Ice cream, you scream!

Last week was ice cream week at school. Considering what a big fan I am of the cold, sweet treat--and how hot it's been!--I had to go to the buffet. This is what I was greeted with:

Here's the class with their frozen cake and pop creations.

 

Josh made this just for me. It was Bailey's ice cream dipped in chocolate and nuts, in the shape of a doggy footprint. Yummmm!

 

Here's a cake, beautifully decorated by Clovis, and half a pineapple filled with pineapple sorbet and topped with fine strands of caramel (by Josh).

I'm not sure who made this one, but it's an ice cream cake topped with scoops of all the flavors--ice cream and sorbet--the class made: chocolate, pineapple and basil, strawberry, cherry, apricot and vanilla. At left you can see a meringue-coated cake. Yum.

So long absent

I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up this blog as well as I had hoped. I guess June has been a bit on the slow side. Plus our Internet is spotty at best (grr). So, here are a few updates if anyone's interested:

Yesterday was Music Day! It was kind of funny because all the music I heard in the hour or so I attended was traditional French folk music--like, hand organs and accordions. And the dancing was very folky. But it's part of how they keep their culture alive, which is cool, and I have to say everyone seemed to be having a great time. I met up with some of Josh's classmates there, where we also ran into their chef, her husband (who's also a chef and works at the school) and their daughter. We saw a few other people who work at the school and a host of local business owners I recognized from daily interactions, like the guy who works at the tabac/papier store where I bought the insanely expensive stamps for Josh and my final visa appointment next week; the woman who owns the boulangerie near our house; the woman who runs the counter at the chocolate shop downtown; and the poissonerie owner, who cooked up some amazing-looking paella for the festivities. What's really cool is that, in seeing these people again and again they've begun to recognize me and now we have conversations beyond, "Bonjour, je voudrais ..." (hello, I would like ...). I'm starting to feel like part of the community!

This week is ice cream week for Josh's class. I've heard about chocolate, caramel, various fruit flavors, Bailey's ... Can't wait for the buffet today when I can taste some of them!

Tonight Josh, Clovis and I are hosting a dinner party in our apartment for the class, chef and some others from school. Should be a fun night! Josh is making Indian tacos (Native American tacos, for which he'll hand make and fry bread). And ice cream for dessert. Yum!

And, tomorrow we head to Lyon. Everyone from Josh's class except one is coming, and we'll stay the night before returning to Yssingeaux Sunday with Lizzie's boyfriend, who's flying in from South Africa to visit for a few weeks.

Next week brings a few notable highlights as well: Monday the class goes to the Valhrona chocolate factory(!) and I get to go along(!!!). And later next week I go with them again when we finalize our long-stay visas. Mine's a little different because it's a visitor visa, not a student visa, but the school has been very helpful in setting up everything for me as well as Josh and the rest of his class.

Shopping

OK, it's time for me to write about grocery shopping in France. Like most everything else here, it's just different enough to remind me I'm not in Kansas anymore.

There are four main stores here for groceries. One of them sucks and, after our first week here I have yet to go back. One of them, Super U, is far--probably about a mile away--but it's the cheapest. Josh, Clovis and I went in together on a rolling bag so we can go to Super U (pronounced, of course, soop-air ooh) and not kill our arms. When we're not feeling up to the walk we go to Intermarche or Lidl and, when super lazy, Petite Casino, which is downtown but small and a bit pricey.

Here are Super U and Intermarche for your viewing delight:

OK, so the differences pretty much start with the shopping carts. Seems like they'd be the same, right? Well ... they are but they aren't. First of all, they have a pretty fool-proof system for making sure you return your cart to the corral--they make you pay a deposit for it.

 Insert a 1 euro coin to release the cart. Get it back when you return it! Genius!

As far as the choices on the inside are concerned, you have a pretty average store. Both Super U and Intermarche offer food as well as other stuff--school supplies, garden stuff, housewares, personal-care items, etc. I liken Super U to Walmart and Intermarche to Target, as far as how nice they are and their prices. They both have big produce sections, a fish department and a large butcher area. The biggest difference in meats is that there is a TON of veal. Like, there's as much veal as beef. But by far pork is the most popular meat. They also regularly have lamb, duck and rabbit. Sometimes you'll even see pigeon. There is no deli department, though they do sell sliced meat, in packages of two to six (weird). Sliced cheese is even harder to find, though Super U especially has a HUGE cheese counter. They also have charcuterie, which is kind of like bologna but infused with stuff like duck liver and olives. Oh, and they sell sliced bread with or without the crust--funny!

One thing I cannot get over is the flavors of chips they enjoy. Apparently among their favorites are chicken and thyme, mustard, smoked ham, bacon, rosemary and olive oil, bolognaise, paprika.

  

   

The other thing that is really weird is that they regularly stock milk on the shelves--not in the refrigerated section. They call this kind of milk "UHT," which stands for ultra-high temperature. It lasts longer and doesn't need to be cold, but once you open it you need to consume it within a few days. It also tastes a little different. They do the same thing with cream. 

Oh, and they sell goat's milk!

(It's funny, a lot of places where they sell cheese, milk or meat, they show pictures of the animal so you know what you're eating/drinking. This is quite helpful actually!)

Fruit juices are very popular and very good. They offer some unique flavors, too!

Here you can see cranberry and currant, cranberry, mango, tomato, raspberry, strawberry and cherry.

