Sunday, October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween!


Just a brief post to say Happy Halloween! We have carved a potimarron in honor of the occasion. Here is me carving, and here is the result.

From this angle he looks scornful and sarcastic...

...but from this one, he looks like he's giving you the once-over and offering to make you breakfast.
 Très parisien, non?

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Everyday life

It has been a quiet week here on rue Oberkampf. Elsewhere, as you may have read and seen in various news outlets, things have not been quiet; a few hundred teenagers decided to change the face of what had been, up to that point, a very peaceful series of massive protests. Of course, it's the kids breaking windows who get attention from the media, so you might have thought all of France was in shambles, but for us, it's been normal. Our apartment is about a fifteen minute walk to my work, so I don't have to deal with subways and trains that might have been crowded or delayed, and I don't have a car in need of gas (problems for some of my coworkers, though). Some of my students took the day off to attend protests. But that's all the disturbance we've experienced.


Weekdays when I work are fairly routine: I get up and go off to teach, Jeff does whatever he does when I'm gone (I think he plays guitar, works on learning French, plots world takeover, etc.), and then meets me at school. Sometimes we get a coffee, sometimes we go for a walk, sometimes we go window-shopping. Eventually we get hungry and decide we need to find food, and depending on how ambitious Jeff's plans are, we either go to Lémo (humorously pronounced lame-o) the organic grocery store, or we run the gamut of butcher shop, fruits and vegetables, bakery, etc. The fruit and vegetable guy recognizes us and realizes that he can talk me into "un petit peu" (a little bit) of pretty much anything, and usually throws something extra in the bag,  so he is particularly fun.

Then Jeff works his cooking magic while I catch up on the news of the world, but I like to let Jeff talk about that since it's his thing. I've cooked maybe three times since I've been here (other than toast and such).

Non-workdays are more fun and vary more; since I last wrote, we have been to the museum in the Petit Palais, we have gone actual clothes-shopping, gone out for drinks with some of my fellow lecteurs, we have been investigating French pizza, and today we are planning to head over to the Musée de la Chasse (hunting) et Nature, which we have read is surprisingly great, full of taxidermy and weapons and paintings, all commemorating the great aristocratic pastime of shooting things.

However, our big plans right now are a long weekend in Avignon. It's Fall break for all schools in France, ending with the Toussaint (All Saint's Day, an official holiday here), so I have ten full days off. In the middle of them, though, is a band that we want to see. So we're just planning a quick jaunt down south for some sunshine and Roman ruins.

I just realized I haven't put any pictures in this post, which I usually would add for interest - maybe we'll get some up later. In any case, that's what's going on - the streets are not burning, things are quite ordinary, but some excitement of the positive variety is in the forecast.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Tous ensemble! Tous ensemble! Grève générale!

Boulevard Voltaire today. That's the door to our building.
There are just as many people two blocks away on Boulevard Beaumarchais.
The groups will meet at Place de la Bastille and then head to Place de la Nation as one giant mass.


Around the corner from our place:
"General Strike"


Earlier today we tried to visit the new Basquiat exhibit at the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art. The line was down the block so we detoured to Musée des Beaux-Arts at Le Petit Palais. We checked out the 19th century paintings. The building is super cool. Here's the central courtyard:


On our way to find lunch we were passed on Avenue Champs Élysées by a very old, very dirty car that had a "Peking to Paris" sign on it. Twenty minutes later as we walked through Place Vendome, we found where it was headed. We had stumbled on the finish line of the 4th Peking to Paris Motor Challenge. It has been run in 1907, 1997, 2007 and 2010.

After lunch we bought expensive cookies from Pierre Hermé. Next time we'll hit Ladurée so we can weigh in on the eternal Pierre Hermé vs Ladurée Macarons Debate.
We got six flavors: rose, peach & saffron, salted caramel, green tea, creme brulée and hazelnut.


Friday, October 15, 2010

A bunch of unrelated items about food.

