Pure Randomness

"Goutee?" It was 9:00 in the morning and the man at the meat counter was giving out samples. I had just run into a friend of ours and she seemed eager to try so I followed suit, not that I wouldn't have anyway. Even before I tasted it the multicolored chunks held together with a gelatinous mortar, I had my suspicions as to what it was. So I asked my friend. Sure enough: Head Cheese or as she unneccesarily described it "all the piecese of a pigs head cooked together". Actually it was pretty good. When I started laughing, she asked me "They make this in the U.S. don't they?" To which I replied "Yes, they just wouldn't dare try to hand out samples".


I love to improve on my French. I love practicing it. Unfortunately, yes that's right, unfortunately, many French people love to practice their English with me. I say that because what you get is two people trying to convey information in broken fragments containing the vocabulary command of a brilliant chimpanzee. Now, if this conversation occurs at the market or the hardware store, it's just not a big deal. The worst that happens is that you end off with an extra helping of cous cous and some North African stew (a happpy mistake that occured on Sunday). The problem is that most people that speak a little English and want to practice it are educated folks. How educated? Oh, just Doctors and Pharmacists. Everytime I call the Dr. to make an appointment he wants to speak english and use our am/pm clock system versus the normal European 24 hour clock. I never understand him because of his accent. Now if he'd speak French, I'd get it with no problem whatsoever. I know it sounds crazy but sometimes I'd rather them speak slow French. I'm sure they probably think the same of my French.


We accepted long ago that there are certain things and that there are certain foods that we would not be able to find, at least not easily. It's not that bad. You can deal with a lot if you set your mind to it. "I do not miss Dr. Pepper. I do not miss Dr. Pepper" I say that often enough that I actually believe it. Anxiety and stress are honeslty not caused by such items. It is the ones that you think you can find. Coca-cola and M&Ms are different. Coke uses the more common sucrose rather than HFCS like in the U.S. M&Ms taste more like their dark chocolate than our version. It's weird but even those are tolerable. One that was not recently was a big jug of chocolate milk. I got really excited and couldn't wait to pour a big glass. I had the combined disappointment of the M&Ms and the Coke. Dark chocolate flavor and no HFCS. It was a low moment. The worst so far, though, is breakfast sausage. Plain old Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage. I don't know what I'd pay for it right now, but I don't want to guess for fear of offending you. They eat all manner of ground pork here but so far I haven't tried any that is flavored like our run of the mill breakfast sausage. The conundrum I face is that I can't accept that it doesn't exist here so I keep buying different types and every time I do I whip up a batch of pancakes or "French" toast. And (so far) everytime the one is good but the sausage tastes enough different that every bite reminds you that you are not home. What I'm trying to say with all of this is that "comfort food" isn't comforting. All the food is good, great in fact, but sometimes you don't want good, you want familiar.


When did eating domesticated duck become unpopular in the U.S.? I know you can get it, but it isn't common. I bought one off of the rotisserie yesterday at the market. I also bought the potatoes that had been cooking in the marvelous dripping duck fat underneath it. It was unbelievable. We all loved it. Why did we abandon it? Same with some of the cheeses. Why do we not make these? Is it because they take too much time and money to make? Yes, the duck costs a little more than the chicken and yes, some cheeses are expensive, but it's easily worth it. Pretty sure I'll miss some of those things when we move back.


I once read that French language has substantially less words than English. I, mistakenly, took this as good news. Less words to learn has to be good, right? Wrong. They just reuse the same words for several different things. For example: "Bouchon" 1) A wine cork 2) a traffic jam 3) a specific type of resaurant in Lyon or possibly Paris. It makes sense that the first two could be similar, but it doesn't help when you are trying to translate. Just because you hear a word you know, doesn't mean you know how it's being used. That and you could potentially tell
a story about how you didn't get to pop bouchon out of a bottle of wine at the bouchon in Lyon because you got stuck in a bouchon on the way. There is also their nasty habit of running words together that creates conjunctions which sounds like other, completely unrelated, words. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the French language is mostly context and non verbal communicaton. Proof positive for this is that, since Day 1, I've been able to grunt and point to get what I want at the bakery. It wasn't until I thought I could speak a little that I started messing up my order.