Yes we did!

The other day on the radio I heard a quote that I can't get out of my head...

"Rosa Parks sat and Martin Luther King walked so Barack Obama could run."

I get choked up every time I think about the magnitude of what happened last night and how far we have come as a country. Not only because Barack Obama is black, but because he has moved people who many had dismissed as unable to be moved. He has inspired generations and demographics who thought that politics didn't concern them and that their voices were meaningless, and has given the rest a reason to vote FOR a candidate, instead of voting against a bad one. He has proven that inspiration and hope really can trump fear and hatred, and let's hope that this is only the first of his many great legacies to come.

One of the very minor but nonetheless great things about Barack Obama is the ability to make puns off his name. My friend told me that last night her husband made Roasted Red State Pepper Soup, and another friend just told me that she made Barack-oli and cheese pasta, Yes-we-(pe)can pie, and blue-state-berries. I had my second biennial election returns watching party, at which--as a precautionary good luck charm--we ate primarily blue food. Contributions from guests included "Baracklava," Blue Moon beer, blueberry pie, mini blueberry cheesecakes, blue-frosted cookies, blue M&M-studded pretzels, and wine with a blue label. I made my signature Election Night dish of tortilla soup with blue corn chips. The first time I made it, at the mid-term elections in 2006, the Democrats took back the Senate and the House. And now look what we have accomplished. This recipe is going to be a fixure on election night at my house for years to come!

LUCKY ELECTION NIGHT TORTILLA SOUP
(scribbled at the bottom of the recipe, which is dated 11/11/06: "Note: It worked!!!")

Soup:
1-2 T olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
1 jar roasted red peppers (about 2 peppers), drained and chopped
2-3T ground cumin
1 T chili powder
1 can pureed tomatoes
1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes
2 cans drained black beans
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, peppers finely chopped and with 1-2 tsp of adobo sauce
4-6 cups vegetable stock, chicken stock, or water
Salt to taste
1 bag frozen roasted corn

Accompaniments:
1 bag blue corn tortilla chips
1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1 cup chopped cilantro
2 diced avocadoes
1-2 limes, cut into wedges

Heat oil in soup pot over medium heat. Add onions and cook until softened. Add garlic, cumin, and chili powder and saute about 1 minute. Add roasted peppers, pureed and diced tomatoes, beans, chipotle peppers, and vegetable stock, stir, and bring to a boil. Simmer until reduced and thickened, about 30 minutes. It can be made ahead up to this point (it's actually better if it sits for a day) and stored in the fridge. Salt to taste.

Add corn and warm soup until corn is melted and soup is heated through. To serve, put a handful of tortilla chips in the bottom of the bowl and a few ladlefuls of soup over the chips. Top with cheese, avocado, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime.

Serves about 6, easily multiplied.

This is a great recipe for a party because almost everything comes out of a can, and if you have a few last-minute guests you can just add a can of beans and/or tomatoes and up the seasonings accordingly. All the proportions are pretty loose anyway.

A Three-Squash Day

It's definitely fall here in Boston. If you couldn't tell from the pretty leaves, or the chilly nights (and, lately, chilly days), you can definitely tell from the farmer's markets. Apples, squashes, dark green leafy vegetables, and tall stalks of Brussels sprouts have almost totally replaced the tomatoes, corn, and summer fruit. Last year was my first fall in New England in seven years, and although "autumnal" has been my favorite word for a long time, I had forgotten how wonderful it was to actually experience a real fall (no offense to St. Louis or DC).

Last week I picked up a big butternut squash at the Brookline farmer's market, and last night I cut it up and roasted it. It was delicious. Bright yellow, tender skin (it's edible), almost custardy if you are patient enough to let the pieces roast and get brown underneath. Today I had some of the leftovers for lunch. Then I went over to the Harvard Cambridge campus, where the campus was celebrating its environmental initiatives (there were banners everywhere that said "Green is the new crimson") and Al Gore was speaking. It was cold and drizzly and pretty nasty outside, but the school had made a big effort to make everything eco-friendly and fall-like. They were serving delicata squash bisque, which was made from squash from local farmers, and tasted like it had some apples in it. It was pretty good, especially considering that it was prepared for several thousand people and served out of vats. Oh, and Al Gore was amazing. I get so sad every time I think about what a great President he could (should) have been. But then I look at all he's done once he started following his true passion, and I am just so proud of him and awed at what he's accomplished. However, I forgot that he can be a wee bit boring, even when he's talking about climate change. He got in some good political jabs though.

The downside of this event is that it took place in Harvard Yard, and after sitting out in the cold and drizzle and wind for an hour and a half wearing a fleece and no hat or gloves, I was so cold. All I could think about was coming home, making tea, and having something cozy for dinner. Once I got home, I didn't feel like going through the trouble of making soup, and I was NOT about to go outside again to get dinner supplies. I was about to start the cookbook flip-through when I remembered that I had half a can of pumpkin left over from a mediocre variation on pumpkin pasta that I made the other night. In a burst of inspiration, I played around with one of my favorite family recipes ever--butternut squash souffle--and came up with my own riff on it. It's basically an excuse to eat pumpkin pie for dinner. I seared a few apple chicken sausages to go with it...mmm.

And that's the story of how I got more beta carotene in one day than I have in probably the past month combined.

PUMPKIN SOUFFLE

Serves four as a side dish, easily doubled. Or eat half of it and call it dinner. Or breakfast. Or dessert.

1/2 can pumpkin puree (about a cup)
1/4 cup sugar
2 to 3 tablespoons maple syrup (Grade B is super maple-y and delicious)
1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 eggs, beaten
Dash each of cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt
Splash of vanilla (optional)
3/4 cup 2% milk

Preheat oven to 350. Combine all ingredients except milk and beat well. Add milk slowly. Pour into greased 8x8 pan or small souffle dish. Bake for about 45-50 minutes, until center is set. Let cool a few minutes before serving.

