Whoops I did it again.

I went to the market this morning with a very short list. Fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables. And some fresh spaghetti for the kids.

I would *not* be swayed by the siren call of the basil-olive tapenade, by the succulent smell of the roasted, marinated tomatoes, by the smooth shell of a perfectly formed tortellini. Most of all, I would NOT yield to the temptation of any kind of fromage.

Well, I got my fruit.

I got my vegetables.

And I was on my way to get my spaghetti for the kids. But when it was my turn to be helped, the vendor wouldn't let his new assistant serve me. He told the new assistant: "She is my special friend -- I will get her spaghetti -- did you know her kids love this stuff?" And then when I told him that after today, I had just two more Saturdays at the market before "quitting" France, he didn't believe me. He looked so very, very sad. And he said I would always have a special place in his heart, and he hoped he would always have a special place in mine.

So of course I had to buy the tortellini.

And then, on my way to buy flowers for a gouter with friends this afternoon, I walked by my favorite cheese vendor. Or should I call her my dealer. She is, after all, the one who on my first visit had the nerve to suggest I try a new cheese she was offering that day, a tasty, salty gruyere that is made high in the mountains by cows that, I am sure, receive regular massages and manicures. What other explanation for the the price -- 44 euros per kilo? Yes, that's right, there is a cheese in the world that costs about $30 a pound -- and it IS that good. Really.

That first taste was free, of course. It  always is. And like a good junkie, I've been dutifully coming back each week to see what the latest specials are (although I only ever buy a small slice of the most delicious, expensive kind on the Saturdays she has it). So clearly, CLEARLY, when she stopped me this morning to say bonjour, when she said she missed seeing me last week, when we talked about chateaux and the Loire and a new cheese she had -- well, really, I had no other choice. Before I knew it, I was walking away with three small packets of cheese in my bag, and my wallet noticably lighter. The only saving grace is that she didn't have my (crazy expensive) gruyere this week. Otherwise I might not have been able to face John when I got home.

And finally, I had everything on my list (and then some). I was almost free. I was walking toward my car, almost all temptations behind me, and who do I see? The olive-tapenade-tomato vendor -- another of my favorites where I usually stop at every week but had purposefully walked by this morning. He caught my eye. He gave a warm bonjour.  How could I say no?

(Does it help that he gave me a good deal on it? Probably not.)

Clearly, I have a problem...and what a wonderful problem to have. But for the sake of our budget and our cholesterol, it is probably good we only have two Saturdays left.

Sigh.

Two Saturdays left.

This won't be easy.

A family recipe

Still no official word on what the mystery plant may be. Might be reason to come back to Burgundy some spring in the future just to research more!

But... my dad did ask me to pass along his special "anti-skunk" recipe to my amazing in-laws after reading about our faithful hound Kaia's encounter with a skunk earlier this week. I did. And then I realized that since I often post or link to recipes (for things like tarte au chocolat or tortillas, true), maybe someone out there might be helped by my dad's surefire way to get the skunk smell off of a dog.

From the all time skunk trapper of Teller County, Colorado: Mix together one quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide, 1 teaspoon of mild liquid dishwashing detergent and 1/4 cup of baking soda.  Before bathing your pet, put cotton balls in his ears and a drop of mineral oil in each eye to prevent the mixture from irritating the eyes.  Rub the mixture through your pet's coat and brush it through with a soft brush, then rinse well.  You might have to repeat it until the odor is gone, but it really does work.  This is my long time remedy from Heloise.  When a skunk sprays the yard, I use a spray bottle and spray it around and it gets rid of the odor.  Poor Kaia.

Are skunks a problem in France? I can just imagine the conversation with Geraldine and Thomas (who patiently answer all of my random French questions) -- it's sure to be a good one!

In completely non-smelly other news... the kids and I are surviving John's absence for a work trip (we finished day four today -- hooray!), and we couldn't have made it through today without Lauren, Claudia and Penelope (and their parents). I was running low on patience this morning, and had a long list of shopping to do at both the Beaune Saturday market and the regular supermarket to prepare for my mom's visit. The kids do NOT love going to the market with me. They love the carousel there, of course, and John always takes them to it on any market morning. But going from stall to stall while I buy vegetables and cheese and chicken has never been their favorite activity. And with all of the tourists coming to town and the market more crowded than ever, it would have been even less fun.

