Crépuscule, Paris

Pretty sunsets symbolic of our pending departure!

 From our window

From Canal St-Martin

We leave tomorrow, but we must return our internet hardware to the (hopefully) fine people of France Telecom today, so this will be the last post from Paris. If the opportunity arises we may update the Twitter feed, so look up and to the right for that.

We talked about writing a big sentimental post about all the things we'll miss most, and then a snarky post about things we really won't miss. But surrounded as we are by bags and boxes and with an unpleasantly long to-do list, a short version will have to do.

The things we'll miss most: friends, visitors, the markets, the parks, apéros by the Canal. See our previous posts for details.

One thing we will definitely never, ever miss, not even for the teensiest little second:

First note that I had to press the button several times. There's always a moment of tension when you're not sure if it's going to work at all. And then it makes the noise. That enormous, apartment-rattling, horrible noise. And then a pipe somewhere in the kitchen makes a noise and you're terrified that's gonna blow. Someday it will. But (knock wood) we're thankful we won't be here when it does.

But adieu to all that.

- Lia

Le Jardin!

We recently discovered that now that it's spring and the sun is in a more northerly position, we get direct sunlight in our apartment! Not a ton, no, maybe just an hour in certain select locations, but enough to inspire. In celebration, we have obtained a basil plant. For those who have been to the market with us, we got it from the potato stand, where the guy told us that that it should have its drink and fresh air at the same time that Monsieur (I assume he meant Jeff) has his apéro.

So here is Monsieur le Basilic sunbathing before his apéro.

Le Crépuscule, Chez Nous

Dead People Particles

Our friend Danielle dropped by Paris for a visit last weekend. It was great fun to tromp around Paris with someone who had never been here before. We are very happy she made time to visit us before heading to meet up with her husband Hideo in Dublin. Hideo has been touring Europe with his band Birthday Suits. You can check out his beautiful and hilarious blog here: Stupid Tour Diary. Saturday was themed Dead Things Day as we visited the Catacombs and Deyrolle Taxidermy, which doesn't allow photography but is a magical place. Père Lachaise cemetery was on the itinerary but shockingly cold weather forced us to put it off until Sunday.

The Catacombs are eerie and damp and full of the bones of about six million people.

The welcome sign:

"Stop! This is the empire of the dead."

That sign on the left warns you to not use your flash.

 Assessment: Creepy.

We also did some less morbid things.

Lia and Danielle at the Louvre

A photograph of a photographing of a tattoo of Winged Victory, 

with stunt Danielle to make it look like I'm not taking a photo of the tattoo girl.

 

I like Lia's smile better.

contemplative

In the Louvre, Danielle pretends to enjoy The Worst Beer Ever: Panaché. 

We didn't know when ordering that panaché means: 

"a shandy-like beer and limonade concoction that tastes horrible."

The first ever party in our apartment. It was a rager.

At Père Lachaise cemetery, a fitting exclamation for the deceased.

"Hélas!" / "Alas!"

Oven Appreciation

Do you love your oven? We love ours. Here it is, hanging out in the corner with the water heater, calmly cooking away while Jeff whips through the tiny kitchen area with a dish towel.



The apartment didn't have one when we moved in, so we bought this little 19-liter mini-four to supplement our two-burner stove after a couple of weeks. We didn't have terribly high expectations. But you know, it is amazing the things you (and by "you" I guess I mean "Jeff") can do with this glorified toaster oven.


For example:

you can roast some pork belly!

or a guinea hen!

you can take your leftover meats and make a shepherd's pie! (or a parmentier if you want to be French about it)

(Jeff wafts furtively)

It also works well for the kind of easy fruit desserts that I like to throw together. This is a buckle with raspberries and pear.

you can, in fact, make an entire Thanksgiving dinner! Which Jeff did. It was rather amazing. I had to work all day so I didn't even help. Turkey leg, stuffing, green bean casserole, dressing, and potiron (pumpkin) pie all made in our little oven. Mashed potatoes and gravy also pictured.

Here it is on a plate:

And here I am trying to be good and not pick at it until Jeff finishes taking pictures:

Especially when it's cold out (which it is, in both Paris and Minneapolis), doesn't your oven maybe deserve an affectionate little pat?

Beaujolais Nouveau

It's the third Thursday of November, so we figured we ought to grab a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. Sure, it's a marketing ploy and lots of wine people won't touch the stuff, but I think it's fun to play along with the yearly tradition. For this bottle, we walked down to Spring Boutique and Le Garde-Robe Restaurant on Rue de l'Arbre Sec. The two shops, across the street from each other, teamed up to bring Jean-Claude Lapalu in from Beaujolais along with a giant oak barrel of his wine. For €8 Jean-Claude personally funneled his wine into a bottle, corked it, stuck a label on it and handed it to us, all while sitting on the sidewalk enjoying a few glasses himself. The wine in the photo lived about an hour in the bottle before being opened. It's good - light and young and full of red currant and cherry loveliness.

We picked up a rotisserie chicken and potatoes on the way home.

Lia approved.

Apartment scene

Not a whole lot to report at the moment. But here we are, doing the usual:

I was trying to be sneaky and get a picture of Jeff without him knowing, but of course he noticed. It's hard to get away with these things when the other person is never more than a few feet away.

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?

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.

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.