Erika's Moveable Feast

The feast has up and left

2009-03-30T21:42:00.003-04:00

Erika's Moveable Feast has emigrated to a new URL--www.erikasmoveablefeast.wordpress.com. Be sure to update your bookmarks/feeds/subscriptions!

A bittersweet goodbye

2009-01-19T11:05:00.000-05:00

Today was our last day in Kaohsiung, and as I write this I’m on the high-speed train that will take us back to Taipei and then back to our normal lives. While in some ways I’m more than ready to go back—as usually happens at the end of a trip, I’m ready to not have every meal be an event, every day not a new challenge or adventure, not having the element of suspense when I point to something on a menu and not knowing whether I just ordered noodles with stewed beef tendon or noodles with vegetables. I miss talking on the phone with my friends and family. I don’t like having my days and nights flipped from most of the other people in my world.

But for all that, this has been one of my favorite trips ever. Sometimes on group trips I don’t always bond with either the American-based group or the group that we’re visiting, but on this trip I truly enjoyed the company of both groups and made some wonderful new friends. Today after we presented our case studies of the factories we visited, we went to a Harvard-KMU Academic Exchange Symposium. Harvard and KMU have several joint programs through the medical school and the public health school, and so six people gave speeches about both the research they had done and the experiences they’d had. Two of those speeches stick in my mind in particular—the speech given by James, one of our Taiwanese student hosts at KMU, and one given by a medical student who had done two rotations at Mass General through Harvard Medical School. James, who usually keeps things pretty lighthearted, talked a lot about what he and his peers had learned from working with us. Although we all had a ton of fun—more fun in a two-week period than I’ve had in a very long time—I was surprised to hear how much they had gotten out of the visit in addition to the cultural exchange. James talked a lot about how our approaches to problem-solving and our work ethics served as examples to him and his classmates, and how they learned so much just from working on our reports together. He also talked about how they were so impressed with our adventurousness—particularly around food—and that it reminded them how much a person is able to push their personal limits.

Then the Taiwanese medical student who had lived in Boston doing a sub-internship in urology and pediatric nephrology through a Harvard-KMU exchange talked about her experience. Throughout it all she kept saying how grateful she was for everyone’s kindness and generosity and acceptance, and how much she had learned. At the end, she said something like, “Since participating in this program I have learned a new meaning of thank you. You have changed my life and my career.”

It was then that I really realized how this exchange was about a lot more than factories, karaoke, and giant feasts. Throughout our stay, the KMU students would tell everyone—including taxi drivers—that we were Harvard students who came to visit them. One of the deans spoke about the exchange programs, and one of his proudest points was that Harvard students receive 2.5 credits for taking a course at their school—the implication being that the quality of their academics was so high that Harvard would give its students credit for participating in their class. Among ourselves, we had discussed how for months the students had been preparing for “The Harvard Students” to come—probably picturing us as either no-fun extreme nerds or jackets-with-elbow-patches types—and how much we surprised them with the way that we actually wanted to hang out with them outside of structured programs, go to their favorite places, eat the foods that they liked, and learn from them in addition to them learning from us.

This trip has involved a lot of comfort-zone-pushing for me, as well. As in Tanzania and especially Madagascar, it’s a very good experience to look so visibly different than everyone else around you. Especially because Kaohsiung is really not a tourist destination, when I would go off on my own or with a few friends, I or we would often be the only white people around, and people definitely would look twice at me—there was no slipping into a shop to unobtrusively look around. Part of that was the language barrier, which I talked about earlier. It’s profoundly humbling to realize that although I’m a student at a world-renowned institution, I can still be completely unable to communicate something as simple as a taxi destination or what filling I want in my dumplings. I didn’t even know how to look up the right words in a dictionary. In France I could get around because I could read, talk, and relate things to Spanish, but I had no traction here.