So Alli kindly offered to have me drop the kids at her place and sent me on my way. What a friend! I had a great market morning -- a few of my favorite vendors passed along little extras today, some breadsticks and a few extra flowers -- and you will be shocked to hear I bought all of my favorite cheeses -- but this time for selfless reasons! My mom and Sharon can't eat gluten -- when I explained that to different vendors they gave a look of recognition (they had clearly heard of a gluten allergy) and then all of them, every single one, gave the saddest face ever at the thought of being unable to eat French bread. So I figured what they will miss in bread we will make up for in cheese! How very, very noble of me, I know.

The kids had a blast playing with the May girls. Kate and Liv adore anything that the nearly two-year-old Penelope does (and Penelope loves having them as adoring fans). Jack, Lauren and Claudia traded a few Pokemon cards while they were at it. And when I returned with my final haul, all the kids (and moms) walked back to town to get an ice cream cone -- a perfect end to a day that could have been so stressful and frustrating for all four of us. I did get a bit misty as we walked and I watched Lauren hold Kate and Liv's hands, and Jack take Penelope's while talking to Claudia... because it is clear how lucky we are to have such good friends, and how sad we are to be getting to a point where we can count down how many more market mornings we'll have. That's just not something I want to think about too much.

So... to avoid any more weepy eyes, I'll just say the kids and I returned and started getting ready for Mom and Sharon. John will pick up them up tomorrow night in Lyon after having made a whirlwind trip to Paris and Barcelona (again, I am struck by how much cooler than sounds than making a whirlwind trip to, say, Calgary and Winnipeg). And hopefully, at this time tomorrow night, I'll be saying bienvenue maman!

Row, row, row your bateau

Beaune was its most beautiful yet Saturday morning, and so we headed to the market (which is getting so crowded with all of those *tourists* (we say, feeling like we aren't really one of them), then to lunch, and then to Le Parc de la Bouzaise (which John had never seen) while Kathy and Alex toured the Hotel Dieu (which all of us had enjoyed).

At the market, the kids took a turn on the carousel, while I visited my favorite cheese vendor and was praised (?) for my luxe taste in cheese. Uh-oh. I don't think that's actually a good thing. But we returned with a plate full of our favorites, as a gift from Kathy and Alex (now those are GOOD friends).

At the park, after playing in the maze, after looking at the animals, after watching Jack fly through the air on the crazy swing/merry-go-round-this-would-never-be-legal-in-the-U.S.-or-Canada piece of playground equipment, and watching Kate and Liv master the art of sliding down a fire pole (Uncle Steven would be so proud), we decided to take a little boat ride.

First Jack and I headed out... then John took all three kids.. It was the kind of afternoon where you might start humming to yourself something about life being but a dream...

Things I learned at the market

We all headed to the market this morning, although the kids were happy to quickly detour to Chez Alli and John (or, perhaps more accurately, Chez Lauren, Claudia and Penelope). They played and played while we shopped and shopped. A few lessons learned:

1. If you have the option of having a real butcher "prepare" your chicken -- take it. This was the first time I bought a whole uncooked chicken at the market, and I wanted to prepare this recipe which calls for a whole chicken to be cut into eight pieces. I am more comfortable roasting a whole chicken, so hesitantly asked if they could couper the bird for me. In no time at all, they chopped off its head and feet, removed the guts, and had that bird beautifully prepared in eight pieces for me. If I do it again, I'm going to ask if I can take pictures -- it was *that* cool to see.

2. There is more than one kind of garlic. I found this out today when I tried to buy three bulbs. The vendor gave me a bit of a confused looked, and asked if I had a garden (giving me a look like I could not possibly be a gardener). I immediately panicked, thinking my reputation as someone who kills all plants had crossed an ocean, wondering how he KNEW I was a terrible gardener. Then he explained that the ones I was trying to buy were for planting... and the ones for eating were at the other end of the counter. Ah. Who knew?

3. I shouldn't take John with me when I buy cheese. It's not exactly cheap, but it's SOOOOOOOOOOO good. He just didn't know how good. Until now. Sigh. (Cheese of the week: an amazing cheese from high in the Alps that had been aged 29 months. I need to start bringing a pen to the market and writing down names... I always think I'll remember, but I never do.)

4. If you see people in a line for something, whatever they are buying is probably worth trying. This has turned out to be true for an amazing whole grain bread (two of the last four weeks) and an incredible goat's cheese (today).