That's pretty much the gist of the shopping experience in Yssingeaux. The other main difference is that stores do not offer bags, plastic or paper, for free at the checkout. You can often buy heavy-duty reusable bags and sometimes regular-old plastics. Needless to say, our ChicoBags are coming in handy!

Spoiled on sweets

I've come to the conclusion over the past week or so that this entire town is spoiled on sweets! As I've mentioned before, Josh doesn't bring all his creations home. (If he did, I'd most likely eat them and come home 100 pounds heavier!) So, what does he do with them? Well, sadly sometimes they get tossed in the trash. But more often they get handed out to our favorite locals. Usually the stuff is very perishable and is best eaten immediately, which is part of the reason for the waste and the speedy giveaways. Other times, like last week, he makes candies and other goodies that will last a while.

Last Friday Josh brought home a ton of candies. They made orange-flavored marshmallows, caramels, raspberry-flavored caramels, jelly candies and chocolates filled with almond and passion-fruit ganache. Yum. There were so many, though, that he'd already stopped and given some away. Because the candies last a while, I convinced him to let me save some to hand out to my favorite farmers' market vendors on Thursday. Good to go.

Then this week rolls around and his class had two days of practice exams in preparation for their first test next week. At the same time, one of the French programs had finals. On Wednesday, I decided to check out the poissonerie--the fish market--because, well, I love fish. I got to talking with the guy behind the counter--which is nice because sometimes I feel shy and just buy the stuff I want and leave with a "merci, au revoir." The guy was friendly, explained he's from Belgium. I told him we just visited Belgium and loved it, especially the chocolate and beer. I said I was in Yssingeaux because my husband is studying at the pastry school and his face lit up. He said he has a Belgian friend who just finished his final at ENSP and then he went into the back of the store and came out with a box full of cakes his friend had given to him!

Fast forward to Wednesday night, when Josh got home from school with his own four cakes. We went to the pizzeria by our apartment and he gave one to the owner, another to his employee and two to random patrons. When one of his classmates came in behind us with her gifts, there was no one to give them to! And in fact she'd just come from another restaurant where the owner had refused her treats. (We're guessing he'd already gotten too many!)

So, this town is spoiled on sweets, for sure. And the people are quick to thank us for them. The bars offer free drinks, the coffee shops free coffees. When I brought candies to my favorite cheese vendor at the market on Thursday she gave me a whole half a round for free. Clearly not everyone can afford to be so generous and some instead express their gratitude with a big smile and a "merci beaucoup!" All in all the system works out quite nicely for everyone.

Next week brings Josh's first exam. They'll get a list of things to make when they arrive at class and then they get 30 minutes to put their schedule together. They work independently so they really have to know how long each item takes in order to finish everything on time. Wish him luck!

Differences

I've had several people ask me to write about the main differences between France and the U.S. Of course, there are many. Here are what I consider to be the top five after two months:

5. Quality and specialization. It seems that these days Americans are encouraged to cast a wide net, to choose a specialty but also become fluent in other areas related to that specialty. Journalists are encouraged to learn to write and take photos; restaurants that could do quite well selling only cakes and pastries also offer full coffee bars and lunch fare. In France it seems to me there's still an emphasis placed on specialization that we've started to lose in the States. In Yssingeaux, which is a pretty small town, we have at least two butchers, a fish market, several stores that sell only breads, a chocolate shop, and probably a few others I'm forgetting to mention. And all of these places offer goods handmade by people who focus on what they do best and don't try to do everything else at the same time. Quality is key. 

4. Driving. I mentioned this in a previous post, but I'll repeat it here because I do find driving--from the cars to the roads to the gas by the liter--here is different. First off, not everyone here has a hatchback, but pretty much everyone does. Cars are typically smaller, though there are more SUVs here than you might think. No pick-ups, though. The colors are sometimes strange, from pale yellow to violet. And they're 95 percent manual! The road signs are mostly close enough to understand, but there are subtle differences. For example, where we have dotted lines to indicate passing is OK, they have dotted lines and big swooping arrows. And I think it's funny the way they tell you you're leaving a town--they print the name of the town with a line through it--reminds me of HTML (how big of a dork am I?).

3. "Bonjour!" People here are extremely friendly, even to us foreigners. Just walking down the street, whenever you make eye contact with someone, they're bound to say, "Bonjour," and it's polite to say it back (or say it first!). [I should note here that the same cannot be said of Paris.]

2. Smaller sizes. This applies to just about everything, but especially when it comes to food. At McDonald's, the "maxi" is a medium in the U.S. In restaurants, portions are smaller and in grocery stores it's the same. There are no "family-size" bags of chips or boxes of cereal. People here must shop more often than we're used to, which might explain why we have a mini fridge in our apartment!

In cafes, coffee is served in a tiny cup and is simply a shot of espresso.

1. Pace of life. Everything is just a little bit more relaxed here than anywhere I've lived in the States, and that mostly includes California. People take long lunches, so practically everything is closed from noon to 2 or 2:30 or even sometimes 3. On Sundays and Mondays you're lucky to find things open after noon, if at all. Few restaurants offer food to go--it's much more common to sit and enjoy your meal than take it on the road. It's sort of intangible, but people just seem less rushed here, less in a hurry to get from one place to another, less inclined to push to the front of the line or get rude with a slow salesperson. 

I have a whole post in the works about grocery shopping--eta later this week!