Expanding my culinary horizons

As I have probably told most of you, I became decidedly un-vegetarian in Paris. There was too much good chicken, lamb, duck, and (my favorite of all) cured pork to not taste it. Eating is such a huge part of the culture, and I didn't want to miss out on it. I had been vegetarian for 15 years, but it was quite easy to adjust to being able to order anything on the menu and really taste the local specialties. For example, in Burgundy I had escargot, coq au vin, and boeuf borgogne (I tasted Anna's--I'm still a little squeamish about beef). Suffice it to say that, after such an amazing gastronomic experience, it was hard to go back to go back to, say, a grilled cheese sandwich without thinking, "Wow, some cured pork would be make this really amazing!"

I decided a few things: I would eat mostly free-range, organic, or vegetarian-fed meat, and if I was going to eat meat I was going to cook it too--I had to be able to face the reality of what I was eating, instead of only seeing it all prettied up on a plate. I have cooked chicken twice now, and both times it's been pretty good (I like dark meat much better--it's much less likely to be dry). The first time I got drumsticks and I tried to skin them myself, which was a huge mess and a lot of work for not much reward. This time I got a bag of frozen, boneless, skinless chicken thighs, and pieced together a few recipes (from Cook's Illustrated and something I cut out of a magazine several years ago) plus a whole bunch of fiddling around to make a really good dinner. If you want to try it (it was very fast and easy, and would probably be good with chicken breasts too), here's what I did:

CHICKEN THIGHS WITH BALSAMIC-ONION PAN SAUCE

Chicken:
2 to 4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, depending on how many ppl are eating
1/4 cup or so of white whole wheat flour, or any other kind of flour
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200 and put a plate in the oven to warm. Trim fat from chicken and pat dry. Salt and pepper both sides of the chicken and dredge in the flour, shaking off excess. Heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat until smoking, and add chicken. Turn with tongs after four minutes or so and cook the other side for another 4-5 minutes, until it's not pink anymore when you cut it open. Put the chicken on the warmed plate and keep it in the oven while you make the sauce.

Sauce:
1 onion, thinly sliced
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Don't wash the frying pan after you take out the chicken, and keep the heat on medium. Add the onion and saute in the pan drippings from the chicken for about 5 minutes, until softened. Add the chicken stock and vinegar (I learned this is called "deglazing"), increase the heat to medium-high, and simmer until the volume is reduced by half--this took about 10-15 minutes. Swirl in the butter and salt and pepper (the butter makes a really big difference, I tasted it both ways--it takes the edge off the vinegar). Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve. Bon appetit!

I had braised kale with this, and the sauce from the chicken got all mixed up in the kale--so good! The perfect third element would have been some good bread to soak up all the juice.

The Feast has Moved

It's hard to believe that I've been home for a month. School has started and I'm sitting and working on a) an article critique for school and b) the last delicious bar of 76% cacao dark chocolate that I bought in Paris.

Two days before I left, I went to my favorite Anglophone bookstore and found an ancient copy of A Moveable Feast--the price listed on the cover was two francs. The book seemed like an appropriate way to end my summer, so I took it to Pere Lachaise cemetery (where Gertrude Stein, among others, is buried), sat on a bench, and started to read. It's an account of Hemingway's life in Paris right after World War I, as a young semi-starving writer and a member of the "Lost Generation." The book is very much written for those who know and love Paris--or at least for those who are well-acquainted with Paris, for he says right up front that he believes Paris is a city that's easy to learn but impossible to know (I agree with him, wholeheartedly). In the first chapter, he describes a walk he takes from Place San-Michel to his home in the Quartier Latin. With a start, I realized that the night before I had literally walked almost the exact same route (which is when I took this picture of the fountain at Place San Michel). In my bag I had my constant sidekick, Paris Par Arrondissement (a Paris map book by arrondissement and the only guidebook you'll ever really need), and I used his narrative to trace his routes in my book. I could picture the walks by heart, but I still loved mapping his walk into my book that I used every day to get around. And then in the next chapter he talked about visiting his friend Gertrude Stein on Rue de Fleurus, and I realized that not only had Lisa, my advisor, lived on Rue de Fleurus a few houses down from Gertrude Stein's, but that I was more likely than not sitting a few hundred feet from Gertrude Stein's grave. And in the next chapter he talked about browsing through Sylvia Beach's famous bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, which happened to be the exact bookstore where I had gotten the book.

Hemingway, for all his problematic viewpoints later in his career, was really able to capture the spirit of how it feels to live in Paris as a young adult, low on money but full of life. Sitting there in Pere Lachaise, I felt that he was able to encapsulate the sometimes gritty, often but not always beautiful, and absolutely visceral soul of the city. Experiencing all these interconnections with his memoir, the titular inspiration for my blog, was the perfect way to end my time in Paris.

And he's right, that you really do take Paris with you after you leave. The best way I could describe it was that, after a few weeks of living there, Paris just gets under your skin (in the most positive way possible). The outlook on life, the expectation of sensory saturation in every experience, even that scoff that the most Parisian of Parisians pull off so well (you can probably picture what I mean, even if you've never seen it in person). Peaches are supposed to taste perfumey and melt almost without chewing and be slippery smooth and exactly the right kind of ripe when the fruit man picks them out for you, and anything less is a moderate disappointment. My first day back, I bought a peach at Stop and Shop, and maybe the French penchant for melodrama got to me a little, but I could have cried when I took a bite. Dry, sawdusty, tasteless, aroma-less. I spit it out on the sidewalk.

Now that I'm back and re-acculturated (interestingly I had almost no culture shock when I arrived in France but a definite case of reverse culture shock when I got home), I've been able to retain some of my Paris sensibilities. I appreciate the freshness and flavor of vegetables from the farmer's market, and it's so wonderful to actually be able to communicate with the vendors about how they make their goat cheese and what constitutes a good ear of corn. I have always loved exploring my surroundings, but I find myself wandering further into Boston neighborhoods I've never gone to and walking into shops just to see what's on offer and chat with the shopkeeper (this is standard practice in France, and one that I always regretted I could barely partake in because of the language barrier). I had grown accustomed to having a camera with me and taking pictures of odd moments rather than iconic sights, and while there are fewer moments of unexpected beauty here than there were in France, there are also a lot more of those moments than I thought I would see.