But that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t connect. Today after the programs, we had a gift exchange with the KMU students. We had gotten them each a few things both before and during the trip, which we gave them. They bought us each one or two personalized gifts—different things for everyone—that reflected something they had learned about our personalities or things we liked. For example, I loved Erin and Puffy’s three dogs, and kept joking that I wanted to take Yang-Yang home with me, so they bought me a stuffed dog that looks just like Yang-Yang (and they brought the real Yang-Yang to the train station to say goodbye). One of my Harvard classmates has an iPhone but no case, so they got her an iPhone case from a store that she liked in one of the markets. They did this for all eight of us. And then the gifts just kept coming—one student got each of us a customized stamp with our name in Chinese characters, another bought us each a kind of Chinese Magic 8 Ball, we got KMU mugs and bags and keychains and calendars. I’m astounded by their generosity, not just today but throughout our stay. One of the doctors who took the class with us saw that I had the same computer as him and that I was curious about his silicone keyboard protector, and the next time he saw me he gave me a box with a new keyboard protector in it. Another doctor came out to dinner with us one night, a huge and delicious meal—for about forty people—and paid for the whole thing without telling anyone. We only learned a few days ago that it was him. We all spent this afternoon taking pictures, reminiscing and saying goodbye—I can’t believe we’ve only known them for two weeks, it feels like forever.

So for now, it’s goodbye from Taiwan—I’ll probably pick at this blog throughout the spring, but be sure to tune in again for more travel adventures if and when I go to Paris this summer!

Good times in Taiwan

2009-01-16T05:24:00.000-05:00

Our days have been so jam-packed that this is one of the first times that I've had to sit down and write about what I've been doing. We have been having a great time--the Taiwanese students are wonderful hosts and are making such a huge effort to ensure that we are having fun. Some of the highlights of the past week or so...

- Asian-style karaoke, or "KTV": Rather than American- or European-style karaoke where you sing to the whole bar, in Taiwan and much of Asia, it's completely different. You go with a group of 10-15 friends and rent out a whole room. Included in the price--about $8-9 US per person--is an all-you-can-eat buffet and six hours of customized karaoke. Each room has its own karaoke machine, a big screen to display the lyrics, about five microphones, and a whole bunch of couches and chairs. Amazingly, we used the whole six hours, and had a great time singing songs in both English and Chinese. Here Erin, one of our Taiwanese hosts, is singing with one of her three dogs that she brought along.

- We visited China Power Company, which is located in Tainan, a city near Kaohsiung. Tainan was really cute--much older and more charming than Kaohsiung--and I got two free sausages by winning a game at the vendor's stand (although this was immediately following a huge lunch, so after taking this picture I passed them off to my classmates)

- Today we visited Pingtung Long Chuan Brewery, for which I'm writing a case study about occupational health and safety along with one other Harvard student and five Chinese students. This is a wall of beer at one of the loading docks.

- Just finding our way around the city has been fun--the Metro system here is only a year old, and it's beautiful. This is the Dome of Light, which is a giant stained glass half-sphere built into the roof of one of the stations.

As for the hard parts of this trip...they certainly exist. By far the hardest part is the language barrier. Never before have I fully understood how apt a term "language barrier" is...I am basically rendered mute, deaf, and illiterate in many, many conversations and interactions. The Taiwanese students speak English with varying proficiency (ranging from near-fluent to very minimal), and we've made great headway in communicating but it's still difficult to have good conversations without someone translating. Chinese is completely impenetrable to me--even though I'm trying to learn, it's so difficult to speak that my attempts at words beyond "hello" and "thank you" are pretty much unintelligible, although people do appreciate us trying. Just getting around the city can be really difficult--for instance, when trying to buy food at a night market, all that's displayed is the raw ingredients, and without knowing how to read Chinese, we have no idea what the stand's dishes contain unless we stand there and watch what other people order--the pointing-and-motioning approach works in small restaurants, less so in crowded markets where the vendors are busy. Some--like this octopus on a stick--is pretty self-explanatory, but others are pretty much impossible without knowing the language. A few of our group members are native Chinese speakers so they can translate for us, but it's really difficult for me to have to depend on others for something as basic as how to order a bowl of noodles.

The other difficult part is a product of one of the best parts--group travel. I'm doing things that I would never get a chance to do if I came here as a tourist, and my experiences are infinitely richer for being part of this group. But I haven't traveled in a group for about three years (since Madagascar), and since then I've become a pretty independent traveler. Even though we are only eight Harvard students and about 12 Taiwanese students, maneuvering is still difficult. The Taiwanese students are almost all younger than us--their age range is 18-25, and our age range is 23-29--and although we have a wide range of travel experiences in our group, we all appreciate some unstructured, unsupervised time. However, the KMU students are afraid that if we go off on our own we'll get completely lost--on the first day they gave us a card to wear around our neck, and told us to just show it to a taxi driver if we get lost. A few days ago I learned that the translation from Chinese is "Please take me back to Kaohsiung Medical University." We've bargained for some free time, which has been much appreciated--I just need time to wander around by myself, get lost, and not be on a schedule. Yesterday we had the afternoon off, so I went bike riding with two friends from my group. We rented bikes and rode the whole length of the city, ending up at a huge lotus pond that is full of temples, dragons, and some nice fresh air (Kaohsiung is fairly polluted, since there's so much industry here). We rode about about 15 miles total (none of the KMU students could believe it...their primary mode of transportation is on a motor-scooter), and it was so nice to get some exercise and see the city in a different way.