Of visiting Americans with little knowledge of the French language, the one advantage I have is that I know a lot of words for animal parts and vegetables. When I don't know what something is, I buy it and we eat it. It's how I show my mastery over nature. Last week, while looking at duck bits, we found manchons de canard. Luckily, I had Lia to inform me that manchon means sleeve. So these are duck wings. They are good, but not great when stewed in red wine. I found them at the store the next day preserved in jars of fat as confit. Probably better that way. Probably even better on the menu of the chicken wing franchise Jeff D. and I would like to open here.
A much more rousing success was the dish below. Shoulder of lamb, braised with lemon, garlic, tomato and Banyuls- a fortified, sweet dessert wine from Catalan, kind of like ruby port. Best thing we've made since arriving in Paris.

Last weekend we visited La Grande Epicerie de Paris. It's a gigantic grocery store, with fresh and packaged goods from everywhere. I especially enjoyed the TexMex/Spain/Germany section. This is a great place to go if you want ketchup, peanut butter, fish sauce, maple syrup, English canned beans, horrible salsa, wild rice, rare artisanal Spanish ham, marshmallow fluff and you want it all at one beautiful store. Of course, you pay more. €3 for a shot glass-sized bottle of fish sauce is crazy when there are Asian markets selling liters of it for that price. Anyway, it's fun to see all the hard-to-find and luxury items in one place. If it were open all night you would find drunken tourists and ex-pats from all over the world satisfying their midnight food cravings together.


I have what I think of as a Midwesterner's relationship with seafood. I'm kind of ignorant and a little unsure what to do with most of it. It makes me anxious- I wash my hands more than usual when preparing it. How do I cook this? When is it done? Which part do I eat? How do I get to that part? Which part is poison? I just don't like being that neurotic at the dinner table. I figure France is a great place to get over this problem.

To start, we decided to hit the open-air market, buy a bunch of seafood and make a stew. It sounded so simple and then ended up being one of the most time consuming things I've ever cooked. Luckily, it was delicious and fun. We bought langoustines(little lobstery things from the North Sea), mussels and rouget(red mullet).

Langoustines and Mussels

Rouget fillets and their former home.

shells, fish racks, leeks and carrots

Lia particularly enjoyed the little langoustine claws.
Here she is eating them while impersonating a Vermeer painting.


The table.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Seasons and Mushrooms

If you've been bowing at the altar of the internet gods for us, we thank you - we do now have real internet in the apartment! Everyone will be shocked to hear that the long wait was the result of an administrative mix-up, and our internet had been activated without any notification being sent. Ah well, bygones.

I'd mention all the very lovely food we've been eating, but Jeff is going to tell you more about that later. I will restrict myself to mentioning that the pig's ear salad at l'AOC. It is amazing: rich and caramely and sticky with a little balsamic vinegar, and not chewy at all. Truly wonderful, and that's coming from someone who is not that adventurous in her choice of meats.

The weather here has been gorgeous - cool, dry, and brilliantly sunny - so we've been trying to soak up as much light and flower power as possible before winter sets in. As you may have noticed, we are great fans of the city parks for our picnics and walks: any average day can be brightened up by an interlude in the Place des Vosges, lying on the lawn with a thousand other people.


Last weekend we went to the Bois de Vincennes, a very large park on the eastern edge of the city. This was originally a royal hunting preserve conveniently located outside the Château de Vincennes, later turned into a military training ground. Louis-Napoleon turned it back into a public park and added trees and lakes, and now it's a lovely place to spend a nice Sunday afternoon.






At the Parc Floral in the Bois de Vincennes, we also visited an exhibit on mushrooms. You may not be aware that this is the Semaine Nationale du Champignon, but it is, and even if you are not French, American mushrooms surely deserve some celebration, and maybe even a hug.



They're pretty high on my favorite food list, anyway, so off we went. We saw a few hundred different kinds of mushrooms in little trays: some tasty, some hallucinogenic, some that could shut down your kidneys or induce heart failure. Disturbingly, most of them looked very much alike. I left the exhibit convinced that mushroom-hunting is best left to professional mycologists.




There were also some mushrooms that smelled convincingly of something else: kerosene, ink, etc. Here I am, checking the garlic-scented mushrooms.