My cooking has changed, too. I've backed off from the "kitchen sink" approach I often took before, and I think more about flavor and texture harmony, rather than blunt assault on the taste buds. But I also can see why my instinct is to just keep throwing stuff into a dish, whereas the French take a more spare approach to composition. Things just taste better there, period. When your bread and olives and zucchini and cheese are that good, you don't need a whole lot of embellishment. To season her food, my housemate had olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and sesame seeds, and grew thyme and mint in her garden. Period. But when your eggs taste like eggs, you want to taste them for themselves and not as an adhesive to make other things stick together. That doesn't really work here, because even if you get the $4 a dozen, free-range, organic eggs, they're still just not a egg-y as they are there. I'm now starting to develop a hybrid style of cooking, one that blends my tinkerer's tendencies with a respect for food's cultural and agricultural origins and that adapts to the quality of the ingredients I have. Reality as a grad student in a Northeastern city is that I can't always get or afford the best or freshest items available. But I now instinctively think of different uses for peppers from the farmer's market (starring role in the dish) than for plasticky supermarket peppers (contributions of color and texture).

Paris...j'taime. But I love my life here too, and that has made coming home much easier. So this blog is now less of a travel journal and more of a post-travel journal, at least until I find a way to live there again. Which I'm hoping is sooner rather than later, because I am not nearly done feasting yet.

Anna c'est ici!

Anna arrived on Friday for a ten-day visit, and we've been having a great time experiencing Paris together. I didn't go to work on Friday, and so we had a great three-day weekend together: another dinner with Catherine and Patrick at their beautiful Montmartre apartment, a picnic in the Luxembourg gardens, a sunset cruise on the Seine (surprisingly, not cheesy and really fun/beautiful/interesting), a DELICIOUS dinner at a Moroccan restaurant right near my apartment (Souk), a visit to the Marche D'Aligre for produce and French foodstuffs, the Orangerie museum (an impressionist collection at the end of the Tuileries, right near Place Concorde), and watching the Champs Elysses stage of the Tour de France. About that--we walked down Rue Rivoli from my apartment and joined a huge crowd on the loop where the riders were going to pass. It was really hot out, and after an hour of standing around in the baking sun near the Louvre, we decided to screw it and do something else instead, because nothing was happening. We walked around the Tuileries and spent about an hour in the Orangerie, and when we came out, the riders were on lap #5 (out of 8) and it was much less crowded--so we got to see the Tour after all. Pretty cool to watch, although they passed so quickly that in the time it took to take a few photos, they were gone!

On Monday while I was at work, Anna went to the Louvre and surrounding areas, and in the evening we met up at E. Dehillerin (the cooking supply store). She is similarly smitten with the store--seriously, it's my favorite store in Paris by a long shot. I think I may be paying them a third visit before I leave. Then we met up with a few friends that I have made here--we went to a reading at Shakespeare and Company (a famous Anglophone bookstore that's associated in some way with City Lights bookstore in San Francisco). The writer is Catherine Sanderson, who wrote the book "Petite Anglaise" that is a spinoff from her my-expat-life-in-Paris blog. Afterwards we went out for drinks (and got caught in a downpour on the way home!).

And yesterday we went up to Montmartre to look in the cute shops, get a great view of Paris, and meet up with Dana and her mom for dinner. We went to an adorable French restaurant on Rue Lepic called, appropriately, "L'Epicurien Bistrot" (this picture on the left courtesy of another blogger).

Chefs' Supply District Part II, and French toast for real

I woke up with a shock today at 6am. The apartment complex's stray cat was sticking his head through the sliding glass door in my bedroom (which I had opened about 4 inches to get some fresh air--no screens in France) and yowling--baying is more like it--while staring directly into my eyes. What a way to wake up. I think I shrieked a little--this cat is huge. Instead of falling completely back asleep, I started half-dreaming about Parisian cookware and the chefs' supply stores. So I decided to go to work early, leave early, and track down the dough whisk I learned about yesterday, and perhaps some little tartlet pans.

After a productive day at work, I felt completely justified in leaving at 4pm. I got the last dough whisk from the hardware store/cookware store on R. St. Augustine in "Japantown" (more like Japan-block), and for probably the first time since I got to Paris, I had reverse sticker shock (it was way less than I had believed was possible)! I then stopped in a little Japanese cookware/grocery/gourmet foodstuff store on R. St. Augustine, and as I was looking at the sake pitchers, the saleswoman came up to me and said (in French), "You can taste anything in the store that you want"--and I understood her!! I then said (in my toddler-level French), "le sake froid c'est bon ajourd'hui...il fait chaud" (Cold sake is good today, it's hot out--yeah, told you it was toddler-level) She led me to a refrigerator case in the back and picked out four bottles, then set them out on a counter with little tasting cups and told me (in English) how they're all different as I tasted them.

Then I found culinary heaven--E. Dehillerin. Seriously, the stores I saw yesterday paled in comparison to this. It's much more a restaurant supply store than the ones I saw previously--for example, you can buy at least twenty sizes of ladles (some the size of mixing bowls), and the bowls come separately from the stems so you can customize your ladle to exactly how you want it. The store has the industrial feel of Home Depot, has about ten times the breadth of products as Sur la Table, is jammed from floor to ceiling, and is very reasonably priced for the quality (you'd pay a whole lot more at Williams-Sonoma). After forty-five minutes of happily browsing and trying to figure out the uses of the tools--an endlessly entertaining activity, especially with the occasional help of the salesman working in the gadgets section--I bought a set of nonstick, fluted tartlet molds with removable bottoms.

E. Dehillerin is in Les Halles (by the Louvre), and since it was gorgeous outside, I decided to walk home--down R. Rivoli and through the Marais area, which I love. On the way home, I ran across yet another kitchenware store--Le Vaissellerie--which sells discount china, ceramics, and other various and sundry kitchen goods. I started hearing the siren song of the amuse-bouche plates and mini mustard pots and cheese knives that I so valiantly resisted yesterday, and I'll go back when I am not so deeply in the mindset of "my life will be incomplete without a Camembert knife." (But speaking of which--cheese knives are brilliant! They have a blade like a normal knife, but the end of the knife is forked, so you can spear your piece of cheese after cutting it).