5. You can learn a lot by asking where something comes from. One of my earliest market mornings, I asked (just out of curiousity) where the bananas were from (most that I had eaten in my life were from North and South America and I wondered where French bananas came from). The vendor said, a bit apologetically, that they were not from Martinique, but from Cote d'Ivoire. Well, at the next vendor, I saw bananas from Martinique. And they were delicious. Today, a vendor was selling two kinds of strawberries, one a bit more expensive than the other. I asked where they were from. These, he said with great pride, are from southern France. These others, he said, were from... Spain (the way he said it made it sound like he had found those strawberries under his couch, leftover from a long ago spring, and he was very sorry he was having to display them). He also said the French ones were more fragrant (had more perfume) while the Spanish ones had more sugar. I tried the French ones. They were magnifique.

6. It's kind of hilarious to watch two people with bad French accents try to talk to each other (example: the kind man selling Asian food (spring rolls, samosas, noodle dishes) and me). Neither of understood a word the other said, but somehow he ended up with his money and I ended up with spring rolls. I guess that's a victory of sorts.

7. And the best suggestion of all came from the website of David Lebovitz (source of my tasty chicken recipe). "One thing I've learned in France," he wrote, "is that if someone who's an expert tells you to eat something—you should eat it."

He's right.

To market, to market... to buy a lot of cheese...

Despite the snow and cold (yes, more snow and cold), we HAD to make it to the Beaune market this morning. As always, it was fantastic. I just asked Jay and Judy to describe it (a request they are complying with while playing cards with Jack... so if they sound a bit distracted, they are. Jack is a tough card player).



"It's so varied," said Jay as he muttered in disgust at Jack's discard choice. "Usually in a market, you don't have such variety -- clothes as well as food. They even had underwear!"

"Between French lingerie and roasted rabbits and chickens..." said Judy, debating the play Jack was making.

"And you throw in all of the cheeses and meats," Jay added, indulging in his daughter-in-law's love of all things fromage. "We don't get anything like that."

"It's an artist's palatte of vegetables," said Judy, listening to Jay and Jack discussing whether they could overtake her. "The textures of the vegetables, the colors..."




In the end, Jack won the game (called 313, a kind of complicated rummy game they have been playing nonstop since Jay and Judy's arrival) but we all were victors when it came to a delicious lunch (and snack, and dinner...). The haul included: four bottles of wine, a bigger chicken than usual (to feed more people than usual), six pears, two kilos of the BEST clementines, four apples, two kinds of fresh pasta, walnuts, pistachios, olives, marinated garlic, tapinade, strawberries, radishes, une baguette, three kinds of cheese (a hard cheese called, I think, comte, and two spreadables that everyone seems to love), and fresh parmesean. I feel like there was more, but we have probably already eaten it!

Weekend update

I wish I had taken a picture from our house on Thursday night. It would have shown John on Skype, talking on to Franck (one of the owners of this house), who was on his computer in Canada and who then did a conference call with his father at his computer in a house in our little village, who was (thankfully!) talking on his phone to Monsieur France Telecom about our telephone and internet woes. It was an impressive feat of technology – trying to solve our technological problem.

Apparently, it is a problem with the line to the house, and France Telecom will need to fix it. Now, we’ve only been here two weeks, but already I know enough to not hold my breath that France Telecom will be able to do that any time soon (I figure if you set the bar of expectations VERY low, you can only be pleasantly surprised). And I am so grateful to Laura and Franck for arranging a native French speaker to talk to French Telecom on our behalf. I am feeling pretty OK about my language skills for most conversations (and am remembering so much more French every day), but the telephone is SO hard. So three cheers to Franck's father!

And no one knows why we still can get Skype when we can’t get a dial tone on the phone or a regular internet connection – but we do seem to have Skype (lisnjohn1) if you need to reach us urgently, and a French cell phone if the schools need to reach us. I figure it’s a bit of a safety net to keep us connected to the world, and I'm not going to complain about it even if no one understands why we are getting it.

In the meantime, Franck and Laura have hooked us up with an internet connection at another location, where John or I go (briefly) once or twice a day to check in with the outside world.  It’s working for now – and one unintended consequence is that instead of turning to my usual daily must-reads (The New York Times online, The Globe and Mail online, etc.), I have looked instead to the many wonderful books in this house and started devouring those.