Gone shrimping

2009-01-10T08:22:00.000-05:00

The Taiwanese students have been working so hard to make this a fun, cultural experience for us, and it's been wonderful. Yesterday they had a Chinese New Year party for us, where we had dumplings (a traditional chinese new year food), learned Chinese calligraphy from the students, and got to spend a lot of time talking with the students.

Then last night they took us out for beef noodle soup, a Taiwanese specialty (the handmade udon noodles were fantastic but I've decided that, except for a really good steak, I don't like beef that much). At dinner I also ate a "thousand-year-old egg," which is a preserved egg that is blackish-blue and served with silken tofu and ginger. It was neither good nor bad--it just tasted like a mushy egg--but as you can see, it's not exactly the most appetizing-looking foodstuff in the world.

We then went to a "lounge bar" for a few hours for some drinks, and afterwards the students asked what we wanted to do. It was only about 11:00, so they reeled off a few options--pub, other bars, or shrimping. As soon as James said "shrimping" we all said "Yes, let's do that," even though none of us had any idea what it actually entailed. Turns out that's because it only exists in Taiwan. We got in cabs and pulled up to a building with metal siding that was about the size of a high school gym. "This is the shrimping court," said James. Shrimping court? We walked into the building, which had concrete floors and fluorescent lights and the only obese people I've seen so far in Taiwan. In the middle of the room was a gigantic pool with blackish water and a whole bunch of shrimp on the bottom (you couldn't see the shrimp on the surface), and people were sitting around the pool on plastic chairs and holding fishing rods, drinking beer and waiting for a nibble on their rod. After they had collected a bunch of shrimp, they would either spear the shrimp and grill them alive, or throw them into a pot and boil them.

We rented a few rods and started shrimping. It was surprisingly difficult! There was a real art to catching a shrimp, and a few of the locals who apparently spent a whole lot of time there gave us some good tips. As a group (about 15 American and Taiwanese students) we caught probably 25 or 30 shrimp over the course of the evening--we got there around 11:30pm, and I left at 1:30 but a group stayed until almost 3--the shrimping court closes around 8am. After almost an hour and a half, I caught my first shrimp, and we grilled and ate them. They weren't bad! And I think it's safe to say that this was one of the more unique experiences of the trip.

Today (Saturday) they planned out a whole day of activities for us. We rented bikes, and almost our whole group--the men included--got pink Hello Kitty beach cruisers with a bell and a basket. We took our bikes onto a ferry that went to a small island off Taiwan, and we biked/hiked around the island, had an unbelievable seafood lunch (our table of 8 had about 10 dishes and the total came to $10 per person--and it was the most expensive restaurant in town), hung out on the beach, biked over to a teahouse to watch the sunset, and now we are heading out to check out the Kaohsiung nightlife. What a fun day!

From vegetarian to duck tongues in six months

2009-01-08T19:26:00.000-05:00

We've been eating a lot of street food, and it's been fun to try so many new things. If I were still vegetarian, I'd really be missing out--although given some of the stuff I've eaten, it's sort of amazing that six months ago I could count on one hand the number of times I'd eaten meat in the past 15 years. Yesterday on our way back from our site visit to China Shipbuilding Company, we saw a stand on the street that smelled amazing, and it turned out to be a street snack that we had all been wanting to try--soup dumplings, or small pieces of pork and spring onion in broth, with the broth encased inside a dumpling wrapper and served with finely sliced ginger root and hot sauce on top. They are small--about an inch and a half in diameter--and you have to be very careful when picking them up with chopsticks so that you don't pop them. They were unbelievably delicious. Then for dinner, the students who are hosting us at Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU) took us out to the biggest night market in Kaohsiung. There must have been close to 100 food stalls, as well as stands selling clothes and jewelry. Our usual routine is to each buy things and then share all of them, so you get to taste many different things. My list of things that I tried last night (my most adventurous night yet)....most of it was pretty good!