I finally got home around 8pm and decided that I would put the last stale five inches of yesterday's "pain au tradition" to good use (pain au tradition is, incidentally, my favorite kind of bread here--shorter and squatter than a normal baguette, with a springy inside, big holes perfect for catching jam, chewy-crunchy crust, and a light dusting of flour on the outside, AND usually still hot when I buy it). I had some organic eggs, milk, and honey....so I made pain perdu (French toast--literally, "lost bread") and ate it with some of the raspberry-peach compote that my housemate made last weekend. Using good bread and fresh eggs made a huge difference--the inside was like custard, and I think it actually helped that the bread was a little stale. Trés délicieux!

My spontaneous outing to the chefs'-supply district

Today was one of those days at work that just dragged on and on--by 4pm my brain was tapped out. So I started checking some of my favorite websites to pass the time, including Chocolate and Zucchini, my favorite food-and-Paris blog. The latest entry on the blog was about a whisk used to mix thick dough batters, and Clotilde, the writer, mentioned the store in Paris where she got it. I had this moment of "Whoa! I can actually just leave work and go there and check it out myself!" I then looked through the archives of the blog to see if there were any other cooking supply stores that I could find while I was out. As it turns out, there are about six within one block of each other--near the corner of R. Montmartre and R. Etienne-Marcel in the 2nd arrondissement--which is walking distance from the store with the whisk. By this point it was 5pm and I was guessing that most of the stores would close by 6 or 6:30, so I hightailed it from Villejuif (the suburb where I work) up to the 2nd. These stores were fantastic, if a little overwhelming. Geared towards somewhere between the enthusiastic home cook and a chef at a fine restaurant, they had rooms and rooms full of stuff that looked so enticing but that I knew would be less charming once I left Paris. Some examples: a choice of ten types of escargot plates (which come to think of it would make a great earring-holder), multiple sizes of gratin dishes, a three-inch-tall round ceramic pot with two handles (I have no idea what it was for--I tried to ask the salesperson in French, and it was sort of embarrassing how poorly I was able to express myself), two-inch-square plates for amuse-bouche, a set of 24 tartlet pans--and yes, I briefly toyed with the idea of purchasing all these adorable items. I then had an attack of buyers' hesitation, and the stores were closing so I felt kind of rushed and I didn't end up getting anything, and by the time I got to the store with the whisk (the whole impetus for this mission), it was closed. But through all this browsing, I did make a mental list of cooking supplies that I want to get while I'm here, since I'll have no choice but to make French things with them once I get home: tartlet molds (and maybe a big tart mold), a madeleine pan, the dough whisk, and hopefully some kind of antique/obscure kitchen tool at a flea market. The stores are a little expensive, but even I can tell how good the quality of the cookware is. I also heard about a few discount and overstock chefs' supply stores in the outer arrondissements, so I may go check those out now that I've gotten a good sense of what I want and what's out there.

Here are some really beautiful espresso cups I saw that all have a big wrinkle in them, as if the clay partly collapsed when the cup was being made (looking at them would make my mom carsick due to the asymmetry).

Mon Weekend dans Belgique

I spent this past weekend in Bruges, Belgium with Dana and her cousin Jaimie. We had a fantastic time and it felt like much longer than two days. Bruges is vaguely like Venice in that it's constructed around three canals, but it's very small and picturesque--the architecture is beautiful, and most of the streets look straight out of a movie set or a storybook. When we got there, we wandered around for awhile and eventually we found an inexepensive bed and breakfast where the three of us could share one room. This was one of the strangest establishments I've ever stayed in, but at that point, it was a place to crash, which was exactly what we were looking for (we got 4 hours of sleep the night before and had caught an 8am train). It was completely filled with teddy bears on every available surface-- including a grouping on a windowsill in the stairwell that was strapped in with a bungee cord--and the whole place looked like it had been painted solely with the remnants of assorted cans of paint (the extremely large, shared bathroom was four shades of purple and had three kinds of carpet).

We went out, walked around a bit, got lunch, and went back to the b&b in an exhausted daze, where we took a nice long nap with the teddy bears watching (it was raining outside anyway). After sleep and showers, we all felt much better, but coffee was highly necessary. We found a little cafe/hotel with outdoor seating on the edge of one of the canals, just outside the center of the city, and we sat right next to the canals and got cafe au laits (I took this picture from my seat at the table). We were expecting your average cups of coffee, and instead each of us got a china tray with a pot of cafe au lait, a little bowl of butter cookies, and a piece of Belgian chocolate. It turns out we had found one of the "leading small luxury hotels of the world," and it lived up to its billing (for instance, it was sort of chilly, so we each got a soft blanket to wrap around ourselves). And it was 5 euros each...such a change from Paris!

We wandered around the center of the city for awhile, admiring the architecture, sampling chocolates from the many chocolatiers, and vaguely listening to a terrible public concert in the main square (Dana described the guy as a Flemish Neil Diamond). At this point, it was high time to sample the local brews (Belgium is famous for white beer, which I really like), so we found a bar in a youth hostel where we had a Bruges blond beer. Then we went to a square with lots of pubs and restaurants (in other words, great people watching--we saw a guy in a tux shirt and tails, shiny patent leather shoes, and no pants to speak of except his white underwear) where we could sit outside under heat lamps--it was really cold out. Dana and I ordered medium Hoegaardens, which were so big that my hands couldn't fit around the glass. We got some dinner, toasted my birthday at midnight, and had a great rest of the evening.

The next morning, we went on a bike tour of the area around Bruges. It was really beautiful, and so nice to be on bikes. We saw a working windmill that uses the generated power to mill flour, and we could climb all the way up to the top of the windmill and see the mechanisms that make the windmill actually work. We rode along canals, stopped for Belgian waffles at a small restaurant, and saw some beautiful scenery.

When we got back, we went to a brewpub for lunch, where I got Flemish onion soup made with house-made beer, local cheese, and fresh bread. It was delicious (and beautiful). After browsing through the shops, we came back to Paris and watched the sunset from a cafe at the top of Montmartre. It was exactly the kind of birthday I wanted--just a really great day, with nothing overwhelmingly birthday-ish about it except that it was fun and relaxed.