Oh yeah, books! I remember you! First I enjoyed a fluffy and fun read called Entre Nous about finding your inner French girl (full of lots of useful tips including how you can’t really buy coffee to go in France (no kidding!), advising buying fewer items of clothing but the best quality you can afford, and extolling the virtues of sayin "no" (or "non") from time to time). Then, I picked up the wonderful writing guide/inspirational tome by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird. You know how there are books you need to read at a certain place and time? Well, this is one of those books. She strikes just the right note of teacher/friend/editor/fellow writer sharing the lessons learned... and it was just the bit of inspiration I needed – the kick in the pants to get back in the habit of writing *something* every day. We’ll see how long her pep talk lasts – and feel free to email me and encourage (harass?) me as I try to get back into the world of writing again.

The kids had a good end of the school week, although we had more snow which meant that the bus for Jack was cancelled Friday (he had taken it for the first time on Thursday and loved it) and that the kids are not properly shod for the moment. I had considered long and hard what winter wear to bring and, it seems, I made the wrong call on this one. France is generally more temperate than Canada (I can't help laughing a little as a write that -- most places in the woirld are a bit more temperate than Canada!) and often there are winters with very little snow. This, however, appears NOT to be one of those winters. So we have been putting the kids in lots of layers (which works) and sending them to school in their rain boots and two pairs of socks (which mostly works, sort of). I know I could go buy new snow boots – but what if it doesn’t snow again?

We braved the snow and bad roads to go to check email briefly Saturday morning and then (more importantly) to head to the Beaune market. At several points I thought we should turn around and go home – the roads were quite slick and it was looking worse by the minute. But when we arrived at the market, I swear you could almost hear the harps of heaven strum and the angels sing as the grey skies broke and the sun and blue skies cascaded down on all the market goers! Clearly we were meant to be there -- and we had a wonderful outing. The kids and John returned to the carousel (bien sur) and I did a quick tour to pick up a few things we needed. It wasn’t as big of a haul as last week, but still pretty good considering how little time I actually spent there (we wanted to get home as we didn't think the blue skies would last long -- and they didn't).

 

 

Pictured above, you can see the haul: six apples, eight pears, four avocados, four containers of strawberries (on special this week because the vendor wanted to go home), tapenade, walnuts, hazelnuts, dried apricots, dried strawberries, olives, a new cheese of the week (again, I didn’t catch the name... I need to bring a pen next week!), salami dried with goat cheese (DELICIOUS!), a quarter of a roasted turkey and some French beans, a Florentine baguette, the most delicious tomatoes I have ever had in January (grown in a nursery in the south of France), an umbrella, and local honey. Pas mal, n’est pas?

(Oh, and Katie and Livie are in tank tops because we were doing their laundry and pretty much EVERYTHING else was dirty.)

And a few other observations from the week:

* We passed by a high school at some kind of morning break and were surprised (although perhaps we shouldn’t have been) at the number of students smoking. Crowds of teenagers, all wearing black and grey jackets, of course, but also school backpacks, were huddled in the cold, smoking, smoking, smoking. It feels like the U.S. and Canada are quite different in this area... even when I was in high school (way back then), you wouldn’t have seen this kind of number of students with cigarettes. I wonder if they are taxed as heavily here? It would be interesting to find out if there have been any changes in who smokes (and how much they smoke) over the last few decades.

* Like in Lethbridge, it is not always easy to get details out of Jack about his day. But we did manage to ask just the right question the other night to elicit a response about the behavior of kids at school. He said the kids are wilder on the playground but calmer in the classroom. He said he’s been a little surprised at some things – seeing kids (boys and girls) throw snowballs at each other, fight, kick, wrestle, pull hair, etc. – but all of the kids involved seem to *want* to be wrestling/fighting/throwing snowballs, etc., and no one seems to be upset about it. He said none of it’s been directed at him, either, and that he’s been happy to be playing tag, hopscotch and other games with boys and girls. He added that the students are unsupervised for most of their breaks. The flip side is that he said things in the classroom are very, very calm. There has been only one time where one student was acting out in a way that Jack noticed this last week and where the teacher had to raise her voice a bit. His own classrooms in Lethbridge have been pretty calm, I think (when considering have twenty children together in a confined space), so for him to comment on this is pretty telling, I think.