Braised duck tongues (still attached to the trachea)...it was rather, shall we say, springy
Slices of chicken neck
More stinky tofu (it was better this time but still not great--our unofficial Taiwanese social director kept buying us plates of it!) with kimchi
Shaved ice (fresh-made snow mixed with syrupy fruits, rice balls, taro root, and sweet red beans
A sweet medicinal soup that was thick and black, mixed with the same things as the shaved ice
Pancakes filled with a sweet paste (in this picture)
Candied strawberries on a stick
Papaya pureed with milk (a popular drink here)
Edamame tossed with salt, pepper, and garlic (delicious!)
Little marinated tofu cubes
Cherry tomatoes split and filled with a kind of brown sugar paste
And I didn't try this, but a few other Harvard students did....congealed pig blood mixed with rice, in slices on a stick

Very healthy, right? Our Taiwanese hosts were very impressed at how willing we were to taste things! As we were leaving the market, I noted that I had never before been to a place where I saw things laid on on sticks at a food stand and wasn't sure whether it was a meat or a dessert.

Hi from Taiwan!

2009-01-08T05:12:00.000-05:00

Hello from Taiwan!

After a 27-hour journey, I arrived in Taiwan on Monday evening. It's been a whirlwind of meetings, events, meals, and fun since we arrived (and the jet lag isn't too bad--although we are 13 hours ahead of the East coast! I think I'm finally more-or-less caught up).

We spent the last two days in Taipei, meeting with health officials in the Taiwanese government. We stayed at the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), where we were led by a Taiwanese researcher whose English name is--not kidding--Dr. Peter Pan. He set up meetings to introduce us to the director of IOSH, the director of Taiwan's Environmental Protection Agency, and other leaders in occupational safety and health. There's a big culture of gift-giving here--every time we meet someone, we give them a gift, take a picture of us with them and the gift, and then they give us gifts. It's really nice, and it's fun to be greeted with such enthusiasm wherever we go. We also went to the top of the world's tallest building, Taipei 101 (which I'm "holding" in this picture taken from the rooftop of the EPA). As you can see, the weather in Taipei was sort of gross--so humid that after walking around outside with some papers in my bag, the paper didn't even tear when you tried to rip it, it just fell apart.

And of course, the food has been amazing. It's so many new tastes and textures and smells that I'm not used to at all, so it takes some adjusting, but I have had some wonderful new dishes and found a few things that I can definitely do without. Dr. Pan took us out for a huge lunch on our first day (left photo), where the lazy susan in the center of a table for 10 was completely filled with different dishes. There's lots of seafood, which is wonderful, and also a lot of pork--not as much chicken or beef, although beef noodle soup is a Taiwanese specialty. The middle photo is stinky tofu, which is a Taiwanese street snack sold at the night markets. It smells like an open sewer, and as I learned, it kind of tastes like one too, but it's a traditional food so we all decided to try it. The right-hand picture is my friend Kevin's face when he took a bite. We also got bubble tea from the stand where it was invented (no joke), and it was AMAZING! It's slightly sweetened milk tea with tapioca balls it it, and while the bubble tea I've had in the US has been overly sweet with balls that get caught in the straws, this was just great. I couldn't finish it (on that day, we had our gigantic lunch at 12:30 pm and the students at Taipei's public health school gave us a "snack" of pizza and fried chicken at 2:30pm).

A few more pictures from Taipei--Taipei 101 lit up at night, the entrance to "Snake Alley" (one of Taipei's night markets), and the Longshan Temple, the biggest in Taipei (I think).

Yes we did!

2008-11-05T15:28:00.000-05:00

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

2008-10-22T22:53:00.000-04:00

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

2008-10-05T20:20:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-08T22:12:00.000-04:00

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!

2008-07-29T08:18:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-24T16:23:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-23T14:51:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-21T07:19:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-17T16:04:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-15T06:42:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-13T15:35:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-12T14:40:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-10T17:00:00.000-04:00

(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

2008-07-08T04:19:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-07T07:25:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-05T11:47:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-05T05:40:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-02T06:41:00.000-04:00

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!

2008-07-01T15:43:00.000-04:00

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

2008-06-28T15:39:00.000-04:00

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

2008-06-19T22:38:00.000-04:00

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!

2008-06-19T08:58:00.001-04:00

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!