Three nights, three dinner parties

I've had a great last couple days (more specifically, a great couple evenings). On Tuesday night my advisor Lisa had me and a few people from work over for dinner. One of her closest friends is my former statistics professor Judy, who has been visiting Lisa for the past week, so she was there too. Altogether there were ten people--about half French, half American--and it was so much fun. The last time I saw Judy, I was all stressed out about a final project for class, and then two months later here we were, drinking champagne and eating caviar in Paris. Lisa is staying in a gorgeous apartment right near the Luxembourg gardens, and we had a really great dinner and conversation.

Then last night (Wednesday), I met up with Dana. She's staying in a refurbished former servant's apartment above the apartment of a couple that is friends with her family, and Patrick, the husband, is a photographer. He had an exhibit opening, so we went to celebrate the opening with them (with champagne of course) and see the photos, and then Catherine and Patrick invited us back to their apartment for dinner. They live in a very cool area of Montmartre, they are avid travelers, and he is an artist, and the confluence of those three factors means that their apartment is spectacular--not in an ostentatious way, just in a really effortless and eclectic-yet-classic way. But the best part is the view of Montmartre--Sacre-Coeur is basically framed by their living room window. They had several of their friends over--a very intellectual, artistic group--and we had a Lebanese feast (along with half a case of Burgundy). Their friends were so interesting, and we had a great time. But it's not a lie that Parisians eat late--they put out dessert at midnight--and the Metro closes at 12:30ish. People here are so relaxed about time, though. I was planning on walking to the Metro with a couple I met at the party, and at 12:10 the woman (I forget her name) was pouring herself another glass of wine and laughing and talking. I was really nervous that I would miss the train and have to take a cab back, but decided that it was their city and they knew better than I did how the Metro worked. We left the apartment at 12:20 and I had to switch trains--but of course I made it back fine, I wasn't even on the last train, and it was a great lesson in just relaxing and trusting that things will work out. Everyone at the party, this one couple in particular, just seemed to love and relish life, and I could have talked with them all night.

Then, since I haven't been home before midnight since Sunday (today is Thursday), I decided that tonight I would come home and have a quiet night. I didn't really have any plans beyond that, and I had completely forgotten that my housemate's mother was visiting from Bordeaux and her niece--who is my age--from Toulouse (grandmother and granddaughter are about to take a trip through Sardinia together). Muriel invited me to join them for dinner, so I had another fabulous meal and great conversation. Her mother brought a bottle of 1996 Bordeaux along with her, which even I could tell was excellent, and it must have been something about the combination of her Bordeaux accent and speaking slowly, but I could understand about 40% of what her mother was saying (this is a vast improvement over my usual 10-15%)--it was enough so that I could get the gist of the conversation without Muriel needing to translate. For dessert Muriel made homemade yogurt, which was really excellent and which I'm going to try and make when I get home.

And I'm officially exhausted from all this merriment (and from a busy week at work)! I'm planning on going to Bruges, Belgium for the weekend with Dana and her cousin who's visiting from New York--chocolate, beer, and waffles, here I come!

14 de Juillet

Yesterday was Bastille Day, so Paris was in rare form. Parades, plane formations, every conceivable form of military personnel, WWII-era helicopters--you name it. I slept in and missed the military parade down the Champs-Elysses and most of the plane formations, but I did catch the horses at the end of the parade as they went past the Bastille opera house.

I then met up with Dana, my friend and traveling buddy from Madagascar and Tanzania, and we went to a picnic at the Hotel des Invalides that was hosted by my friends from the Fourth of July. It was wonderful to see Dana and have a good catch-up--and since she's staying in Paris for the next four weeks, we'll have lots of time to hang out. When I think about where we were almost exactly a year ago--climbing Kilimanjaro--it's hard to imagine a setting of sharper contrast. Anyway, there was a whole military display going on at Invalides, and every so often a group of paratroopers would come raining out of the sky (oddly enough, the plane itself wasn't visible). At the end of the day, we witnessed the exit of the helicopters that had been chilling on the lawn, and the launch provided fantastic photo ops of Hotel des Invalides and the Pont des Invalides. When you see the quantity of gold involved in the Invalides building and bridge, it isn't hard to believe that it's the place that Napoleon built to house himself for eternity. Apparently he is entombed in seven caskets, one inside the other like Russian dolls (I'm sure he would really appreciate that metaphor, too).

We stayed Invalides all evening, and around 11pm the fireworks started. We could see the ones that were high up in the sky (they formed a pretty contrast with the Eiffel Tower), but we were a little too far to see everything. I was more than okay with this, considering that the alternative was a gigantic crowd at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Instead, we got to sit on our picnic blankets, drink some wine, and watch at our leisure. The fireworks were done in classic French style--set off a few, take a break for a few minutes to have a cigarette or something, set off a whole bunch more, take another break...There were several really amazing bursts followed by long pauses, but somehow everyone knew when the show was actually over because they started applauding. I must say that the ones on the National Mall in DC are more impressive, or at least better-executed, but watching fireworks over the Eiffel Tower is pretty unbeatable (especially when the tower lights up on the hour). Overall it was a really nice weekend...and now it's back to work!

An afternoon for all senses

Happy Bastille Day!

Yesterday I spent a lazy afternoon reading at home. Around 2pm my housemate came home with a backpack and a bucket full of produce. She had gone to the Marche d'Aligre right before it closed and gotten a ton of fruit (2 kinds of peaches, raspberries, pears, white and orange melons, pineapples) at steep discounts, since the market is closed today and the vendors want to get rid of it. She made 14 jars of jam--a big batch of white peach-raspberry and a smaller batch of yellow peach-pear (both are really delicious!). While she was doing this, the concert pianist who lives across the courtyard was playing, and then the opera singers started to practice as well.

I had heard about a 4-km stretch of train tracks over a viaduct that was converted into a narrow park--the Promenade des Plantes--so I decided to take a walk. It starts right behind the Bastille opera house (in my general neighborhood), and it is high above the streets in many parts, so you have a great view of eastern Paris. Plus, the various architectural elements along the path are really interesting--tunnels, bridges, overpasses-- and of course it's great landscaping. I walked to the end and back, and it was some of the best people-watching I have done so far. Here are a few photos of some things I saw--a series of larger-than-life Greek god statues perched on the side of a building (yeah, I have no idea what they are doing there) and a picnic-perfect park under a suspension bridge on the promenade.