* On Thursday, when I was waiting for Jack to catch the bus, I was talking to a girl in his class. She told me (unprompted... I had only asked how old she was and hearing she was almost eight, asked if she knew Jack) that Jack is a quick learner and hard worker... that there is something he doesn’t understand one day, and then he does the next. Bravo, Jack!

* We pushed our luck a bit with Kate and Liv and had them try heading back to preschool for an afternoon on Thursday. The afternoon program sounded wonderful – lots of time spent reading books and painting and playing. While they were fine, they were SO tired when we picked them up.  So for now, we will have them go only in the mornings. They both are having so much fun there. We are feeling VERY lucky about how well it’s all going for all three kids at school.

* On Monday, I will get to accompany Kate and Liv on a field trip to Dijon. In the morning, the class will go to the museum. They will have a picnic lunch, and then see some kind of puppet show (I *think*... I could be completely wrong about all of it, too!). They are very excited about this, and I am excited to get back to Dijon.

*  Speaking of the beautiful city to our north -- I have exchanged emails with the Harmels, the family I lived with in Dijon in 1993, and am going to try to get together with their daughters (who have many children) this week and with them in a few weeks (they have been travelling quite a bit lately). I am so excited to see them -- I look back at my time in Dijon and so many of the wonderful memories took place at their apartment, at the kitchen table with Christine, as I learned about France, French, and more.

* Two of the kids (Jack and Kate) have picked up the cold I heard actively in both classrooms when we went to visit our first week here. Sigh. I know it's inevitable (between travel, weird sleeping schedules, and new germs they haven't encountered before), but I don't like it anyway! Kate had a rough night but seems to be a lot better this morning. Jack had a rough night and seems to be about the same today. Neither has a fever,  headaches, or body aches, and Jack's doesn't sound like it's tranformed into his asthma cough (and he says it doesn't feel like his asthma cough)... so I am hoping it's just a regular old cold.  Fingers crossed for their quick recovery!

And I think that's about it. Sorry for such a long post... and apologies, too, if you email and we don't reply right away... we are mostly just checking in and making some travel plans (Jay and Judy are coming to visit next week!), and hoping for the best for France Telecom to fix the phones.

Market day

Someone -- and I'm not naming names here -- might have gone a little crazy at Beaune's market today.

This was the haul we brought home:

In case you can't tell, that's about 10 pears (three different types), four apples, a beautiful head of lettuce, two containers of sweet strawberries, one artichoke, four avocados, one small chicken (already cooked on rotisserie), fresh pasta, parmesean, baguette, dried apricots, a cheese of the day (I didn't understand the name, but trust me... it was GOOD), ham, hazelnuts (already shelled), almonds (already shelled), olives from Provence, basil-olive tapenade, and three treats from a patisserie.

And the almost embarrassing thing is that this was with me restraining myself... I could have *really* gone crazy if we didn't have three kids eager to get to the carousel and only a certain number of Euros in my purse.

 

What an amazing market. Flowers, fish, cheese, fruit, chickens, bread, butter... all the delicious things you could dream of were right there, waiting to be tried and purchased. Jack and I had a REALLY good time at the nut/dried fruit/olive/tapenade stall... he let Jack try a number of dried fruits (he settled on apricots) and he let me try a number of olives (I settled on Provencale). Kate and Liv came back later and decided that next week, they would like the dried strawberries. Nice to know we can go back next week!

The kids were not 100 percent smitten with the market, though. At one point, inside a giant hall where many of the meats, fish, and cheeses were being sold, Jack made a face and said to us (not quietly), "I'm surrounded my my mortal enemies: stinky cheeses and fish!" Some of those stinky cheeses are amazing... he just doesn't know it yet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 John even found a black coat for a mere 20 Euros. In the spirit of less luggage, he had left both his black wool coat and his black leather coat in Lethbridge and brought his multi-pocket, multi-purpose blue rainish coat. He immediately regretted leaving the black coats at home (no one -- and I mean NO ONE -- has been seen wearing anything close to his kind of coat). While we were in Colorado, he found a black wool coat with my Dad at Costco...but it had a hideous (yes, hideous) faux fur collar. The laughter of the women at my parents' house forced a return on our way out of town and John has been on the lookout for a new coat since we got here. The market coat was just the thing.

As I made my last purchases, John took the kids over to a beautiful old carousel. They loved it -- each rode twice, and picked out their rides for next time.

 

 

 

We brought our haul home, had a big Saturday midday meal, and now might all need to take a nap. What a wonderful Saturday ritual.