The REAL reason to travel

Yesterday was my birthday. Not just any birthday-- my GOLDEN birthday, which I've been anticipating since I was present for a childhood friend's 9th birf on July 9 and she received a golden plastic 9, a golden dress, and cupcakes sprinkled with gold flakes.

I didn't end up doing any of the golden goose-eating, goldschlag-ing, golden body paint-ing things I had originally envisioned for this verra special day; I've got a rather large party coming up in a month, so I was quite content to spend a quiet day with the fam.

One thing that did elevate this birthday from all others, though, was watching my Facebook wall fill with birthday greetings that poured in from all over the world. Friends I met in Morocco, Switzerland, Italy, Holland and Germany all sent well wishes, and I received a deluge of greetings from my beloved former students in France ("I hope you are very fine," "Hope you'll pass a nice day," "Happy birthday and good wedding miss," "You become old LOL,"). Ils me manquent trop!

The sights were breathtaking and the food delish, but my very favorite part of all my travels this past year was meeting so many wonderfully unique and generous people. I made literally hundreds of friends with folks who I know would share a meal with me, house me, and help me out of a jam if I ever ended up in their vicinity again. And hopefully they know I'd do the same for them.

You will get fat just looking at this

After another unbelievably scrumptious lunch chez mon patissier préféré (with courses of pâté en croûte; suprême de volaille with mushrooms, carrots and chicken quenelles; and a massive hunk of comté cheese), we were presented with this baba au rhum.

My stomach said, "There is not even a sliver of room in me." My head said, "If you eat something else you might actually explode and die." My heart said, "But it would be a happy death."

Lazy Sundays

Sundays can be the worst day of the week for a lonely American in small-town France. The few shops and bakeries that deign to open on the Day of Rest have all closed their doors by noon, so if you've slept in you're pretty much SOL. The situation can get pretty dire if you were frolicking all day on Saturday only to awake on Sunday and find you have nothing but condiments (and no baguette to put them on).  That is, of course, unless you're lucky enough to be invited to join a French family for their weekly ritual of a gigantic lunch and post-lunch relaxation.

The dedication to family life is one of the things I love most about France. The 35-hour work week and the two-hour lunch breaks might seem to us like evidence of laziness, but their purpose is to allow people more time with their families. And on Sundays, there's literally nothing to do but just enjoy each others' company. I hope you like each other!

The Dude and I spent a wonderful weekend with fellow Broad Abroad Emily and her charming French boyfriend Nicolas at his apartment in Chatillon-sur-Seine. After some strolling and museum-ing and lots and lots of cooking on Saturday, on Sunday we headed to Nicolas' family home in Froidvent. His parents Bruno and Françoise prepared a delightful "French tagine" of chicken, lamb and potatoes, followed by a cheese course (bien sûr) and a tarte tatin.

Our hosts Emily and Nicolas, the latter of whom admitted to washing his mouth out with chocolate after eating peanut butter.

After the meal we decided to "profiter" from the glorious weather and enjoy coffee and chocolates en plein air. No one was in a hurry to check things off their list or run their errands--they couldn't if they wanted to. We were content just to talk, inhale the scent of pear blossom, enjoy the breeze, and listen to the snores of Tao, the Jack Russell terrier.

*****

Tasty Sunday Lunch Recipe

Françoise started out our meal with a delicious and surprising avocado-cucumber-kiwi salad. I'm totally guessing on the proportions here, but I'm sure you can easily add a bit of this or that to get it tasting the way that pleases you.

-1 part cucumbers, diced
-1 part avocado, diced
-1 part kiwi, diced
-Mustard vinaigrette (1/4 cup white-wine vinegar, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard, 1/4 tsp black pepper, 3/4 cup oil... whisk together everything but the oil, then add the oil slowly until it emulsifies)


Combine cucumbers, avocado and kiwi into a bowl. Add enough vinaigrette to coat all ingredients. Toss gently. Refrigerate until served.

Carrots for dinner

Dessiné par l'artiste Valentin

Sunday lunches in France are quite economical. I eat a tiny breakfast of tea and maybe a Speculoos cookie or two in anticipation. And afterward, I'm so painfully full that there's no need to eat dinner. Sometimes I skip breakfast the next day too because I'm still digesting.