Pasages de Paris

Yesterday morning over breakfast, my housemate told me about a series of passages in the area between the 2nd and 9th arrondissements. She had a hand-drawn map from one of her friends, and I wasn't quite sure what constituted a "passage" (I had an image of an alley in my head), so I set out towards that neighborhood, figuring I would find them sooner or later. When I eventually got there (of course I took a few wrong turns and came across this really cool fork in the road), I was standing right where the map said--the corner of Rue du Fauberg Monmartre and Blvd. Poissoniere, but I couldn't find any cute-looking streets.


Then I noticed what looked like an open gate, so I walked through, and I was in a magnificent passage that runs through the spaces between the buildings--it was like a really, really beautiful and official covered market, filled with boutiques and galleries and a few little cafes. I spent awhile browsing around an antiquarian bookstore, and I found a boutique consisting entirely of flowers made of paper (where I took this picture).

Then I met up with my friend Pascale from work and a couple of her friends, and we went to the Gallerie National du Jeu de Paume, which is at the far end of the Tuileries, right near Pl. Concorde. We saw an exhibit of the photos of Richard Avedon, who was a fashion photographer in Paris/New York in the forties and has continued his work to the present day (in the eighties, he took a series of photos about people of the American west). It was really wonderful. After seeing the exhibit, we went to Angelina, which is a fancy pinkies-in-the-air type tearoom/patisserie by the Louvre. We got French hot chocolate, which is essentially melted dark chocolate with cream, and it was out-of-this-world amazing. And along with a madeleine, it was filling enough to serve as dinner.

This morning I went back to the Marche d'Aligre to do my fruit and vegetable shopping, and of course I couldn't resist stopping to gaze at the fromagerie (this is a small part of the case devoted to solely to French goat cheese) in the covered part of the market. Earlier this week I discovered the glories of unpasteurized (cru or raw-milk) cheese at a fromagerie on Rue St. Antoine, and it's pretty much a different product than pasteurized cheese. The flavor is really unique and when I first tasted it, I almost couldn't decide if I liked it (the owner of the St. Antoine fromagerie gave me ten or twelve cheeses to sample, after which I decided that I do like it, a lot)--it's much more assertive and has a different flavor than I am used to, even for milder cheeses. Raw cheese is actually illegal in the US (ironically, due to public health concerns), so I better eat up while I have the chance! I also decided that in order to find the best baguette at the market I would go to the bakery with the longest line (it happened to be the organic bakery), and it was a good strategy. It's really hilarious to stand outside a bakery and watch people leave--they pay, pick up their bread, walk out, and like a reflex they break off the part of the baguette sticking out from the bag and eat it. I do it, too--it's absolutely irresistible, especially when the baguette is still hot.

Un Commute Magnifique

(interestingly, I can't find a French noun that means "commute." Which may be a larger commentary on the relationship between language and culture)

This was an evening of realizing just how lucky I am to be living in such a magical place. After a good day at work, I was ready for a long walk, and I set off to find an English language bookstore to trade in the incredibly weird John Irving book I finished last night (Until I Find You). Before I left work, I had figured out the approximate location of San Francisco Book Co--in the 6th arrondissement, Left Bank, the heart of Paris bookstore heaven. I got off the Metro at Place d'Italie (in the 13th) and decided to walk north from there. But it wouldn't have been an Erika walk if I didn't take several wrong turns and end up in a different place than I'd intended. This usually turns out pretty well for me, as it did today--I walked along Blvd Port Royal instead of R. Monge, and I ended up at the foot of Blvd St-Michel in the 5th. I saw a huge fountain and realized that I was at a string of small parks that meet the southern edge of the Luxembourg Gardens.

Rather than walking up St-Michel (a major shopping street that runs parallel to the gardens), I decided to walk through the middle of the gardens. I am continually struck by how truly beautiful it is--you can't believe that you're in the middle of a huge city, and it's so well-maintained and well-landscaped. There was a huge thunderhead looming, but it didn't rain, and just as I was about to exit by the Palais de Luxembourg, I looked to my right and saw the dome of the Pantheon through a hedge. It was one of those "do-I-seriously-live-here?" moments.

The bookstore was great--one of those warren-like tiny spaces with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves--and I traded in my book for The Corrections (which has been on my list for years). Then I decided that rather than walk home through the St. Germain area, I would meander back on the quays. The quays are a string of pedestrian-only sidewalks on the banks of the Seine; they are well below street level so it's really quiet, and you can see all of Paris along the length of the river (but very few crowds or commercialism).

I had walked the quays of the Left Bank in the 5th/6th before, but in the other direction, and I hadn't realized just what a perfect view I would have of the Notre-Dame cathedral. It just sort of popped into view, and it was about 7:30 pm so the light was really nice (it gets dark around 10pm now). Again, I couldn't believe that this was my commute home from work.

I crossed to the Right Bank on Pont Sully, which just grazes the southeastern tip of Ile St. Louis (where I was the other night) before becoming Ave. Henri IV. This flower shop is right outside my usual Metro stop (Sully-Morland), and while a photo can't capture the heavenly smell of the flowers, you can only imagine how wonderful it is to see and smell these flowers every day when I get in and out of the Metro.

To top it all off, I got a perfectly ripe avocado at the vegetable stand next to my apartment complex by asking the guy behind the counter for "an avocado ready to eat tonight" in French (and if the guy couldn't understand my French, he understood the pinching motion I made). I cut it in half, sprinkled it with sea salt, smeared it on a piece of fresh baguette--perfect dinner (with a lovely glass of Bordeaux. And some cheese, of course).