Okay, that was slightly exaggerated for effect, but they really did smell very strongly of garlic.

The Parc Floral has a lot of nice gardens, as you'd guess, and some interesting plants, including a giant rhubarb.


They also had a corner full of pine trees that smelled for a second like the North Woods. We were already feeling a little wistful after seeing the Santeri Tuori video installation at the Institut Finlandais, a very large-scale time-lapse projection of a forest going through the seasons. So we are currently planning a trip up to Bretagne (alias Brittany), which we think will be a lot like the North Shore but with oysters and medieval things. That will be the week after next, assuming the trains are running.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

If everyone out there could just think a little harder about our home internet getting hooked up, I think we could make it happen. A few moments of silent meditation. A quick muttering before a shot of Beam, perhaps. Orange, as the formerly state-run telecommunications company is known, says it takes about 15 days to get things going. How is this possible? If someone could offer a reason I would be happy to wait the time needed to rev up our internet. Any explanation more than a shrug and a sympathetic smile would be sufficient. Anything to get this image of a guy waiting 15 days to press our Internet Button out of my head. Reasoned explanations not being regularly forthcoming over here, I am ready to resort to supernatural means. Thank you in advance for your prayers and small animal sacrifices.

In more cheerful news, we visited a lovely park. There is an old elevated rail line running from Bastille to Bois de Vincennes that has been converted to green space called the Promenade Plantée. While we haven't walked the entire length yet, we did explore far enough to reach Jardin de Reuilly, a beautiful collection of gardens surrounding a wide green space. Parks in Paris tend to be tight, formal affairs, without a lot of open spaces, so the big lawn is a welcome novelty.
The lawn has a footbridge arching over it. It's cool. Lia inspected the gardens. Satisfactory.
We pique-niqued with goods bought at the Bastille Saturday market. The bees and wasps were diverted by the release of decoy ham.

Another reason to love Paris was found at Reuilly- free sparkling water! Eau pétillante, all you the bottles you can fill, for free!

Today we visited Uniqlo, a fashionable yet bargain-priced clothing store based in Japan. Clothing is really expensive here so we are trying to find the good cheap stuff. I think only rich tourists shop at the regular clothing stores. Everyone else is buying €5 knock-off Converse from sidewalk vendors or shopping at H&M and Uniqlo. We bought jeans for €10 each. After shopping we grabbed some sandwiches and ate them on the steps of the Opera. While eating, a pigeon shit in our bag on our new pants. I was displeased.(no photo)

Right now, Lia is doing some heavy cinema theory reading while lamb stews away on the stove and I try not to drink too much wine before dinner. Our colds are waning. I have a new guitar. This weekend we are going to check out an exhibit at the Institut Finlandais. Something about forests.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Nuit Blanche

The first Saturday in October is "Nuit Blanche" ("white night") in Paris, which means that the city organizes a big, all-night art party. They invite people to create art installations in unusual buildings or spaces and open them up from dusk until dawn, more or less. It's a great event that attracts hordes of people with some 38 city-sponsored exhibits and another 50 or so others. Many of them had half-hour lines, so to see even a quarter of what's available, you would probably need the entire night. We went to seven or eight spots, and Jeff put together a little video to show you a few of our favorites.



It's hard to convey just how cool it is to be in a centuries-old cathedral with a giant LED panel (that's a statue of Jeanne d'Arc, by the way), or on a bridge above the Seine with several thousand people in a crazy cube environment.

Apparently there are versions of Nuit Blanche in a bunch of cities, mostly in Europe, but also in Toronto and Santa Monica. We think Minneapolis should institute one. It wouldn't be quite so big and we don't have any Gothic cathedrals to play with, but it could be a lot of fun anyway.

So that was the big excitement for this week. Other minor events: we found the Japanese noodle-shop neighborhood, a guitar for Jeff, and the parc Reuilly, yet another fabulous place for a picnic - hopefully the weather will continue to allow picnics a little while longer. Unfortunately now we have both got colds, so if the rain stops we'll go out for internet and decongestants, but otherwise it is going to be a quiet day at home.