After stuffing myself with course after course of the most delectable, gourmet food of my life at a New Year's Day feast chez ma famille française, I told them I was planning on eating nothing but a carrot for dinner. Today, budding 12-year-old artist Valentin drew a picture of me as a rabbit after another gigantic and delicious lunch of vegetables, chicken, crêpes and, euh, rabbit.

Très bien fait, non? Merci Valentin!

Morocco Part 1: The People

Fayçal, Amin, Emily, me and Hattim visiting a fez factory in Fès

It's a bit complicated how I ended up in Morocco this winter. I originally had other plans for my two-week winter break, and when those fell through I tried in vain to latch onto other assistants' holiday voyages. I was relating my woes to Emily, an assistant in Angers who I'd never actually met in real before, and she said her plans had similarly gone bust and she was thinking about heading to Fès to visit her friend Fayçal.

Fayçal ended up being an incredible host. Together with his friend Hattim, who lodged us, and various family members and friends, he made sure we got an authentic view of Moroccan life.

I've never before experienced hospitality like what we encountered in Fès. I had only the most tenuous of connections to Fayçal, yet his family and friends welcomed me as if I were an old friend. His parents hosted us for three delicious, elaborate meals (more on that in a later post), one of which was to celebrate the 16th birthday of Fayçal's sister Boutaina. I came as a stranger and left feeling like one of them.

Fayçal, Boutaina, Mama Bouzoubaa, Amin, Papa Bouzoubaa, Hattim, and little Wael in their home.

It wasn't just the Bouzabaa family that welcomed us. As we walked through Fès' ancient market streets one day, we ran into a man we'd briefly encountered playing a traditional Moroccan instrument in an alley of the Medina a few days earlier. Without hesitation, he invited us to partake in some "Berber whiskey": the delicious mint tea that's ubiquitous in Morocco.

Emily and I had some trouble communicating to a taxi driver the name of a café where we were meeting our friends. We went back to the restaurant where we had lunch, and the host there used a payphone to call Hattim on his own dime, and then accompanied us to a taxi so he could explain to the driver in Arabic where we needed to go. Like, who does that?

Also, I spied several people wearing this fantastical cloak with a pointed hood, like they were straight out of Whoville or something:

Man they're cool. My biggest Moroccan regret is not buying one.

Why you should always be nice to secretaries

Meet Sophie and Christianne, two of the coolest chicks Diggy Town has to offer. These fabulous ladies really take care of me. They're the ones who moved me into my palace from the cell when they learned I would be having guests. They're the ones who thought it imperative that I learned the wonders of French chocolates and promptly bought me a box. In short, they rock.

Whenever I try to thank them profusely for their generosity they say, "Bah, mais c'est normale!" 

When Christianne found out my cousin was going to be in town this week, she hatched a plan to make us real French crêpes ("Not zuh pan-cake!") one afternoon. She'd go home and make them during her lunch period, and then we would feast at precisely 16:00.

As toppings she brought Nutella, honey, and a homemade fig-almond jam. She also brought me marrons glacés (candied chestnuts) and speculoos cookies, which I plan to crumble into my speculoos paste to make chunky speculoos paste. I apologize if I just blew your mind. As we noshed on the excellent fare, she gave us advice on the best wines (Burgundy, of course) and a great Chinese buffet 45 km away. 

I translated their French for Kiki and her English for them, but they said they didn't need a translation for our grunts of satisfaction.

Thumbs up for crêpes!

Dessert chez un vrai pâtissier

I've been hinting broadly to my students that I have more leisure hours than I could possibly fill. Last week a junior in one of my classes approached me and offered to remedy that situation. I was pleased as punch when he invited me to go to Vichy on Saturday, for as a WWII nerd it was my not-so-secret wish to see the place where Pétain played the puppet. We spent the entire afternoon there with his parents, brother Valentin and dog Corneille, before going to their home for dinner. I suffered from permagrin upon my return chez moi at midnight, for his family had made me feel truly, absolutely at home for the first time since I got here.

I emailed Baptiste this week to say that if he and his brother wanted extra English practice I would have nothing but time today since we had the day off from school in honor of Armistice Day. He replied asking if I would like to join him at his grandparents' house for dessert.

Baptiste's grandfather is a retired pastry chef. The answer to the above question would be, "No duh."