Mon travail

Several people have asked what I'm actually doing in France (besides eating cheese and taking walks), so I thought I'd clear that up. I am working at the French equivalent of the NIH--the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Medicale (National Institute of Health and Medical Research), or INSERM. For 15 or 20 years, the French government has collected data on the health of 20,000 federally employed gas and electric workers. The name of the gas/electric company is Gaz de France/Electricite de France, so the cohort is called GAZEL (Gaz/Electricite). Every few years, they send out a survey to the workers, who answer about 300 questions about their lives, health, and demographics. Those surveys are linked with their medical records and are collected in a huge data set, which is housed at INSERM. My advisor has been working with GAZEL data since about 1993, specifically with questions about the workers' social networks, mental health, and exposure to stress at work. She has come here every summer since, and has co-published many papers about the GAZEL data (a few examples are here and here). We are now working on a paper about work-family conflict--conflicting demands from work and home--and sickness absence from work, to see whether high levels of work-family conflict are related to certain kinds of sickness absence (psychiatric, infectious disease, etc, as well as number of short- and long-term absences). I'm currently swimming in data, and the analysis is much harder than anything I've done before (not to mention that the data is in French). It's a lot harder than analyzing data for a class assignment, where the professor is asking specific questions and has cleaned the data nicely. Plus, the study uses different programming commands than I'm used to (for SAS nerds, we use proc genmod instead of proc glm, since it's a Poisson distribution with a categorical outcome). So I spend every morning working on the data, and usually by lunch I'm totally frustrated. Then I take a nice long lunch and do my paid job in the afternoon. The hardest part is that sometimes I feel like I work on it for hours and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I'm learning a lot, though, and my stats (and French!) skills will definitely be better by the end of the summer.

On a more fun note, my housemate had one of her closest friends, Anna, in town--Anna is Italian and is a professor of French literature. She was here for a conference, and she's a fabulous cook, so last night she made dinner for all of us. She made "melanzane parmagiana"--eggplant Parmesan--and it was really delicious. She made two kinds--one was "traditionelle" and one was "nouvelle." She originally meant to make two of the same, but we ran out of almost all the ingredients for the second one, so she improvised and made it with a little bit of tomato sauce, baked eggplant pieces, chevre (goat cheese), pine nuts, and golden raisins. It was incredibly good. She spoke about as much English as I speak French, so our conversations were really funny--a lot of pointing and laughing. Here, she was making the "traditionelle" dish.

Marche d'Aligre, Musee D'Orsay, et Picard

I had a wonderful end to my weekend. I spent the morning at the biggest outdoor market in Paris, the Marche d'Aligre, which is a ten minute walk from my apartment. It's about five blocks full of vegetable and fruit stands, and most of the stores behind the stands are boulangeries, charcuteries, fromageries, etc. It was so much fun to see all the vendors and the huge variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, most of which are arranged beautifully. Also, every item is labeled with its place of origin, so it is really easy to tell if you are eating peaches that are grown in France or peaches that are imported from Algeria and probably sat around for awhile before getting to the market. Not to mention that it's about ten times cheaper than the grocery store--I got half a kilo of cherries, half a kilo of haricots verts, half a kilo of mushrooms, five nectarines, and a bunch of green grapes--all for about 3 euros. And I couldn't get over how many vegetables people were buying. Almost everyone had a "bubbe cart" and filled it with fresh produce. The mushrooms and haricots verts were amazing--unfortunately, the cherries were sort of soft.

Then I met up with Annie and Marc, who were passing through Paris again. We went to the Musee D'Orsay, which is an incredible Impressionist museum in an old train station, and when we first got there the line looked way too long to be worth waiting in. But it was moving really fast, so we just got in line, and while we were standing there we learned that the museum is free on the first Sunday of the month--which was yesterday! So we waited about 15 minutes and got to see some amazing paintings (even though it was really crowded), and the building itself is a work of art (this picture was taken in the museum cafe).

I had been hearing a lot about Picard, which is a gourmet frozen food store, so I checked it out at lunch--there's one right near my office and another across the street from my apartment. Amazing! I have never seen anything like this place. It's basically what would happen if you crossed Harris Teeter with Trader Joe's and made it all frozen food. The food all looked really good, and seemed pretty healthy (you can read all the ingredients on the label, or at least you can if you speak French). There was no gluey macaroni and cheese--just really good-looking food with preparation instructions that aim to make the food taste like you actually made it (for example, they mostly recommend using an oven or skillet, rather than a microwave, to defrost things). I've met several people for whom Picard forms the majority of their diet. I got Moroccan fish tagine with apricots and couscous. For less than 2 euro. How did it take me a week and a half to find this place? Lunch is forever changed.

I have made several friends at my office, and everyone eats lunch together in the canteen area. After sitting there for about an hour at lunch today, I said that I should go back to work. One of my new friends worked in the US for 10 years, and she told me that in France, the culture around work is completely different. It's highly discouraged to eat at your desk (apparently someone at our office comes around to patrol once in a while), lunch is at least a full hour, and everyone makes espresso/tea afterwards and just chats. Nobody is in too big of a hurry to get back to work--their work will still be there when they're done eating. What a change from my previous office jobs!

Un cafe parfait

I ended up spending the day wandering around two neighborhoods I hadn't visited yet--Ile Saint-Louis and Montparnasse. Ile St-Louis was really cute and I went into lots of nice stores and galleries on the main road. I then made my way to Montparnasse, where I found (and had a late lunch in) the most picturesque cafe--Mamie Gateaux Salon de The--on the corner of R. Cherche-Midi and R. de l'Abbe Gregorie. It's exactly what you would picture a Parisian cafe to look like--lace curtain in the window, cafe area decorated with lots of antiquey kitchen stuff, chalkboard menu--yet not kitschy or overdone, just genuinely its charming self. It's on a quiet street, away from the crowded shopping areas, which was nice. I had a slice of smoked salmon and olive tart, and I'm definitely going back at some point for afternoon coffee and pastries (it's only open from 11:30am to 6pm).

I couldn't get over the number of cute little boutiques in the Montparnasse area. I must have passed 10 or 15 candy and chocolate stores today. And yes, I went into most of them. It's just amazing to me how each store really imparts its personality into its chocolates--the store's decor and ambiance is usually reflective of the way they make their candy, and I wouldn't have thought that there could be so many ways to make, display, and package a product that is essentially similar across the stores. There was the minimalist shop painted in warm colors and bright lighting, and the emphasis was on the origin of the cocoa beans in each product; those candies have un-froofy shapes and were displayed geometrically. Then there was the store that felt almost bridal, and those chocolates were all made in really intricate molds and packaged like jewelry. And speaking of food as art, I went into the Gran Epicerie at Bon Marche department store (it's like Harrod's or Sak's). Even though it's totally overpriced and touristy, the food was really beautifully prepared and displayed, and I loved walking around.

