traîne with my main meuf Missy, and I often end up chatting with a philosphy professor from my lycée for the first part of the journey. This afternoon, after picking up a conversation we had started last week (yes, I still like grenouilles; no, I still have no interest  in trying boudin noir; eh, escargots are pas mal), he invited me to break off a small piece of a square of the hard black candy he had in his bag.

He told me it was mint- and  réglisse-flavored. He tried to explain to me what réglisse was, but I ended up with the impression that it's a cigarette-shaped plant that he thinks Americans eat in sandwiches. No matter; I would just have to try it.

Imagine licking the elbow of an infirm old man who goes nuts with his mint-scented arthritis cream.

After he saw my grimace he offered me a tissue so I could spit it out. "Yeah, I don't like it either," he said.

Vive les Petits Fraçais

Whilst on a stroll during a beautiful spring evening, the Dude and I happened upon the strangest site I've yet to lay eyes upon in Digoin. In the middle of a field near the canal sat three tiny houses with unfinished roofs. Too big to be dog houses, too small for les enfants to play in comfortably, too carefully wrought to be someone's Fischer-Price castoffs.

There's but one possible solution to these houses' existence. They must be ruins from the terrible famine of 543, when nutrition was so poor that the French shrunk to the size of garden gnomes. Making matters worse, the nearby Belgians, who had grown inversely larger thanks to their diet rich in snozzcumbers and frobscottle, took advantage of their relative giantism to raid the tiny French villages on numerous occasions. 

What we happened upon could be nothing but one last group of relics from that nightmarish time in French history. The roofs may have been ravaged by time's unforgiving blows, but one last remnant of a carefully wrought lace curtain remains as a testament to the heartbreaking, brittle lives (and bones) of les Petits Français....

Or, you know, maybe they're just forgotten playhouses from the early 90s. We'll never know.

Fat Sunday

1. Foie Gras 2. "Lemon fish dream" 3. Garlicky fromage blanc 4. Dude's scared to stuff more food down his gullet, but will sacrifice for this pistachio soufflé

The Dude and I have been subsisting on mostly saucisson-et-fromage baguette sandwiches, cereal and questionable pasta salads whose recipes I "create" based on "inspiration," so I thought it was high time to introduce him to haute cuisine à la française. My Diggy buddies Suzanne and Christian were happy to aid me in this endeavor, and agreed to join us at Le Merle Blanc yesterday.

First there was an amuse-bouche of zucchini soup with a melty cheese making itself at home in the creamy depths. Then we had entrées of oeufs en meurette (eggs poached in red wine with lardons and mushrooms) and millefeuille croquant de rillettes de caille au foie gras (slices of quail foie gras in between crunchy crackers of puff pastry). Our main course was a faux filet de charolais (steak made from the local breed of cow) for me and filets de bar superposés en duxelles de champignons et beurre d'estragon (bass filet with mushrooms and tarragon butter) for The Dude.
 

Next was the cheese course. The Dude ordered himself a bowl of fromage blanc, a very fresh cheeese halfway between yogurt and cottage cheese, and he ate it à la bourguignon with salt, pepper and garlic. Ail ail ail! No smooches for you!

I chose the cheese plate, and was delighted when the proprietress wheeled over an entire cart of options. I went with reblechon, Saint Nectarin and a young chèvre, and opted for a dollop of fig jam on the side. If you've never tried this flavor combination, do yourself a favor and go immediately to the nearest grocery store and order up one log of chèvre and one jar of fig jam, stat. I'll leave you alone for the next two hours so you can nom this ambrosia in peace.

My stomach was near to bursting, but luckily I left room in my right shoulder for dessert. I have been dreaming about their apple crumble in a bed of luscious caramel sauce since my first visit to Le Merle Blanc last December. And I'll probably be dreaming about it for the rest of my life. Because: OMD. YUM. Dude had a pistachio soufflé, and that was good too I suppose, but it was no apple crumble in a bed of luscious caramel sauce.

And what do you know, after all that I still had room in my left knee for Second Dessert. You kind of have to make these sorts of sacrifices when Grandpère (of ma famille française) decides to make a confection or two. 

On this blessed day, he created delicious strawberry tartelettes and les choux-- a cream puff with a circle of candied caramel on top.

It was a good thing ma famille had Contrex on hand. It's a special diet water that makes you have to make water a lot, if you know what I mean. If you don't, there's a helpful diagram on the label.

Land of Funny Names

I was combing through my archives this morning and noticed this post, which I fully intended to publish about a month ago but didn't. Many apologies to those who have been dying to hear about my weekend in Switzerland.

My Main Meuf Missy (M&M&M) has friends scattered across the globe, and for her birthday her dearest wish was to have as many as possible gather in the Swiss town of Herznach. Where's Herznach, you ask? Oh, you know... just outside of Frick. You read that correctly. FRICK. Herznach is in fact smack dab in the middle of a cluster of towns with the Best Names Ever.

Check out this map my friend Kelly made of what would be the ultimate Land of Funny Names road trip, which takes you on a delightful voyage of Frick--> Stumpholz--> Schupfart--> Mumpf--> Bad Säckingen--> Egg--> Murg--> Butz:

View Larger Map

Since we had but the weekend, we were forced to save that epic journey for another time. But we did manage to knock two off the list.

We didn't see a whole lot of Frick, but what we did seemed very clean and neutral (it's in Switzerland, after all). We hit up every store we could think of to search for Frick-ing postcards, but left empty-handed and bemoaning the fate of our quest. "Frick!" we exclaimed when returning unsatisfied from every single store. "Frick..."