Baptiste's grandfather with his chef d'oeuvre

I arrived at his grandparents' beautiful home near the canal full of stately 17th and 18th century furniture at precisely 2:00 and, after a round of "les bises" (kisses on both cheeks) I was offered a seat for the grand presentation of the gateau. Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of this confection, but it was puff pastry with a mousse interior, topped with candied almonds. Oh my. It was pure heaven. 

Gateau of Dreams, rosé champagne, and china made in Digoin's own ceramic factory (natch)

Though I had eaten a light lunch of pumpkin soup in anticipation of this treat, I was unable to finish the gargantuan slice I was given. That's probably just as well, for I have recently discovered that calories do indeed exist in France, and it might be time to cool it a little on the Nutella and the Speculoos and the butter. Just a little.

In further social news, my Facebook friend Suzanne called today to invite me to go wine tasting at a Burgundy vineyard this Saturday. Diggy, I gots such mad love for your peeps.

A Real Frenchy Dinner!

When I first learned I was coming to Digoin, I researched the crap out of it. Given that there are only a handful of Digoinais Internet sites, most of which are a time warp to 1995, that didn't take me very long. In desperation, I then turned to Facebook, and carefully looked over everyone who had "liked" Digoin. I chose a woman who looked nice and asked her for advice on how to best travel from Paris to her fair city. We commenced a correspondence, and when I told her I had arrived she suggested meeting up last night.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, since Polly Platt told me in her book "French or Foe" that it would take months, years even, for a French person to feel comfortable enough with a stranger to invite them into their sanctum. Maybe we'd go out for some pastis, I hypothesized. Perhaps she just intended on taking me on a tour of the charming countryside.

But non! She took me to her sanctum! She lives up in the hills just outside of Digoin, in a charming stone house with an ancient bread oven outside. She introduced me to her rotund dog, Desi, who looked distinctly human and who, after pleasantries were exchanged, held court in the armchair, sitting on her hind legs with one paw proffered as if she were queen and I was supposed to kiss her ring.

Suzanne went upstairs to grab her laptop so I could show her pictures of my family, and meanwhile her son Fabian came home. Fab just received his Master's in geography (juste comme mon frere!) and was in the process of moving to Macon to study dams. After I went through Facebook and showed her the important peeps in my life, she went through her own files and showed me all the family trips she's taken in the last year.

While we waited for her husband she served me vin de noix, a wine she had made with chestnuts. It was about a 3 on the sweetness scale from one to Manischewitz. Her husband Christian then arrived home from a rousing game of boules (the French version of Bocce) with his friends, and we sat down to eat. The first course was avocado halves filled with mayonnaise and an olive and sprinkled with pepper. The mayonnaise here is different from at home-- it's tangier and has more of a yellowish tint. What I ate last night was probably homemade. They then poured me a glass of AOC* Beaujolais, and Suzanne served me chicken, mushrooms and potatoes as a main course.

I attempted to explain to them what my job was in Portland, but it was difficult to do since nothing similar exists in France. Here, the state takes care of most of what nonprofits do in the US. I had a heckuva time trying to explain workplace giving. Plus, I mispronounced culture (cool-TUYR) as couture (coo-TUYR), so they thought I raised money for art and sewing. Bof.

Christian encouraged me to use baguette to sop up all the juices on my plate before the next course. "En Frace, c'est la sauce qui est la plus importante," he explained.

Next Suzanne presented us with a cheese plate. Christian went through each one and explained its origin, what kind of milk it is made with and how strong it was. He told me one was from Gier, and I thought he said giraffe, as if the cheese had been made from giraffe milk. Bof encore. There was a camembert, a roquefort, and five other cheeses whose names I forget. He encouraged me to start with the most mild and end with the strongest. "Mais tout est fort!" Suzanne countered. The last one I tried was so strong it made my eyes water. "Du vin! Du vin!" they exclaimed when they saw my expression.

Finally, dessert. Suzanne had marinated figs in a sauce of cinnamon and ginger, and offered a selection of petits fours to go along with them.

After dinner we retired in front of the fireplace and first watched a scintillating program about windmills, and then the soccer match between Lyon and Tel Aviv. Lyon won. It was about 11:00--or, excuse me--23:00 when I arrived back to my cell, stomach gurgling from all that lactose but heart happy that I had triumphed over Polly Platt.

*AOC= Appellation d'origine controllée, a designation given by the French government to wine, cheese, butter, etc. that comes from a specific geographical region and has met certain standards. Nothing but the mustard created in Dijon that meets the AOC standards may have AOC on its label.