Il pleut

Happy (somewhat belated) 4th of July!

I had a good first week at work--it's going to be really hard, but I think I'll learn a lot. The data set I'm analyzing is in French (and most of the French words are abbreviated), which is definitely challenging my language skills in addition to my statistics skills.

Last night I thought it would be fun to do something for the 4th of July, so on a whim I went to an American expat Meetup group on the southeastern tip of Ile Saint-Louis, one of the two islands in the middle of the Seine. We sat on the actual point of the island, about two feet above the water--it was really pretty. I had a great time and met some wonderful people, plus I sampled lots of different kinds of wine (do I remember what they were or which was which? Of course not!).

It's pouring today, which means that the museums will probably be mobbed. I'm feeling a little guilty that I haven't been to a museum yet (well, truth: i'm feeling guilty that i'm not feeling guilty), so I'm debating whether to fight the crowds at a museum, go hang out at a bookstore, read my book in a cafe, or just stay home and watch the rain and listen to French radio in an attempt to learn the language. Tough life!

Mon ami

I have spent the past few days wandering around, getting lost, and in the process getting acquainted with the city (I haven't even taken out my guidebook yet). Even though it is very crowded with tourists right now, it is still so much fun to walk around (and we all know how much i love to walk, so this is heaven). I have also gotten the opportunity to see some truly hilarious tourists--Hawaiian shirts, fanny packs, and all. They have been my favorite photo subjects so far. This picture is of a Segway tour outside Hotel des Invalides.

I have also gotten to meet up with many friends from home and meet lots of new people, which has been great. Annie L. and her boyfriend Marc are traveling in Europe now and ended up in Paris for the night due to a train mix-up, so we met up yesterday morning for a croissant and a cafe crème.

Then I met up with Anna's friend Jenine in the afternoon; Jenine lived in Paris for a semester and showed me many of her favorite spots, including the best gelato EVER (the place is called Amorino, near the Luxembourg Gardens). On a whim I got pistachio and lemon, and the pistachio was mind-blowingly good. I would never have guessed that pistachio ice cream could be so amazing. Plus, they make it look like a rose in the cone. Then we hung out in the Luxembourg Gardens, had dinner in the Latin Quarter, and went to the Trocadero to watch the Eiffel Tower light show. It was really fun.

I started work today, and I am really excited about the things I will hopefully be doing. Also, a couple who sings in one of the Paris operas lives in my complex, and as I write this they are rehearsing together. Pretty cool!

A tout a l'heure!

Bag has arrived!

I got my bag on Monday--what a relief! It's been through quite a lot...check out all the tags on it. And please ignore the "HEAVY" tag....it was only 22 kilos, I swear!

Gay Paris, indeed

So first of all, I arrived safely and right now I'm sitting on the patio of my adorable apartment, the cat in my lap, looking out onto a courtyard with a beautiful garden (tended by my housemate and nourished by our compost!). Unfortunately, my baggage was not so lucky--my bad luggage luck persists, and my bag got stuck in Dublin. But my housemate is friends with everyone, including someone who works at the airport, and her friend arranged to have my bag delivered tomorrow afternoon. What a relief!

Last night I had dinner with Muriel (my housemate) and Kathrin, the previous tenant. Muriel made a delicious tomato and zucchini tart (she is vegetarian also) and we had a really nice time.

Today was the Paris pride parade, and it was incredible. I was wandering around in the Latin Quarter and just followed the men in leather pants until I found the parade. I have never seen anything like this--there must have been tens of thousands of marchers alone, and the spectators were five deep where i was standing. I met a really nice couple from the US, and we watched from 3pm until about 5 from the street (we were on St. Germain du Pres), then I met up with my mom's friend Anita and her family for dinner. You could see the parade from their apartment, and at 7:30 it was still going strong. The streets were FILLED with marchers, and the floats were just amazing. It ended in Place du Bastille (where I live) and the entire Bastille area is still closed to traffic and packed with drunk revelers.

This picture is from the parade--pretty self-explanatory :)

Le Lecon du Francais

On Thursday night I had dinner at my grandparents' house in Newton to have a French lesson with my grandfather, get some party supplies and a wonderful dinner from my super-cook and super-hostess grandmother, and hang out with them.  They are 87 and 80 and traveled most of the Silk Road between the seventies and the nineties, in addition to traveling all over Africa, Europe, and Central/South America (and I wonder where I get my travel bug from). One time we figured out that my grandfather has spoken 11 languages in his life (although since then, I think he has learned at least two more). 

When he was in medical school right after WWII, he spent a year studying in Europe, splitting his time between Edinburgh and Paris. During this time he developed a habit for buying antique medical books and would barter with booksellers, trading them the cans of tuna and sardines that his family sent for food in exchange for things like Charcot's doctoral thesis and van Leeuwenhouk's original treatise on the microscope. For those who don't know him, he also likes to save stuff (and yes, this is a massive understatement). While this annoys my grandmother to no end, it means that he still has things like:

• his Michelin green guide from 1947 (and his daughter's from 1972)
• the map he used when he lived there
• Rent receipts from his landlady at 76 Rue du St. Pere
• Postcards that he wrote and received while he was there
• And of course, his books.

We figured out that I am almost the exact same age as he was when he lived in Paris, which is pretty cool. We practiced French for a long time, and maybe it's because he was speaking so slowly and carefully, but I understood almost everythign he said and could even respond sometimes! Also, I have (and am bringing) his Langenscheidt pocket French dictionary that he's had for years and years, and it smells like his study--cigars, old books, with a little bit of mothballs and a little bit of basement. I love it.

He sent me this picture from when he was 25 and was living in Paris--it was taken sitting on his balcony on Rue de St. Pere.

Bienvenue!

Welcome to my blog!

This blog will be my way of keeping in touch from Paris and experimenting with a new kind of travel journal. The name comes from the eponymous book by Ernest Hemingway, in which he says, "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." (Incidentally, I've been waiting for about five years for the perfect time to use "eponymous" in a sentence.)

Thank you for sharing my feasts and travels with me, and enjoy!