The next day we walked to Germany. It was a great motivating factor that on the other side of the river lay a quaint German town by the name of Bad Säckingen. I never found out where Good Säckingen was, but that was OK because we ate really good ice cream in the Bad one.

 

So there you have it. We went from Frick, Switzerland to Bad Säckingen, Germany, and then we ate some Fruithagel and Puur Hagel Slag. And then we died of awesome.

Walk hard

So for the longest time, whenever I wore thin socks with my brown Earth shoes and I was walking kind of hard,  I would get a piercing pain in my left heel. 

I often inspected that shoe to see if there was a rock or something in it, but I never found anything. I've been convinced that I had a splinter deep in my left heel that I was never going to be able to get out. Today it was particularly ouchy, and as I limped home I bemoaned the fact that my trip to Italy was going to be RUINED-- RUINED I TELL YOU! How was I supposed to romantically stroll among the piazzas and the vias and the gelatos if I couldn't walk?

But just now I had an idea. I took the lining out of the offending shoe, and sure enough, there it was: A NAIL. It was wedged deep into the sole, and camouflaged by the insert. It was a tiny little guy, but sharp as the tooth of a lion that's riding a shark.

I have been walking on a nail for months.

Blast from the Past: Survival of the Toothless

Lately I've been thinking about wisdom, dental hygiene, and raps, which inevitably led me to thinking of this post I wrote back in January of '09. I hope you'll agree that it stands the test of time and is just as phat as ever. Mot à ta mère.

I got my teeth cleaned this afternoon at my new dentist office, where the Michele Bachmann-look-alike told me I must be more evolved than other humans because wisdom teeth have never taken root in my gob. That's where our race is headed, she claimed.

The following rap immediately ensued:
Yo, yo, yo yo, yo-yo yo
Listen up y'all
This be the tale of a case where being toothless ain't bad
In fact
It means you're all evolved
('n shit)

HIT IT!

I got my mouth bones all ready and clean
'Fraid my dentist would get up in my face 'n be mean
See, I ain't had the very best toothal luck
My last dentite drilled me till I was screaming, "Oh (sh)uck!"

I was a little bit nervous and a lot bit scared
But my girl Michele told me no need to be afeared
My fangs were dense, tha roots nice 'n strong
When'd I get my wisdoms pulled? Had it been long?

I laughed best as I could wif her digits in my mouf
"Gurrl, I ain't never had them! Grumble mumble krawf."
She looked at me as if I was all human ills' solution
And called her assistants to gaze on a product of human evolution

Compared to me, she knew her own mouth had failed
Compared to me, she may as well have a prehensile tail
When it comes time for breedin', my kids might have gills
But one thing's for certain: they'll have killer grillzzzz!

WHUT?

My next year's going to be total crêpe

Before we begin today, I need you to admire this insanely awesome sweatshirt I got in Paris at a store where everything was 10E or less:

The big print says, "South Dakota/ It's all yours/ School/ Master/ Scheludes" (yes, scheludes) and on the bottom left it says, "South Dakota Middle School." France, I love you so much sometimes it hurts.

OK. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. We learned on Monday that France doesn't celebrate Groundhog Day, but apparently the second of February plays host to its very own French fête. La Chandeleur has religious significance like pretty much every other holiday here, but secularly (and, more importantly), it's become the day of the crêpe.

Lore says you are supposed to flip your crêpes with a coin under your thumb, and if you're successful you'll be graced with prosperity for the rest of the year. Below is a photo essay of how my next 365 days are going to shape up:

That's right, my next year is going to be terrible and unprosperous because I can't flip a stinking crêpe. This one landed right-side up. Another legend says you're supposed to keep the first crêpe you make on the top of your armoire for the rest of the year, but I was so depressed at failing my flip that I had to eat my feelings.

Running makes me sick

Before I came to Digoin I had this idea that I was going to take up running while here. There's not a whole lot to do, and as the town is situated at the crossroads of a river and canal, I figured I would have nothing better to do than kill myself running.

I have this memory problem where entire conversations and experiences go into a black hole, so in the weeks leading up to my departure I must have said to Matt, "Do you think I'm going to start running when I'm in France?" or "I think I'm going to start running when I'm in France." about a billion times. I was obsessed. I had dreams about it. I even bought an iPod armband.

Yesterday was the perfect first day for my new fit life. The entire country--including the teachers I had classes with-- was on strike to protest the change in retirement age from 60 to 62. Thus I had nothing to do (all the shops were closed) and nowhere to go (trains weren't running), so I decided to lace up my trainers and go for a leisurely jog in the lovely weather.

It. Was. Hell. It would appear I have a mild form of asthma, as evidenced by my burning lungs and the wheezing, oh the wheezing, after I'd gone about a mile. I walked about another mile down a lovely riverside road as I contemplated my craptastic performance. How in the f can I be so out of shape? I walk EVERYWHERE, sometimes hours every day, and I had just spent much of the weekend lugging suitcases (and my body) up and down several million flights of stairs in Paris. People like Brady can run entire marathons, but I can barely run a mile?

Plus, I woke up this morning with a terrible sore throat, which can only be an anti-gift my body protesting the torture I put it through yesterday.

So now I'm torn between being determined to improve by going at it several times a week, and prematurely throwing in the towel because running is just not good for the health.